CHRISTIANITY AND PSYCHOTHERAPY

Is it true that Scripture is able to make us complete for every spiritual work (2 Timothy 3:16-17) and that all spiritual blessings come through the Scriptures (2 Peter 1:2-3)?

Many doubt this. They claim that, at times, we require professional secular psychological counseling and treatment. It is not that this practice has such a stellar track record. Far from it! Why then do some Christians make the exception for psychological problems? Here’s how their reasoning goes:

·       When we have a plumbing problem, we turn to the plumber. When we have a tumor, we go to the surgeon. God provides through these means. It should be no different when it comes to psychological problems.

However, it is different. The Bible doesn’t pretend to be a substitute for the plumber, bake, or the surgeon. However, when it comes to a relationship with God and even with others, the Bible does claim to give us everything we need:

·       All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. (2 Timothy 3:16-17 ESV)

Therefore, when we pursue a secular psychologist, we are pursuing the very wisdom and guidance that the Bible claims to provide in these areas. Consequently, it then becomes a matter of rejecting the Bible in favor of secular answers.

The skeptic will claim that the psychologist often has the same wisdom that the Bible has. Sometimes, this is true. Often, secular therapists will talk about the need to forgive, to be grateful, and to do random acts of mercy. However, even when they advocate biblical principles, they are stripped of their necessary context. For example, why should we forgive? From a secular point of view, it is because it will make us feel better. While this is true, sometimes revenge seems sweeter.

Here is another example. While gratefulness is also a mood raiser, to whom shall we be grateful? The secular answer is friends, family, and circumstances. However, there are times that our problems are so severe that we need concrete solutions, which only the hope in God and eternal life can provide. Besides, we are instructed to be grateful to God for our families and friends.

While I applaud the renewed emphasis on living a virtuous life, the secular variety also falls short. Why live the virtuous life? The secular answer is that it provides benefits. Well, it might. However, virtue is no longer virtue if its practice is reduced to a strategy of self-improvement.

Besides, all of these secular solutions suggest that we can live the “good life” without God. It’s just a matter of applying the right techniques. However, the Christian answer is that real change requires a relationship with our Savior who transforms us:

·       And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit. (2 Corinthians 3:18 ESV)

This is something that human engineering cannot accomplish. This is why Jesus tells us that without Him, we can do nothing (John 15:4-5).

Besides, without the biblical context, any self-improvement or success is likely to make us proud, arrogant, and self-righteous. Meanwhile, a relationship with God guards against this in many ways.

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What I wrote above represents the best-case scenario for a Christian who enters the world of secular psychotherapy (SP). However, on its most fundamental level SP is diametrically opposed to Biblical counseling (BC). Here are some considerations:

·       Imparting hope to is basic to all counseling. However, since SP has no room for God, they are left with only one form of hope – self-hope. However, this hope can also heap another burden or responsibility upon the shoulders of the already faint-hearted.

·       Along with this, SP tries to build self-trust based upon raising self-esteem and mastery over fears and other conflicts. In contrast, BC rejects self-trust in favor of trusting in God alone (Psalm 62), but self-trust opposes the Gospel. Jesus instructed His followers that they could do nothing without Him (John 15:4-5; also Jeremiah 17:5-7; 2 Cor. 3:5). Furthermore, those who trust in themselves have fallen from grace (Gal. 5:2-4). If we are honest about our limitations, learning to trust in God is our only option. The fact that we all die should make this fact very obvious.

·       While, SP seeks to exalt the client, Scripture counsels humbling ourselves to the truth of our brokenness and need, trusting that God will exalt us (Luke 14:11; 18:14; James 4:10). Humility best accords with the reality of our humanity and moral failures.

·       While SP is focused on symptomology and, in the short run, feeling better about oneself, Scripture is primarily focused on truth and thinking correctly about ourselves and God (John 8:31-32).

·       Because SP is all about mitigating symptomology, it has little tolerance or understanding for the positive role of suffering. Consequently, it fails to embrace the totality of our experience. Scripture, however, recognizes the need for suffering (2 Cor. 4:7-11), helping us to accept it and to even rejoice in the midst of it (James 1:2-4).

·       While SP is self-centered (client-centered), Scripture is about affirming God and His truth! SP focuses on improving the client’s performance and feelings about oneself, while Scripture’s focus is upon honoring God, knowing that He will, in the long run, take care of our needs better than we can (Matthew 6:33). Besides, when we line ourselves up with Jesus in faith and obedience, it is like plugging into the electric socket.

·       SP tends to be non-judgmental and tolerant of just about all reported behaviors. Scripture maintains that truth has to guide all of our thinking and behaving. Underlying this distinction, SP resorts to the disease model. In the same way that we are not responsible for contracting cancer, we are also not responsible for our problematic behaviors. Scripture has a higher view of humankind, and therefore we must take responsibility for our lives.

In One Nation Under Therapy, psychiatrist Sally Satel and ethicist Christina Sommers warn:

·       "At the heart of therapism is the revolutionary idea that psychology can and should take the place of ethics and religion. Recall Abraham Maslow’s elated claim that the new psychologies of self-actualization were offering a “religion surrogate,” that could change the world. He had “come to think of this humanist trend in psychology as a revolution in the truest, oldest sense of the word…new conceptions of ethics and values.” Carl Rogers then looked upon group therapy as a kind of earthly paradise—a “state where all is know and all accepted.” The sixties and seventies were heady times for Maslow and Rogers. They were promoting a visionary realignment of values, away from the Judeo-Christian ethic, in the direction of what they regarded as a science of self-actualization." (217)

Tragically, the more that the Church has embraced SP, the more it has denigrated the Gospel. Professor of religion, Philip Jenkins, writes:

·       "During the 1970’s and 1980’s, psychological values and assumptions permeated the religious world no less than the secular culture…But an intellectual chasm separates the assumptions of traditional churches from those of mainstream therapy and psychology. The medicalization of wrongdoing sharply circumscribes the areas in which clergy can appropriately exercise their professional jurisdiction, and this loss of acknowledged expertise to therapists and medical authorities at once symbolizes and accelerates a substantial decline in the professional status of priests and ministers." (“Opinion: The Uses of Clerical Scandal,” First Things, 1996, 60.)

This is not to deny that that there are brain diseases and injuries that might require medical attention. However, these problems are clearly distinct from the controversy between SP and BC.

After my five highly recommended psychologists had utterly failed me, Jesus took over and changed me through His Word. For example, Scripture taught me that I no longer live. Instead, Jesus owns me entirely (Galatians 2:20). This truth, among others, gradually freed me. I had struggled with decades of intense depression and self-loathing, followed by panic attacks. However, God’s truths finally took over. My life was no longer about my failures and rejections but about Christ’s mercy and righteousness. Therefore, if anyone rejected me, they were actually rejecting Him. Free at last!

I am therefore convinced that everything that we need is found in Christ:

·       For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have been filled in him, who is the head of all rule and authority. (Colossians 2:9-10)