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Christians Don’t Need Secular Therapy

Truth in Love 122

Dr. Lambert shares why Christians don’t need secular therapy.

Oct 13, 2017

Heath Lambert: It is the week of the 41st annual Conference on biblical counseling from the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors. We have people from all over the United States and from all over the world in Jacksonville, Florida, this week to talk about what it means to be Faithfully Protestant: biblical counseling and the Reformation. Our annual conference theme this year is of course intended to celebrate the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation and to make the point that it is a commitment to biblical counseling that best embodies the themes of the Protestant Reformation. To make that case, this week I’m joined along with five other plenary session speakers, including Brad Bigney, Jim Newhouser, Keith Palmer, Ligon Duncan, and Paige Patterson, and we’re going to be showing how the five Solas of the Reformation spring to life in counseling ministry and how its biblical counseling that most consistently applies those Solas to life. 

The theme of the conference underlines something that is, quite frankly, unpleasant, that Christians who are committed to counseling know about and we have called it “the counseling wars”. The counseling wars refer to the strong disagreements that have existed among believers in Jesus who possess different convictions about how to counsel and how to counsel well. There are a lot of disagreements that Christians have lamentably had about counseling, but I think the most significant disagreement, the key disagreement among Christians on this point has to do with the best place for counseling resources; biblical counselors have argued for decades that the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament provide resources and those resources are sufficient to offer counseling care, you don’t need anything else. Other Christians, who love the Lord and are committed to the Scriptures, have a different argument. People who are in positions like Christian psychology, integration, levels of explanation, have argued that the Bible is a valuable and an important book, but that it does not give us all we need in order to do counseling ministry. 

Now that is a dividing line that has been consistent over about four or five decades, and somebody is right, and somebody is wrong. Both of these positions cannot be right, there is a legitimate disagreement. ACBC is, of course, committed to a Biblical counseling position, and so we believe that the resources in Scripture are sufficient for counseling care. To communicate our convictions is biblical counselors on this on the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, I wrote a document called 95 Theses for an Authentically, Christian Commitment to Counseling, and I tried to have that document be a summary of the best arguments of biblical counseling, showing what we believe about counseling and showing what we don’t believe about counseling.

This issue of the counseling wars comes up in many places in the document, but one place that it comes up is in thesis number 40, in that thesis, I wrote the following, “no proof has ever been offered that the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament are anything less than fully authoritative and sufficient for counseling issues”. Now, that is a bold claim, but I nevertheless think it is true. What I’m saying is that the claim of integrationists, the claim of Christian Psychologist, has never been proven, and that claim is that when you only use the Bible, as the foundation for counseling wisdom, you don’t have enough wisdom to offer good counseling care, you need more. The Bibles is a wonderful and important book, but it’s not enough to help people who have counseling problems. My argument in thesis number 40 is, they have never offered any proof that it is true, they have said it’s true, but they’ve never offered proof that it’s true.

Now, that doesn’t mean they’ve not made arguments. In fact, they have made arguments and I talked about those arguments and thesis 56 and in thesis 57. Here’s what I say in thesis 56, “Christian Scholars, who have argued against the authority and sufficiency of Scripture for counseling have failed in this argument by declaring that the Scripture is insufficient for counseling without citing evidence for their declaration”. So my point there is they have made a claim but haven’t proven it. They’ve made a declaration but not given evidence for it.  In Thesis 57, I say, “Christian Scholars who have argued for the necessity of secular resources in counseling have failed in this argument by pointing to scientific information that may be true but is nevertheless unnecessary for counseling”.

As I read Christian psychologist and integrationist trying to prove that the Scriptures are insufficient for counseling and in need of more wisdom, like what we find in secular resources, one of the most common pieces of evidence that I see is secular research showing the truthfulness of brain science, brain research, dopamine, neurons, synapses, and all of that information is true; all of that information is stuff that psychology knows, that theologians don’t know because they’ve read the Bible because it’s not in the Bible, but that kind of scientific information is not what is on the table in counseling and so it doesn’t advance the argument. When you prove that the Bible does not talk about those kinds of scientific things, you have not proven that the Bible is not about counseling because counseling is not about those scientific things. It’s a category mistake. That gets us back to thesis number 40, that no proof has ever been offered that the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament are anything less than fully authoritative and sufficient for counseling issues. We await, Christians do, the evidence that Christians Psychologist and integrationist must offer in order to prove their claim is true. 

Now, that doesn’t mean that secular therapists don’t use interventions that are helpful. There are secular therapist who do things that are helpful. I actually speak to that in thesis number 47, “The most effective strategies of secular therapy, repeat principles already contained in the Word of God”. The point I’m making here is that, yes, secular therapy does things that are helpful, they have strategies that can make people better, but we’re secular therapy is the most helpful is where they have piggybacked off the truth in the Bible, and they have actually become play jurists. They rip off an idea that is in the Scriptures, but don’t give God credit for it. You can take it to the bank when you become aware of a secular therapeutic technique that is leading to real and lasting change, you are going to find a secular therapeutic technique that is very, very close to a Biblical technique that God thought of before the secular therapist did.

In fact, in thesis number 48. I say, “no example from secular therapy has ever been provided of a counseling intervention, that is essential to the change process, which is not already in the Scriptures. Integrationists say, “hey, here’s things that we use that aren’t in the Bible”. Christian Psychologists say, “hey, here are things that are available that aren’t in the Bible”. What I want to argue is when you find one of those techniques that’s not already in the Bible, it will not be a technique that is essential to the change process. That is a claim, if it’s wrong, Christian psychologist and integrationist need to prove that it’s wrong, but they never have.

Finally, in thesis number 49 I say, “information that psychologists know and which is not included in Scripture is not necessary for effective counseling. There’s a very important point here, I am making the claim that psychologists know facts, they know factual information. There’s no claim in the biblical counseling movement that people who are unbelievers or people who are experts in other disciplines, don’t know factual information. The issue is, what do you need to do counseling well? My point in thesis 49 is that these psychologists, these secular therapists, do no accurate information in many cases, but the information they know which is accurate, which is not included in Scripture, won’t be necessary for effective counseling. 

Now, that is a claim. It’s a strong claim. It’s either true or it is false. If it’s false, somebody needs to prove it. Nobody ever has, and what I’m arguing right now is that nobody ever will. The reason I’m arguing that is because God gave his people, his Word, precisely to care for them and their difficulties. If you say to me that the Bible is lacking in the information that we need to understand our problems and understand how to help, then I’m going to tell you that I simply do not understand what the Bible is about, but I think I do understand what the Bible is about. I think God intended to help us with our difficulties and the way he reveals how we can have help in the pages of his Word. Our argument at the conference this week is actually less an argument and more of an appeal. The appeal is this, don’t undermine the Word of God when you have trouble in your life.

Don’t undermine the Word of God for counseling problems, because when you do, you will do horrible things. When you undermine the Word of God, you will undermine the grace of Jesus that you need in trouble. When you undermine the word of God, you will diminish the help that is available to people from God, in their pain. I don’t have any interest in perpetuating a counseling war but I do have a very great interest in being clear on this issue, and the reason I have an interest in being clear on this issue is because the Word of God is clear and the good of hurting and troubled people is at stake.