Your Therapist has a Theology

Words and ideas sometimes seem like squishy things, more like jellyfish blobbing their way around the ocean. And yet even so, watch where they wash up and you might discover a cultural current.

“Christian psychologist” or “therapy” or “pastoral counselling” surely represent one of those trends. And the story comes in stages.

1. 1950s-1970s: Psychology is great and Christians can do it too!

• Post World-War II optimism towards science and a strong evangelical interest in being academically reputable coalesced to create integrationism such as in Gary Collins’ Psychology & Theology: Prospects for Integration. The bold thesis was that Freud and faith could be integrated as partners in the project of helping humans. Since theologians and psychologists “have similar interests and some overlapping goals,” and since “God is the source of all truth,” (15) the two disciplines ought to be able to work together.

2. 1980s-1990s: Peak prestige of the Christian Psychologist

• Christian psychologists such as James Dobson and Larry Crabb earned enough respect to find their way onto seminary faculties and build large organizations offering special insights into the human condition drawn from psychology. This was the era when it seemed that psychologists had an x-ray for the human soul and that pastoral training was insufficient for the really big issues.

3. Late 1990s–present: The Biblical Counselling Correction

• In the late 80s and early 90s, even within secular psychology, doubts were already accumulating about the utility of therapeutic methods or the notion that psychologists could remain neutral without their own value judgments and assumptions. In the world of biblical counselling, figures such as Jay Adams and David Powlison attacked the notion that Scripture was not sufficient for soul care. The biblical counselling movement arose to argue for the sufficiency of Christian theology and to elucidate a distinctly Christian view of humanity and the human condition.

Behind these trends stand two fundamental questions:

1. Is psychology neutral enough (free from faith and ethical committments) that it can be merged with Christian theology without corrupting both? Tertullian famously asks, “What indeed has Athens to do with Jerusalem?” If he wondered whether Plato can be integrated with Paul, we ought to ask if Freud is compatible with faith.
2. Is Christian theology sufficient for the key questions of the human experience or ought we turn to further expertise? What types of cases require us to seek out further medical intervention, and what standards should we use to decide?

But already this begins to reveal that psychology cannot be valueless or merely neutral. However much a therapist addresses “human behavior, values, interpersonal relations, attitudes, beliefs, pathology, marriage, the family, helping, and problem areas such as loneliness, discouragement, grief and anxiety”—in short, to whatever extent it offers a program for human flourishing and wholeness, it must choose an underlying ethic and theology (Collins, 15). And now an entire thicket of questions assert themselves:

• What is the default setting of a person—are we fundamentally good, neutral or evil?
• What is “normal” or “acceptable” human behaviour and who gets to define it? Is it ever possible to tell someone their behaviours are wrong if they are happy and aren’t hurting anyone by what they do?
• When someone’s behaviours are clearly unacceptable, what is the most likely explanation? Are our behaviours created by our upbringing, culture, or the impact of people around us? How important is it to explore these before we can help someone? And if our upbringing or past factors do critically shape us, are we responsible or might we be mere victims?
• Change is hard. What do we do when we try to change and fail? Or very practically, when a struggling person asks us for help, what should we tell them to do? What practical methods have the best chance of success?
• For all of these questions, are there any absolute, objective answers? What is the basis of our confidence or authority to tell someone to change?

These questions are only a mere beginning and each is hot, contested space. What cannot be contested is that no one can avoid having a view. Every theologian, every politician, every employer and yes, every therapist, has an assumed set of beliefs about these questions. Theology is inescapable. And the only way to avoid conflict between theology and psychology is for one discipline or the other to stop speaking meaningfully to the core questions of human life and flourishing.

That leaves me with a final set of evaluations you ought to make as you consider a counsellor:

• Would your therapist be willing to tell you that a certain behaviour is morally wrong? What is the standard for this ethic?
• What is the end goal of your therapy? Is your therapist looking beyond symptoms to address your fundamental character and your life after death, or is the goal simply to help you recover “normal human functioning?”
• What is the source of your therapist’s authority? What causes you to trust them or to think that their advice is worth following?
• Is therapy filling and replacing the role of theology, preaching, Christian fellowship, and the authority of Scripture? In the event of a conflict between theology and psychology, which will win out for you?

But Christianity speaks with the greatest of hope, boldly affirming that any human being can be transformed from within and experience full human flourishing. In the words of the only One who can truly transform human hearts on the deepest level, “come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls” (Matt. 11:28-29).