The Antithesis In The Right Place

I recently read this blog post, Heath Lambert, which was a reaction to this post, by David Murray and I was inspired to write something about Biblical counseling as opposed to counseling psychology. The quote these two posts are responding to is this:

I know of no single biblical counselor who rejects the observations of secular psychiatry. Biblical counselors embrace the same facts as secular counselors, integrationists, and Christian psychologists. Biblical counselors are not distinct from these other approaches in their embrace of the facts but in their approach to and understanding of these facts.

One of the assumptions that Dr. Murray makes is that Biblical counseling and counseling psychology are simply sisters in the arena of helping people with their problems in living. Because he thinks this is true, he doesn’t understand why we can’t get along like colleagues, bantering and arguing about our various different approaches to helping people. What he doesn’t understand is that that isn’t where the battle lines are. And there is a battle.

The facts that Dr. Lambert is talking about are the events, emotions, thoughts, and behaviors the various people present as their stations in life. After that, there aren’t really any similarities between counseling psychology and Biblical counseling. The goals are different. The assumptions about causes and solutions are different. The approaches to treatment are different. The pathologies are drastically different. There is nothing the same. The facts of the events are the same but after that nothing.

I know it is hard to hear this, especially when we understand that there are over 300 different kinds of therapy in counseling psychology, but I will stick to my guns and say that even though they differ among themselves, they still differ from Biblical counseling in drastic, serious, and fundamental ways.

Incidentally, the folks who practice these 300+ different therapies can talk amongst themselves the way Dr. Murray wants folks to talk. They are the same, they are peers. They only differ in how they practice what they are doing. At the fundamental levels, all these folks agree. It is like they are all playing baseball but differ in the play they would run with two out and runners on first and third. What folks don’t understand is that counseling psychology is playing baseball and Biblical counseling is playing soccer. Both are on a field, but everything else is different.

Here’s the thing. Everything is religious, everything is done in front of the face of God. Sd so if a person or group isn’t doing what they are doing for God, they are in rebellion against God. Psychology has assumptions that are antithetical to the Biblical understanding of God, man, creation, salvation, motivations, causes, ethics, what cure looks like, what help looks like, goals, direction, and on and on. At the foundational level, there is nothing in common between psychology and Biblical counseling; except the people who are hurting.

Years ago, Ed Welch wrote a wonderful article in the Journal of Biblical Counseling, called, “A Discussion Among Clergy.” In that article, he described psychology/psychiatry as a religious entity. Psychology has clergy, is faith-based, assumes their faith is true and thus rarely examines their presuppositions, and they want to make and keep converts. Dr. Welch went on to explain the Christian view of soul care, which includes the fact that Biblical Counselors begin and end with God and everything in between. Both organizations are religious in nature.

Since this religious nature is true, what we have is two competing religions. In the Bible, after the Israelites went into the promised land, they were forever plagued by the gods of the people in the land. There were times when the people obeyed God, to a point, and removed the false gods from amongst them, but they always left a few. And their leaving these few always afflicted them, leading the astray from the worship of the true God. In the end, this compromise brought an end to the nation of Israel and they were destroyed in 70 AD.

What all this means is that secular counseling psychology offers a counterfeit salvation and is thus false religion. It is not only different from Christianity; it is an enemy of God. It is a Baal of our day. It doesn’t look like a religion from certain angles, but it has a god, worship, fellowship of believers, laws, things to attain to, things that indicate failure, it has people who represent the people to the god and the god to the people. It is a religion. Did I mention that as such it is a rival religion to Christianity? And in the same way that Israel was judged because they didn’t act in a radical manner against those foreign gods and embrace jealously the God of their fathers, we are going to be help accountable for our own false worship.

The Bible talks about the battle that is raging all around us between the kingdoms of this world (those in rebellion against God), and the Kingdom of God and his Christ (Christians). The way we recognize who is with us and who is against is by looking at who or what they/we worship. If we worship Jesus, we are members of the Kingdom of God. If we worship anything else, or if we try to combine the worship of Jesus with anything else, we are members of the kingdom of the world.

So, Dr. Murray, and I can’t believe I need to say this to someone who teaches men at a seminary how to serve God and how to lead others to serve God, you are completely missing the antithesis. Your lines are drawn in all the wrong places. Will you reject the false gods of our culture and society and embrace the Lord Jesus Christ as our all in all? Or will you continue to try to worship both the God of the Bible, while giving your life to the false idol of psychology?

Photo by James Wheeler from Pexels