Psychology and the Church

Tom: You’re listening to Search the Scriptures Daily, a program in which we encourage everyone who desires to know God’s truth to look to God’s Word for all that is essential for salvation and living one’s life in a way that is pleasing to Him.

In this first segment of our program we’re beginning a series of discussions related to the subject of Psychology and the Church, a topic that Dave and I have written about rather extensively, and about which The Berean Call has produced an hour-long documentary titled, Psychology and the Church: Critical Questions, Crucial Answers. Also, we’re in the process of putting in book form the many articles we’ve written on the subject. Lord willing, the book will be available late this spring.

Now, Dave, without going into great detail, which we will certainly try to do as we progress in the series, but right now in general terms the implication of this program, as well as our DVD, is that psychology presents problems for a Christian. To begin with, in what ways does it present problems?

Dave: Well, Tom, the most basic problem would be that psychology pretends, or attempts to deal with the very things that the Bible deals with. Are you happy? Do you want to be fulfilled? Do you want to live a worthwhile, fruitful life, and so forth? This is what the Bible deals with. This is the province of the Bible, and it’s a spiritual matter. We are led by Christ, we are indwelt by Christ, filled with His spirit, and He’s our life. Okay? Now, psychology pretends to deal with that area. Well, then the implication instantly is, well, the Bible doesn’t handle it properly, or it doesn’t handle it sufficiently.

Tom: Or even correctly.

Dave: Right. Therefore, we have to help the Bible out, and we have to help the Bible where it has some deficiencies, and we’ll bring in psychology and that will do the job.

Tom: Dave, some of these questions that we will be discussing, as you know, the privilege of producing the DVD on psychology and the church. So, I’ve had some radio interviews so I’m taking many of the questions because they were good questions that were sort of launched at me, and maybe we both can discuss them. Certainly, I know that in my studies of this, with regard to biblical Christians, evangelical Christians, a great concern that I have is that psychology has undermined the belief in the sufficiency of God’s Word. So if it’s not sufficient, then we need to turn elsewhere. And psychology would say, “Well, we’ve got the answers with regard to man’s emotional problems, his problems of living, and so forth.” But I’ve been asked, Are we talking about all of psychology? What do you think?

Dave: We’re talking about psychotherapy. There are some—well, I hesitate even to say that, but there are some legitimate studies in psychology, industrial psychology, learning problems of children, and so forth. The problem with even saying that is that psychology is really based upon Darwin. It’s based upon the medical model of Freud, so that man is not a spiritual being, he’s just a kind of stimulus response mechanism. In some ways that can be helpful, because we do learn things, we are influenced by experiences that we have had, but that’s not the only thing. And furthermore, that does not inhibit the Christian, because we have Christ to turn to.

So, Tom, we just reiterate, you know, the way we are starting out. The Bible claims—2 Peter 1—Peter says, “According as His divine power hath given us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, to the knowledge of Him who has called us unto glory and virtue, whereby given unto us exceeding great and precious promises [and so forth], that by these you might be partakers of the divine nature.”

So, the Christian is supposed to have a divine nature, and the Scripture says that Christ is living. Christ is your life—Colossians 3: “…when Christ, who is your life….” I don’t believe that Christ needs any help from psychology.

So that, as you pointed out, that undermines the confidence—not only undermines the confidence, it destroys the confidence. What it says is the Bible does not have the answers that we need. Now, of course, doesn’t have the answers for repairing an automobile, tuning the engine and other things. No.

And, Tom, we’re talking about Christian psychology. Now, you wouldn’t think of saying, “Well, how about Christian aerodynamics? Well, what about Christian auto mechanics?” No, they are Christians who are auto mechanics, or physicists, or chemists, but no one would ever talk about a Christian chemistry or a Christian physics. Then why do they talk about a Christian psychology? That’s the problem that we are trying to get at here.

Tom: And we’re going to deal with that in detail as this series progresses. But, Dave, going back to psychology and itss different fields, I have an undergraduate degree in industrial design, so I took courses with regard to aerodynamics, man, machine interface, and so on. And there were some—you know, there is psychology involved in that, which I think has validity. But that is not what we will be talking about in this series, and because that is not what the church is into. The church is into psychological counseling, as you said, psychotherapy. So this is the arena that we will be addressing.

Dave: In other words, to help people live a happy, successful, fruitful life.

Tom: Right, and deal with problems of living. Now, so Dave, can you give me some problems regarding psychotherapy for evangelical Christians, and really what I’m alluding to here is psychotherapy claims to, or pretends to understand the nature of man, and how he can fix his problems of living. Does psychology have an insight into the nature of man?

Dave: No, it does not. Tom, that’s a very good question, because as soon as we are going to try to address, How do you live? How do you function? How can you keep a smile on your face? How can you have a sense of fulfillment, and so forth? Well, now you are dealing with man. What is man, and what is wrong with man, if anything is wrong. Of course, there’s a lot wrong. Why do we have all the crime, and unhappiness, and suicide, and divorce, and so forth? Something has gone wrong. Well, how are we going to address that?

Now, psychology cannot give you any answers because, look, psychology tries to deal with human behavior as though it could be scientifically explained. Now, you can’t turn a human being into something that you will examine under a microscope, because we have something called free will. And that gets into all kinds of questions, because even many Christians deny that. Martin Luther wrote an entire book, The Bondage of the Will. But you can’t predict…see, science, you are supposed to be able to predict, based upon observation, and you have these experiments, and they have been repeated. Now you have confidence, and you can predict. These are called repeatable experiments, all right? You cannot predict what a human being is going to do. The subject of your experiment is hopping about capriciously with a free will, and you don’t know what he’s going to do next, okay? So, that’s a basic problem.

They are trying to turn man into some kind of a medical specimen that you can examine—"Well, it must be in his brain! Well, it’s in his nerves, of course.” Richard Dawkins, who wrote a book, The Selfish Gene, he dares to say, “Well, it’s all in the genes, and we don’t have anything to say about it. The genes are doing it.”

So Tom, as soon as you veer from the Scriptures, and Darwin and Freud are saying very much the same thing, you’ve got big problems, because, 1) it doesn’t work, 2) you are contradicting what we believe to be the Word of God.

Tom: Well, the Word of God says that we are tri-part beings: body, soul, and spirit. Now, Dave, to some degree, maybe even to a great degree, we can have a science of the body, correct?

Dave: Oh, yes.

Tom: But what about the mind, the soul and the spirit? Can we have a science of spirit? Can we have science of soul?

Dave: Well, there are those who have tried to do this, Tom, and of course we could name them: Mary Baker Eddy, Holmes, Science of Mind, Christian Science. As soon as you do that, you have destroyed man. You don’t have God anymore, because they have a God who follows some kind of laws of nature, the great mind, and you can follow the same principles. That’s the problem with many of the charismatics. With Pat Robertson, who wrote a book, The Secret Kingdom, and he said it works by eight laws, and one of those laws is the law of miracles. Wait a minute! The scientist would say to you, “You believe in God, a God of the gaps, because your God gives a hypothesis to explain what science has not yet explained. But one day, when science has explained it all, we don’t need your God anymore, okay?”

So now we have Christians who think, Wow, wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could show that God follows scientific principles! No, God made the laws. The universe follows the laws He imposed upon it, and He does not have to follow them. So a miracle, by very definition, violates the laws, and it can only be done by the One who created the laws. Okay?

So now, that’s a problem, because how are we going to change behavior? Well, Tom, I can tell you, and you know—well, many Christians don’t know the change in behavior is a miracle from God. “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ lives in me.” Now, you are not going to accomplish that through some scientific principles. But the Christian psychologist, this is what he is trying to do. And he thinks that the Bible is inadequate to deal with problems of living today, and he’s going to pick up ideas (he has picked up ideas) from Freud and Jung and so forth. I know I am getting into too much detail, but this is the basic problem.

Tom: Well, we’ve been talking about problems regarding psychotherapy for evangelical Christians. In other words, why would an evangelical Christian opt for some of these things? And, Dave, another point that we have to present here is that some of the concepts of psychotherapy, psychological counseling, a major one is that man is innately good. That’s why they think they can solve the problem, because if man in inherently evil, there’s no way to change them, right?

Dave: Tom, you make a very good point. Now, what do we have to work with? All the psychologist has to work with is man. This is the subject of his experiment, and he’s been working at this forever! It’s like some of my old illustrations: If I went to the race track—I don’t think I’ve given this on the radio, maybe I have long ago—but if I went to the race track and I bet on the same old nag day after day after day (it can hardly stagger out of the starting gate, but I put my money on that), I’m going bankrupt, of course. But I scrape together every penny I can get. I’m going to bet on that guy—he’s going to win tomorrow.

Tom, they’re betting on the human race. This is what the sociologists are doing. The politicians—"Oh, of course we’ll get together. We’ll have a peace conference, and we’ll solve all these problems.” Wait a minute, who got us in this mess? It was man himself, and now man himself is going to solve the problem?

So, you make a very good point, Tom. What does the psychologist have to work with? Man—that’s all! He doesn’t believe in God, and God has to do miracles. Christianity is based upon miracles. The resurrection is a miracle, and without that you have nothing. So I’m going to have to trust God to change my life.

Tom: You see an evangelical…. And, Dave, as you know, one of the reasons that we did a DVD on this subject (Psychology and the Church: Critical Questions, Crucial Answers), one of the reasons we’ve written extensively about this, is that the evangelical church (and by the term evangelical, I’m simply meaning those who profess to believe in the Bible for matters of faith and practice, and so forth), they would trust the Bible. Yet psychology, psychotherapy, is entered into the church like a plague. It’s everywhere, it’s in everything. It’s in the most conservative of Christian denominations of churches, and so forth.

Dave: Well, Tom, let me put it like this—I don’t know how to make it any simpler. If Christian psychology has anything of any value to offer that the Bible hasn’t already presented to us, not only a better analysis of man, but also the miraculous, supernatural solution—if Christian psychology has anything to offer, then the Church has been missing it for 2000 years. Jesus didn’t offer it. Paul knew nothing about it.

And, Tom, I sometimes facetiously, with just an introduction here, I sometimes facetiously say, “Well, you know, you want to see a guy that had problems, how about Joseph? Hated by his brothers. They threw him in a pit, they were going to kill him, and then they sold him into Egypt. There he is falsely accused of immorality by Potiphar’s wife. He’s thrown into prison, and there he is languishing. I mean, he could be there the rest of his life. How in the world can he handle this? Well, fortunately, there was someone from a Minrith-Meier Clinic, or some other Christian psychological group, who managed to come in and visit Joseph once a week, and build up his self-esteem and help him out.”

No, he did not need that, nor did those in Hebrews 11: they were sawn asunder, they wandered about in sheep skins and goat skins, and they were desolate, tormented. They dwelt in dens and caves of the earth. And it says these all triumphed through faith! No psychology, Christian or non-Christian, was needed for any of the great heroes and heroines of the Bible, who triumphed!

Read about Paul, the suffering he went through. He’s shipwrecked and beaten, and from prison he said: “My God,” tells the Philippians, “my God shall supply all your needs through the riches and glory through Christ Jesus.”

So, Tom, it’s sad, because the church has turned from God and His Word and from the indwelling Christ. They have turned to the theories of men who couldn’t straighten out their own lives.

Tom: And, Dave, sadly, my concern here, and I know your concern here, is for the church that claims to be a Bible-believing church. These issues, like the concepts of psychology that are so contradictory to what the Bible teaches, they have to brush those things aside. For example, psychology would say that the problems are not within the individual himself, it has to do with his environment, with things external to his nature—his parents, circumstances, and so forth—again reinforcing the idea that there’s nothing really wrong with man. But what does the Bible teach? That the heart is “deceitful above all things and desperately wicked,” that “there is no one that does good,” on and on. Things just have to be shoved aside in order to accept this so called solution to man’s problems.

Dave: Well Tom, you can just look at history, look at the Bible. The people who triumphed—well, it’s not a triumph unless there are trials. Today we have people running to psychologists. The first little problem that comes up, they’ve got to rush to a psychologist to get their self-esteem built up, or get their confidence back, or something. Look, there are even psychologists, Tom, there are some of them who come over on our side a longways—not all the way, unless they are Christians.

Tom: Primarily through common sense.

Dave: Exactly, and they will tell you, you need to work through your problems. Problems are good for you. You don’t send a soldier or a new recruit out to the front lines until he has gone through basic training. Let him crawl under a few machinegun bullets. Let him try to work his way through barbed wire. Let him scale some walls, and so forth. He has to have training! And, Tom, this is what it is—the trials that beset us, this is our training.

Well, God said, Deuteronomy 8, “Israel, I led you through the wilderness. I caused you to hunger and thirst. I wanted to prove what’s in your heart, whether you would serve me or not.” Unfortunately, they failed, and God knew they wouldn’t. But if they would persevere in their trials without going to get a psychologist—you know, you are looking for another solution. You don’t want to be strong. You don’t want to trust God. You don’t want to have faith in His Word. Well, it doesn’t work, you know. I’ve tried that. Well then, God is a liar, because He made some promises, but maybe you did not persevere long enough.

Maybe I’m hurting some feelings out there. I’m not trying to be hard on anybody. I want to be sympathetic for problems that people have that I have never experienced. But I have experienced a lot of problems in my life, hopeless situations, absolutely hopeless, that maybe they have never experienced. Look, we walk by faith, we live by faith, we trust the Lord. And psychology, what is it going to do? It is going to take you away from confidence and trust in the Lord. It is going to give you another solution to your problem that will not work.

Tom, I’ve seen it with secretaries, I’ve seen it with bookkeepers when I was in the business world: they get hooked on this, and they have to go back and again and again and again. Christ Jesus makes you whole. “Go and sin no more,” Jesus said to the woman taken in adultery. This is not some syndrome; this is not something that has got you in its clutches. You can turn completely, but only by the power of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit, and only through recognizing that you participated—you accepted Him as your Savior. You’ve been crucified with Christ.

Tom: Dave, it really comes down to this, what you’ve been laying out: We do have compassion for people who are going through problems, but to whom are they looking for solutions? It’s either going to be God’s way or man’s way.

Dave: Right, Amen.

Tom: And man’s way, the Scripture says, leads unto death.