Gospel Living

The Domain of Truth completed its week-long series on biblical counseling and the Christian's concern of psychology.  I recommend it, especially if you are unfamiliar with the differences between "Christian counseling" and the more biblical brand, or if you trust life's problems to the hands of a certified psychologist or psychiatrist. Choose Biblical Counseling Not Psychology: Part 1 Choose Biblical Counseling Not Psychology: Part 2 Depression Poem Pre-courtship Counseling: Seven Relationship Questions Courses: Pastoral Counseling Course by Dr. Stuart Scott Marriage and Family Counseling Course at The Master’s Seminary by John Street Westminster Theological Seminary’s Professors on Biblical Counseling Book Reviews: Review: One Nation Under Therapy by Christina Hoff Sommers, Sally L. Satel Review: Freud by R.J. Rushdoony Book Review of “Out of the Blues: Dealing with the Blues of Depression & Loneliness” by Wayne Mack I lift up my eye...

There are Christian counselors and then there are counselors are Christians.  Said another way, there are believers committed to serving their hurting brothers and sisters by biblical instruction and admonition, and then there are Christians who, with the best intentions, seek assistance from sources outside of the Bible and even outside of the Christian realm. By " outside of the Bible ," I mean mystical/pseudo-spiritual engagements that go beyond simple prayer.  The goal here is to provide a special healing that allegedly cannot come through confronting unbiblical thoughts and attitudes with biblical truths. By " outside of the Christian realm ," I mean turning to the false philosophies I highlighted here and  here . By all of this, I do not mean medication.  Counseling deals with the soul, drugs deal with the flesh.  There may be health issues that require meds, and there is nothing wrong with seeking medical help for me...

(Continued from last week.) B. F. Skinner By way of contrast to Jung, Skinner was a naturalist of naturalists, granting no mystical overtones.  As a result, “ He rejected that a person has meaning or significance ” (36).  His naturalism also left him a determinist, rejecting “free will” and instead teaching that genetic codes direct actions.  For instance, if a man has a disposition toward religion, it is only because his DNA is encoded with a need to seek something spiritual (apply as you will now to the thief, a pedophile, a homosexual, etc.).   Thus, these views flow from his naturalism: there is nothing spiritual or supernatural here, and a man is as bound to his base desires as is an animal. How, then, does Skinner propose to correct societal ills?  Quite simply the same way we would train an animal:  “ behavior modification .”  Ganz describes this as “ attempting to control a person’s destiny by controlling his or her behavior ” (37)—for in...

t’s tempting to gain a helping hand from the learned men and women in the fields of psychotherapy, psychoanalysis, etc. in order to minister to the hurting and poor in spirit.  And why not?  There are a lot of unique problems out there, so it seems to make sense to send sorrowful and troubled souls to the "trained professionals."  Yet, we must wonder if we are feeding our sheep to the wolves.  To answer this, it is first necessary to examine the foundations of modern method. To do that, I recommend you read Richard Ganz’s PsychoBabble: The Failure if Modern Psychology and the Biblical Alternative.   He explores each individual responsible for modern psychology giving the reader a basic understanding of what these men actually believed.  By learning their frameworks and what drove them as people is fundamental to the debate within Christianity over whether we should use  psychology as a complement to the Bible.  The conclusion of the text ...