As I study and practice biblical counseling more and more, it becomes so evident that there is a great divide between modern psychology and biblical guidance. Last year I actually wrote a paper on this very topic, entitled, “The Importance of Biblical Counseling to the Ministry of the Local Church,” from which I would like to share some points that bear repeating. In recent days I have heard so many in the Church trying to communicate various forms of pseudo-counseling, in which they espouse to believe in the sufficiency of Scripture, yet in practice forsake it quite readily by blaming man’s sinful deeds on his upbringing, his environment, his chemical make-up, and all such nonsense. Now we have a form of “Christian” psychology that has infiltrated our pews, even in doctrinally sound churches. Due to the accessibility of psychologically driven media that has cloaked itself in a spiritual guise, as well as the lack of protective shepherding being done by many pastors, many Christians embrace psychology as the primary means of change in one’s life instead of the Almighty God! Psychology gathers bits and pieces of biblical principles, seeking to apply them as a means of encouragement or assistance in the process of change in man’s life without clearly defining them as the basis for that change. Biblical counseling relies on Scripture as THE establishment for a theology of God and His Word, which means that Scripture is the interpreter of man’s problems and the cure for his soul diseases. God will not share the recognition for transforming change in the life of man: “God, who has made Himself known in Scripture, is jealous for His own glory (Deut. 4:24).”
The biblical counselor places the authority and power to change where it rightly belongs: in the inspired and inerrant Holy Scriptures. The psychologist places authority and power in the hands of man. Biblical counseling follows the scriptural teaching of self-denial, while psychology touts self-fulfillment (Mtt. 16:24). Biblical counseling is about who man is, while psychology is about what is happening to man. Biblical counseling is rooted in the restoration of the soul, while psychology is only about a reformation of the soul. Essentially the two come down to personal redemption versus behavior modification.
The psychological world teaches that man is affected by unmet needs, victimization, inborn temperaments and biological determinations. Biblical counseling affirms that man is driven by his sinful nature; it has permeated every crevice of his soul!
A church that adheres to a psychological approach for helping people, most likely, has a membership filled with those who are seeking the church out to meet their personal emotional “needs” – which are actually demands and expectations. The psychology-driven church is not interested in teaching and training every believer to be a spiritual counselor to others, but is more interested in making him feel good about himself and his circumstances. One common characteristic of a psychology-driven church is that it will typically refer out its members for “professional Christian counseling”. This denies the scriptural mandate of the pastor as the caretaker of the souls of his sheep. The pastor, as well as the congregation, is called to “the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ” (Eph. 4:12). By neglecting this biblical principle, the church is failing to fulfill the commands of God. One of my professors has stated that preaching cannot be pursued apart from counseling. A pastor who is not connected intimately to the heartaches of his people certainly cannot truly know how to preach to them. His knowledge of his members is utterly superficial and therefore, cannot benefit the membership best.
A final concern when examining the effects of psychology on the Church is the failure to call sin what it is. The biblical counselor must call man to repentance, but the psychologist has invented substitute word for man’s evil. Jim Own remarks: “Disease is one of the most common. It replaces the ideas of sin nature and being in bondage to lust. Addiction is another replacement word. People don’t lust anymore, or give themselves over to lusting continually as described in Ephesians 4:19. No – now they are addicted(implying thereby haplessness as well as helplessness). And when they lie about their own addiction, they are not really lying. They are just in the denial stage of their disease.”
Buying into Christian psychology has left the Church filled with members who see only a brief glimpse at spiritual transformation as it is based on controlled behaviors. The biblical counseling church, however, produces sincere believers who are committed to a lifetime of hard labor to see the rich rewards of a life renewed in the Spirit and kept by the ordaining and sustaining hand of an Almighty God!
No comments:
Post a Comment