Part 3 – What Are We Doing Here? How the “Aims” of Biblical Counseling Differ from Secular Therapies

ARTICLE • Biblical counseling diverges from the aims of secularized therapies in multiple ways, including the desire to transform lives into the image of Jesus Christ, to bring about personal sanctification, and to relate realistically to counselees in light of the realities of both God and indwelling sin.

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If we intend to counsel faithfully to Scripture, what goals and objectives should shape our counseling? What are we praying for the dynamics of counseling to accomplish in the end? Biblical counseling diverges from the aims of secularized therapies in multiple ways, including the desire to transform lives into the image of Jesus Christ, to bring about personal sanctification, and to relate realistically to counselees in light of the realities of both God and indwelling sin.

Two Key Aims of Biblical Counseling

Biblical counselors are grateful when both secular and secularized ‘Christian’ counseling achieve “common-grace goods—But these other ‘pastorates’ heal lightly the woes and wrongs of the human condition.”[1] In short, perhaps the most gracious critique of secular therapies is their superficiality. Scripture does not set out to merely change ‘irrational’ thought patterns, or curb ‘deregulated’ emotions, or retrain ‘maladaptive’ behaviors so counselees can be restored to a generic functioning, happiness, and satisfaction in life. Such goals are neither bad nor without relevance, but unless they are conscientiously submitted to, subsumed in, and governed by God’s larger aims for humans, they are fundamentally sub-Christian, sub-biblical, and superficial. There are several aims of biblical counseling that seek above all to please and imitate the goals, content, and methodology of God, the ultimate and authoritative “Wonderful Counselor” (Isaiah 9:6).

First, biblical counseling aims to transform “individual lives and communal life into the image of Jesus Christ.”[2]

The incarnate life of Christ is the measure of optimal human functioning. If the God-man’s active obedience on earth was the only righteousness satisfactory to God for the salvation of sinners (2 Cor 5:21), it follows that he is the ultimate pattern of a human life well lived, perfectly loving God and neighbor in heart, word, and deed (Matt 22:37–40). There is no fuller expression than Jesus Christ for how God wants humans to live in a fallen world beset by sin and temptations of every sort (Heb 4:15). In that Christ is depicted as the fulfillment of all God’s promises to his people throughout all of Scripture, “We witness the psychology of Jesus not only in the Gospels, but also in psalms, proverbs, history, and prophets. Every revelation of the ways of God and the ways of godliness give expression to how Jesus worked both intrapsychically and interpersonally.”[3] In other words, normal is not determined by a statistical average of fallen yet functional humans. Jesus is the measure of normal, and every other human has fallen short. For this reason, God is renewing believers into the image of Jesus according to his eternal purposes (Rom 8:29; 2 Cor 3:18; Eph 4:22–24; Col 3:10; 1 John 3:2).

Second, biblical counseling aims to bring about personal sanctification.

Our greatest need this side of eternity is sanctification by the Spirit, not merely the rearrangement of life’s furniture. Richard Sibbs explained, “No wicked man can be a wise man. . .. And Satan by corruption gets all the holds of the soul, till Christ, stronger than he, comes and drives him out, taking possession of all the powers and parts of soul and body to be weapons of righteousness, to serve him.”[4] This is not to say that all human suffering and disfunction are a result exclusively of personal sin. But indwelling sin “crouches at the door” seeking occasion to tempt and enslave even the most mature believers (Gen 4:7); and all sin and suffering are ultimately the result of the Fall and its ongoing effects (Rom 8:22–23). The reality is that our responses to suffering often stimulate and draw out the underlying ways we are not relating rightly to God in our hearts. “The works of the flesh are evident,” as Paul argued (Gal 5:18), and they are most evident in the ways we respond to the pressures of life in a fallen world.

Life problems that commonly pass in secular therapies for psychiatric disorders, maladjustments, attachment issues, biological dispositions, or emotional dysregulation are often actually a complex of difficult circumstances exacerbated by a spiritually disordered heart. Hence, “The holy grail after which counseling theories finally aspire is redemption from what ails us, a cure for the diagnosed problem:” which for biblical counseling involves “the renewing of our hearts (fructifying cognitive, emotional, and volitional processes), the renewing of our manner of life (transforming individual behavior), the renewing of our community (transforming corporate relationships), and the renewing of our bodies (resurrection from the dead),” which are “the goal of God’s counseling.”[5]

How the Aims of Biblical Counseling Differ from Other Visions for Counseling

First, secularized therapies naively treat perceived needs as guiding lights rather than subjective lenses.

Susie Orbach finds it “incredibly heartening for a therapist to see [a client] so active in relation to his needs, personal needs which he has come to know about over the course of his therapy.”[6] Biblical counselors, in contrast, recognize that redemptive help is found outside of the counselee, in the objective and life-giving wisdom of God’s word. Merely helping a troubled counselee pinpoint her unmet desires to better satisfy those desires naively assumes psychological desire equals need—equals truth, goodness, and beauty. If indwelling sin is an ever-present reality that grossly distorts one’s perception of need and begets depression, anxiety, anger, infidelity, and a host of other emotional and behavioral maladies, then therapies that do not expose a heart of sin superficially treat spiritual cancer with Tylenol and new routines. Paul Tripp warns, “It is very easy for counseling to atrophy to the size of people’s perceived problems and felt needs. When we do this, we reduce ourselves to situation and relationship mechanics. . .. Yet, personal ministry, counseling, and discipleship must have a grander goal.”[7]

Second, secularized therapies often superficially focus on modifying troubling behaviors rather than focusing on disordered hearts.

Psychotherapist Paul Wachtel, states, “The task of the therapist consists to a significant degree in helping [clients] to overcome . . . fears and live more fully, freely, and enjoyably.”[8] There are many empirical tips, tricks, and techniques that need not take God or his inerrant word into consideration to achieve such shallow ends. But has the counselor succeeded if the person, work, wisdom, and aims of God are either disregarded or only given tacit priority? Orbach articulates her own superficial goal: “Therapy’s aim is to understand, to provide context, to indicate ways of thinking, feeling and being that invite the individual to know more of her- or himself, to extend their experience, to intervene in stumbling blocks or hurtful practices, to live more richly.”[9] Again, as Christians we must cry out that the Emperor has no clothes: where is the transformative knowledge of both God and indwelling sin in such a goal? Elsewhere Orbach claims that “We don’t so much pierce the bubble of [a client’s] narrative as layer it, turn it inside out, look at it from unexpected perspectives, join it with what we know of how the individual has construed his or her circumstances.”[10] The biblical vision is remarkably more realistic.

A counselee’s disordered narratives are indeed meant to be seen from an unexpected perspective, but whose perspective? Is “every thought [being taken] captive to obey Christ” until one’s “obedience is complete” (2 Cor 10:5–6)? When Orbach hears another client’s “desire to understand the meaning of life,” rather than help her first and foremost embrace why God created and is redeeming her, she seeks “to rearrange Helen’s internal furniture . . ., the structures of her psyche [that] need to be reorganized so that she can discover what she wants and join it up with an emerging Helen inside of herself.”[11] Such a humanistic orientation is what contributes to psychological and relational chaos and confusion. Biblical counselors seek, rather, to demonstrate the priority of a God-centered perspective that radically reshapes the distorted lenses through which we often see God, ourselves, others, and our circumstances—to see with new eyes “the presence, activity, and grace of God” in the chaos of our lives.[12] ❖

References:

[1] David Powlison, “A Biblical Counseling View,” in Psychology and Christianity: Five Views, ed. Eric L. Johnson, 2nd ed. (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2010), 259, Kindle.

[2] David Powlison, “Modern Therapies and the Church’s Faith,” The Journal of Biblical Counseling 15, no. 1 (Fall 1996): 12, https://www.ccef.org/jbc-article/modern-therapies-and-the-churchs-faith.

[3] David Powlison, “Cure of Souls (and the Modern Psychotherapies),” The Journal of Biblical Counseling 25, no. 2 (2007): 22, https://store.ccef.org/my-account/jbc/2502/cure-of-souls-and-the-modern-psychotherapies.

[4] Richard Sibbes, The Bruised Reed (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 2010), 86, Kindle.

[5] Powlison, “Cure of Souls (and the Modern Psychotherapies),” 22.

[6] Susie Orbach, In Therapy: The Unfolding Story (London, EN: Profile Books, 2018), 203, Kindle.

[7] Paul Tripp, “Identity and Story: A Counseling Transcript,” The Journal of Biblical Counseling 22, no. 2 (2004): 59, https://store.ccef.org/my-account/jbc/2202/identity-and-story-a-counseling-transcript.

[8] Paul L. Wachtel, Therapeutic Communication: Knowing What to Say When, 2nd Ed. (London: Guilford Publications, 2011), 84, Kindle.

[9] Orbach, In Therapy, 2.

[10] Orbach, In Therapy, 186.

[11] Orbach, In Therapy, 282.

[12] Tripp, “Identity and Story, 64.