Monday, February 15, 2021

SECULAR VS. BIBLICAL COUNSELING

 


 

Secular and Christian counseling have at least one thing in common. Both are religious, having their own set of values. This might sound strange since many are convinced that the secular variety is neutral regarding values. However, I am scarcely alone in this assessment. In One Nation Under Therapy, psychiatrist Sally Satel and ethicist  make the same indictment:

At the heart of therapism [the no-fault, disease-pathology philosophy of psychotherapy] 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)

Secular humanistic psychotherapy (SHP) is more explicitly value-laden than its secular parent, but there is little essential difference between the two. Let’s travel back to 1945 to get a glimpse of its parent. Psychiatrist G. Brock Chisholm, president of the World Federation for Mental Health, had proclaimed:

  • “The re-interpretation and eventually (sic) eradication of the concept of right and wrong which has been the basis of child training, the substitution of intelligent and rational thinking for faith… are the belated objectives of practically all effective psychotherapy.  The fact is, that most psychiatrists and psychologists and other respectable people have escaped from these moral chains and are able to observe and think freely.” https://www.cchr.org.uk/undermining-morals/

How widespread were these opinions? A year later, Chisholm wrote:

  • The fact is that most psychiatrists and psychologists and other respected people have escaped from moral chains and are able to think freely.” (Psychiatry: Journal of Biology and Pathology of Interpersonal Relations 9, no. 1, February 1946)

Escaped? They had merely replaced one set of moral chains for another – a self-indulgent and self-centered variety. Although the field has now become more pragmatic and eclectic, its parent has left its profound imprint upon its progeny. Nevertheless, I think that these following generalizations capture the essence of the secular religion, as it is compared to the Biblical religion:

  1. While secular psychotherapy (SP) understands us as a product of nature and nurture (genetics and environment), in other words, a pathological result, Scripture sees a broader, more creative process at work, which includes our formative choices. Fundamentally, many of our struggles are self-caused. We reject the light of self-awareness in favor of the darkness (John 3:19-20), bringing upon ourselves all manner of ills (Romans 1:21-32; Proverbs 1:29-32). By rejecting God’s gift of righteousness, we condemn ourselves to pursuing an alternative - self-righteousness, the endless attempt to prove our worth.

  1. While the secular approach is client-centered, the Biblical is God-centered, plugging into the Source of everything good and the ultimate answer to our problems (Romans 8:31-32). Meanwhile, SP claims that the answer is in us. We have within ourselves the resources for meaningful change.

  1. While SP tries to build self-trust and self-esteem, the Bible rejects self-trust in favor of trusting in God alone (Psalm 62). Jesus instructed His followers that they could do nothing meaningful without Him (John 15:4-5; Jeremiah 17:5-7; 2 Cor. 3:5). Furthermore, those who trust in themselves have fallen from grace (Gal. 5:2-4).

  1. While SP seeks to exalt the client, Scripture counsels humbling ourselves to the truth of our moral bankruptcy and neediness, trusting that God will exalt us (Luke 18:14; James 4:10).

  1. While SP is focused on symptomology and, in the short run, feeling better about oneself, Scripture is primarily focused on truth and thinking correctly (John 8:31-32; 14:6). As a byproduct of our new identity and growth in Christ (Galatians 2:20), our human “symptomology” becomes more manageable.

  1. Consequently, SP is about affirming the self, while Scripture affirms the transformative power of God, His truth (Romans 12:2), and who we are as His beloved children! SP focuses on improving the client’s performance and feelings about himself, while Scripture’s concern is faithfulness to God, knowing that He will, in the long run, take care of our needs better than we can (Matthew 6:33). This focus will also alleviate our morbid self-obsession (2 Corinthians 4:16-18).

  1. SP emphasizes self-expression, while Scripture emphasizes self-control and faithfulness to our Savior.

  1. SP tends to be non-judgmental and tolerant of just about all forms of expression, at least superficially. Scripture maintains that Truth must 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 insists that we must take responsibility for our behaviors.

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

Tragically, the Church has failed to recognize SP as a stealth virus, which has infected 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.)

SP diminishes the Gospel, having convinced us that healing is only through the hands of the mental health professional. Nevertheless, there is a lot we can learn from others. When my wife needed additional computer skills, I was all in favor of her taking a computer course. However, in view of the above, there is little that Christianity can profitably borrow from SP and its implicit belief system.

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