What Does the Scripture Say?

The next number of blog posts will be on psychology (specifically psychotherapy or ‘pop’ psychology) and how it has infiltrated the church. Over the next few weeks I plan to intersperse a few videos and some articles that I’ve written along with other articles that I’ve been blessed with by other writers. As most of you know, I formerly worked for James Dobson, Christendom’s most popular “Christian Psychologist” and have done much studying into the field and how it lines up with Scripture (or the lack thereof). The following article is a little something I wrote up last year.

WE’RE TAKING BACK PSYCHOLOGY!

The theme last year at AiG-USA was “We’re taking them back.” What we meant is that for too long the world has captured the sciences like geology, biology, paleontology, etc. and harnessed them for their own godless ends. The foundation for much of the teaching we see in our culture relating to dinosaurs, racism, disease, DNA, etc. is evolutionary, a denial of the authority of the word of God in these areas. One of AiG’s goals is to ‘re-connect the Bible to the real world.’ When the Scripture touches on one of these areas, it speaks with authority and can be trusted.

We are taking back geology because the Bible speaks of a worldwide flood that affected the geology of the world. We’re taking back biology because the Bible says that God created the various kinds of plants and animals to reproduce ‘after their kind’. We’re taking back paleontology because the Bible proclaims that land dinosaurs (along with all other land animals) were created by God on day six.

One area that we also need to take back from the world is ‘the care of the soul’ aka psychology.  The term psychology by itself is not innately unrighteous; it simply means the study of the soul. From the Greek, psyche (soul) and logos (words). Clearly, the God of the Bible is the One who created our souls and can speak authoritatively on what the soul is, how to care for it, its purpose, how it works, etc. In today’s culture, the term psychology has come to be used as synonymous with psychotherapy (aka ‘pop’ psychology).

Psychotherapy is not a unified, coherent science but rather a diverse menagerie of man made theories and speculations concerning human relationships, emotions, and the almighty ‘self’ among other areas.

2 Tim 3:16-17 tells us that “All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.” Christians are the only people who are led by the Spirit of God and have the ability to use the Word of God in the care of souls. Humanists have a faulty foundation and because of their presuppositions, they cannot come to right conclusions in this area of soul care.

Unfortunately, almost all of the founding fathers of modern psychotherapy (and its underlying psychologies) were outright atheists (Carl Jung being an exception, as he was widely recognized as an occultist). Sigmund Freud, Alfred Adler, Abraham Maslow, B.F. Skinner, etc. were all secularists who denied Jesus Christ as Lord and believed that man could in and of himself study the soul and come to sound conclusions. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Many leaders in psychotherapy (such as the above mentioned and Pavlov, etc) were committed Darwinists and began with the assumption that human beings were merely complex animals and sought to reduce human nature to animal instinct, reflexes and the like. Out of this secular worldview came ungodly concepts such as behaviorism, man’s supposed “hierarchy of needs”, and the idolatrous concept of self-esteem, self-love and self-image.

What may be the greatest challenge for us is that many of these humanistic theories have stormed into the church and taken it captive. Simply walk into a Christian bookstore and you will likely find a whole section devoted to psychology. Many Bible colleges and seminaries have degrees in psychology in which they are training future Christian leaders in the godless theories of men.

2 Peter 1:3-4 says, “Seeing that His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness, through the true knowledge of Him who called us 1by His own glory and excellence. For by these He has granted to us His precious and magnificent promises, so that by them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world by lust.” God has given us everything pertaining to life and godliness which clearly includes man’s spiritual, relational and emotional spheres.

We must recognize that where the Bible speaks to an issue, such as the study of the soul, it speaks with authority. In this realm of soul study, the Bible is also sufficient and must be used as the glasses by which we understand our relationships to each other, our relationship to God and how to view ourselves. To try and integrate opposing views of the nature of man is to compromise one view or the other. Unfortunately when you try to make the Bible and man’s theories fit, guess which one gets modified.

As Dr. John MacArthur has written on this topic,

“Christian psychology” as the term is used today is an oxymoron. The word psychology no longer speaks of studying the soul; instead it describes a diverse menagerie of therapies and theories that are fundamentally humanistic. The presuppositions and most of the doctrine of psychology cannot be successfully integrated with Christian truth. Moreover, the infusion of psychology into the teaching of the church has blurred the line between behavior modification and sanctification.There may be no more serious threat to the life of the church today than the stampede to embrace the doctrines of secular psychology. They are a mass of human ideas that Satan has placed in the church as if they were powerful, life-changing truths from God. Most psychologists epitomize neo-Gnosticism, claiming to have secret knowledge for solving people’s real problems. There are even those psychologists who claim to perform a therapeutic technique they call “Christian counseling” but in reality are using secular theory to treat spiritual problems with biblical references tacked on.

The result is that pastors, biblical scholars, teachers of Scripture, and caring believers using the Word of God are disdained as naive, simplistic, and altogether inadequate counselors. Bible reading and prayer are commonly belittled as “pat answers,” incomplete solutions for someone struggling with depression or anxiety. Scripture, the Holy Spirit, Christ, prayer, and grace—those are the traditional solutions Christian counselors have pointed people to. But the average Christian today has come to believe that none of them really offers the cure for people’s woes.

Christians must take back psychology and proclaim the truth that the Creator and Redeemer of our souls is sufficient for “all of life and godliness” (2 Peter 1:3). Please pray that the Lord would continue to bless Answers in Genesis as we strive to faithfully proclaim the authority and the sufficiency of the Word of God from the very first verse.