Why Biblical Counseling Should Be the Only Choice
By: Dr. Mike Jones
Whether or not the counselee believes in God should be the first thing determined in the counseling session. Once it has been determined that the counselee is a believer, then secular counseling doesn’t enter the conversation. Many secular counselors are not believers, who turn to God for help with the various challenges in life that oftentimes cannot be resolved through human methods of reasoning.
In this chapter, you will be introduced to three types of counseling offered world-wide, to help people deal with human challenges (problems) and dysfunctionalism that plague the core of our society – the family.
Secular Psychotherapy – can be found world-wide and is easily attainable through systems of higher education. (Simply stated) It is when secular counselors attend secular colleges/universities and graduate school programs and their training is geared to the field of psychology and the humanistic approaches to human challenges and difficulties in life. As stated in the previous chapter, “What Is Biblical Counseling?” the philosophy of secular humanism or postmodernism is based on mankind solving his/her own problems and using his/her own resources, thus, determined not to rely on any outside source to help guide him/her. Point blank – their spiritual need is never addressed, because they believe, and in some cases, were taught, that God (divine or supernatural intervention) has no influence on human problems or solutions.
Secular psychotherapists rarely address moral issues and have been known to completely go against what the Word of God teaches about the depravity of mankind. [Example: A client comes into the session to discuss his feeling guilty about stealing time from doing work on a major government project and wants to end it and confess the slothfulness to his superiors. The psychotherapists are apt to tell the client to keep the slothfulness a ‘secret’ from his bosses, on the notion that “what they don’t know, won’t hurt them.” Doing this does not help the client with their guilt feelings, nor does it help him with facing the consequences that are sure to follow, once his slothfulness is discovered/reported.
Integrated Christian Counseling – Just as the name entails, these are believers who have attended secular institutions of higher learning, obtained their secular counseling degrees and training and have integrated them with the Word of God and prayer as they uniquely apply what they have learned to counseling hurting people in their sessions. The problem with this type of counseling is that the knowledge of scripture the counselor knows is usually very limited; thus, most of their counseling approach is secular in nature with a few Bible passages added throughout the session for good measure. They feel they are providing the ‘best of both counseling curriculums,’ but it’s not authentic biblical counseling. [What they fail to realize is that the ‘mind sciences’ have only been recognized over the past several decades, while the Word of God has existed for centuries. [Note: In later chapters, we will discuss many of the cognitive (personality) theories/therapy that secular counselors use to solve many of the issues of mankind. In many cases, their cognitive therapy methods are similar to what Jesus taught in the Bible. However, secular counselors have added a few ‘twists’ to their technique or changed the name, so as to not make Jesus the author of their successes.]
Authentic Biblical Counseling – Just as the name implies, authentic biblical counseling is based on teachings directly from the Word of God, based in a belief system of God as the only creator of human life. Based on this infallible belief system of what the Word of God says about Him, He alone knows our flaws and shortcomings, and there is no one better to ‘fix’ us than God Himself. Trust in Him alone and what His Word says about us, will help us solve any problem that life throws at us. This starts by us acknowledging that we as human beings have a SIN problem as the root of all our troubles. James 1:5 states, “If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall by given him.” Verse 6 is the quencher: “But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he who wavers is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed.” This verse is saying, he who continuously veers from one course to another only reveals his own instability and lack of a sense of being under divine control. This is why we so desperately need God in our daily lives.
Conclusion: Secular counseling focuses on the symptom of the problem, not the root of it; as the old expression goes, “putting a Band-Aid” on the wound. Whereas, biblical counseling focuses on and deals with the root of the problem! And stay with the solution until victory is assured.
(Adapted from Biblical Counseling 401: A Focus on the Family; all Scripture references are taken from the KJV unless otherwise noted.)