Isn’t Christianity Just Wish Fulfillment?

A lecture given at L’Abri Fellowship in Southborough,
Massachusetts. For more information, visit
https://southboroughlabri.org/


Feb 25


Dr. Brandon Unruh


"Isn't Christianity Just Wish Fulfillment?"


This talk examines competing understandings of our seemingly
universal desire for transcendence and perfection as either a
collective neurosis driven by unresolved infantile longings
(famously argued by Sigmund Freud) or a trustworthy signpost
hinting at ultimate spiritual reality (as C.S. Lewis posited in
his "argument from desire"). Dr. Brandon Unruh will consider the
strengths of and objections to each claim from his professional
vantage point as a psychiatrist and psychotherapist while also
describing four experiential pathways this desire may take across
the course of our lives: (1) it may be wrongly deified and leave
us dissatisfied, (2) it may lie dormant on account of deadening
attachment experiences, (3) it may be devalued or demystified by
naturalistic explanatory models, or (4) it may deliver us into a
deeper relational experience of God as the source and object of
this desire.


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Southborough L'Abri 2022