Cure for the Souls: Moving Beyond Psychotherapy
I am grateful to the Lord for having a blogging platform based on blockchain technology. Using this as a tool in publishing a series of articles as part of my class lecture, an easily accessible way to store and retrieve data is now made available.
Just recently, I encountered a headache while reformatting my files and storing them on Google Drive. I just found out that many of the folders our student saved are empty. That's an unfortunate loss of years of data saved in my external hard drive. I think with a platform like Hive, such a loss will never happen again.
The present article is part of a series of articles for my first lecture in Introduction to Biblical Counseling. I still have two days to complete it. This lecture will be delivered on 19 January.
In this first lecture on Introduction to Biblical Counseling, I consider the review of the historical background of this movement as an appropriate starting point. However, before I proceed to that part, I want to mention some points taken from the preface and the introduction of the book Counseling: How to Counsel Biblically.
Preface
From the preface we learn that the goal of the contributors in writing the book’s chapters was to create a textbook for biblical counseling or pastoral theology. I think the first three parts of the book accomplish that purpose by providing the historical background, the theological foundations, and the implementation of biblical counseling.
With that goal in mind, the writers share a common conviction as to their method and their objectives. They describe their method as follows:
In preparing this book, we have labored to present material that is accurately biblical rather than humanistic or secular, basically proactive rather than reactive or polemic, practical rather than theoretical and abstract, and easily understood rather than technical or complicated” (p. vii).
As for the eleven objectives, I just want to share seven of them:
The development of a biblical worldview, that is, approaching human issues from the perspective of the Bible.
Consistency between classic Protestant theological foundations and counseling methods
Maintaining the distinctives of biblical counseling to avoid confusing it with popular counseling approaches.
Keeping the vital role of the Bible in counseling that is exegetically rooted and concretely practical.
To provide a brief historical perspective on how biblical counseling started and its current growth.
To give guidance to the local church in developing a biblical counseling ministry.
And to dismiss the inaccurate critique that biblical counseling is simplistic.
Introduction
Shifting to the introduction, I would like to add three additional insights.
The first one is about a cover story featured in Time magazine on 29 November 1993 questioning the legacy of Sigmund Freud (1856 to 1939), the founding father of psychoanalysis. We were told that while the secular world was increasingly disillusioned with the psychotherapy industry, the evangelical community has been doing its best to integrate it with the Bible. That is ironic! MacArthur described it as the evangelical addiction to psychotherapy.
The second insight is about a textbook on pastoral psychology written in the 1950s. This book tells us about the relationship between a professional therapist and clergy. Overall, when it comes to people suffering mental illness, the role of a gospel minister is to refer the person to the professional psychiatrist. He should refrain from acting as a psychiatrist, for such a task is beyond his expertise.
Many pastors succumbed to such thinking, and as a result, counseling is no longer considered as part of church ministry and has moved instead into counseling clinics. Unfortunately, despite the growth of Christian psychology into a billion-dollar industry, the spiritual and emotional state of many people shows no significant improvement.
The last insight is related to the resurgence of interest in biblical counseling. An increasing number of churches today are returning to the Bible to find a cure for the souls. MacArthur is grateful that under the leadership of Wayne Mack, “The Master’s College is building a biblical counseling program that is unequalled anywhere” (p. xiv).