Insightful to me. It’s interesting how Christians take psychologists and then kind of baptize them somehow with Christianity. I remember good Clyde Narramore on the radio at our home, growing up.
There are insights you can gain through psychology, but it sounds like we need to contextualize those insights both in regard to their source, as well as with reference to Scripture and the Christian faith.

I think many people think their minister is like a General Practitioner – great for hatches, matches and dispatches. But when you want specific help – you find a specialist. Anthony Giddens in his book ‘Modernity and self-identity: self and society in the late modern age’ argues that specialisation is the necessary result of more complex systems. Eventually the training, skills, etc are the domain of a few rather than ‘common sense’ Specialists are the gnostics of modernity – the holders of esoteric knowledge. This is a reason why we bypass the pastor for the therapist.

Kris seldom gets involved here – but her take on this post would be interesting.
The therapeutic approach is a very individualistic approach to gospel – gospel is a means to a happy life and peace of mind. Certainly the gospel carries an element of personal transformation that should lead to happiness – but this is a consequence not an aim. Interesting to think about.
Another question occurs as well … Does the push toward spiritual directors (or renewed interest in spiritual directors) also arise from this therapeutic approach to the gospel?

RJS, Kris is out the door already and is working on this day before Thanksgiving. But she’ll weigh in later today maybe.

On the Therapeutic Gospel:
What most irritates me is how some (therapeutic gospel-ists) capture the gospel and the message of the Bible and Christian theology into a therapeutic bundle and end up distorting everything.
I’m wondering if any of our readers have analyzed the ideas of LeAnn Payne and if she’s in this therapeutic stuff?

I taught Psychology at the college level for 15 years and pastoral counseling in the seminary for 4; was trained as a family therapist but am also a pastor. For years I fell for the idea that you can integrate therapeutic psychology with Christian faith. I do not think that is possible. In most cases, I’m not even sure it’s necessary. As I learned: “in the integration of psychology and faith, psychology wins”, which is why so many Christian therapists end up sounding more like therapists than disciple-makers (in my opinion) The culture privileges therapy because it comes wrapped in (social) science.
I am not one who simply turns to the Bible looking for the specific verse for your specific ill, since that sounds awfully medical in itself. (prescriptive; take 2 John 3:16s and call me in the morning)
I have come to believe that the church is God’s “therapeutic”. That the life of the church and all that entails, richly expressed, absorbed and lived, is sufficient for what ails most of us. (I do think there are some maladies that require professionals and that ought to be their domain, e.g. severe mental illness, etc.)
I no longer practice “therapy” but do believe that as we become disciples and grow into that in a “rich” church community we can find the peace for which we and many are looking. (I do think the therapists sometimes remind us of what we already should know based upon our own narrative. e.g. Freud reminds us that we are not all that, Rogers reminds us to be kind…some of them seem to come out of a Judeo/Christian memory)

As a Christian, a psychology major and someone who has benefited from therapy, I wanted to weigh in. I have encountered those who claim that therapy is outright anti-Christian faith. I do think things can go overboard on the therapy side, and that there?s a tendency to undervalue the benefits of things like deeper Christian community as part of our well-being. However, I no more think that therapy is out of bounds for a Christian to help heal emotionally than a MD is out of bounds when we have a broken arm. It is another wonderful tool God has given us to help one another and ourselves to be restored. You know, atonement is reconciliation with God, with one another, within ourselves and the world around us (I hope I got that right :^) And therapy in line with Christian values and practices can help all of these, especially being reconciled within ourselves.

Steve, thanks for this. It might be too easy to critique today than to evaluated both the good and the problematic. The book itself, as summarized, does show the extremes and it seeks a “third way” between the extremes.

Thomas Oden did a study and showed that at the turn of the century (into the 1900s), most pastoral training manuals dropped Gregory, Augustine, St John of Cross, Teresa of Avila, Richard Baxter, etc. and turned to Freud, Jung, Maslow, etc. Western Christianity forfeited their rich pastoral history of helping people for the pablum of psychology. We’ve yet to recover. Eugene H Peterson laments this unfortunate state in his introduction to *Five Smooth Stones for Pastoral Work.* In recent years, Larry Crabb has sought to realign the great power of the gospel and the believing community as legitimate resources the struggles of the soul.

I recommend Pete Scazzero’s books, Emotionally Healthy Church and Emotionally Healthy Spirituality. They combine good emotional health with contemplative practices. This is I think a wonderful combination of helping believers grow into the likeness of Jesus as they are healed.

We are shocked, shocked, at the influence of therapy. However, we promote sermon series that almost exclusively focus on “Better Marriages”, “Good Parenting”, “Healthy Families”.
Yet, as the recent study on teenagers showed, the culture and churches have so hyped this that our youth now adhere to a theology of “Therapeutic Moral Deism”.
As the researchers of that finding indicated:
This theology “is about belief in a particular kind of God: one who exists, created the world, and defines our general moral order, but not one who is particularly personally involved in one’s affairs–especially affairs in which one would prefer not to have God involved. Most of the time, the God of this faith keeps a safe distance….”Other more accomplished scholars in these areas will have to examine and evaluate these possibilities in greater depth. But we can say here that we have come with some confidence to believe that a significant part of Christianity in the United States is actually [only] tenuously Christian in any sense that is seriously connected to the actual historical Christian tradition, but is rather substantially morphed into Christianity’s misbegotten step-cousin, Christian Moralistic Therapeutic Deism.”
They go on to say that it can be found “within the structures of at least some Christian organizations and institutions….”The language, and therefore experience, of Trinity, holiness, sin, grace, justification, sanctification, church, Excursus, and heaven and hell appear, among most Christian teenagers in the United States at the very least, to be supplanted by the language of happiness, niceness, and an earned heavenly reward.”

“However, I no more think that therapy is out of bounds for a Christian to help heal emotionally than a MD is out of bounds when we have a broken arm,” — Good point, Steve (#7)
I’m a PhD counselor, conduct counseling, and teach it at the university level. I find that many people in the church today (particularly the convervative evangelgical church) view psychology/counseling/therapy with a 40+ year old lense. They’re thinking Freud, Jung, and so forth, whose early and probing theories did very much look on the surface like counter-religions of sorts. In the past several years, however, the field of counseling/therapy has become very scientifically evidence-based. For example, the family of cognitive-behavioral therapies is gaining a mass of evidence-based scientific studies to fit with various types of clients and/or problems. In that respect, why then would a counselor/therapist who is well-versed in this social and nuerological science be any more or less suspect than an MD who is well-versed in the biological sciences?

My thoughts on this are scattered…
When I was in seminary there was a real difference in atmosphere between the counseling classes and then rest. The theology in the counseling provided a basic backdrop, but not very much deep content. The therapeutic models came from the secular direction.
If the Gospel transforms, then why is Christian counseling such a booming business? Yes, we also need sanctification, but does this require the intervention of a specialist?
Luther once said something to the effect of “if you want to live a holy life, live in public.” Community has a way of curbing the worst of our behaviors.

This idea of capturing the gospel in a therapeutic bundle and distorting it – I see that as a very real warning.
We are holistic people – we come from a background and family (or lack thereof), there is a chemistry and biology to our bodies and brains, and we have a soul. We are in relationship to God, others, ourselves, nature. I have seen an unfortunate thing where pastors who are not well tuned-in to the daily struggles of an addiction or an abusive family have a small toolkit of answers they learned that supposedly solve everyone’s problems. These answers are backed up by Scripture, of course. But what about when the addiction doesn’t go away or the abuse continues, etc.? Some people just pretend everything is OK, others take their search outside the church. At this point, the church has failed “bear one another’s burdens.”
As believers, we must take the Spirit and the church and sin and redemption into account. But I think too many well-meaning believers overreact to psycho-babble and err on the side of not dealing with the intruding factors of background, childhood and such and not realizing some of the messy consequences of childhood abuse that carry into adulthood. Blaming one’s dad for everything does no good. Burying deep hurt and pain and ignoring it may look fine on the outside but it ignores part of the whole person. The Psalmist dialogued with his soul in the presence of God: “why are you cast down, soul?” This is in contrast to ignoring, covering up. The church can certainly bite the poor-me psycho-babble apple, and hard. But we should be careful to truly walk with others, truly carry their burdens – in real life, not just in theory. Real life is messy, involves abuse, sexual abuse, addiction, hang-ups. I’ve sat with pastors who can barely stay awake and pay half-attention to you while you talk, and then they repeat their canned answer and send you on your way. That’s no triumph. either.

Why do pastors become therapists?
John Burke in No Perfect People Allowed describes a visit he had with a couple that was dealing with a messy triangle that involved bringing other partners into the marriage. He made a quip about looking back at his theology textbook to see what he should say to the couple in distress and the remembered that the textbook didn’t discuss this precise scenario. Bridging the gap between Millard Erickson and a family caught in the cycle of violence or a wife who is stuck enabling her husband to continue being a drunk – that can be a big gap. I think that can drive a pastor into a search for how to practically engage messy real-life problems. And for some, that search will end up meandering at least part of the way down therapy lane.

My degree is in divinity with a concentration in pastoral counseling. However, I do not believe in “psychologizing” everything. Some things are simply sin issues and others are about becoming dependent on God and less dependent on self. While I do believe there are legitimate reasons for seeking out therapy, I find that in some churches there is too much leaning in that direction with therapy becoming just another crutch. So, some people go from leaning on one unhealthy habit to leaning on therapy in an unnatural way. Somehow, I don’t think that’s what God has in mind for us.

I don?t think a psychological worldview can be undone, any more than an Enlightenment world view can. Even the average person on the street has much vocabulary on psychological issues. This isnt going to change.
Instead of fight against it, why not make use of it?
At my seminary, therapists and pastors are trained together as much as possible. Obviously, we have many classes separately, but there is much overlap in the curriculum for both sides to wrestle with the other discipline – and all our classes are done together during the first year.
Honestly, I cant understand how you can walk more than 2 feet deep into theological issues, and not run into psychological issues. And vice versa.
I think we should use psychological understanding in the same way we should use understanding from other disciplines – knowledge of history and philosophy deeply influence our understanding of the bible, theology and church life. There may be no value-free psychology, but there is not value-free philosophy or history either. Why not take the good of it and use it for our benefit?

Of course there is a place for therapy and good psychological counsel, etc. It’s not an either/or. But the post is about the wholesale permeation of the Gospel and Christian living and pastoral ministry with a “therapeutic model” rather than a Christian formation model. These are NOT the same. Example, I know a couple who were on the mission field and the husband’s addiction to pornography came to light and caused incredible marital distress. They came back to the States and went to one of their very evangelical mission agency’s “Christian counselors.” They were counseled to view pornographic literature and films together. This would lead to “healing” their marital strife. Pure bs. Again, I mention Larry Crabb, one of our own evangelical Christian counseling gurus, who saw the wholesale capitulation of the church to therapy and said basically, This is not good. As a pastor, I am not at all reluctant to refer people to help beyond my expertise and competencies. This is, I think, wise. But it seems that Christian counselors come across an omni-competent and to them pastors just stick post-it notes with Bible verses on them on people’s problems. Let me tell you, those days are long gone for many of us in the pastoral field. We are rediscovering the awesome healing power of Christian formation within a Christ-following community.

We are rediscovering the awesome healing power of Christian formation within a Christ-following community.
To me, that is the essence Gal 6:1-5, of walking together and helping each other.

John @ 18…”We are rediscovering the awesome healing power of Christian formation within a Christ-following community.”
Amen!
How did Christians ever find wholeness before the late 19th century and beyond?
I agree about the value of therapy and much of what is written above…However, given the so-called “fact/value” distinction, as I suggested before, in this culture when you put “faith” against science (even social science) the latter wins because it is privileged in the culture.

John #18
I am with you. Christian formation is very different than the bible-verse-post-it method. And yes, even people (and their pastors) who are in churches where very good Christian formation is happening can still need to be in counseling, or on meds.
There are some realllly bad therapists out there – just like there are some reallllly bad pastors. It’s not fair to judge one approach based on the bad apples. Instead, we need to work together.

I do not care for Leanne Payne. I think she sends people down a dangerous road. I won’t say more than that, but allow people to form their own opinion of her by way of their own research.

I greatly respect the discipline of psychology and believe that there is a place for good therapy, etc. I am thankful for the women/men in who serve in these roles.
Regarding the therapeutic and the church:
1. I am thankful that more and more people are seeing the incredible power of Christian community for helping to shape and form Christian people. I’m thankful to Larry Crabb for his attentiveness to this in many of his books.
2. Some of us who went the theraputic route in our ministries (myself included in this number) did so while we were in seminary and saw a gap between textual/theology/church history classes and what we were seeing in the churches we were working with. (I’m sure not everyone’s seminary ed had these kinds of gaps. For whatever reason, mine had a few of these gaps.) Consequently, as I drove from class to the cemetary in a small town, to do a funeral for a small child, I knew no other approach in those days other than the therapeutic. Again, not discounting the role of Psy/Therapy at all. Just saying that I felt a huge gap and did not know where the bridge was between the classroom and the funeral.
3. Perhaps one reason why the therapeutic model has resonated with so many Christian people is the lack of authentic Christian community in our churches. Consequently, relationships are shallow and friendships are sparse. For many people the therapist is the only person who they feel like they can be totally honest with.

Increased awareness for Christian community is a wonderful thing. It can be very helpful for the bumps that come along the road in life.
And yet, “In 2002, more than one in three doctor’s office visits by women involved a prescription for an antidepressant” http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A29751-2004Dec2.html
What do we do with that?
Do we just say that not enough churches really “get it” about community? Or maybe that community is good but not enough? Either way, the reality is that many many many people in our churches are struggling with enough sadness/anxiety to go on medicaiton for it (and that stat doestn even include men, or those with no access to health care.) Somehow, something is not right.

Many of us who did seminary in the 80′s were taught to do counseling in a clinical-therapeutic paradigm. The seminaries had bought into the the CPE (clinical pastoral education) model hook-line-and sinker — and that’s how they were teaching us to process problems.
The message that was unintentionally communicated to my generation of seminarians was that if you’re average you can be a pastor — but if you’re a really good teacher you should aspire to teach in a seminary. If you’re really good in pastoral counseling you should work on developing your skills so that you can move up and become a real therapist.
We learned a lot in seminary that shaped the way we see and do pastoral ministry.

I took my psychological problems to a therapist because:
-nobody in my church understood that my problem was not one of morality, and that I couldn’t “just snap out of it”;
-the theology in which we swam did not allow for anything that might make people think that God wasn’t “in control”. There were so many mental gyrations going on with theodicy/the character of God. That in itself was depressing and confusing.
-there was no explanation of forgiveness and how to do it.
-there was no comprehension that a person is a unity, and all is affected when one “part” is “out of joint”.
-no one was able to discern what I needed to hear to be enabled to discover what I needed to discover about myself, both the good and the not-so-good, in order to be able to trust God, myself and others more appropriately and love people more appropriately. I got a lot more help from the AA/12-Step model than from pastors, until I spent three years in counseling with a “secular” MFCC who in her early life had professed Christianity but by the time I saw her had become Bahai…
Is the gospel supposed to be therapeutic? Well, if the view of what underlies the gospel is a legality, I don’t suppose there is any need for a direct relationship between the gospel and healing the psyche. If all you have is hammer, then everything looks like a nail… If, however, the [incarnation/life/death/resurrection/ascension/bestowal of the Spirit] of Jesus is meant for the healing of all creation, then there is certainly a place for psychotherapy within that larger picture of healing. Finding out that Christus Victor was alive in the Orthodox Church was a huge, huge turning point for me.
http://www.antiochian.org/assets/asset_manager/da42e6049df1d08bff1865c1ac19e759.pdf
My favorite blogger, Fr. Stephen Freeman, has written: “Jesus did not die to make bad men good. Jesus died to make dead men live.” What is is that is conducive to the flourishing of human life? It’s not always being happy or having peace of mind or “a better life”. It’s how to become the kind of Being God is, self-giving in humble love, while moving toward the fullness of what I as a distinctive human person am to be “in Christ”. I know I’ve been captive to the (Enlightenment) notion of “progress”, and I think American Protestantism is in general. I think a more useful paradigm is “fullness”. My overall experience has been that a prayerful, gifted confessor/spiritual director can point a person toward that fullness, and avoid the three problems the authors point out. We need good therapists, too, and I think they can work together, because much of what one does overlaps the what the other does.
I hope I haven’t rambled too much. I see a lot of things differently than I used to, and sometimes I can hardly remember what it was like for me before… I guess I never have really seen the issue as an either/or kind of thing, even before I encountered the holistic mindset/point of view of the Eastern Church.
For me, the discussion leads right back to the question from my teenage years which was not satisfactorily answered for me until recently: Why did God create human beings at all- What was God up to with that?
Finally, I have to say that I’m perplexed and irritated and saddened by the dismissive tone some use when talking about “those young people and their moralistic therapeutic deism”. It makes them “the Other”- like we their elders had everything all figured out when we were their age… like they came to their conclusions without any influence by adults… like previous generations grew up in some “golden age”.
Dana

Jim @ 23: Darn good point #3 about the shallowness of Christian community many times. As an anxiety-monger, I agree with Jennifer # 24 too.
Seeing several references to Dr. Larry Crabb, I forgot earlier to also commend wonderful Christian counselors like Frank Minirth and Paul Meier.

And Jennifer,
Many women are rushed right to the anti-depressants and past the part about first determining whether there’s a medical cause for a woman’s symptoms.
But beyond that, I do think we do need to do more to affirm and support each other.

Diane,
I agree that some are rushed into meds. But, it still reveals that there are many many people in our churches who are hurting – and somehow what is currently happening isnt enough.

The Bible says this about the Messiah, Jesus
“A bruised reed he will not break,
and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out. “ (Issaiah 42:3a, NIV)
In other words, he is gentle and sensitive when people need gentleness and sensitivity. In my experience, these traits of Jesus often seem absent from the list of traits his followers seek to emulate. Which means that church communities and church leaders cannot be relied on as ‘safe’ for the bruised reeds and smoldering wicks. It seems very hit and miss whether a follower of Jesus, lay person or professional leader, will have this sensitivity towards those who need it.
On the other hand, counselors are trained to have it, and their desire to be a counselor probably means they already lean that way in the first place.
In my experience, the difference between going to a professional counselor and a church leader or church peer is huge. I think professional counseling has become huge because of the extent to which the church has overlooked the traits of Jesus described in Isaiah 42:3 and has failed to emulate them. People need other people with that sensitivity and if the church lacks it others will step in i.e. professional counselors to fill the gap.

It is my Christian psychologist/therapist who helped me grow my child-like faith into that of an adult.

Helen (#30),
You paint with a fairly large brush. You could have said that you were hurt by a bad church or church leader (a pastor who was unChristlike) and you were helped by a Christlike counselor. No problem. But to accuse most, not all, churches of unChristlikeness is over the top, and to baptize all ‘Christian’ therapists as gentle and sensitive is untrue.
In *your* experience maybe.
Your comment seems to violate what you affirm for your Christian counselor. Just a thought.

John, thanks for your response and Happy Thanksgiving (if you live somewhere that celebrates Thanksgiving)
I did say “in my experience” twice. While my experience doesn’t include all Christians, of course, it does go beyond the people I’ve met face to face – it includes my reading and listening and Internet interactions with Christians. I suppose I’m thinking mostly of conservative Christians since they tend to be more wary of ‘psychology’ (*in my experience*) than other Christians.
You speak of ‘Christian’ therapists but I would rather speak of professional therapists. For me the point is that they are professionally trained in such behavior as being good listeners and showing empathy. Whether Christian or not.
Again, *in my experience*, I definitely have noticed a pattern among conservative Christians of not emphasizing sensitivity. Conservative Christendom is led by males and denounces homosexuality. That combination tends to lead to leadership reticence about being sensitive rather than embracing that trait. Regardless, apparently, of whether it’s one of Jesus’ traits.
I didn’t understand what you meant about my comment violating what I affirm for my Christian counselor. My professional counselor does happen to be a Christian but as I said, for me the emphasis is on him being a professional, not on him being a Christian.