David Powlison wrote a book entitled Seeing With New Eyes: Counseling and the Human Condition Through the Lens of Scripture. Of course, I find this topic fascinating, having been a counselor in the secular world for almost 10 years. This book could be such a help to counselors and ministers alike. He has a chapter in the book called X-ray Questions. It is a list of 35 questions that include scripture references, to be used in some form by the counselor. I have decided to write in my personal journal on one question each day, being as honest as I can. This is no easy task, because we can lie to ourselves quite easily, I’ve found, and to truly answer these questions is humbling, and at times embarrassing.
So I’d like to write out the list of questions for anyone who is interested. If there is any feedback or insight that you would like to share, you can comment, or email me at andimeade @ hotmail dot com. Also, I’m not going to include the scripture references, so if anyone would like those please contact me as well.
1. What do you love? Hate?
2. What do you want, desire, crave, lust, and wish for?
3. What do you seek, aim for, and pursue? What are your goals and expectations?
4. Where do you bank your hopes?
5. What do you fear? What do you not want? What do you tend to worry about?
6. What do you feel like doing?
7. What do you thing you need? What are your “felt needs”?
8. What are your plans, agendas, strategies, and intentions designed to accomplish?
9. What makes you tick? What do you organize your life around? What food sustains your life?
10. Where do you find refuge, safety, comfort, escape, pleasure, security?
11. What or whom do you trust?
12. Whose performance matters? On whose shoulders does the well-being of your world rest?
13. Whom must you please? Whose opinion of you counts? From whom do you desire approval and fear rejection?
14. Who are your role models? What kind of person do you think you ought to be or want to be?
15. On your deathbed, what would sum up your life as worthwhile? What gives your life meaning?
16. How do you define and weigh success or failure, right or wrong, desirable, or undesirable?
17. What would make you feel rich, secure, prosperous?
18. What would bring you the greatest pleasure, happiness and delight? The greatest pain and misery?
19. Whose coming into political power would make everything better?
20. Whose victory or success would make your life happy? How do you define victory and success?
21. What do you see as your rights? What do you feel entitled to?
22. In what situations do you feel pressured or tense? Confident and relaxed? What are your escapes? What do you escape from?
23. What do you want to get out of life? What payoff do you seek out of the things you do?
24. What do you pray for?
25. What do you think about most often?
26. What do you talk about? What attitudes do you communicate?
27. How do you spend your time? What are your priorities?
28. What are your characteristic fantasies? Daydreams? What do your night dreams revolve around?
29. What are the functional beliefs that control how you interpret your life and determine how you act?
30. What are your idols or false gods? Whom do you serve?
31. How do you life for yourself?
32. How do you life as a slave of the devil?
33. How do you implicitly say, “if only…” (to get what you want or avoid what you don’t want)?
34. What instinctively seems and feels right to you. What are your opinions, the things you feel are true?
35. Where do you find your identity? How do you define who you are?
This is quite a list! I would definitely recommend only taking one question at a time. The answers will most likely surprise you. More on some of these specific questions to come.
