Part 2 – What Are We Doing Here? How the “Content” of Biblical Counseling Differs from Secular Therapies
ARTICLE • Biblical counselors understand that solutions to life’s problems lay external to us in God’s Word and are mediated to us through Scripture-saturated, Spirit-empowered, sanctifying conversation.
Read time: 6 min
Counseling informed by and submitted to God’s word departs from secular approaches not only in theory but also in practice. The actual content of the conversation will drastically differ. Secular therapists commonly hold that the therapeutic relationship and conversation themselves are mainly what counselees need. As such, therapists chiefly help clients express and understanding their feelings and subconscious desires to thereby resolve life problems. Biblical counselors, however, understand that counseling solutions to life’s problems lay external to us in God’s word and are mediated to us through Scripture-saturated, Spirit-empowered, sanctifying conversation. Drawing out one’s heart becomes central to rightly grasping the elements of both suffering and sin at play, in order to wisely impart the words of life (John 6:63).
Types of Questions that Need to Be Asked and Truths That Need to Be Made Known
Since problems in living most often involve elements of internal disorder, and since God’s solutions reside external to us in his word, biblical counselors must seek to both (1) ask questions that draw out the heart and (2) apply the truths of the gospel to heart and life. David Powlison provided thirty-five carefully crafted queries to gain insight into a counselee’s heart—X-Ray Questions. He designed the questions to be used both “microscopically,” to dissect the details of a given incident, and as a “wide-angle panoramic view, to illuminate recurrent and typical patterns that characterize a person’s entire life.”[1] Not all such questions need asked directly, yet the biblical counselor is always listening for how a counselee’s comments, complaints, omissions, and narratives pull back the curtain on patterns of functionally disordered beliefs, desires, and choices.[2] Powlison described how such questions are ‘Why?’ questions framed concretely as ‘What?’ questions. He insightfully summarized,
The Bible . . . is concerned to pierce below behaviors and emotions in order to expose motives, to lay people bare before Him with whom we have to do. Reorienting motives through the grace of the gospel can follow when there is conviction of particular forms of disorientation. Reorienting motives through the grace of the gospel can follow when there is conviction of particular forms of disorientation.[3]
Additionally, Paul Tripp advises a tact of reframing the errant questions of a counselee into biblically informed questions that shed light on how the counselee may be relating to God, him- or herself, and others in a disordered fashion. For example, a counselee may ask, “Why isn’t God working in my life?” Since the question belies an unbiblical assumption that sometimes God forsakes his children or does not fulfil his promise to work in us for his good pleasure (Phil 2:12–13), a counselor may reply: “God is at work in your life. What are the things that keep you from seeing it?”[4] This reframing simultaneously presents biblical truth and probes deeper into the heart for disordered beliefs and desires. Ed Welch likewise points out that we must ask questions that state or assume biblical truth. For instance, to lead a counselee to more biblical self-awareness and biblical change, a counselor may ask, “What is the good that God is doing in these painful events?”[5]
The Gospel Applied to Life Troubles
Not only must a biblical counselor ask the right kinds of questions, he or she must present and apply gospel truths for sanctification (John 17:17; 1 Cor 15:1–2). Notably, Scripture itself and not mere biblical categories must preoccupy the conversation. We are not merely imparting principles drawn from Scripture but also the very words of God. Paul Tripp beautifully illustrates how Galatians 5:1–6:2 may be unpacked to teach a warring married couple to begin to use redemptive rather than contentious language.[6] By evidencing from the biblical text how the fruit of the flesh had ripened into the contentious marriage, he demonstrated that the flesh and not the Spirit was producing the couple’s destructive words.
Other biblical truths that must find a place in the counseling conversation may include the following affirmations: (1) the existence, holiness, goodness, faithfulness, love, power, presence, and meticulous providence of God; (2) the original designs of God in assigning humans God-centered purpose, meaning, and certain roles; (3) the reality of the Fall and its ongoing effects in suffering and in the distorting and destructive effects of indwelling sin;[7] and (4) the redemptive works and promises of God through the life, death, resurrection, and reign of Christ, which are now being mediated through the sanctifying work of the Spirit through the word in the context of the church, as we await a fully renewed creation (Rom 8:24–26).
How the Content of a Distinctively Christian Conversation Differs from “Therapeutic” Alternatives
While biblical counselors and secularized therapists may initially ask similar questions to gain background information about a person, one’s upbringing, experiences, and presenting problems, the nature of the questions eventually diverge. Secular and secularized ‘Christian’ counselors ask questions designed to therapeutically dig deeper into one’s psyche to reveal latent feelings and unmet ‘needs’ and desires, with little to no intention to compassionately call for repentance to realign disordered beliefs and desires to God’s word. For instance, Susie Orbach asks questions in keeping with her psychotherapeutic commitments: “The phenomenon they called transference describes the often intense feelings an analysand has towards the therapist. Have you experienced this?”[8]
Elsewhere, she asks many questions to draw out feelings, but she asks not in order to expose the despair of Godlessness in her client’s life but to ‘help’ a distressed client understand better what she wants out of life: “Questions like ‘Do I want to be a lawyer?’, ‘Do I want to be X?’, ‘What am I feeling now?’ might emerge, . . . [and] such reflections might lead you to what you are missing that is producing this sense of loneliness.”[9] Paul Wachtel’s ‘cyclical psychodynamics’ approach sees anger as a behavioral cycle between one’s anger and defenses, leading to a self-perpetuating cycle where defensive behaviors aimed at avoiding anger result in being overlooked and taken advantage of—thus, intensifying the anger.[10] As such, questions will be asked to enable a client to better modify social defenses so others do not take advantage, rather than drilling down to the heart elements giving vent via anger.
The Biblical Contrast
By way of contrast, biblical counselors ask questions designed to reveal misplaced heart motivations: “What do you want, desire, crave, lust, and wish for? What desires do you serve and obey? Where do you bank your hopes? What do you fear? What do you tend to worry about? Where do you find refuge, safety, comfort, escape, pleasure, security?”[11] Welch’s questions for depressed counselees—after relating to them, first, as sufferers and looking into circumstance contributions to depression—likewise seek to reveal the cognitive, affective, and volitional elements of the heart. He offers,
Considering some of the possible causes of depression, here are some examples of questions counselors can ask. Are you angry? Do you have a right to be angry? Why are you so downcast? Where is your treasure? What have you lost? Are you especially worried about something? Why are you so afraid? For what are you so guilty? What do you feel like you must cover up? Do you love Jesus?[12]
In short, matters of heart motivation lay at the center of a biblical approach intent on exposing idols of the heart that betray, disappoint, and destroy fallen humans made in God’s image. As Jesus taught, the heart expresses itself through behaviors (Matt 12:19). Powlison explains, “Scripture never bifurcates motive and behavior. The mirror of Scripture exposes both. The lamp of Scripture guides both. The grace and power of Jesus Christ change both root and fruit.”[13] If we simply ask questions that facilitate self-understanding (Prov 18:2), we aid and abet the enemy of our souls. As Richard Sibbs warned, “There is an army of lusts in mutiny against [Christ]. The utmost strength of most men’s endeavors and abilities is directed to keeping Christ from ruling in the soul.”[14] So, when the shamed adulterers of the world propose, “It is just not like me, I don’t do that kind of thing, you know, . . . I am just not that kind of person really,”[15] we must not fail to offer the biblical diagnosis and point to Christ as God’s cure for us all, who are that kind of person. ❖
References:
[1] David Powlison, “X-ray Questions: Drawing Out the Whys and Wherefores of Human Behavior,” The Journal of Biblical Counseling 18, no. 1 (1999): 3, https://store.ccef.org/my-account/jbc/1801/x-ray-questions-drawing-out-the-whys-and-wherefores-of-human-behaviors.
[2] Powlison, “X-ray Questions,” 8.
[3] Powlison, “X-ray Questions,” 3.
[4] Paul D. Tripp, “Strategies for Opening Blind Eyes: Data Gathering, Part 3,” The Journal of Biblical Counseling 15, no. 1 (1996): 47–48, https://store.ccef.org/my-account/jbc/1501/strategies-for-opening-blind-eyes-data-gathering-part-3.
[5] Edward T. Welch, “Counseling Those Who Are Depressed,” The Journal of Biblical Counseling 20, no. 2 (2000): 13, https://store.ccef.org/my-account/jbc/1802/counseling-those-who-are-depressed.
[6] Paul D. Tripp, “Speaking Redemptively,” The Journal of Biblical Counseling 16, no. 1 (1998): 10–18, https://store.ccef.org/my-account/jbc/1603/speaking-redemptively.
[7] Paul D. Tripp, “Identity and Story: A Counseling Transcript,” The Journal of Biblical Counseling 22, no. 2 (2004): 60, https://store.ccef.org/my-account/jbc/2202/identity-and-story-a-counseling-transcript.
[8] Susie Orbach, In Therapy: The Unfolding Story (London: Profile Books, 2018), 82, Kindle.
[9] Orbach, In Therapy, 96.
[10] Paul L. Wachtel, Therapeutic Communication: Knowing What to Say When, 2nd ed. (London: Guilford Publications, 2011), 71, Kindle.
[11] Powlison, “X-ray Questions,” 4–7.
[12] Welch, “Counseling Those Who Are Depressed,” 20.
[13] Powlison, “X-ray Questions,” 8.
[14] Richard Sibbes, The Bruised Reed (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 2010), 111. Kindle.
[15] Orbach, In Therapy, 88.
