SECULAR PSYCHOTHERAPY IS DIAMETRICALLY OPPOSED TO BIBLICAL COUNSELING

 

 

 

I had been a highly disturbed youth. Consequently, starting at the age of 15, I began to see a series of highly recommended psychologists until I was 23. Each had left me in greater despair than I had been before seeing them. Since then, many studies have confirmed the value of caring relationships, but not of any one form of psychotherapy. Consequently, I read Riddle’s blog about theologian and writer Thomas Oden with interest.

 

In Thomas C. Oden's A Change of Heart memoir he notes how his "conversion" from Protestant liberalism to traditional Christianity. (From the blog of Jeff Riddle, a Baptist Pastor: http://www.jeffriddle.net/2022/05/oden-on-pastoral-care-and-modern.html?fbclid=IwAR3Osiwkfg0Qe2oQ75ELm4K14ytKgvF92R2Wf_9S24YO9HyDv3GDb4u22LU)

 

·       “After reviewing over 300 empirical outcome studies, he found "that the average psychotherapy cure rate was not better than the spontaneous remission rate."

 

·       "The average outcomes of all types of therapy approaches turned out to be the same rate of recovery as that which occurred merely through the passage of time, approximately 63 percent."

 

·       "That finding was coupled with the alarming specter of 'client deterioration,' which showed that 10 percent of the patients found their conditions worsening under the care of professional psychotherapists."

 

·       "Those empirical facts took me aback. I had spent two decades trusting the assumed effectiveness of psychotherapies, but now I had actual rigorous empirical evidence of their average ineffectiveness."

 

What Oden had derived from the empirical studies, I had learned primarily through experience and the Scriptures, which give us everything we need psychologically and spiritually:

 

·       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)

 

It had been hard for me to believe that the Scriptures would give me everything I would need without professional help. Nevertheless, I had become convinced that they weren’t able to help me because I was a looser, damaged beyond repair. However, in my needy condition, Scripture finally began to prevail. Not only was Scripture adequate, I began to understand that if God is omnipotent and omniscience, He was all I needed:

·       …If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? (Romans 8:31–32)

 

“All things!” This made me complete in Him (Colossians 2:8-10) However, I had to first learn humility:

 

·       Likewise, you who are younger, be subject to the elders. Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another, for “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you. (1 Peter 5:5–7)

 

However, humility directly contradicted the self-help books I had been reading and psychotherapy, which taught us:

 

·       To trust in ourselves,

·       To love and forgive ourselves,

·       To regard ourselves as good and worthy.

 

While the Bible was about humility based upon seeing ourselves as we really are—sinners who need the Savior—pop psychotherapy was all about self-focus and self-exaltation. I had been trying to prop myself up with all forms of positive affirmations and visualizations. While they worked temporarily, they were no better than a drug, which required increasingly higher fixes.

This illustrates the principle of “focus.” To focus honestly upon ourselves—our insecurities, vulnerabilities, failures, and inadequacies—is depressing. However, to look towards our Savior is uplifting. Even if we become wildly successful, we tend to become self-righteous, conceited, arrogant, and look down on others.

 

I knew that I couldn’t trust in myself, but could I trust in God? I had nowhere else to turn! I had lost hope in secular psychotherapy. It had replaced my boyhood dreams of virtue, heroism, and sacrificing myself for the well-being of others with the flat-earth philosophy of moral relativism where there was no intrinsic meaning or purpose, no dreams, just sameness.

 

However, God’s world glowed with purpose and vibrancy, the very things that my aching heart craved. The only hope that secularism could offer me was either hope in myself or in the psychotherapist. However, Scripture convinced me that my hope had to be in the Lord alone:

·       Thus says the LORD: “Cursed is the man who trusts in man and makes flesh his strength, whose heart turns away from the LORD. He is like a shrub in the desert, and shall not see any good come. He shall dwell in the parched places of the wilderness, in an uninhabited salt land. “Blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD, whose trust is the LORD. He is like a tree planted by water, that sends out its roots by the stream, and does not fear when heat comes, for its leaves remain green, and is not anxious in the year of drought, for it does not cease to bear fruit.” (Jeremiah 17:5–8)

 

Subsequently, I found that trying to love, forgive, and believe in myself was a burden I didn’t need, not as long as a had a Savior who loves, forgives, and takes care of me, working everything for my good (Romans 8:28). Trying to tweak my brain to believe in what I couldn’t was like masturbation. Instead, we are created for something far greater—an eternal relationship with a God who had loved us so much, even when we hated Him, that He died for us (Romans 5:8-10).

 

Love transforms. Therefore, Jesus had prayed that we’d experience the love of God in greater ways:

 

·       “I made [You] known to them …and I will continue to make [You] known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.” (John 17:26)

 

There is no substitute for the love of God! (Please ask about the free course via zoom I plan to offer in September)