6. Directive vs. Non-Directive Counseling

Okay, this is actually part six, is the sixth session in our series on Biblical Counseling. And the title of this one is called Directive vs. Non-Directive Counseling. And I'll explain a little bit what that is, but first a little review.

So far what we've done is we had an introduction to Biblical Counseling, and then we looked at the situation, the status in our society around us, and saw the crisis in counseling. And then we looked at the role of the Holy Spirit, and that is one of the foundations of any true Biblical counseling.

The Holy Spirit is the one who gives us insight and who can make effective and long-lasting change in the individual. And then we looked at what is New Thetic Counseling, and we saw that in two parts, which brings us up to tonight, where we're starting a new topic called Directive vs. Non-Directive Counseling.

And this one also will be divided into two parts. We'll do part one tonight and part two next week. Rogerian Counseling. Rogerian Counseling is one of the schools of thought or schools of counseling that uses what's called the non-directive approach, as opposed to the directive approach, which is what the Biblical counseling does.

So that's why I've titled this, the first point, Rogerian Counseling. And it comes from a man by the name of Carl Rogers. Rogers was an American who lived from 1902 to 1987. So you can see this is the product of just the previous century, and those of us my age or maybe even a little younger were alive when he was influencing the world in his theories.

He was one of the founders of humanistic psychology, and these are the words that are used to describe him in his biographies and in the encyclopedias. So these are not labels that I'm imposing on him, but this is how he himself would have categorized himself.

So he's a founder of humanistic psychology. He believed in the inherent goodness of man. Now you've heard this from the pulpit numerous times, not just from me but from our other elders, that one of the stark contrasts between humanistic thought and Biblical thought is what is the status of man.

And in our natural case, we believe in the total depravity of mankind, and the humanists believe in the inherent goodness of man. And in fact, I'm going to give you a quote from Carl Rogers. He said, when I look at the world, I'm pessimistic, but when I look at people, I'm optimistic.

I don't know what people he's looking at. But that gives you a pretty good idea of the approach that he took. The fundamental presupposition of the Rogerian system is that the solution to man's problems lies within himself.

In other words, you have to dig down deep inside you, and any problem that you have in life, you have the ability in and of yourself to solve it. And if you know anything about humanistic thought, that is perfectly consistent.

That is exactly what they believe. They believe in the autonomy of the individual. And he says that man is seeking this level, and I'll explain what I mean by levels in a minute, of self-actualization.

Now, self-actualization was expanded upon by another psychologist by the name of Abraham Maslow, who was somewhat cohorts with Carl Rogers. And he actually came up with what's called the Pyramid of Needs.

OK? And I'll give you a little preview of what that is. I don't want to spend too much time on this, but you can see here's the theory behind humanistic counseling or humanistic psychology, is that if you start at the bottom, you have to have the base needs first, and then you build upon up, and that blue pyramid on top is when you reach the level of self-actualization.

So the bottom line is physiological needs. That's breathing, sleeping, eating, those type of things. Up from that, once those needs are met, then you can start focusing on safety and security needs, a home and relative safety.

You're not worried about predators coming and eating you or somebody breaking in and shooting you, those type of things. Then you can get into love and belonging. That's relationships. And ultimately, of course, you want to build your own self-esteem, and we've dealt with that before at somewhat length, so I'm not going to get into it.

Once you've mastered that, what you're striving for is the self-actualization. This is where you can perform and accomplish many, many things, and this can all be done from within yourself because you have the ability to do all of this.

Follow? Obviously, it is contrary to the scriptures. So what we're talking about is man's innate resources can be tapped by non-directive techniques, and this, again, is you're going to see a big difference between what the scripture teaches and what humanistic thought.

Roger said, it is the right of every man to be psychologically independent. In other words, you don't really need anything else, especially not God. Essentially, this is a belief in the autonomy of man who has no need for God.

Obviously, this is in direct opposition to the word of God, where man certainly needs God and is doomed and is lost without Him. In fact, to make any real headway, to make any, as we've seen in past lessons, to make any personality change, a humanist can affect some behavioral change, but they can't affect any true and lasting personality change.

That can only come with the aid of the Holy Spirit, and that is one of the reasons we need Christ. Proverbs 19 -20. Listen to counsel and accept discipline, that you may be wise the rest of your days.

Notice how this is completely opposite of what we've just seen with Rogerian. The biblical answer to man's problem is to listen, listen to counsel. And what does listen mean, and what does it mean to give wise counsel?

And these are questions we'll ask. Accept discipline. That would be the farthest thing from a Rogerian, would be to tell somebody that they need discipline. All right? So listen to counsel, receive instruction.

It would not be... You would never see a Rogerian counselor saying, this is what you must do to solve your problem. They would never say that. And what's the result? If you're listening to Proverbs, you're listening to counsel, accepting discipline, the result is wisdom.

In other words, the answer to man's problems lie outside of himself. Everybody needs help, and that help being offered in the biblical view is the biblical wisdom through the aid of the Holy Spirit. Does that make sense so far?

And it's important that we actually remember what wisdom is. And of course, we know that when we were going through Proverbs, we defined wisdom as the ability to handle life with skill. And then when I came through this, he breaks it down into three things, which I think explains it a little bit better.

Wisdom is the practical application of knowledge. You can know something, but unless you're being able to practice it and put it into application, it's of no value to you. It's also behavior consistent with biblical morality.

Is there a right and wrong behavior? Yes, there is. What is right? What is biblically moral? And of course, the skillful use of divine truth for God's glory. That's the goal of biblical counseling, because remember, biblical counseling rests heavily on the wisdom of the book of Proverbs.

Also, something that you see in biblical counseling is responsibility. Responsibility is the ability to respond, as God says we should respond, to every life situation in spite of the difficulties. I'm going to give you a quote.

You may want to write this down. I know you've never heard it again, never heard it before. Life's hard. Just a little reminder. Life is hard, but through the Holy Spirit and applying biblical wisdom, we have the ability to respond as God requires us to respond despite the difficulties.

Through the reading of God's word, by the power of the Holy Spirit, man has the ability to live according to the commandments of God. Perfectly, no, but striving for perfection, yes. And that's because regenerate man has the ability to emulate Jesus Christ.

As Paul says, that's one of the reasons you were saved, that you would be conformed to the image of Jesus Christ. That's exactly what that verse is talking about. Now, this is basically the principle of discipleship or sanctification.

Remember, all counseling is is Christ's discipleship. The difference between just regular discipleship is when somebody comes to a counselor, they're coming presumably because there is some sort of problem.

That's built into the whole model of biblical counsel. Next point that we're going to make is talking about neutrality in counseling. Now, you've heard this again from the pulpit many times. Neutrality is what?

What is neutrality? Go ahead. Yep, and what do we call that? It's a myth. Rogerian or humanistic counseling says the counselor should remain neutral and make no moral judgments. Now, imagine that. You're burdened, you're heavy, you're hard, you're depressed, you've got some sort of problem that's going on.

You go to a counselor and he says, well, I'm not going to make any moral judgments. The scriptures, on the other hand, command believers to make moral judgments. In fact, if you're not willing to make moral judgments, take out your Bible and rip out the book of Proverbs because the whole book of Proverbs is about moral judgments.

That's what we are called to do is to make moral judgments, the purpose of Proverbs, Proverbs 12, verses 2 to 4. This is right in the first chapter of the book of Proverbs. As an introduction, Solomon gives us the reasons that he's writing the book of Proverbs, and I've just pulled a couple of things out.

One is to know wisdom and instruction. That's a moral judgment. If that's bad, this is good. There's morality involved. And instruction, that means you must tell somebody, this is bad, this is good. As opposed to the Rogerian counselor will say, well, what do you think?

Or something to that effect. To discern the sayings of understanding. To understand, when somebody speaks wisdom, excuse me, is to be able to understand and how to apply those sayings to your life. To receive instruction in wise behavior.

And notice it doesn't just stop at wise behavior, but righteousness, justice, and equity. Moral judgments. What good is biblical counseling if you're not being told what is right and what is wrong? To give prudence to the naive, to the youth, knowledge and discretion.

And I always point this out, especially we have some young people here tonight. This is a book that has a special caveat where it's aimed for young people. So if you're a young person, you should be spending a lot of time in the book of Proverbs.

If you apply those principles to your life, it'll save you a lot of grief as you mature. The Christian counselor is also called a parakletos. Who knows what that word means? Sorry? It means a helper. What else?

There's several translations for it. Comforter, counselor. Literally, it means coming alongside. That's the literal Greek. Where have we heard that word before? Go ahead. Yes, that's what the Holy Spirit is called in Scripture, the parakletos.

So it's the same word used to describe the ministry of the Holy Spirit. So as we're going along, we see that counseling from the book of Proverbs requires making moral judgments. Keeping in this in mind, though, in fact, let me back up a second.

One of the things that you'll hear somebody when you try to, if you see a brother or sister going astray and you confront them, what is one of the first things that they'll tell you? Stop judging me. Doesn't the Scripture say if you judge, don't judge or you'll be judged?

You know that? The Bible condemns illegitimate forms of judging. What do we mean by that? Hasty judgments, you know, judgments with no evidence. Hypocritical judgments, criticizing somebody for behavior that you yourself are performing.

Or wrong motives, and that is to make you look good instead of correcting the other person. The Bible condemns those things. But the whole of Proverbs is making moral judgments. So when somebody says, stop judging me, you have no right to judge me, pull out the book and say, the Bible says that we are to make these moral judgments.

What you are doing is wrong. Look, it says right here, chapter and verse. You cannot counsel biblically without calling sin, sin. What good is this counseling if somebody says, if somebody explains their situation and you see it clearly as sin, you say, well, that's okay, I understand.

What good is that type of counseling? So neutrality in counseling is a secular myth. Now for this next title, this next point, I've brought in a special guest speaker to introduce us to the next point.

Hi, Dr. Frasier Crane. Anybody know who Frasier Crane is? That's how he started his show. Hi, I'm Dr. Frasier Crane. I am listening. So what we're looking at now is counseling and listening. Thank you, Dr. Crane, you can go back to Seattle.

The Bible teaches the importance of listening before making any judgments. Listening is a very important skill. And we see that, Proverbs 18, 13, he who gives an answer before he hears, it is a folly and a shame to him.

One of the problems that we have in life in general is we don't listen to one another. One of the things, especially like in marriage counseling or any type of relationship, parents and children, is you get into an argument, and neither one is listening to what the other one is saying.

And quite frequently, when you sit down and you bring some calm to the situation, you say, now, you have an opportunity to talk, you listen to what he's saying, you listen, then she has an opportunity to talk.

Quite often, it's resolved in that short a period of time because they're just not listening to each other. And so Proverbs is right on target again. He who gives an answer before he hears, it's a folly and a shame to him.

Rogerian counselors do not, in fact, listen. They may hear something, but they don't listen. Rogerian counselors consider intellectual content and objective facts to be unimportant. In other words, it doesn't matter what's happened.

And you'll see in a few minutes, I have a little chart. But they listen only to hear the underlying feelings of what the individual is saying. So it's not important about what happened. What's important is how do you feel about it.

And so I put together a little comparison chart. This comes from Jay Adams. It's not mine. And he presupposes a certain situation, which you'll get the gist of right away. On the left, you'll see this would be directive or the biblical counseling, and on the right, it's non-directive.

So here's the first point of directive counseling or biblical counseling is to ask specific questions. Who, what, when, where? Notice I stopped short. What W didn't I ask? Why? All right, why didn't I ask it?

Because the bottom line is it's a question of sin. The motivation at that point is not the important thing. The important thing initially is what has happened. So you ask specific questions. Exactly what has your son done to make you say he doesn't love you?

Notice it goes right to the point. Obviously, the person has come in, says, you know, my son said he doesn't love me. What has he done? What has he done? Not why has he done it. What? Non-directive is not to ask questions, but to recognize feelings and attitudes.

I see you're troubled. Notice the whole idea here. A little of this is tongue-in-cheek. That's typical J. Adams, but you're getting the point. Recognize the feelings. Notice the biblical counselor goes right to what has happened.

You know, facts, it's important. The intellectual content. The Rogerian counselor goes right for the feelings. It doesn't matter what has been said. I see you're upset. Second point of directive counseling, explains, discusses, and gives information.

This is a very typical response for a 10-year-old. In other words, not passing a judgment yet, but getting to the point. Well, wait a minute, don't be that upset. This is not unusual, you know. Whereas the non-directive of the Rogerian counselors interprets feelings or attitudes instead of looking for information.

You mean you feel unloved. Notice the difference. What's going on? How do you feel? Continuing, the biblical counselor says, next, his point is he marshals evidence, persuades to take action. Anybody know what marshals the evidence means?

I took it right from Jay Adams, but some people don't know. Anybody familiar with the term marshaling evidence? In a court proceeding, when the cases are all done and the testimony is finished and the prosecutor and the defense attorney have summed up, the judge will then turn to the jury with his notes and he will do what they call marshaling the evidence.

That is, he'll just go down a list. This is what has been said. These are the facts of the case. And that's what a counselor has to do, too, is once you've got your data taking from all the other questions, you say, all right, this is the situation, and presenting facts persuades to take action.

Obviously, your approach is not working. Let's try something biblical. So whatever this person has been doing, it obviously has fallen short at some point. The non-directive, or rogerian, he explains, discusses, and gives information rarely.

Not completely devoid of it, but rarely. His response would be something similar to this. Uh-huh, I see. I'm not making this up, either. The directive in that last point would be to point out problem needing correction.

Your son needs discipline. It's your responsibility. Now, again, this is very short, concise. Remember, love is behind this. So, all right, and then the rogerian defines the interview in terms of the client.

You know better than I what is the right solution for you. If that were me, I'd say, well, then why did I come to you? But that's the way it works. And I worked for many years when I was a hostage negotiator with a psychologist who was, in fact, he just passed away recently with a big article in Newsday.

He was a good man, but this is exactly what his methodology was with the hostage negotiating team. Well, in fact, let me just go back. Any questions so far on this? You see the difference. And, again, this is somewhat of a caricature, but I think you can see the fundamental difference.

So, listening. This does not mean that the biblical counselor is not concerned about feelings. Feelings are there, but they're not the motivating factor. Just because you feel bad about something doesn't mean that what they have done is wrong, all right?

So feelings are definitely a concern, but the feelings follow, not lead. Feelings must not be the deciding factor for the solution to the person's problems. What is the deciding factor? Truth. What is right, what is wrong, biblically.

And though the individual may focus on his feelings, and that may be just to show the gravity of the circumstances, his real concern is the solution to his problems. People will talk a lot about their feelings, and maybe even show emotions, crying, weeping, you know, expressions of indignation and whatnot.

And then by the time you've solved it, they're gone, because behavior leads to feelings. Rogers insisted it's wrong to advise counselees. The Bible says we must give them the truth. So that is certainly advising.

Let me just put a little caveat in here as well. When we talk about advising counselees, we're not talking about giving them your best advice. We're talking about giving them biblical advice, not what you think, all right?

And in fact, you should, if you ever do get in a situation where you're counseling somebody, something you don't want to do is say, well, I would suggest, no, what I would approach would be something like this.

Well, let's look at your circumstances. This is what your situation is. Let's see what the Bible says about the circumstances you're in. And you're leading them through the Bible, and let the Bible be the one telling them what to do.

Otherwise, what you're going to find out, as soon as you say something they don't like, if they perceive it's just coming from you, there's going to be a breakdown there and the counseling is going to end anyway.

The biblical counselor listens to the individual to gather data in order that he may give biblical advice. That's exactly what we're looking to do. In fact, in the very first counseling session is mostly data gathering.

You're listening, truly listening, listening to what they're saying. But what's the second most important thing outside of listening to what they're saying? Well, that even goes above that. Listening to what they're not saying.

There's some things that should be said that a person omits, and that sometimes is more telling than what the person is actually saying. Rogers basically did not understand listening. Listening is not just letting it hear and then go out there.

Listening is perceiving it and interpreting what the person is saying. Listening means taking an interest in what another person is saying and responding appropriately. Notice that. And you can't feign interest.

If you can't demonstrate interest in listening to what somebody has to say, then don't try to counsel because they'll see right through that. There has to be a genuine, hard attitude of love and care and interest in what the person is saying, and then being able to interpret that data and then respond appropriately.

Rogers believed the counselor must avoid certain things. This is the first one. I can't put it up without laughing. This is a Rogerian counselor who was counseling somebody who was going through some sort of psychological trauma.

Can't give them help. That's verboten in Rogerian school of thought. Don't give them advice and don't make value judgments. And the super no-no. Don't apply divine declarations to personal problems. Don't tell them what God said.

That's not something you should be doing. The Rogerian substitutes repetition of the individual's question for any application of biblical principles. That would go something like this. I believe my son hates me.

So what you're saying is you believe your son hates you. That's a typical Rogerian response. And it's full. You've seen television skits that mimic this because it's so ludicrous, and most of the stars are in some sort of counseling.

They've been through this, so they mimic it on stage. But that's exactly a lot of, mm-hmm, I see. So you're saying that's what the situation is? Okay. But it never goes any further. Or it would be, how does that make you feel?

The biblical counselor, on the other hand, demonstrates love to the individual. Love. And that's what we've been going through in the morning services. How do we apply biblical love? Remember, biblical love is always giving love.

It's demonstrated by our actions. The first one is actually listening, and then understanding, and then bringing the person to the right portion of Scripture that will alleviate their situation. Because God speaks of love in both attitudinal, which is feelings, and behavioral actions.

Love is both. It's feelings and actions. It's not one or the other, it's both. And we know that because God defines love toward him as what? Keeping his commandments. We have love and commandments all in the same sentence.

And that's as far as we'll go. So tonight, do we have any particular questions on Rogerian counseling? Now, we are going to pick this up next week as well. There is still more to go over. Specifically, we'll be going through some use of the Book of Proverbs, which is in direct opposition to Rogerian counseling.

But that's the directive methodology. Any questions, thoughts? Psychosomatic disturbances?