Counseling the Heart Through Biblical Thinking

Hey Cole, thanks for your comments. By the way, I went to your website and read a couple of your articles. Looks like you have a firm grasp on philosophy, science, theology, and psychology. I also found it interesting to read your co-bloggers testimony from Evangelicalism to Atheism. Ironically, I went through the exact opposite experience. Beginning as a skeptic, I investigated the claims of Theism, and particularly Christianity, and found these world views to be more consistent with reality and more logically coherent than Naturalism.

Moreover, I enjoyed reading your thought experiment concerning slavery in the Old Testament. A good book I would suggest, if you haven’t read it already, is Paul Copan’s book “Is God a Moral Monster?” It helps answer some contextual questions about the Old Testament in it’s relation to Ancient Near Eastern History. I still have questions myself and would be dishonest if I told you I don’t wrestle with the same issues you brought up. I graduated with my M.Div from Southern Seminary and still haven’t scratched the surface with many of these questions. If you want to have a deeper dialogue, please let me know. I’d be happy to learn more from your perspective.

In your comment section, you wrote a few things about my article. Let me first mention this article was a surface-level approach to secular based counseling versus biblical counseling. My intention was not to create a mischaracterization of the viewpoints but to paint with a broad brush to encapsulate the main beliefs each secularist had.

For instance, Freud did in fact believe the remnants of religion were embedded in our culture. There was no escape from it, even for the unbeliever. For instance, Freud writes in his essay Civilization and Discontents (1939) the following: “Thus we know of two origins of the sense of guilt: one arising from fear of an authority, and the other, later on, arising from fear of the super-ego. The first insists upon a renunciation of instinctual satisfactions; the second, as well as doing this, presses for punishment, since the continuance of the forbidden wishes cannot be concealed from the super-ego.” p. 74

Freud had a problem with this. The notion of sin was only a false guilt to cause people to conform to societal values. He believed this fear tactic from the religious elite was used to control the people, similar to Marx: “Religion is the opiate for the masses.” Consequently, Freud said, don’t believe what you hear. When the church says you should be in a monogamous relationship, that’s their own value system. Rearrange your values. You create your own value. Don’t allow the superego and civilization to suppress your instinctual nature. The instinctual nature is a good thing. It’s not a sin. Sin is a delusion. Give power to the id, and eventually the id will overcome the superego.

Next, you said I created a false dichotomy between secular psychology and biblical psychology. When I use the term “psyche” I am referring to the study of the soul. Hence, I am arguing secularists study the soul very differently than biblicists study the soul. Am I saying there are no redemptive qualities in secular-based counseling? No. For instance, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is a practical tool used, regardless if one believes in a god or not. It’s been proven empirically that thoughts affect feelings, and feelings affect behavior. This methodological approach can be used in biblical counseling as well.

I am also a fan of the secular Psychologist Hobart Mowrer, who started treating patients with respect and dignity through group therapy rather than drugging them up and treating them subhuman. He makes a fascinating statement as an unbeliever in his book Sin, the Lesser of Two evils. “For several decades we psychologists looked upon the whole matter of sin and moral accountability as a great incubus and acclaimed our liberation from it as epoch making. But at length we have discovered that to be free in this sense, that is, to have the excuse of being sick rather than sinful, is to court the danger of also becoming lost… In becoming amoral, ethically neutral and free, we have cut the very roots of our being, lost our deepest sense of selfhood and identity, and with neurotics, themselves, we find ourselves asking: Who am I, what is my deepest destiny, what does living mean?”

Let me give you the non-sequitor, affirming a disjunctive, which I think is what you accused me of doing:

A is true or B is true. – Secular counseling is true or Biblical counseling is true.
B is true. – Biblical Counseling is true.
Therefore, A is not true.* – Therefore, Secular counseling is not true.

This is not what I did. My point was to point out the mutually exclusive positions within the theories. For instance, Rogers thought man was essentially good. The Bible believes man is essentially bad. Freud thought guilt was false. The Bible says guilt is real. These are two axiomatic principles that are either true or false. I think it fits more in the line of the law of non-contradiction. Both can not be true. Either guilt is real or guilt is not real. They can’t both be true in the same way. Just like a circle can’t be a non-circle. A square by definition can not be a circle. It’s the laws of logic.

In conclusion, I never created a non-sequitor where my conclusion didn’t follow my premises. I believe that Freud’s view of guilt is wrong because I think true guilt is real. If one could demonstrate to me, through reasoning, Freud has a wrong position, then I would be willing to change my mind. For now, I am asserting: “It is more rational to believe guilt is real than guilt being false.”

Thanks for reading through this lengthy rebuttal. I look forward to hearing what you have to say. Have a great day!

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