Romans 15:14
(14) I myself am satisfied about you, my brothers, that you yourselves are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge and able to instruct one another.
This was one of my memory verses in my counseling class last year. I take this as quite an encouragement for the nouthetic method. What Paul is saying here is that the people have the Holy Spirit and have been instructed in the Truth. Therefore, they can help one another grow. The word translated instruct here is "noutheo," which is where we get the term "nouthetic counseling."
Take heart you believers! Scripture is sufficient to help one another. Obviously we do need to handle it correctly, but we can trust that God is true to His Word. What gets me is that so many well-meaning teachers have a "defer and refer" approach to counseling. They think that the Bible is sufficient for everything except for issues of the mind. Our litigious society has helped with that too.
It seems to me that back in the day if someone had problems that person would talk to his minister, priest, or rabbi for advice. Now we feel like we have to go to a "professional." Of course, the counter-argument is that we don't go to the shaman for medical advice anymore. This is true. The big difference is that medicine is much more of a hard science. If someone has diabetes then insulin will help that. But if someone is depressed is the right answer to medicate?
I know that this is an old rant for those who are long-time readers of my blog. However, I also know that there are a lot of you who are anonymous, so I thought I'd bring it up again. I'd love to have interaction in the comments about this.
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1 comment:
Yes, scripture is sufficient for a lot of things if we are looking for the answers. That's one point. I think we don't always want to find Biblical answers for our problems. Maybe we don't think there is one and maybe we don't want to know if there is. Second, we don't usually want to get involved in other's problems. We don't want to be nosy or too invasive. But when I consider what true Biblical community is and read the "one anothers" I have to say I feel obligated to address issues affecting others' relation with God or as brothers in Christ. And to know what you need to do and not do it is not right.
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