During the past decade or so, I have come to realize that in a city-oriented society, people’s spiritual and emotional needs far exceed their material needs. In cities where material comfort is abundant, people all the more seek spiritual satisfaction. In the face of such social problems as domestic violence, divorce, parents’ failure to educate their children, the crises in young people’s growth and development, the frequent occurrences of suicide among students, and murders, etc., the need for psychological counseling has become increasingly accepted and recognized. To meet the need of this magnitude, training classes for counselors have been springing up in every large city, like bamboo shoots in the spring.

I remember a tragic incident that occurred more than twenty years ago. It involved a Chinese student who had been pursuing a doctorate in physics at the University of Iowa. After years of hard work, he earned the doctorate. But when he found out that a fellow student who had also gone to the same university from China to pursue his doctorate, not only had received accolades for having written “the best dissertation” but also been offered a post-doctorate position. In comparison, he had no prospect of finding employment. He could not handle this turn of events. In his state of psychological imbalance, he suspected that the department head and his dissertation director were unfair to him. Unable to look past his disappointment, he was filled with suspicion, anger, and hatred. As a result, he plotted for revenge. At a forum sponsored by the university, he gunned down several professors and fellow students before pulling the trigger on himself.

On February 26, 2014, China’s official “People’s Web site” publicized the shocking news about a 29-year-old Chinese man who had earned a doctorate in the U.S. and returned to his hometown in Yangzhou, Jiangsu Province, to visit his family and get together with his old classmates in China. Through their conversations, he found out that his old friends, who did not leave China, had prospered and not only had their happy families and successful careers but also drove name-brand cars and lived in big mansions. As for him, years of hard work and struggles in the U.S. earned him a doctorate and employment with a renowned company as an engineer. Their earnings were comparable to his, but he was still single. A friend tried to match him up with a woman, but the dating turned out to be a failure. Since he had always excelled since childhood and had never experienced failure, he felt superior to all his friends and therefore could not accept the fact that he was now inferior to them. This thought bred in him the plan to commit suicide. For fear that his aging parents would have no one to care for them if he killed himself, he decided to kill his parents first and then take his own life.

These two shocking news events understandably made those who had heard about them pity the two men involved. I could not help asking, “What drove these two distinguished students to commit such crimes, which not only destroyed the bright future of others and their own but also ended their own lives as well as the lives of other people? We have to take a serious look at these tragic events and probe into their real cause.

The pursuit of knowledge is of course good, but it is not the whole of a person’s growth and development. Luke 2:52: “And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man.” The crux of education is the fostering of one’s balanced development in one’s physical, mental, and spiritual being. In today’s knowledgecentered world of education, however, the true purpose of education has tarnished. The goal of schools and most parents is to make sure that the students earn good grades and be “good students, good children.” On the way to work every day, I invariably hear the advertising, coming from my car’s radio, of tutoring classes touting that they can help students get in Ivy League schools. In hopes that their offspring can excel and be admitted to renowned colleges or universities, many parents want to send their children to these tutoring classes. They don’t give much thought to such questions as whether or not their children are psychologically sound, have good character and habits, get along well with others, and can manage independent living. On the schools’ part, under the pressure of increasing graduation rate, many of them emphasize only the students’ grades and neglect the importance of leading the students to establish a sound vision of life, value, and worldview. The practice of shoving education down the throat of the students, crushing them under a heavy and complex course load, has robbed them of vitality. Last year, on a certain occasion, I had a chance to talk with a fifth-grade student. When she told me that she wanted to kill herself, I was stunned by the unthinkable idea of such a young child having suicidal thoughts. Upon questioning her, I learned that she wanted to end her life because she had too much homework, so much so that on many nights she had to stay up past mid-night and to the wee morning hours.

Under Chinese government’s policy of one child per family, paternal and maternal grandparents spoil their grandchildren to the point where the children are not satisfied unless their demands are met. Consequently, they have become self-centered and unable to get along with others. When others do not cater to their wishes, frustration and the sense of failure set in and become one of the causes of their suicide.

Proverbs 18:14: “The spirit of a man will sustain his infirmity; but a wounded spirit who can bear.”

Among the educational projects of the Go and Love Foundation, in addition to preschool education and scholarship for the poor, we hope to strengthen the work of Biblical principle-based guidance to meet the needs for psychological counseling in today’s China. For this issue of our quarterly newsletter, I invited a licensed clinical professional counselor Dr. Angela Fu to write about the individual cases that she observed in the past few years. Given the quarterly’s limited space, beginning from the next issue, she will write about some feasible practices. We urge overseas brothers and sisters who are concerned about the work of counseling to join in our effort, whether you are professional or non-professional. We need to bring the sorrowful or depressed to the Lord, for only He can heal them and free their heart and soul from bondage.