6. Directive vs. Non-Directive Counseling

Okay, this is actually part six is the sixth session in our series on biblical counseling and Title of this one is called directive versus 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 this 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 theta counseling and we saw that in two parts?

Which brings us up to tonight? We're starting a new topic called directive verse Versus 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 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 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 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 contrast between humanistic thought and 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 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 humanism 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 this level and I'll explain what I mean by levels in a minute of self -actualization

Now the 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 what's called the pyramid of needs

Okay, 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 humanists

Humanistic psychology is that if you start at the bottom you have to have the the base

Needs first and then you build upon up and that blue pyramid on top is the 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 where you know and Relative safety, you know, you're not worried about 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 you you what you're striving for is this self actualization?

okay, this is where you can perform and accomplish many many things and that's 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 is what we're talking about is man's and 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

Rogers said it is the right of every man to be psychologically independent All right, in other words, you don't really need any anything else, especially not

God Essentially this is a belief in the autonomy of man who has no need for God and Obviously, this is in direct opposition to the

Word of God where man certainly needs God and And Is doomed and is lost without him and 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 why we one of the reasons we need Christ Proverbs 19 20

Listen to counsel and accept discipline that you may be wise and rest the rest of your days

And 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 wise to the council Listen, and what is listen mean and what does it mean?

To give wise counsel and these are questions we'll ask except 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 problem

Problems lie outside of himself You need everybody needs help and that help being offered in the biblical view is the biblical wisdom through the aid of the

Holy Spirit That makes 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 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 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 gonna give you a quote.

You may want to write this down there 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

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 all counseling is is crisis 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 gonna make is talking about neutrality in counseling

Now you've heard this again from the pulpit many times a new threat 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 you you're burdened you're heavy you your heart 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 gonna make any moral judgments the scriptures on the other hand command believers to make moral judgments.

In fact If you 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

That's bad, this is good There's morality involved and instruction.

That means you must tell somebody this is bad. This is good All right, 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 those sayings to your life

To receive instruction and wise behavior and notice that doesn't just stop with 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

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 as you mature

The Christian counselor is also called a paracletus Who knows what that word means?

Sorry Means a helper What else is several translations for it?

Comforter counselor Literally, it means the 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 parrot the paraclete

So it's the same word used to describe the ministry of the Holy Spirit So as we're going along we see the counseling from the book of Proverbs requires making moral judgments keeping in this in mind though In fact one it 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, you know, don't judge or you'll be judged, you know that The Bible condemns a little bit illegitimate forms of judging

What do we mean by that? Hasty judgments, you know judgments, but 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 judge 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

What good is this counseling if somebody says what if the host 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 new neutrality and counseling is a secular myth now for this next

Title this next point. I brought in a special guest speaker to introduce us to the next

The next point dr.

Frazier Crane anybody know who Frazier Crane is That's how he started his show

Hi, I'm dr. Frazier 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 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 relationships

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 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 listening listen, they may hear something, but they don't listen

Rogerian counselors consider intellectual content and objective facts to be unimportant

Now that it doesn't matter what's happened and what they 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 is you'll see this would be directive or the biblical counseling and on the right is 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? Yeah, because the bottom line is it's it's a question of sin

It's not 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 is your son done to make you say he doesn't love you

Notice right 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 now? 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 some of the little it is is tongue -in -cheek.

That's typical Jay Adams But you're getting the point recognize if you notice

The biblical counselor goes right to what has happened You know facts

It's important the intellectual content The Rogerian counselor says goes right for the peelings the feelings 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 ten -year -old. In other words not passing a judgment yet By 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

And maybe familiar with the term marshalling evidence. No in a court proceeding after 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 what do what they call marshalling 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 go once you've got your data taking from all the other questions

You say all right. This is the situation and presenting facts persuade to take action Obviously your approach is not working.

Let's try something biblical Okay, so whatever this person has been doing it obviously has fallen short at some point

The non -directive or or Jerry and 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 member love is behind this so All right, but and then the

Rogerian Defines interview in terms of the client, you know better than I would 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 is In fact, he just passed away recently was a big article in Newsday And 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 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 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 a 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 solved it they're gone

Because behavior leads the 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 give them your best advice

We're talking about giving them biblical advice. Not what you think 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 is

I would approach the 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 gonna be 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 the very 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 what's the second most important thing outside of listening to what they're saying? Well, 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 here 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 if you can't demonstrate interest in in listening to what somebody has to say

Then don't try to counsel Because they'll look they'll see right through that there has to be a genuine heart attitude of of love and care and an interest in what the person is is saying and Then being able to interpret that data and then respond appropriately

Rogers believed the counselor must avoid certain things. This is first.

I can't put it up without laughing There's a Rogerian counselor who's counseling somebody who is going through some sort of psychological trauma

Can't give him help. That's verboten in Rogerian school of thought don't give him advice and don't make value judgments and The super no -no

Don't apply divine declarations to personal problems. Don't tell him what God said. That's not that's not something you should be doing

The Rogerian substitutes repetition for the 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 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. You know, how do we how do we apply biblical love?

remember biblical love is always Giving love it's it's demonstrated by our actions.

First one is actually listening and then understanding and then Put bringing the person to the right portion of Scripture that will alleviate their situation because God speaks of love in Both attitude attitudinal which is feelings and behavioral actions

Love is both its 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

Do we have love and commandments all in the same in the same sentence?

And that's all we'll that's as far as we'll go tonight. Do we have any particular questions on Rogerian counseling now, we are going to pick this up next week as well.