What We're Up Against

I had my Biblical Counseling class last night. We continued talking about how Systematic Theology affects counseling. It was actually very interesting as I had a hard time thinking of too many practical applications when I was taking Systematic.

The last 10 minutes were probably the best as we clarified what we mean by being anti-psychology. In fact, I kept thinking about the linguistics book that we're reading for Greek class. The word "psychology" has become packed with meaning. The distinction that helped me was to say that we are fighting against any counseling practice built on humanistic theories. For example, Rogerian psychology offers no answers, but just helps the patient find the answers from within his own goodness. Of course, this stands in stark contrast to the biblical view of man. We need to fight the influence of that kind of thinking in the church.

However, there is nothing wrong with something like educational psychology that seeks to understand how best to teach children. There is nothing wrong with industrial psychology that seeks to study what practices help people get the most productivity out of their time. And so on. What we need to be careful about it is anything that seeks to treat the "inner man" or the "heart" as Scripture calls it.

It is always good to go back to the gospel, amen?