God – The Perfect Behavior Analyst (PART ONE)

Photo by Haneen Krimly on Unsplash

I have been lucky enough to have exceptional role models in the field of behavior analysis serving individuals with Autism and related diagnoses.  I have had supervisors who are deeply empathetic, prudent, discerning, effectively practical, patient with me (no small task), encouraging, and courageously persevering at times.  I often think “what would [insert name of mentor] do?” when I am trying to make good clinical decisions, especially regarding my first mentor.  She supervised my undergraduate and graduate supervisory experiences, so she had to help me twice to get my fieldwork requirements completed.  God bless her!  Having specific people in our lives who do the kind of work we wish to emulate is healthy and beneficial for pursuing excellence.

Without losing any of these personal examples of great behavior analysts, there is still an archetype to which I look when I consider what a “perfect“ behavior analyst looks like.  I can, should, and must look to God, our Lord, as the perfect behavior analyst.  Consider the following:

KNOWS FUNCTION: A behavior analyst hypothesizes and (with more or less degree of certainty) experimentally demonstrates the reasons why people do what they do, but God knows fully why we do what we do.  Every behavior analyst individualizes a plan to the client based on personal areas of need and strengths.  God bases His plan for us in perfect knowledge of who we are.  He knows our strengths, weaknesses, motivations, and fears better than ourselves or any clinician. 

GROWING & GRACE: A behavior analyst makes changes to a person’s environment so that it is more likely that skills will increase and problematic behaviors will decrease while respecting the freedom of the person, but God also allows us to be challenged and gives us supernatural grace (His life and love) to overcome those challenges.  With assent, behavior analysts can present challenges to a client, and we can give our own encouragement and active presence in a limited way during this, but God gives His life and love (grace) which is perfect.  Without Him we can do nothing (Jn 15:4-5), but through Him Who strengthens us, we can do all things (Phil 4:13).  He also brings good out of everything — even the evil in our lives can be redeemed by Him as repurposed for “good” because evil is a privation of goodness.  Everything is an invitation to be holier and more virtuous when God is the Divine Clinician.

HOLISTIC: A behavior analyst can specialize in many different areas such as Autism and related developmental and neurological diagnoses, depression and anxiety, substance abuse prevention, gerontology, performance management in the workplace, education, sports, health, environmental sustainability, and education.  God does not need to specialize in any of these areas of practice because His truth transcends any nuances and applications across all academic and occupational fields.  All the person-centered disciplines and areas of study converge and integrate with one another at their highest possible level in God because He is the Author of our humanity.

DISCIPLINES: A behavior analyst safely helps a client contact consequences when necessary to help him or her learn some of the most serious contingencies, like “physical altercations can lead to significant restrictions on their access to the general public” or “running in the road and eating inedible objects can lead to death if these behaviors persist.”  There is a minefield of heated discussion surrounding the topic of God “disciplining” His people “because he loves us.”  However, much like parents must discipline their children in order to guide them and care for them, God disciplines those whom He loves (Heb 12:6-8).  This is an incredibly controversial topic related to the age-old dilemma of the “problem of evil” intersecting with our gift of freedom.  All I can offer right now is that God does not create evil, but He mysteriously allows it to exist while remaining Love Himself.  Furthermore, “discipline” is not always the consequence of our own behaviors, but rather a consequence of natural tragedies (i.e., disease and disasters) and behaviors of others which God also permits.  God loves you in whatever suffering you are experiencing, even when you have, through your own actions, brought it upon yourself through your limited free will.  He calls out to all of us in our brokenness and says: 

I will refine them as one refines silver, and I will test them as one tests gold.  They will call upon my name, and I will answer them; I will say “They are my people,” and they will say “The LORD is my God.”

– Zec 13:9

You are His and He is your God.

Like any behavior analyst, God has a behavior plan, and like any good plan it has antecedent modifications (proactive strategies), schedules of reinforcement (consequence strategies for increasing skills), and contacting logical consequences of problematic behaviors (consequence strategies for decreasing certain behaviors).  For now, let’s look at the proactive strategies.

God’s Proactive Strategies

God “woos” us.  Salvation history is a love story between the Creator and the creature.  In a recent sermon given by a priest-friend about God’s invitation to relationship, he quoted a favorite hit single: “It’s a love story.  Baby, just say yes.”   

In most relationships, you usually avoid coming on too strong in the beginning.  We might have fears about being rejected or scaring away the other person.  Behavior analysts know you might need to take a softer approach when entering into the life of the client.  It’s better to come to the developmental, social-emotional, or cognitive level of the client and slowly work at inviting him or her to grow in these different areas (see the message to parents in my article “Relationships are Fundamental”)  God the Father did the same in the Old Testament, not from a place of fear on His part, but from a place of complete knowledge of us.  He knows just how slowly (and quickly) He needs to work with us toward our good.

God told the Israelites “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” (Ex 21:24).  If He had started with “love your enemies” (Mt 5:44) and “turn the other [cheek]” (Mt 5:39), it may have been too far along in the behavior plan or developmental sequence for the Israelites during the Exodus from Egypt over 1,300 years before Jesus’ preaching.  Instead, God the Father needed to use shaping (reinforcing successive approximations) toward the ultimate goal of imitating God’s mercy.  We are invited to love those who hate us as Jesus loves those who hate Him (see Rm 5:8).  

Imagine starting off with teaching a skill for which a child is not ready.  For example, you wouldn’t start off teaching a board game to a two-year-old.  You also wouldn’t expect a three-year-old to have a long back-and-forth conversation on a single topic with another kid, let alone a topic that is not of mutual interest.  God knows what prerequisite skills we need to acquire so that we can cooperate more fully with His grace.  Yes, of course He can help us do things outside of our developmental sequence, but He wants our participation as maturing individuals.

God gives us countless other blessings as part of His comprehensive antecedent interventions.  He gives us grace, the Sacraments, the Scriptures (especially the Commandments, the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes), the community of believers, and so much more.  He modeled for us how to analyze situations — how to read hearts (motivations and affections), how to challenge, how to correct, how to extend mercy, how to be silent, how to love, how to die, and how to live.  He has walked the road before us.  He uses modeling as an intervention through His own example, and through the lives of the Saints.  Video modeling is especially recommended from the research in ABA, so I am particularly grateful for projects like The Chosen for modeling possible ways to act more like Jesus. 

Jesus used metaphors and parables to shake up people’s perception of God not unlike how behavior analysts use metaphors in Acceptance and Commitment Training (ACTr) for transforming the way we relate to different things in our lives in a verbally-based way.  Verbal behavior is incredibly powerful.  It can do so much good and so much damage.  Regardless of how advanced the verbal behavior of our clients are, we need to be careful with our words.  We need to be careful with what those words have been paired (associated).  Systematic and responsible verbal behavior instruction is key to both communicating and receiving truth.  Behavior analysts usually start with the basics of verbal behavior, but it is a lifelong development in which we advance through metaphors, stories, poetry, academic texts, and Sacred texts.  God is still helping you mature your verbal behavior – when is the last time you opened your Bible?

God the Father asked Mary who was “full of grace” (Lk 1:28) and Joseph who “was a righteous man”(Mt 1:19) to raise Jesus.  A question to ponder is, why didn’t God the Father just have Jesus raised by parents with a mediocre caliber or weak character?  Why not have Jesus raised by scoundrels for that matter?  I’m not offering an answer here – just something to meditate upon.  However, an immediate takeaway is that our family dynamic matters.  The brokenness of parents has been passed down ever since Adam and Eve.  Where did Cain learn to not trust God?  He learned it from his parents.  Sometimes generational trauma can have its effects, yet it is not deterministic.  Joseph’s genealogy is quite checkered if you recall (Mt 1:1-17; Lk 3:23-38) yet he is “righteous.”

I will end with this last point about God’s proactivity: God’s love precedes our behavior.  It is what some behavior analysts call “non-contingent” though some might make the distinction that His particular love for just us is contingent on our existence, not on our behaviors other than the act of existing (i.e., He loves us because He made us), yet “God is Love” (1 Jn 4:7-12) even without us existing.  Since our existence is contingent on Him, we might say that His love for us is truly non-contingent since existence is His essence (Aquinas, 1273/1920, I.3.4).

These philosophical arguments matter because we carry around a bunch of real wounds telling us that others’ love for us is dependent on us behaving in a certain way.  God never stops reaching out to us, calling us by name, and giving His life in a single, continuously re-presented sacrifice of Jesus.

Part Two will examine God’s reinforcement strategies and why He allows us to contact logical consequences, as well as some implications for behavior analysts and others in the field of ABA.

May God bless you for reading (or even skimming) this far.

Sincerely,

The Catholic Behavior Analyst

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Bio & Disclaimer: 

Joseph (Joey) Clem is a Catholic licensed behavior analyst in Virginia. He is a husband, father, and lifetime full member in Youth Apostles.  He works primarily with children diagnosed with Autism and volunteers in youth ministry.  This article does not constitute professional advice or services.  All opinions and commentary of the author are his own and are not endorsed by any governing bodies, licensing or certifying boards, companies, or any third-party. 

REFERENCES

1. Aquinas, T. (1920). The Summa Theolgiæ of St. Thomas Aquinas [Second and Revised Edition].  Literally translated by Fathers of the English Dominican Province.  Kevin Knight (2017). [Online Edition]. (Original work composed 1265-1273).  Accessed via https://www.newadvent.org/summa/