Are Some Psychotherapies Biblical?

In this regular feature, Dave and Tom respond to questions from listeners and readers of The Berean Call.  Here’s this week’s question:  Dear Dave and TA:  I am a committed Bible-believing Christian, and I am studying to be a psychotherapist.  I have listened to your views regarding psychological counseling, and although you have some very legitimate complaints against some of the various psychotherapeutic approaches, I’m appalled that you don’t recognize the value of certain ones.  Cognitive behavioral therapy is a primary example, and one I hope to major in.  In essence, it says that many of our problems of living stem from wrong thinking, which then adversely affects how we act and feel.  For example, irrational thoughts and beliefs over generalization of negative events, a pessimistic outlook on life, a tendency to focus on problems and failures and negative self assessment, as well as other cognitive distortions promote the development of psychological problems, especially depression.  I see the cognitive behavioral approach as quite consistent with what the Bible teaches.

Tom:

Dave, let’s just take this cognitive behavioral therapy and give you a name.  Albert Ellis would be one of the originators of that, or you call it that.  But basically, you’re paying between a hundred and two hundred dollars, depending on your therapist, to have somebody tell you that you’re being irrational, that you’re not thinking straight!  This is another theater of the absurd!

Dave:

I’m afraid so, Tom.  Now, anyone with common sense would recognize this.  A friend should be able to tell you, hey, you’re irrational!

Tom:

Or you’re dwelling on this, get off it and get on with your life!

Dave:

Yeah.  We have to go to a psychiatrist or a psychologist to find this out?  These guys are scratching around, trying to find some way to make a living.  And how many kinds are there out there, about 300—

Tom:

No, there are 500 different approaches, and then when it comes to techniques, for example, within cognitive behavioral therapy, there may be, you know, a couple of hundred different techniques with a little variation.

Dave:

The “theater of the absurd” is right, Tom.

Tom:

But Dave, here’s the other question:  Let’s say I get a Ph.D. in psychological counseling, all right?

Dave:

Some kind.

Tom:

Sure, now in that program and I’ve gone through many of the programs in terms of just observing, studying them, seeing what they are learning and how this might make them effective, and so on.  You don’t learn about people relationship, you don’t learn about thinking and how to change somebody’s irrational thoughts, and so on.  In other words, they become the experts on how to live your life—well, for a couple of years you take courses in how to live your life and a right life?  And for a Christians, I mean, can a person like this who wants to be a psychotherapist—they are going to learn how to live a life pleasing to God, going through courses that involve Freud, Jung, Maslow, Rogers, Ellis, and so on?

Dave:

Well, Tom, you put your finger on it right there, a life pleasing to God!  Isn’t that what counts?

Tom:

That’s what life has to be about.

Dave:

Right.  I want to please Him; I want to please my Savior.  I’m not going to get that from some atheistic psychology course!

Tom:

No, you’re going to get it from, “The Instruction Manual,” that you talked about earlier.

Dave:

Right—that they don’t want to be an instruction manual anymore.  We used to read—well, I can remember, as a boy I would have verses from Proverbs.  I would stick them on the mirror, and here and there.  If you want to get a little counsel, read Proverbs, read Solomon’s counsel to his son.  I think a lot of it he got from his father David.  But what is happening, Tom?  We’ve mentioned it many times, what are we doing?  We’re going away from God, we’re going away from his Word, and what basically, Christian psychology so-called, what is the very foundation of it?  Well, the Bible may be inerrant, but it’s not sufficient—we can’t really find everything that we need in there—we need to improve it—we need to supplement it with some of the wisdom of the world that is foolishness with God!  You’re going to tell me where my thinking is irrational?  Their thinking is irrational, even to come up with this idea!  I’m going to go by God’s Word.  Now, is God’s Word sufficient?  I believe it is!  It says He has given us all things that pertain to life and godliness.  Did Paul need any of these new therapies, Peter, James, John, Spurgeon, and Moody?  Did any of those that we look back in history and we admire for their lives of sacrifice to reach souls, missionaries, my good friends, Jim Elliot and Pete Fleming and Ed McCauley, Ed McCauley was my closest friend.  Did they take any of this stuff?  They gave their lives for these Auca Indians.  I don’t read of anybody needing any of this.  Job, he certainly suffered a whole lot more than anyone, why didn’t he get some psychotherapy cognitive training, whatever it is!  Tom, it doesn’t make sense, and furthermore, the worst part of it is, it’s thumbing the nose at God.  It is saying, God, you lied to us.  You said the new life in Christ, Christ living in me, the power of the Holy Spirit, and obeying your Word, you said that would be enough, I would be transformed, and you didn’t tell me the truth, because, look, I need all this other stuff! 

Tom:

Well, Dave, part of the problem here is that certain myths have been developed and popularized.  One is that this is scientific, which it’s not.

Dave:

Right.

Tom:

The other thing is that you need to be a professional in order to counsel and minister.  That’s ludicrous, as we have just seen here.  Where do these guys learn that they have the right way, that they know how the best thinking and how to raise your children and how to do this and how to do that?  They’re making it up as they go along, and some of them are wrong.  Remember—of course he wasn’t a psychotherapist—remember what Dr. Spock did for a generation of children?  Oh, don’t spank your children, that’s really going to lead them astray.  Then just before he died, or in his later years, he said, oops, I was wrong!

Dave:

The profession that has the highest percentage in therapy, suicides, divorces, unhappiness, depression, these are the psychiatrists themselves, and we’re going to take counsel from them?  It doesn’t work for them why would it work for us?  

Tom:

Dave, this concerns some people out there listening to what we are saying.  We have the video, DVD, called, “Psychology in the Church, Critical Questions, Crucial Answers,” it will answer a lot of these questions.