A Critique of "Concluding Reflections" |
by Martin and Deidre Bobgan |
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[The following is excerpted from
Counseling the Hard Cases ~ A Critical Review,
available as a free ebook at www.pamweb.org.]
Much of what co-editors Heath Lambert and Stuart Scott say in their
“Concluding Reflections” is commendable regarding the sufficiency of
Scripture and how believers can minister care and concern, guidance and
compassion to one another in the Body of Christ. What they say about the
power of Scripture and the power of Christ’s love expressed through
believers to those experiencing challenges in living does apply to all
believers. They aptly quote from Galatians 6:1-2, 9-10 to show the need
for believers to actively care for one another. Indeed, we are to carry
one another’s burdens, we are to listen compassionately, we are to
minister hope, and we are to minister the Word of God as led by the Holy
Spirit.
However, nobody in the church needs
to be a counselor, particularly following mindlessly the methodology
presented in
Counseling the Hard
Cases (CTHC), some of which would be contrary to Scripture and reflective of
psychological counseling.
What the
biblical counseling movement has done is to
formalize and systematize what should be a biblically based
caring for one another in the local church. We have argued in the past
that if God had needed psychotherapeutic systems and methodologies to
minister to His people before the twentieth century, He would have
included those theories and techniques in Scripture. Now we carry it a
step further. If God had needed those methodologies of
CTHC and the biblical counseling movement (BCM) that reflect
psychological counseling theories and therapies, He would have included
them in Scripture. Many of the specifics of what they do and how they do
it are not all biblical. Too much has been recycled from psychological
counseling.
Lambert and
Scott speak of two kinds of people who avoid doing counseling, which is
an either/or fallacy: those who do not understand the sufficiency of
Scripture and those who don’t care enough to help (p. 303). We would add
a third category and that would be those of us who believe in the
sufficiency of Scripture to minister to problems of living and who care
enough to become involved, but who eschew the rigid, authoritarian,
one-up/one-down, certification-dependent methodology of biblical
counseling that often reflects the problem-centered psychotherapeutic
world in actual practice.
Lambert and
Scott attempt to soften the authoritative and demeaning one-up position
of the counselor by saying that:
When we are seeking to
minister to others in need, it actually is a mistake to think that the
counselee is the only one in need. Actually, all of God’s people in the
counseling room are in need of growing in their faith in Christ. The
Holy Spirit does not take a sabbatical on the counselor’s sanctification
while he or she is ministering to others. Faithful counselors should
regularly say after counseling, “Wow, I needed to hear what they said”
or “I needed to hear what Scripture said” (p. 307).
We have read
numerous counseling cases and descriptions but have never read such a
statement following counseling as, “Wow, I needed to hear what they
said.” It certainly was not said at the end of either Lambert’s or
Scott’s cases.
Lambert and Scott are of the
opinion that all pastors are biblically mandated to be counseling their
people in addition to preaching. Although there are instances of
personal ministry in Scripture, preaching and teaching are highlighted
as the primary means of communicating the Gospel and the new life in
Christ. Aside from Christ and the apostles being able to heal
miraculously, their personal ministry was one of teaching. There is no
instance of a married couple airing their grievances week after week.
Paul simply taught believers how married couples should treat one
another, e.g., 1 Corinthians 7:3-4; Ephesians 5:23-33.
Rather than
emphasizing counseling, the Scriptures emphasize teaching. For instance,
Paul wrote to Timothy: “And the things that thou hast heard of me among
many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able
to teach others also” (2 Tim. 2:2). The older women were to teach the
younger women: “To be discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient
to their own husbands, that the word of God be not blasphemed” (Titus
2:5).
Every pastor
should devote himself to praying, studying the Word, preaching,
teaching, and equipping the saints, as they mature in the Word and the
Spirit, to minister to each other as well as communicate the Gospel to
others. A biblically based church with believers who have been well
taught in the Word, lived accordingly, and have found the Lord faithful
in small and great trials, will have sufficient resources to minister to
the needs that arise. We have seen the Lord put people together for
mutual care without any human assignment or imposed system. Sadly,
however, people have learned, first from the world and then from the
church, that they need experts in counseling, and so they may not seek
help from “ordinary believers” unless they are trained and certified.
Lambert and Scott, perhaps unknowingly, are promoting the myth of the
superiority of the trained expert over the untrained ones who are living
the Christian life and able to minister.
Erroneously,
Lambert and Scott equate their kind of biblical counseling with the
personal ministry people need. While their primary target is pastors,
Lambert and Scott recommend that every believer become a biblical
counselor, as they “urge all Christians
toward the battlefield of love— the task of walking with broken people
in the work of counseling” (p.
305, bold added). However, that would be very restrictive. Instead of
following Scripture and the work of the Holy Spirit in their lives, the
pastors especially, along with all members of a congregation, would have
to learn the techniques and methodologies of data gathering, delving
into the past to hear unconfirmed stories (Prov. 18:13 misused), probing
for more details (Eph. 5:12 abused), enabling and encouraging gossip,
complaining (murmuring), and other forms of sinful communication, and
confronting any sin in the counselee that may appear or even be
suspected, such as unseen “idols of the heart.”
Lambert and
Scott speak of the “hard work of loving people through counseling.” How
much does a counselor love every client, particularly if the client is
paying? Lambert is a great promoter of David Powlison, who is listed as
the first endorser of
CTHC and who is head of
the Christian Counseling and Educational Foundation (CCEF), where
counselees are charged fees for counseling. Lambert heads the
Association of Certified Biblical Counselors (ACBC), which includes some
certificated members who charge fees and a board member who charges fees
as well. To our knowledge, neither Lambert nor Scott have publicly
exposed the great unbiblical error of charging. Can one purchase love
through buying into biblical counseling?
Love can more
freely be expressed in a body of believers who grasp the truth about the
sufficiency of God’s Word, the indwelling work of the Holy Spirit, and
the love of God,
but who are not hampered by a rigid counseling format or
requirements for specialized BCM training, credentials, or certificates. True ministry to one another is an act of love and we believe
that many biblical counselors do love their clients. However, the
structure of the counseling puts one believer above another in a one-up
position. One-up is the counselor who diagnoses the spiritual problem,
prescribes the homework, issues orders, and confronts major or minor
sins of the one-down counselee, which may or may not be apparent. Here
the counselor may assume too much spiritual authority, rather than
simply teaching the authoritative Word regarding what may appear
applicable and then trusting the Holy Spirit to make the direct
application and conviction of sin, without usurping the husband’s
headship or lording it over the wife.
Even within the
description of
CTHC one can see how
counselees are sometimes demeaned rather than treated as equal at the
foot of the cross. What would it be like to be in a church where
everyone is busy counseling one another according to the BCM
methodology? Not only would this fictionalize fellowship; it would
displace the work of the Holy Spirit to convict according to His work in
believers as they respond to preaching and teaching. Such an environment
would be spiritually stifling! Thankfully, Christ did not include
“counselor” in His ministry gifts to the church in Ephesians 4:11ff.
Instead He sent the Holy Spirit to be our perpetual guide, who does not
have to guess and presume, but who knows all things about every
individual!
We conclude
with this
WARNING: Do not blithely, blindly, and blatantly play
follow-the-leader with the ten case studies showcased in
CTHC. Do not take literally these ten cases and the inferred claim that
you, too, can cure through biblical counseling the hard cases listed in
CTHC plus, by extension, the other 300 mental disorders listed in the
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of
Mental Disorders (DSM) that do not have medical markers and where no organic issues are
found after a full medical workup!
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(PsychoHeresy Awareness Letter, March-April 2016, Vol. 24, No. 2) |
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