Counseling and fellowship
In the interest of posting something a little more edifying than me whining about our cars, here is a quote from Dietrich Bonhoeffer that I found to be thought-provoking in terms of the needs and benefits of fellowship. If you're not familiar with Bonhoeffer, he was a German theologian who wrote a great deal on Christian community. He was killed by Hitler's regime for his work resisting Nazism both by helping Jews to escape and working on a plot to assassinate Hitler. See this link for a little more information.
The most experienced psychologist or observer of human nature knows infinitely less of the human heart than the simplest Christian who lives beneath the Cross of Jesus. The greatest psychological insight, ability, and experience cannot grasp this one thing: what sin is. Worldy wisdom knows what distress and weakness and failure are, but it does not know the godlessness of man. And so it also does not know that man is destroyed only by his sin and can be healed only by forgiveness. Only the Christian knows this. In the presence of a psychiatrist I can only be a sick man; in the presence of a Christian brother I can dare to be a sinner. The psychiatrist must fist search my heart and yet he never plumbs its ultimate depth. The Christian brother knows when I come to him: here is a sinner like myself, a godless man who wants to confess and yearns for God's forgiveness. The psychiatrist views me as if there were no God. The brother views me as I am before the judging and merciful God in the Cross of Jesus Christ.
I believe the quote is from Bonhoeffer's Life Together. I found the quote in David Powlison's Seeing with New Eyes.
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