What's the Origin of and Solution to Internal Conflict?

Let us start off with my understanding of the biblical worldview regarding internal conflict.

The biblical perspective, as I understand it is, that the heart is the center of everything that makes us human. This heart of man though is under the curse of sin. Therefore a biblical worldview stems from the premise that we are all born under the curse of sin. In the natural man this turns our heart inward, twisting even the best of intentions to be centered on what can be gained personally.

In the biblical worldview this is overcome by Christ’s sacrifice bridging the gap imposed by sin between God and man. By coming under the sacrifice of Christ a person is given access to a new nature through the Holy Spirit which is others focused and centers not on a mans heart being prompted but on the teaching of Christ and a relationship with the Father through the indwelling Holy Spirit. Though a Christian is given salvation and a new nature in Christ, they are still fallen and therefore in constant conflict between the old nature and our new one.

Taking the above into account, both the Bible and psychology agree that conflict originates internally from the person. Any similarities appear to stop at this point. Popular psychology asserts, in contrast with scripture, that internal conflict not only originates internally, but can be solved internally as well by a person helping themselves by appealing to thier individual psychological needs.

This view seems to recall the old adage "Physician heal thyself." Like a physician who would need external assistance to operate on a personal problem, the individual must have external assitance to deal with internal points of struggle such as addiction, phobia, and moral descision making.

A biblical worldview, however, says that the strength to put aside the old or selfish nature of a person originates externally based on what is allowed to flow into the heart. It is then that our hearts can be a “well spring of life”.