Ed Welch at the Society Conference

Ed talked this am about how he thinks about biblical counseling, integration, and Christian psychology. He sees Christian Psychology as founded upon two good ideas: (a) building a solid infrastructure for our Christian work (in the past christian counseling hasn’t done this well), and (b) helpful listening and dialog so that we can learn from each other (and we haven’t done this well in the past either).

He acknowledged that given his milieu at CCEF and Westminster Seminary, the issues of integration aren’t primary. They might well be for others but haven’t been for him.  He discussed how he sees secular literature. He reads it and enjoys it when stimulating and not so much when it is boring or overly preachy in worldview. As a teacher he asks his students to engage this literature and read it carefully.

What has been more of a primary focus for him is how we access Scripture and the person of Jesus Christ. He spent a considerable amount of his talk on making sure we see problems from Scripture’s multiperspectival approach. As example he used the concept of low self-esteem. In the 80s, biblical counselors rightly pointed out that low self-esteem was poorly masked pride and egocentrism (wanting to look more highly than we think we do).  And yet, he admitted that this is not all that Scripture has to say about the chronic feelings of not measuring up. First, there is the impact of Adam’s original sin. We are in places where we feel guilty because we do not measure up. Second, we must acknowledge the sin done to us and how that shapes our sense of self. As biblical counselors we need to have this rich understanding of problems and not treat issues such as self-esteem from only one perspective.

Ed’s talk was personal and open, as usual. Its really hard to dislike him or to disagree with him–even if I wanted to. I am biased as I have always liked listening to him muse about life. I am glad he has come and lent his voice to the conversation here. It will help those only exposed to radical forms of biblical counseling see a better example and also will help Ed see how others see biblical counseling.

Later in the day, Steve Zombory (Palm Beach Atlantic University) gave a talk entitled, “Why I am not a biblical counselor.” He brought to light some of the lack of self-critique within the movement, the stagnation that may come as a result of not interacting with developments of mind/brain research, of misrepresenting academic psychology. These are some of the complaints I have also raised. He did also suggest that biblical counseling lacks a broad understanding of suffering (I highly disagree) and doesn’t interact with serious pathology (I disagree here but understand that their public writings haven’t been as focused here as much as their teaching). Later, Welch and Zombory will have a public dialog. Should be good.