Category Archives: christian counseling

February 12, 2009 · 9:44 am

Persisting Conflict: Breaking the cycle


As you can imagine, most people I see in counseling settings have a conflict with someone in their life that doesn’t seem to resolve. The problem comes up again and again. Change the scenario, but the dialogue remains the same. Someone shuts down, someone presses hard, someone brings up the past, someone changes the subject, someone seems to agree at first but then later reverses their position. You get the picture.

There are many reasons why we fall into this kind of pattern. But, one comes to mind as a common reason: We want to be heard and we don’t feel like we are being heard so we keep doing things in order to be heard (silence, many words, loud words, etc.). The end result is both parties feel unheard and generally unwilling to really “hear” the other for fear their concerns will be ignored.

One way I try to break the cycle is to draw 2 intersecting roads. In most conflict, we are going different directions and we want the other to come with us. And when we consider going with the other down their road, it feels as if our road (concerns, desires) will be left far behind.

In order to break the cycle we have to stay in the intersection, without demanding that we go down either road. The intersection means that both of our concerns and interests are being considered. We stay there to hear without leaving. We fight the anxiety that staying there means giving up. It doesn’t. The intersection is to be a safe place (okay, in real life hanging out in an intersection probably isn’t the smartest thing).

When conflicting parties agree to hang out in the intersection, I find that most of the anxiety and fears of rejection or neglect subside. And frequently, parties agree that the concerns of both are legitimate. And just maybe they can find another road that they both can travel in safety.

What word pictures do you find helpful when confronting persisting conflict?

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Filed under christian counseling, christian psychology, conflicts, counseling, Relationships

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February 9, 2009 · 11:06 am

Do you see your body as good?


At church on Sunday I attended a class discussing Lauren Winner’s “Real Sex: The Naked Truth About Chastity” (Brazos, 2005). Her thesis (in the second chapter anyway) is that the church tends to have one of two responses to singles about sex: either be honest and loving (e.g., go ahead) or just don’t do it. She suggests that we look at the larger context of the “say no” passages in order to see God’s larger view of sex as good in the right settings. I won’t go any further here with that thesis but all that to say:

Winner wants us to think about the body as being good. And since the body is a sexual entity, that sex is also good. Got me thinking that most of us don’t see our bodies as something that is good. We focus on the fall and the brokenness we see. We see our lack of health. We see insatiable desire. We see danger. We see something that doesn’t measure up to the image we most want to see.

But here is the challenge. Did God make your body? Is it good? If you only focus on what is not good about your body, what are you missing? How are you marring the true story about your body?

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Filed under Biblical Reflection, christian counseling, Christianity, Cultural Anthropology, Doctrine/Theology, Identity, Psychology

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February 3, 2009 · 11:31 am

Improving Case Conceptualization?


For my counselor readers: What books or other helps have you encountered that improved your ability to conceptualize cases?

When we teach counseling skills we do the following (we do more than this but this is the general trajectory):

  1. Build basic helping/counseling skills (if you can’t connect with a person and build a trusting relationship, any knowledge you might have will be useless!)
  2. Expose students to a wide variety of problems (so they can understand and describe common problems in living or common pathologies–even if they are not sure of the causes of these problems)
  3. Explore human growth and development from a descriptive and biblical viewpoint (this at the same time as #2 so that they learn about common problems  and sufferings as well as what healthy and Godward lives look like in a fallen world)
  4. Teach case conceptualization (marrying client information (e.g., background info, presenting problems, attempts to solve the problems, etc.) with theoretical understanding of the person/problem/desired outcome.
  5. Build intervention repertoire during fieldwork.

#4 is the hardest, especially in a generalist program that doesn’t spend a great deal of time on theoretical models (we teach models as part of every course and our model of Christian psychology (biblical anthropology along with process oriented model) isn’t as defined as the old models (e.g., Rogers, Freud, etc.).

If you were teaching counseling to practicum students who needed help with conceptualizing cases, what resources would you turn to?

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Filed under biblical counseling, christian counseling, christian psychology, counseling, counseling science, counseling skills, Psychology, teaching counseling

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January 15, 2009 · 5:16 am

Some critical thoughts about Biblical Counseling


For those reading this site interested in christian counseling and more specifically, biblical counseling, I have a quote below for you to muse about. I’d like to hear your reactions to the author. Is he right? If not, what is wrong with his critique of the biblical counseling movement or wrong with his insistence on producing evidence of the effectiveness of biblical counseling?

The quote comes from the website www.christiancounseling.com (The Association of Biblical Counselors) which publishes an ejournal for paying subscribers. On occasion they publish interviews with those outside (but friendly with) biblical counseling. Some of their interviewees, like myself (November issue) have a foot in their world but also one in the professional world. FYI, there are more and more of us who reject the necessity of separating clinical care from biblical care but do not believe the integrative attempts of the past were all that useful either.

In September they interviewed a Dr. Stephen Farra, professor at Columbia International University and director of their psychology or counseling program. You can find him and his writings at www.ciu.edu/faculty/bio.php?id=12. He has one work there on his model of counseling called Accountability Psychology, a biblically based CBT model.

After lauding the biblical counseling movement for its deconstructive work of then accepted notions of christian and secular counseling, he says, 

…the biblical counseling movement has been better at critique than positive creation, however. Whenever I seek for an answer as to whether Biblical Counseling has developed clinically powerful counseling methods to help meet the needs of most of those suffering from severe psychological disorders, all I find are a few anecdotal accounts of counselor-reported recoveries for a few individuals… To “get it right,” we do need to move from “integration” to biblical consistency, but we must also move from anecdote to evidence. The Biblical Counseling movement needs to squarely face up to its need to provide solid, empirical evidence of effectiveness and efficiency. Without a solid evidence-based, “best practices” approach, Biblical Counseling will continue to be seen by most Christian counselors in the country as primarily a theological-critique society, making some interesting and valuable points along the way, but without practical means for helping many of the suffering souls who come to us seeking help.

Theological consistency and doctrinal purity is vital, but it is half the battle. The other half is showing that the recommended procedures really work for most people suffering with particular disorders.

Well, what do you think? I’m not looking for anyone to trumpet the superiority of biblical counseling or trash it. In fact, I think biblical counseling has one of the best understandings of biblical anthropology out there. But, should it seek empirical evidence for its methods? While empiricism isn’t the only means of truth, it does tell us something. How would one test the effectiveness of biblical counseling? That all would depend on the outcomes sought–which raises a good question: Does biblical counseling seek to reduce anxiety and depression or sinful or immature responses to it? Is it primarily discipleship or is it counseling to reduce the experiences of what has been commonly known as mental illness?

Good questions to mull over.

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January 7, 2009 · 4:49 am

Psychology for the (Christian) Masses


So, the other night I had woke up with thistitle in my head that I couldn’t get it out of my mind. Its an academic’s kind of dream/wake state–a book idea. I wondering if you have ideas to flesh this out a bit after reading some of mine.

The title came, I think, as a result of a Miroslav Volf’s comment that consumerism, not religion, was the opiate of the people. Lightbearer provided us with the context of Karl Marx’s quote. And many of summarize his point but saying that something (religion, psychology, anything) is for “the masses.”

So, I got to thinking about the tendency among evangelicals to fall into one of two trap about psychology. Either they use it unthinkingly (cut and paste bible verses on theories without much thought) OR they reject it because psychology is unbiblical and only rank secular humanism. But, I can’t tell you the amount of conversations I’ve had about the benefits of psychological study–whether about medication, therapeutic interventions, professional ethics, etc. where it was clear that few had ever drilled down below pop psychology to understand both its value and presuppositional foundation.

So, here’s my thought. What if we developed a resource for Christians to come to that would give thoughtful, sometimes lighthearted, but always honest answers (and nonanswers when they are better) about psychology, psychotherapy, medications, psychological testing, etc.

Here’s some of the questions that tend to come up most frequently (from my memory of the last 2 months)

1. Is it wrong to take psychiatric medications for my depression? Shouldn’t I be able to either handle it or get over it using spiritual resources?

2. How do you know if the problem is demonic or psychiatric?

3. Should I ever go see a secular therapist?

4. Isn’t Mindfulness really just a Buddhist form of meditation?

5. Should I go for healing prayer for my mental health problem?

6. Isn’t ADD/ADHD just a fad?

7. Can I divorce my spouse because they refuse treatment?

8. Can pedophiles ever return to the church in a safe manner?

9. Can leaders who abuse their roles ever be restored to leadership?

I’m sure there are more. What else would YOU want to read about regarding psychology/psychotherapy from a christian perspective?   

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January 6, 2009 · 5:55 am

Great illustration of the strength of addiction


Am reading CS Lewis’ The Silver Chairagain (my least favorite of the Narnia chronicles). If you’ve not read it, it tells the story of the King Caspian’s son, Prince Rilian, and his escape from the underworld by the help of two British children and a Marshwiggle. Prince Rilian has been captured by a witch who keeps him insane and believing that he was rescued by her and that she will put him on a throne soon in the overworld. He stays sane except for an hour when he is bound to a silver chair at which point he comes to and know who he is and that the evil witch murdered his mother.

The children and the marshwiggle help him escape the chair while he is sane. He turns on the chair with a sword and shreds it to pieces. At that moment, he has all the clarity of sane thinking and sees reality as it really is. But moments later, the witch returns and begins to cloud his mind with a soothing music, voice and something thrown on the fire. Within minutes they begin to doubt the truth and believe that what is bad is good and what is good is only a fantasy. They disbelieve Aslan, the sun. The Overworld is fantasy and the underworld is the true world.

Now, this story is not about addiction but it reminded me how quickly we can move from seeing the abomination of an addictive habit to beginning to believe it might not be so bad. The addict “repents” from the consequences of their action only to fall right back because the siren song has their number.

Do you notice this in your life about irritability, rage, jealousy, substances, food, internet sex? It doesn’t have to be a traditional addiction, just something that we find ourselves telling (to ourselves) those sweet little lies.

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Filed under addiction, christian counseling, christian psychology, Desires, self-deception, sin

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December 2, 2008 · 5:50 am

Why does God heal and do miracles?


In healing God defeats to enemies of his kingdom. David Goneau preached a sermon from Judges 7 that illustrates this point. You can listen to it here (link at top right). The reason God has Gideon defeat the Midianites with only 300 men is to fight the evil that was overtaking Israel. While it is easy to see that the oppressors were evil, David points out that God is also fighting against Israel’s unbelief. He wins the battle for Israel in such a way as to engender trust and belief–loyalty.

David goes on to say that the tougher battle for God is not the evil oppressor (they disappear from history) but the repetitive habits towards idolatry and unbelief. Fighting disloyalty in order to win the hearts of his people is the major cyclical theme in Judges and in the whole Bible. David ended his sermon with the reminder that God uses another “absurd strategy” to end this cycle–that of Jesus’ death and resurrection.

I make a similar point in a paper on a biblical theology of inner healing coming out in a special issue of the Journal of Psychology and Christianity. All of God’s healing activity in the bible, including that of Jesus’ healings, have the near goal of ending suffering but the ultimate goal of healing disloyal hearts by showing us his power. We get caught up with the amazing power of the miracles but do we see them first and foremost as God showing us his Kingdom power?

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November 19, 2008 · 3:04 pm

Scripture and Counseling at ETS, Providence, RI


Just finished my paper presentation at the Counseling, Psychology, and Pastoral Care section meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society–meeting in frigid Providence, RI. Had the pleasure of hearing David Powlison talk about the various errors of evangelical biblical counselors and professional counselors shortchange scripture (e.g., treat it atomistically or ignore its richness altogether). He gave several case studies trying to put words to what many counselors intuitively know about the best uses of Scripture in counseling. I followed him and talked about two major problems: treating the text as a compilation of timeless truthes and missing the varied ways God is writing us into his story and the problem of either treating Scripture as a tool or a diagnostic manual–which both lead to some dangers.

I then presented one case study of what I call a narratival approach, using Scripture to meet and validate the present experience of the counselee and so make room for two things (that meeting God and seeing self may or may not change our current mental state AND that we can begin to see how God is writing a different story that we tend to imagine in our fallen states).

John Franke then gave a good talk on how a plural way of looking at Revelation supports an inerrantist model of Scripture but avoids the ONE way of articulating doctrines. He said that this way of thinking would impact counselors by: Continuing to anchor christian care in the normative foundation of Scripture, that we would resist absolutizing THE christian counseling model but find unity amongst diversity, that counseling then must be driven by wisdom and the Spirit, that counseling must be engaged in a constructive and critical dialog with secular psychology. He wants us to avoid seeing our diversity of christian counseling models as bad but facets of God’s guidance.

Well, intellectually stimulating to say the least. Now, I’m done and off to be a spectator. I’ve run into several old friends and am making some new ones as I write.

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November 17, 2008 · 7:19 am

CCEF Conference slides now up


Check on my “Slides, Articles, etc.” page for slides of my talk, “Counseling Strategies for Individuals Struggling with Addictions.” The slides are in PPT format and are the last entry (#10) on the page.

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November 14, 2008 · 10:47 pm

CCEF Addictions Conference Update


The first day of the conference is now over. It was good to see many old friends, students, alumni, and to make some new friends as well. Ed Welch opened the conference by talking about the normalcy of even the most severe addictions (he used the illustration of a man who drank Aqua Velva while in the psych. ward and needed to go detox (from one hospital ward to another). He talked about how Scripture would still speak to some of “Mr. Gray’s life and situation.”

Best line from Ed, “God sends us individuals to challenge the clarity of our [little] minds.”

Soon after Mark Driscoll, pastor of the Mega Church Mars Hills in Seattle, talked about some of the facets of atonement can help addicts. Several interesting takeaways

1. He did a quick summary of 1 Corinthians. ch 1-4 is about false gods and doctrines. Ch 5-7 is about various perversions of sex; ch 6 is about division; ch 8-11 is about addictions, abuse of food, alcohol abuse, gluttony; ch 11 discusses gender issues; ch 12-14 is about spiritual gifts and that those the Corinthian church is rich with gifts but lacks love; and finally ch. 15 which is about the necessity of the Cross.  Driscoll made the point that all this was happening in the church of about 50 people! And yet Paul (in the first chapter) has hope for this misfit bunch.

2. Conviction of sin from God? Leads to repentance and joy. Conviction of sin from Satan? Leads to discouragement and being crushed.

There were several breakouts but I was busy with my own presentation.

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