Does the Bible Provide All the Counsel We Need?

Tom: Thanks, Gary. 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. We are continuing through Dave Hunt’s out-of-print book Beyond Seduction in this segment of our program, and we’ve been discussing significant doctrines of biblical Christianity and in particular how such doctrines have been distorted by popular TV evangelists and their disciples. This week, however, we’re going to shift to a major influence on the evangelical church, which has made shipwreck the trust of many believers in the sufficiency of God’s Word. The overwhelming influence I am referring to is psychological counseling within the church, which also has its many advocates among leaders of evangelical Christianity.

Dave, since this subject has quite a number of facets and many people regard it as very complex, I thought we would carefully go over the basics as to why psychological counseling is not biblical, and I thought we would start with the Bible. So, first question: What does the Bible say about counseling?

Dave: I don’t know that the term, “counseling” is used; “counsel” is used. “In a multitude of counselors there is safety,” the scripture says, talking about wise advice. We certainly need counsel; we need wise advice. The psalmist said, “Thy word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path. I have sworn and I will keep it.”

One of the names of Jesus Christ, the “babe born in Bethlehem,” it says, “His name shall be called Counselor.” So Jesus Christ is Counselor. He counsels us in His Word. He says, “Thy Word is truth.” He says, “I Am the Truth.” I think all you need is the truth. So, the Bible, far from discouraging counsel—it is itself a counseling book.

Tom: Dave, isn’t the Holy Spirit referred to as Counselor? I don’t think that term is used, but certainly equivalent of it.

Dave: Well, He’s called the Comforter: “When He, the Comforter, is come, He will guide you into all truth.”

Tom: So there’s counsel right there.

Dave: Well, we need counsel from the truth. So in a nutshell, the Bible is all about counsel. You want to read the Book of Proverbs—this is the counsel from Solomon, the wisest man that ever lived. Unfortunately, he violated his own counsel, but that doesn’t invalidate the counsel that he gave just because he didn’t keep it. The Book of Proverbs is a book of counsel—he is counseling his son about his behavior and the things he will face in this world, and so forth.

So, I’ve been accused of being against counseling. No, I’m not against Biblical counseling, but I’m against counseling from extra-biblical sources.

Now again, it depends on what you mean. If you want to learn how to repair an engine, well, you don’t go to the Bible for that. You want to get some business techniques, you don’t go to the Bible for that, although there are certain principles in the Bible—honesty and sincerity, and so forth; integrity, hard work. But what we are talking about is counsel for our daily lives, how we ought to live, and that comes from the Bible.

Tom: Mm-hmm. Well, that brings up the next question: Is the content of the Bible sufficient regarding counseling?

Dave: Well, again, Tom, it depends on what you mean by counseling. If you want to be counseled on, you know, a young person—what major they should take in university, what is the best profession to go into, something like that—there’s all kinds of counseling that you could engage in. But the Bible is talking about all things that “pertain to life and godliness.” This is what it says. After all, man hasn’t changed. I mean, there’s a problem between man and God, and that needs to be made right. And all the counseling in the world, you know—you can have all kinds of techniques, be positive, and so forth—that is not going to help you in your relationship with God. And it’s the relationship with God that went wrong in the Garden of Eden. That is the root of all the problems. If man is in a right relationship with God, he’s happy, no matter what his circumstances are. He knows where he is going, he knows his purpose, he knows what he is living for—in fact, Christ has become his life. So the Bible claims to have all of these answers. It gives us everything we need to live purposeful lives in obedience to God’s Word. If you obey God’s Word and you are in fellowship with Him, you couldn’t ask for anything more than that. The problem is that much of the counseling, even Christian counseling (Christian psychology) doesn’t come from the Bible anymore; it comes from the world.

Tom: But, Dave, you started out by saying man hasn’t changed, but wait a minute! Lots of things have changed. And the argument is things are so much more complex today than they were back when, you know, the Bible was written that we need extra help.

Dave: Well, what’s complex? Life has become complex—electronics, automobiles, and travel.

Tom: Paper work. [laughs]

Dave: Right, paper work, all of this. That has nothing to do with my relationship with God. It involves the world’s system that has been built up. And I wouldn’t accuse Satan of a conspiracy, of course, but it’s very well designed so you don’t have time for God, you don’t have time for your Bible, you don’t have time for prayer. If you go to church at all, you want a very brief sermon; don’t make it too complicated, don’t make me have to think about it. I don’t want anything that hangs on after I leave, because that would interfere with the rest of my life.

So nothing has changed as far as man’s needs for happiness, security, for contentment, for fulfillment, and that is only going to come in a relationship with God. Anything else is going to pass away. So I can work very hard… And again, Tom, one of the problems that I have observed is successful people, wealthy people—successful by the world’s standards—generally are unhappy. An awful lot of divorce comes in, a lot of jealousy in the families between husband and wife and parents and children, and so forth. And when you look back to the Garden of Eden, it’s pretty simple. God gave man one command, and if Adam and Eve had obeyed it, we wouldn’t have any of the problems that we have today. So the problems that we have today that seem to make our lives cluttered and bring grief and unhappiness and uncertainty, and you’ve got a burden on your shoulders now—how am I going to do all of this? That’s part of the world, and the Bible would just say, “Look, make sure of your relationship with God first.”

“Seek ye first,” Jesus said, “the kingdom of God and His righteousness. Everything else will take care of itself.” That doesn’t mean you won’t have to work hard; it doesn’t mean you won’t have to be well-organized in your life, depending upon what your life is. Christians ought to do the best job of anyone. I mean, we should apply ourselves. You’re going to be an accountant? You ought to be a good one. You’re going to be an auto mechanic or a pilot or whatever it is, the Scripture says we are to do it with our energy, give our attention, and be diligent. But the sad thing is that has become the life for many Christians, and they don’t have time for God. Somehow you are going to have to make room for God.

Now, what is the problem that you want to be counseled about? You can’t get along with your wife, or you can’t get along with your husband, or your children. Well, Solomon makes it very simple. He says, “Only by pride cometh contention.” Now, you want to argue with that and you say, “Well, that’s not my problem.” Well, your problem is pride. You wouldn’t have an argument between two people if someone wasn’t proud. They’re both proud; neither one wants to admit he’s wrong. I’m getting into counseling here now, Tom, but I don’t want to do that. [laughs]

But the Bible has every answer to every question about your happiness, security, fulfillment, whatever you want to call it. If you want to be a happy person, rejoice in the Lord! But I’ve got to have time for the Lord. I’ve got to know Him; I’ve got to know Him through His Word, and if I don’t have time for that, how can I rejoice in the Lord? I think of Paul—he was a very contented person. He was in prison and robbed of everything, and yet he said, “My God shall supply all your needs according to His riches in Christ Jesus.” He said, “I have learned in whatsoever state I am therewith to be content.” This is a man who has being beaten, and he is eventually going to be crucified, he’s in prison, and so forth. “Well, I’m in the Lord’s hands,” Paul said. “I’m the prisoner of Jesus Christ. I’m not the prisoner of Rome, I’m the prisoner of Jesus Christ, and if He didn’t want me here, I wouldn’t be here.”

It’s exactly what Jesus said to Pilate: “You would have no power over me except it were given you from above. Now, I’m in God’s will; I am doing the will of the Father, otherwise I wouldn’t be here. So, no matter what you do to me, I’m happy. I’m content,” because it was for the “joy that was set before Him that he endured the cross.” And that joy wasn’t just that He’s going to have a lofty position in heaven. No, the joy of having fulfilled the Father’s will, of having been obedient to the Father, having paid the penalty for our sins, and that we would be with Him forever.

Tom: Dave, I’m sure there’s some listeners out there who think, “Yeah, that sounds good and you know, I’m a Christian, and I know that’s right. I know we need to look to the Bible more and more. But you know, there are these other kinds of problems. There are people who have eating disorders, you know, and they have names like anorexia or bulimia, and there are people who have phobias—they have fear of flying and they have fear of what have you. Now, the Bible doesn’t address those things, does it?”

Dave: [laughs] Well, Tom, these are names that we have made up to try to excuse ourselves, actually. “I have learned in whatsoever state I am therewith to be content. Rejoice in the Lord always. And again I say, Rejoice! Let your requests be made know unto God with thanksgiving. In everything give thanks.” Now, I think that covers everything, and the problem is that I want to have a diagnosis that will excuse me. Give a name to, you know, “I’m really just selfish.”

“Well, I’m manic-depressive.” Well, no, you are using that to manipulate other people.

I remember talking to a man, and he told me that for nine years he had been in and out of psychiatric hospitals. You know, he’d have all kinds of diagnoses and so forth from various doctors. He said, “One day I just thought to myself, ‘I’ve had enough of this, and I’m just going to quit this behavior that they diagnose and label and so forth.’” And he walked out of there—became a “normal” person, okay? You can make excuses, and you use your behavior—now, I know people are probably getting hot under the collar when I say this, but look, let’s go back a few years. I don’t know what the DSM, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, what does it have? Three or four hundred…

Tom: Yeah, it’s up to 500. I have the book in my office, Dave, and it’s about 4 inches thick. This is the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of mental disorders. They started out early on in the ‘50s. I think there were maybe a hundred and some.

Dave: Oh, well, it was before that, Tom. There were two or three. And I can remember—I’m young enough—we used to visit an insane asylum. You were either crazy or sane. But every year they keep adding to it. How do they add to it, Tom? Scientific tests? No, they vote on it. In fact, I was sitting next to a clinical psychologist on the plane, and she had just come back from the latest meeting—I forget where it was. She was really upset. They want to charge her for a new manual because they have got more of these labels to put in it, and she said, “They just voted on it—that’s not scientific.” Now the vote that came to make homosexuality normal, they removed it! You remember, that was in San Francisco and the homosexuals were outside threatening to pull the power—threatening them to make a “proper” vote. That’s not scientific, and even then—I forget what it was—it was 3,000-5,000, I don’t remember; something like that, but still, it wasn’t a unanimous vote.

Tom: Well no, that was a small part of the membership that actually voted.

Dave: But it still—even among those who were there, it wasn’t unanimous by any means. So what do these labels mean? Well, they give a person some kind of identity. Tom, it is sad. Let’s say a 6-, 8-, 10-year-old child…difficult to handle—and I think we have probably recommended Peter Breggen’s book a number of times, Your Drug May Be Your Problem— that child walks into a psychologist’s office. They are just an obstreperous person; they need some discipline. And when they walk out of that office, they have a label attached to them. They are hyperactive something or other, and there’s a number of those.

Tom: Yeah, ADD, ADHD.

Dave: Right, and now that label is going to follow them for the rest of their lives, and they have a prescription now of a drug that they must take.

Tom: Ritalin.

Dave: Ritalin would be a major one. Now, they give them a drug because they say they have a chemical imbalance. Now, Tom, Peter Breggen—and I’m certainly not the expert, but I know that this is true; simple logic will tell you—Peter Breggen will tell you nobody ever examined the brain to find out what part of that brain was imbalanced with certain chemicals to identify what chemicals were out of balance and what could be given to bring it back to equilibrium. They diagnosed them by their behavior, and then they said, “But there’s a chemical imbalance,” and they give you a drug. And Peter Breggen says, “The only chemical imbalances that we have ever verified are caused by the drugs they give you to eliminate so-called imbalance.” And then he says, “Whose imbalance? [I love this] Whose chemical imbalance are we talking about? Is it the child’s, or is it the parents’, or the teacher who can’t control them?

Tom: Now Dave, we’ve sort of gotten off line, an aspect that—

Dave: Right, sorry.

Tom: That’s okay, but I want to bring us back to the Bible in a question. Now, we’re talking about psychotherapy here, not necessarily—later on we may get into the drug aspect of this—but basically we are talking about rhetoric; we’re talking about talk. When somebody goes to a psychotherapist, it’s talk therapy; that’s the issue.

Now, we’re talking about the Bible and biblical counseling, but let’s go back to some of these labels. Let’s say I have a fear of flying, or—you know, I mentioned anorexia nervosa and those things—but let’s just talk about fear of flying, because people are thinking, “Well, wait a minute, my cousin’s got a problem and she needs help. How is the Bible going to help her with her fear of flying? She won’t get on an airplane!”

Dave: Tom, to digress just a moment a little bit further, I was in the business world for twenty years. I had a number of secretaries, bookkeepers, and so forth, and I had a number of them who went to psychiatrists. And what did it do for them? Well, it cost them a lot of money.

Tom: They didn’t have insurance back in those days, did they?

Dave: No, no. They became dependent upon these people. They couldn’t get along without them. I never saw it help anyone. In fact, it only made them worse until they finally decided to abandon this idea. Fear of flying, okay? Well…

Tom: And other phobias.

Dave: Right, it’s what we call a phobia—it’s an irrational fear. There is no reason to be afraid of flying. There are some people who are afraid to touch anything—they are going to get germs from everything. Well, they’re all irrational fears, okay? Now, “perfect love casts out fear.” If—now, it may sound simplistic, but it is simple. If I love God, I know He loves me, I know I’m in His hands—what is there to fear? I think of a poem, and I wish I could quote it, Tom, but it’s about marchers in the communist world—actually in China—and the author says, “Afraid of what?” You know, a flash, a crash, a sword takes your head off, a bullet goes to your head, and suddenly you are in the presence of the Lord and he says, “Afraid of that?”

So we can be driven by fears, irrational fears. At the heart of every fear like that is selfishness. I am self-centered. I’m thinking of myself. I don’t have a moment to think of anyone else. I’m consumed with my own grief, with my own well-being, my own self-esteem, or how I feel.

Tom, I just finished a book, Judgment Day, and I can tell you what Islam has done around this world. I’m thinking just at the moment Smyrna, the Ottoman Turks—well, they slaughtered about a million Armenians, and in that town alone, about 200,000 Armenians and Greeks and so forth are just slaughtered by the Muslims. They burned it down; they reduced it to nothing. There was nothing left but the Muslim quarters of that town. And one of the worst things is out in the harbor are sitting warships, destroyers, and so forth—cruisers—United States, France, Britain—and people are trying to get away; they are swimming out to be rescued. Did they rescue them? No, they wouldn’t take anybody aboard; they drove them back. Now, the whole world is implicated in the Holocaust and so forth, and when you think of people who are dying, you know—a couple million in Sudan—and what’s happening in other parts of the world, and then we’ve got seeker-friendly churches, “we want to be positive…” It’s not a real world that we are living in, and these people who have these phobias are not living in a real world; they’re consumed with themselves. They need to recognize what evil is, what evil has done, and they need to be grateful for the redemption that’s in Christ Jesus, because there is something a whole lot worse than anorexia or bulimia, and that’s spending eternity in hell, and we better get back to what is really important, and get to know God and His remedy.

I’m sorry, I lose a little bit of patience, Tom, but I have traveled in a few countries where people are really suffering, and then I come back and I see how pampered they are in America, and if somebody looks at me the wrong way or somebody is not as kind to me and I’m knocking down my self-esteem, I’ve got to go for counseling sessions. Well, I think we need to stop the pity party for ourselves and begin to think about other people, and that would deliver everyone from these phobias.

Tom: In the weeks ahead as we continue to go through psychology, psychological counseling, psychotherapy, what the Bible has to say—we’re going to find at the heart of all of this is self, as you’ve been alluding to. And if that’s the problem, the Bible is the only answer for the solution to self, deliverance from self.