Bill Shannon Interview - Counseling and Psychotropic Drugs

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ, based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the

Apostle Paul said, �But we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.�

In short, if you like smooth, watered -down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn�t for you.

By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we�re called by the

Divine Trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King. Here�s our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth.

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church My name is Mike Abendroth, and I�m your host today. You can catch us on the website at www .nocompromiseradio

.com, or you can go to iTunes and type in No Compromise Radio as well. Monday is usually an old sermon of mine,

Tuesdays we have Steve Cooley in the studio and we talk about spicy church issues, and then

Wednesday I like to talk to authors. And today is no different. I have Bill Shannon on the line,

Pastor Bill Shannon, Discipleship Counseling Pastor and Staff Elder at Grace Community Church.

And a friend of mine, by the way, Bill, welcome to No Compromise Radio Show. Well, thank you, Mike. It�s great to be able to do this with you and for the

Kingdom. Bill and I have � we�ve traveled the world together, haven�t we, Bill? Yes, we have. We�ve gone to India together.

Out in the middle of nowhere in Arundhavad. When I say that word, what does that conjure up in your mind?

It just conjures up some spicy food. We did enjoy some spicy food and long train rides and lots of preaching, which was really great.

Absolutely. Well, Bill Shannon was my pastor back at Grace Community Church when I was there. He�s been there since 1989.

And John MacArthur is the senior pastor, but then there are local fellowship groups. And I was serving with Bill and serving under Bill.

And so I�ve always appreciated, Bill, your ministry to me and to the local church. And so welcome to No Compromise Radio Ministry.

And I think your wife is famous, isn�t she? Well, I know that she�s going to be speaking at this very famous church up there in Massachusetts in a few weeks.

And she�s really looking forward to that. That�s where her sister lives and her aunt.

So she�ll be able to be at your church very shortly. That will be great. Well, I had Bill on today,

I have Bill on today, to talk about counseling, discipleship, how to help people with the gospel when they walk into our offices and their lives are falling apart.

And then we can offer them hope and help from the gospel. And then I want to talk to Bill about using drugs, psychotropic drugs, when it comes to depression and those things.

Bill, big picture, when someone walks into your office and they�ve got a problem, what goes through your mind in terms of how do you help this person?

And the reason why I ask the question is because since we�re all competent to give biblical counsel if we�re Christians, Romans 15, verse 4, the way you approach this is the way our listeners should approach helping other people.

So walk us through that process. Well, first of all, I�m no different than they are. I�m a sinner saved by grace.

Frankly, I want to know if that person is truly a believer or not. They may be under the assumption, because they�ve sat in the church for a long period of time, that they are a

Christian. Maybe they walked the aisle, raised the hand, had somebody write in their Bible or something like that, a date.

It doesn�t necessarily mean that they�re a Christian. They have to be convicted of their sin, they have to see their need for a

Savior. And sometimes in the counseling room is when you see that most clearly, is that they�ve come to the end of themselves.

They�ve had many problems, issues. Maybe it�s a marriage issue, maybe it�s a children issue, maybe it�s whatever.

And the Lord is starting to get their attention here and He�s, you know, maybe even drawing them to Himself.

I don�t know that when they walk in. My assessment is to get to know them. I want to know who they are, I want to know what they�re about.

I want to hear their testimony. And recently I was asking somebody their testimony and after I listened to it

I said, �I�ve never heard a testimony like that.�

And it basically was a non -testimony. And so I just came from the premise that this person doesn�t know the

Lord Jesus Christ. So we started to work from there and after working with them for a while,

I think they came to discover that they were not a Christian. We look at the scriptures.

What does God have to say about how we�re supposed to live and how we�re supposed to respond to our sin?

And so when we have those kinds of things, this is how you�re responding. You go and do more sin or this is how you�re responding, you repent.

So those are the things that we begin to look at, we begin to try to uncover and discover as we�re talking with a person.

Well, I think it was Jay Adams who said, �Just between us girls� and he was addressing a bunch of men at a counseling conference � �Just between us girls, we don�t counsel unbelievers, we evangelize them.�

That�s correct. And so, same philosophy. Bill, tell us about the doctrine of hope. When believers come in and they have a problem, how important is the doctrine of hope from the perspective of helping people?

Well, first of all, even in our secular society today, hospitals want you to engage a religious person sometimes.

If you�re in the midst of a disease or something that you�re debilitated by, they want you to have this thing that�s inherent within humanity is hope.

Hope that things will get better. Hope that things are going to change. And so as a Christian, I�m coming from the point of view of real hope.

Real hope because maybe my health can�t get better, but my condition between myself and God can get better as I continue to walk in obedience and continue to follow what

He has to say and continue to discover who He is. So that�s what real hope is, and I want to take the person to say, �No matter what kind of a situation they come in with, that I can take them to the

Scriptures and show them that this is the faith that we have.� It�s in the hope of a good God. He is not in Heaven there to try to punish us.

He�s not there to try to hurt us. He�s there as our

Savior, and just in that word alone is inherent the hope that we need to have, a great

God and Savior. So that�s where I want to take people is to bring them to the understanding that we do have hope, and they can find it in Jesus Christ.

It�s not going to be in what the world has to offer. The world has something that�s broken, and the people that are there in their secular psychology or psychiatry, these are broken people, and what the world is doing is putting a

Band -Aid on cancer, and the person leaves the office and still has the same problem, still hasn�t seen, �Okay, it�s not the world that�s the problem, it�s me, and I�ve got to start changing me, and I�ve got to start working on my heart and on my relationship to the

Creator God.� And so we want to give them real hope, something that�s substantial, something that they can look forward to.

Bill, what�s been one of the most interesting or most difficult counseling cases you�ve ever had to deal with?

Well, there�s been so many, Mike, and if you want to talk about abuse,

I�ve dealt with a young man who had been abused physically by a neighbor, and then, of course, then the parents have all kinds of issues, and trying to work with that.

You know, I had a woman come in here once the day after her baby died, and for me to sit here and try to pontificate that I know why

God did that, I can�t, I have no clue why God would do that, but I told her,

I said, �I know I have a good God, and so do you.� And so we need to discover and try to see that, the love that He has for us, even in that, because if I believe the

Scriptures, then I have to believe that Romans 828 is real. God causes all things to be good to those who love

Him and are called according to His purposes, because as verse 29 says, �He�s conforming me into the image of God.�

And that image which was spoiled in the garden because of the sin of Adam is being returned to some degree here on earth as I continue to be sanctified.

Now, is it true that when MacArthur has a tough counseling case, he sends them to you? John doesn�t necessarily do a lot of counseling.

His role, his calling, I believe, is to preach. But yes, there are occasions when somebody would want to see him, and he would just point them to see me.

We�re talking to Bill Shannon today at Grace Community Church, a friend of mine and a man who�s going to get his doctorate here in preaching very soon at the

Master�s Seminary. Bill, give us a happy ending. What was one of the most tragic cases that you dealt with, but then the

Lord, through His all -sufficient Word and sufficient Spirit, really transformed the life of someone through the means of discipleship and the

Word of God applied? Well, there are many. I want to keep them as innocent as possible, because I don�t want anybody to think that they know who this is.

I was once preaching, and I used an example from my counseling. A lady came up to me and said, �I know who that was.�

I said, �Really ?� I said, �I changed the gender, I changed the age, I changed everything, so that nobody would know who it is, because when you come in for counseling, that�s private, and that needs to be held only by myself.

It�s not something I discuss with other people unless I need help and I don�t understand a certain thing.�

But I don�t want anybody to know who necessarily I�m counseling. Mike, just in general,

I work with men who are homosexuals and have seen them get married and have children, and they�re living wholesome, heterosexual,

God -believing, God -loving lives. I�ve seen marriages that were on the brink of extinction and dissolution, and being able to see

God step in and change people�s hearts, and now they have loving marriages. Frankly, you see people get saved.

I�ve seen that with gang members, I�ve seen that with all kinds of things, that when they begin to open up their heart to the

Lord, that they do begin to change. I�ve seen drug addicts stop taking drugs. There�s all those kinds of things where we would see change.

But you know what? The most important thing as a pastor, as a shepherd, is the people of God that I�m preaching to each and every week, and they have issues or problems in their family or between them and their spouse, and just to see those become strong marriages.

They�re now counseling for me. They�re helping other people because they�ve been equipped,

Ephesians 4, 11 and 12, to do the work of the ministry, and they�re helping others. They�re discipling others.

They�re doing premarital for me. And so those are the kinds of things that, as I look out at the horizon of ministry, that that�s what

God has called me to and called all of us to, sort of the 2 Timothy 2 principle. Absolutely.

Bill, did you just rebuke me on my own show? No. That was a paragraph ago.

We�re talking to Bill Shannon. Bill, walk us through, as people listening today, the different camps that might be attractive to a

Christian. That is to say, psychology, integration, euthetic. Give us just a background of each of those because we want to drive people to the

Scriptures, not to a man -centered philosophy that can�t, at the end of the day, conform them to Christ.

I think the Christian church is confused today. There are too many choices that they can make.

They can go to, because maybe their workplace and they have in their medical, they can go to a psychiatrist, and they go to their psychologist, and go there and think they�re getting help.

Then you have the whole thing of the Christian counselor who has a business where you can go to him, and he�s taken some

Bible at some point, but he�s taken mostly psychiatry at another point, and he tries to help people, but it�s really less

Bible and more man -centered. Then you have the Christian pastor, the Bible -believing pastor, who opens up to the

Scriptures and says, �You know what? God has given us everything sufficient for life and godliness. Here it is.

What God has to say here in his Word is sufficient.� I like to look at it this way, Mike.

Two thousand years ago, a Jewish man, Jesus Christ, came to save us.

Did we need another Jewish man coming 1 ,800 or so years later to fulfill what he started 2 ,000 years previous?

We certainly don�t need Sigmund Freud. We don�t need that paradigm of trying to help people.

That man hated God, and why would a Christian want to be under that kind of a paradigm when this is a man who instituted a hating

God? That�s what he believed. Yeah, but Bill, you don�t really understand.

Someone might say, �You have doctors who can treat heart conditions. You have pastors that deal with spiritual aspects, and this is really soul work.

This is emotional work, and I need someone trained specifically in that, and you, pastor, you can�t really help me there.�

Well, I like to look at it this way. The psychiatrist, psychologist, even the

Christian integrationist counselor, they more than likely will be dispensing psychotropic drugs in order to help somebody.

That particular person is going to have to continue to take those psychotropic drugs from now until they die, because otherwise they would be imbalanced, where I, as a

Christian pastor, will take them to the Scriptures, be able to discover their sin issues and be able to change.

Now, if somebody says, �Oh, but they have a chemical imbalance. I�ve gone to those meetings.

I�ve gone to those seminars, and I�m usually the guy in the back who�s raising his hand and saying, �Which chemical ?�

Most of the time, well, every time, they�ll say to me, �We don�t know.� I raise my hand again, �Wouldn�t it be good to know the chemical that is imbalanced so that we could�

No, it�s not necessary. I�ve had a child who�s on Ritalin or Adderall or something like that, and I ask the parents, �How did the doctor diagnose your son or daughter having

ADD or ADHD ?� One parent told me, �Well, they had my son walk down the hallway, and when he came back, the doctor said, �Your son has

ADD.� Wow, that doesn�t sound scientific to me at all. I said, �How did he come to that conclusion ?�

�Well, my son walked down the hall. He was touching the pictures. He was on the wall, pulling wallpaper, that kind of thing, and so because of that, the doctor now has diagnosed, based upon behavior, not based upon any taking of blood or urine or anything like that, that this child has

ADD, and frankly, that�s the way depression is, anxiety problems or anything else in the

DSM -IV. It�s all based upon the way a person behaves, not upon something that�s going on in their brain or something that�s going on in their spinal column or anything like that.

So, Bill, you�re not saying that if you have diabetes, you don�t need to have medicine. Walk us through the difference between organic problems.

Maybe someone is feeling depressed. Would you not tell them, �Why don�t you go get your thyroid checked and have a complete checkup ?�

Walk us through that. Well, my sister has diabetes. She has juvenile diabetes or had juvenile diabetes.

I don�t know. I guess now that she�s older, she may not be juvenile, but anyway, they were able to check her urine.

They were able to check her blood, and then they give her medicine, medication that offsets the pancreas not working.

My youngest daughter has a thyroid problem, and they discovered that, and now they�re either going to take out her thyroid or they�re going to radiate or something else.

You can discover by measurements, and I don�t know what those are because I�m not a doctor, but you can discover by measurements that there�s something wrong there.

If you have pneumonia, you can see that there�s something wrong there. The way that DSM -IV works is that it�s by behavior, and I think this is very important to understand.

Mark 7, Jesus is speaking there, and he says, �For out of the heart of man come the issues of life.�

The fornications, the adulteries, the sins that we have come out of our heart, and there, in the essence, is it�s not just the emotion that�s there.

He�s talking about how we think. It comes out of our mind, and that creates a lot of our own issues and problems.

Bill, when someone comes to you and they say, �Well, my son has ADD or ADHD. My son is bipolar.

My son has depression. My daughter is schizophrenic, and they�re on all these drugs.� I�m sure there are people who are listening today that have those kinds of � they have their children on drugs.

What would you say to them? Let�s say they are Christians. They�re listening to Christian radio. They have a profession of faith.

What do you tell someone who�s got a kid basically terminally on drugs?

How does that work? Well, first of all, I�m not a doctor. I can�t tell them to take their child off the medication or even them.

I�ve dealt with people who have been on lithium or some of the other drugs that are out there. I don�t ever even discuss drugs.

I say, �Here�s your hope. It�s found in the scriptures. Here�s how we live.� I�ve had people that have so many different maladies like that that have been diagnosed by the

DSM -IV. I just work with them. This is what God says, �Let�s look at that. Let�s see what we can do here.�

They begin to grow. They begin to change. They begin to look at me and say, �You know what? I don�t think I need my drugs anymore.�

I said, �Well, then you need to go talk to your doctor.� I said, �You can�t go off those things on your own.

It may cause other problems. I have no idea. Go see your doctor. Tell him, �Hey, I�m feeling better.

I�m not depressed anymore. I don�t have anxiety anymore. I don�t have OCD anymore. I don�t have

ODD anymore. I don�t have all of these other things. I don�t have it anymore. What can

I do ?� The doctor will then back them down off of that medication ever so slowly and be able to do it in the right way.

I�m not a doctor, so I�m not going to deal with the drugs. I�m just going to deal with God�s Word and bring that to bear upon their lives.

As a pastor, Bill, how important is it to use Biblical terminology in diagnosing a problem?

That is to say, someone might say, �Oh, that guy�s schizophrenic.� But when I look at the person, I try to find a

Biblical category like James 1 �double -minded.� Does that seem to be the way that we should go about diagnosing the problem so we give them the

Gospel solution? Is that the right way to think? I think that�s absolutely the right way to think it. It�s like when somebody comes in and says they�re addicted to alcohol.

What does the Bible call it? It�s called �drunkenness.� Let�s use the right terminology for what it is, and then we can find the solution.

You can go to Proverbs 23. You can go to various things where you can start to help the person to think about what the world calls addiction.

I like to call it �enslavement ,� because that�s basically the Biblical word that�s used there.

You�re enslaved to your lusts, those kinds of things. People say, �But you know what?

That�s in their DNA, that they�re an alcoholic.� I say, �No, it�s never been proven.�

Every time that they come out with it in a magazine and there�s another doctor that says, �Absolutely not. That�s not the case.

Everybody has the same propensity towards it.� It�s basically a choice that you make to have that first drink that you like, that you like another one, and another, and another, and another, whether it�s alcohol or drugs or illegal drugs, and you keep going back to try to have that.

I once counseled a man who was 17 years a heroin addict. He came into my office and I said, �I am just so curious.

Why did you keep taking drugs when you knew they were bad for you ?� He said, �I took them to try to get back to that first high

I ever had. It was so good that I wanted to experience it again.�

So he basically had a lust for something that he couldn�t have. When I said to him and I began to show him that Jesus Christ satisfies and He satisfies forever, you don�t have to keep taking heroin to be able to have that satisfaction.

That is great. Bill, tell me about mental illness. Do you really think there�s such a thing as a mental illness?

Is that a misnomer? How do you work through mental illness? And along those lines,

Bill, is there a difference between the brain and the mind? I think psychology and the psychiatric community have confused

Christians that the brain is the mind, and the mind is the brain. What are your thoughts about that? Well, first of all, when we talk about mental illness now,

I hope you have a few hours. I have three more minutes. Mental illness,

I do not believe there is such a thing. Now people say, �Oh, but what about the guy who�s living out on the street ?�

�What about this ?� �What about that ?� I believe that because of man�s sin, Romans 1,

God gives them over to the lusts of their flesh. There comes a point when

God removes His grace from a human because of their continuing disobedience and their continuing rebellion against God, the

Creator. And so Romans 1 is very strong there. He says it three times.

I think it�s verse 24, 26, and 28, where it says, �God gave them over to the lusts of flesh. God gave them over to a depraved mind.

God gave them over.� To me, that�s a scary place to be. And I think there is a point where, and then we look at them, and they look like they�re mentally ill.

They look like there�s something wrong with them. So the world has to categorize, because they don�t believe in God, that they have to categorize them as being mentally ill.

They can�t say, �Well, God did this. God gave them over to the lusts of their flesh and took His hand of grace away from them.�

So that is what I would say. Now, schizophrenia is a whole different kind of thing. That is a real disease, by the way,

Mike, and you may not have known that. But schizophrenia is the shrinking of the brain.

That�s what schizophrenia is, generally and most likely caused by the use of alcohol.

I remember as a high schooler hearing some of my friends, when they would have a few beers, say, �I wonder how many brain cells

I killed today.� Well, you know what? In actuality, that�s what was happening. They were shrinking their brain to some degree by how much alcohol they would have.

And so that is what actually goes on there with regards to schizophrenia.

Now, can you measure, if you have somebody that�s diagnosed as schizophrenic, can you measure their brain before and after?

No, not too many people are going to let you get in there to check it out. So to diagnose that is almost an impossibility unless you have an

MRI beginning and ending, that kind of thing. So that is what

I think of mental illness. There�s a book by Richard Ganz, not that I�m trying to promote anybody here, but he wrote a book called

Psychobabble, and he gave an example of one of his own professors. Got about 30 seconds,

Bill. Sorry, this is a great conversation. Wrap it up, pal. Okay, he sent these people out in San Francisco to go to various hospitals and doctors and all that, and act like they were schizophrenic.

Guess what? They were all diagnosed schizophrenic, but not one of them was. Just by their behavior, they were diagnosed that way.

It�s an unfortunate thing that that�s the way people are diagnosed today. There is hope in the Gospel, and Bill Shannon is a friend of mine who preaches

Christ crucified and resurrected for our hope with the sufficient scriptures. Bill, thanks for being on the show today.

Hey, Mike, thank you for this opportunity. It�s great to be able to talk to you. No Compromise Radio, with Pastor Mike Abendroth, is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible -teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life -transforming power of God�s Word through verse -by -verse exposition of the sacred text.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at 6. We�re right on Route 110 in West Boylston.

You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio do not necessarily reflect those of WVNE, its staff or management.