Fear and the Demonization of Christian Psychology

Copyright 2007 by Shea Oakley

All rights reserved

There are a number of conservative Christians who have made a crusade out of literally demonizing the rapidly growing Christian counseling movement. They particularly target ministries which they believe have succumbed to the wiles of “secular psychology”. For certain Christians who lean towards the fundamentalist end of the spectrum the integration of the Bible and psychology is anathema. They maintain that everything in psychological theory is somehow “of the Devil”. For them the only answer to any mental or emotional problem is to read the right Scripture verses and repent.

Much has been written on both sides of this debate, although the anti-counseling faction has written far more to attack the concept of integration than Christian psychologists have written to defend it. This is too bad because much can be said in the defense of psychological truths that dovetail quite clearly with what the Bible teaches about human nature.

That said my task in this piece is not to make arguments in favor of mainstream Christian counseling from a theological perspective. Instead I would like to suggest a reason why some who hold the Bible up as the only source of counseling wisdom are so adamant about staying away from psychological therapy.

They are scared to death of it.

What they are so afraid of is what they might find out about themselves if they were to submit to such therapy.

You see, counseling is hard work. More than that it is sometimes scary work. For one thing, contrary to the usual assumptions the anti-counseling crowd makes, it is not about finding out who damaged you in your past and then conveniently blaming them for every problem you have today. Nor is Christian counseling about dodging responsibility for your own sinful response to what they may have done to you. In fact honestly dealing with your own sin is part and parcel of any Christian counseling methodology worth its own salt.

Beyond that good Christian psychology (and, no, that isn’t an oxymoron) requires the facing of the deep pain that abuse truly does inflict on the heart and soul of the one who has received that abuse. It is about getting past defenses like false-piety and self-condemnation to the point where a client can enter into the grief that accompanies realizing the sometimes permanent losses he or she suffered from people who took away, often during the helplessness of childhood, something precious to them. This grief process is ordained by God, the same God who told us to mourn with those who mourn, not tell them to read a verse and get over it! Grief must precede healing and often that grief can only be drawn out by a spirit-directed psychologist who knows, from divinely-given knowledge of human psychology, how to circumvent the walls we put up because we do not want to experience the sometimes great pain that accompanies facing what has happened to us.

Once we experience that pain we can come to the place where both forgiveness of those who hurt us and repentance from our own sins is finally possible. That is the holy goal of a sincere Christian psychologist. In fact this goal has a very scriptural name: it’s called sanctification.

The whole process is very hard. It is not fun, it is not frivolous, it is the hardest work many of us will ever do and there are some people who are so afraid of facing that prospect, whether consciously or unconsciously, that they create theological justifications to avoid it, and that is what the anti-counseling movement is really about, avoidance.

I have worked in psych hospitals with the sexually abused. The victims of these crimes were the sickest, most wounded people in the building. They did not need to be told to read the bible, repent of the sin of depression and then be sent out into the world without human support or the benefit of what God has granted us to help them through His common grace. They needed counseling, they needed medication and they needed people who would walk beside them in the journey of healing. All these things Christian psychologists and psychiatrists are willing to do for them and the fact that they are vilified for it by people who attack them as heretics out of their own fear and self-righteousness is a great sin in and of itself.

Frankly, I believe such people are someday going to have to give an account of their actions to the God who gave us both the Bible and psychology so we might bless the walking wounded among us and help restore them to the life He always intended them to have.