17 Presuppositions In Counseling Part III

Okay, we're in Part 3 of Presuppositions and Principles in Counseling. Just a little review, we started this a couple of weeks ago, and we found out that some of the presuppositions, one, the counselor has to be grounded in the Word of God.

Second principle or presupposition is that one of the first things you do in counseling is offer the person hope, what is the biblical hope. Biblical counseling also must be bathed in prayer, that's the base or the basic idea is using prayer.

And then we looked at the reconciliation-slash-discipline dynamic, how that works together. And then we looked at reconciliation and forgiveness. Tonight we're going to begin and we're going to look at two more sections, presuppositions and methodology, and then technique, and we'll see how that works out.

Christian Counseling and the Two Basic Approaches to Methodology

So let's look at methodology and a couple of facts first. There are hundreds of schools of psychology with radically different methodologies of counseling and therapy. That's not an overstatement. There are literally hundreds of different schools.

The interesting thing is they all don't agree. So when you get advice from a psychologist, it depends on which school he graduated from and which school that he adheres to. The bottom line, however, we don't have to review hundreds of different approaches, and the bottom line is there is only two approaches, the Christian approach and the non-Christian approach.

And I know you've heard this before. There is no neutral position. We've seen that in our apologetics. We've seen it in how we spread the gospel. There is no neutrality. You're either in the kingdom or out of the kingdom.

When you're counseling, you're either counseling in a Christian way or in a non-Christian way. And any attempt at neutrality is a non-Christian approach. This is one of the sad pieces of information that I have to put forward.

There are many Christian psychologists who mean well and are working in therapy or a psychological community, and they have adopted non-Christian methodology, which means that they may be a Christian and they may be practicing psychology, but they're not practicing biblical counseling, and that's a shame because Christian methodology must be based upon Christian beliefs and, of course, ultimately upon the scripture.

That's what makes it Christian counseling. So, therefore, any counseling apart from the word of God is non-Christian. Does that make sense? I mean, it's just, I think it's crystal clear. So the Christian counselor's methodology is based on the biblical view of God, man, and creation.

And that sounds very fundamental, and that's where we want to start because if you don't start with the basics, then by the time you get out into practice, you're very askew. There are two basic categories of non-Christian counseling.

Now, again, remember, there's hundreds of different schools, two basic categories. One is based on expert knowledge, and notice I put expert in quotations because, well, we don't have to get into that.

What makes them an expert? The other is based upon common knowledge. Now, I've made up a little chart to show you the differences in how this all plays out. So there's the chart. Now, you notice that the left-hand, the first column is labeled basic approach, expert knowledge, common knowledge, and divine knowledge.

Those are the three different approaches. Then if you go across the top, you see the specific type of counseling, how they view man's problem and then the solution for it. So let's look at the first expert knowledge.

That would be Freudian. Freudian typifies expert knowledge, and he views man's problem as poor socialization. Do you remember back when we did a little overview of Freudian psychology? Remember, what is he considered to be socialization?

What you've been taught. You're socialized by society, by your parents, by your school, by your church, and the problem is that you're poorly socialized according to Freud. So when a person has some sort of aberrant behavior that he needs counseling for, he looks at how is he socialized.

That's why you'll hear people joke about it, you know, how were you potty trained by your mother, you know, those type of questions. And what's his solution? Well, to be re-socialized by an expert. Okay.

Now, who are the experts? The Freudian psychologists. Okay. But there's another type of expert knowledge, different schools, Skinnerian. All right. This was, we'll talk about him a little bit later. It's B .S. Skinner.

He also believes in the expert. But his view of man's problem is more environmental conditioning. And this is, you always hear the, you know, the dispute between therapists, you know, was it hereditary or was it environment?

And, in fact, you ever see the movie Trading Places? All right. Funny movie. All right. I hope there was nothing wrong in that movie. I don't remember now. Sorry. Scratch the reference to Trading Places.

Okay. Environmental conditioning. So what's the solution for the Skinnerian? A reconditioning by the expert. So, in other words, you want to give, he wants you to think like he thinks. Okay. So you can see definitely they believe that there's the expert who alone can solve the problem.

In the common knowledge group, you have Rogerian. And we spent quite a bit of time talking about Carl Rogers and his view. His view is failure to live up to potential. Remember, he believes that all the resources for a man is inside.

It's the self. All right. So if you're failing to live up to your potential, that's when you need therapy. And what does he do? He only, he looks inside. He gets you to look inside yourself. And then also in common knowledge is what group therapy or integrity groups.

Okay. They look at the man's problem as bad behavior towards others. You know, if you assault someone, this is a favorite of the courts for sending somebody for group therapy. All right. And resources are in the self and in the group.

Okay. And that's just a vast oversimplification, but it gives you an idea. Now, under the divine knowledge, of course, that's Christian counseling. Okay. What's man's problem? Sin against God. What's the solution?

The spirit's resources in the word of God. You can see how vastly different. Not even close. Okay. So the expert knowledge group insists that only the expert knows how to counsel. They would never suggest that, you know, go sit down with your friend or a more mature person because the person needs to have that expert knowledge.

The expert knowledge approach rests on the presupposition that man is not responsible for what he does. That's why they're always looking back to find out why did you do what you did. Somebody's to blame other than you.

Now, at this point, it's helpful if we give you a word of caution because in all of these various approaches, there's an element of truth in the false position. And that's what's so dangerous about it because it sounds legitimate.

Do you remember a book was written a number of years ago? Men are from Mars and women are from Venus. Okay. And then they actually made a movie of it and where he was actually counseling people and all.

It's hilarious. And there is so much truth in it because he picks out the foibles between what a man thinks and how a woman thinks and whatnot. And it sounds legitimate. In fact, when you watch it, yeah, that's the way I am, you know, until he starts to give you solutions which are totally non-biblical.

So you got to be careful. Just because something sounds right doesn't mean that it is. In Freudianism, the element of truth is that people do exert significant influence on one another. Your background is not irrelevant completely.

You just can't go there to look for the problem. You can look for insight and, you know, into how the person has developed but not in the way the Freudian looks at. Well, we know that people exert influence because Paul says it in 1 Corinthians 15 verse 33.

Do not be deceived. Bad company corrupts good morals. So we know we're cautioned by the scripture. So there is an element of truth in how the expert person counsels. The problem is God holds man responsible to do something about the influence of others.

Number one, of course, is to repent of it and reject it, okay? Another expert knowledge approach is that of B .F. Skinner, his behavior modification school, all right? Skinner is the big one who came up with this whole idea of modifying behavior, okay?

According to Skinner, man is merely an animal. Skinnerian theory is basically this. The dynamic is organic evolution. When I finish with these three things, I want you to tell me, what does this sound like?

The goal is survival and the process is natural selection. You think he might have been influenced by Charles Darwin? All right. But that's his view of man. Not that man is made in the image of God or is an exalted creature or is separate from the animal kingdom.

He's just another animal. Therefore, man is merely a product of his environment. And according to this approach, man is created by his environment, dependent upon it, and is strictly determined by it.

Where's the hope? For Skinner to even speak of responsibility, he considered it utter nonsense because there is no responsibility. Now, the element of truth in this theory is that man's environment does exert a great influence on him.

As biblical counselors, as Christians, we know that this is true. But the Bible teaches that man is not a slave to his environment, he's a slave to sin. And so you can see there's the hope that is being offered.

If you're only a slave to environment, then where do you go? In fact, man was given the mandate by God to exercise dominion over the environment, over the creation. All right? And by the way, this is just a little caveat I threw in here.

This mandate was given for all of mankind and remains intact in the new covenant. A lot of people think that that inherits the mandate in Genesis 128. God blessed them and God said to them, Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.

Subdue it. All right? Notice what it says, subdue it. Subdue the earth. Rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and everything that moves on the earth. That mandate is still in effect.

It was given to all of mankind. It's called a creation mandate. A lot of people treat it as though, well, that's not for us today. And then remember the words of Christ after his resurrection and notice the similarities.

Make disciples of all the nations. Subdue it. Make disciples. Sound familiar? Notice the major difference at the core of this approach. The Bible teaches that man is created by God and in the image of God, not the environment.

Therefore, man is held responsible and is capable of dignity because in Christ, he reflects the divine image. Big difference. Big difference in how we approach it. You can see how the hope comes in and that there is a way out of your problems.

The Limits of Common Knowledge and the Horizontal View of Sin

Now the common knowledge approach. The Rogerian theory is that all men have adequate resources and knowledge to handle their own problems. You don't need anybody else. In Rogerian counseling, the counselor is both a catalyst and a reflector.

What we mean by that is the Rogerian counselor looks for areas where he says something to get a response from the person. Remember, he never gives advice. So he's a catalyst and then a reflector. This is being a reflector.

This is the joke you see even on skits on television. I have a problem with women. Well, what do you mean by that? Why do you think that is? Never getting to the heart of it is reflecting. But remember, and this we went over in previous studies, he never gives advice, never makes judgment, never would say, oh, you shouldn't have done that.

The element of truth in Rogerian counseling is that man is responsible, and they admit that. Roger's basic error, he just takes God out of the equation. In fact, Roger says that God, the Holy Spirit, the scriptures, and the help of other Christians is not necessary.

Therefore, Roger's theory must be totally rejected by the Christian counselor. Can you see just so far, we've just examined three very briefly. Can you see how they do not gel with the biblical teaching?

It doesn't gel with what we read in scripture about man and his problems. Another common knowledge approach was championed by O. Herbert Maurer. All right, now I'm going to put you to the test. Who remembers who O. Herbert Maurer was?

We mentioned him way, way back in the introduction to this series. Who is O. Herbert Maurer? Hold on just for a second, Pastor Chris. Who else? Anybody else remember? Who is O. Herbert Maurer? Nobody?

You're breaking my heart. Not really. Go ahead, Pastor Chris. Who is he? He wasn't a believer. Yeah, he recognized that a lot of the aberrant behavior was learned behavior and that some of it was put on to avoid responsibility, and so he took it back.

So let me continue. According to Maurer, and he was a big influence on J. Adams, even though he wasn't a Christian. According to Maurer, bad behavior is defined as hurting another individual. You're going to see this, that everything that Maurer does is on a horizontal level.

Maurer does not believe in the existence of a personal God. Maurer's conception of sin, confession, restitution, and atonement are all on a horizontal level. So in other words, he believes in reconciliation, in confession, and in confronting one another, but only man-to-man, woman-to-woman, not because he doesn't believe in God.

So accordingly, then, he believes atonement is achieved by the suffering of confession and restitution man-to-man. That's the atonement. The atonement you have to do is you have to suffer the indignation of asking for forgiveness and then providing restitution.

The result is a continual process of atonement after atonement. It's just an ongoing thing. There's never any, there's no declaration of, like when Christ makes you free, you are free indeed. There's no such thing in Maurer's theory.

Now the dim reflection, and I took that word right from the book because it just seemed to sum it up. The dim reflection of truth in this system is that God made us social creatures and we do need each other, and also true that we need to reconcile not only to God but with people we have offended.

So what Maurer does is he eliminates the vertical dimension, but it just emphasizes the horizontal where both is necessary. That brings us to group therapy sessions. Group therapy sessions are not necessarily wrong.

However, they can go bad very quickly and very easily. In fact, in my experience, I've seen them go bad almost all the time. They can go easily bad. First, they can lapse into pity parties, everybody trying to outdo the other one with how sad the story they can tell.

Second one, and this is an important one, sin can be confessed to those without standing. In other words, you're sitting around in a group of strangers and you're confessing sins that you have committed.

Those people have no right, no standing to hear what you have to say, let alone pass any judgment on you. Sin is revealed to perfect strangers. You can't find that in Scripture. Scripture gives the methodology of how to be reconciled with somebody and how to be free from your own sin.

And the last one is, I think, the most dangerous. Sinful behavior can be reinforced by a member of the group. You get up and you talk about something that you've done and somebody texts you, that's okay, it's okay, it's not that bad.

Yeah, it is. And you need to be reconciled. On the other hand, Christian methodology must start with a Christian foundation. And what is that Christian foundation? The Word of God. Any methodology must be consistent with the foundation laid in Scripture.

Now this is just almost a caveat in here, but it's an important one. This is one reason for the importance of Christian education. If you have grown up receiving a Christian education, you've already developed a biblical worldview if you've been taught correctly.

And that means that you've already got the foundation laid in your life for how to deal with problems when they come and how not only to ask for forgiveness but to give forgiveness when it's needed. So that's Christian education.

That's why we support it so vehemently in this church, whether it be a Christian school or whether it be homeschooling. But the idea is that it's a Christian education. So the biblical counselor must use biblical methodology and avoid the temptation to adopt secular methods.

And there are, you know, there is temptation, even for the Christian counselor to use some newfangled trick, especially if a new book comes out. Anybody remember a book that was published in, oh, it's a long time ago now because I was still on the police department.

It was called I'm Okay, You're Okay. Anybody, Ted, remember that? Anybody else remember that book? I'm Okay, You're Okay. I like the other version of it. I'm Okay, You, I'm Not So Sure Of. Now, you know what that was?

That was Freudian therapy repackaged and wrapped up and put in modern language. That's all it was. They had, instead of the id, the superego and ego, they had the adult, the child, and the parent. Same thing, just repackaged.

And a lot of Christian counselors started using that. Remember this important fact. Each Christian has the ability to self-evaluate his condition. Now, that can be blocked by sin. But in the power of the Holy Spirit, if you are a Christian, you have that ability.

The conscience is the God-given ability to evaluate one's own actions. That's why we talk about a guilty conscience. And what is Freud's view of the guilty conscience? Well, let's do away with the offense.

It's not wrong to do what you did, so don't feel bad about it. What is the Christian view? Ask for forgiveness and repent. He also has the ability to respond correctly to that evaluation. If you're a Christian and you're confronted in some sin that you've done, you cannot say, I can't stop.

I've heard that said, I don't know why, I can't help it. My answer to that is, yes, you can, because the Bible says so. What's the real answer? I don't want to. There's a difference between needs and desires.

There's a difference between what you can do and what you want to do. This is why some people consider biblical counseling harsh, because you're not ready to accept an excuse. In fact, even the non-Christians have the law written on their hearts.

And look what Paul says in Romans 2 .15. They show the work of the law, speaking about the nonbeliever, the Gentiles. They show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness and their thoughts ultimately accusing or else defending them.

Paul says, even the nonbeliever, because of common grace, and because he has the image, he's an image bearer of God, has this to a certain extent, not to the extent that a believer does. However, the scriptures must be internalized into the heart.

Merely reciting the Bible doesn't do anybody any good. Psalm 119 .11, your word I have treasured in my heart, that I may not sin against you. Again, you can know the Bible cover to cover, but if it's not internalized, you're still going to sin.

The conscience is worked upon by the Holy Spirit, using the holy scriptures. There's the essence of biblical counseling. And why do we say that? Because that's exactly what happens in salvation. How is a person saved?

The scripture possesses the power to lead unconverted sinners to salvation through faith in Christ under the power of the Holy Spirit. That's how it works. That's how any of us were saved, not by anything in and of ourselves.

Remember, according to 2 Timothy 3, 16 to 17, the scripture has the power to teach, reprove, correct, and discipline. I hope everybody in here has memorized those verses. You hear them enough, all right?

In the counseling setting, that means the scripture has the power to do this. There's four things. And notice how they respond to teach, reprove, correct, and discipline. To judge the activity of the person.

That's the purpose. If somebody says, you're judging me, yeah, kind of. That's part of it. Not me, but the scripture does. To convict the heart concerning sin. When a believer reads the word and sees that what they have done is wrong, the heart, the conscience is pricked.

But it also has the power to bring change concerning the activity that's in question. And then how does the last, what is discipline, how does that work? After the forgiveness and the atonement, et cetera, to restructure the activity.

Christian methodology must bring the person to conviction of sin. If you don't get there, then you're doing something wrong. Your methodology is not Christian. Christian methodology then must show the person how to recover from sin.

True biblical counseling never just brings a person to their sin and leaves them there. It always shows them the way out. There's no position that you can put yourself in that the word of God does not have the answer to how to get out of it, through the power of the Holy Spirit.

And remember this, 100 of the Christian counselor's resources are in God. Now, that being said, okay, let's look at technique. Just a few words. Problems arise from the use of techniques apart from the word of God.

Everybody has a technique. You have to have some sort of technique. We're not talking about principles, presuppositions, or anything else. We're talking about how you actually convey the word of God. Problems arise from the use of techniques that are apart from the word of God.

Two of the most common problems, counseling in one's own strength, not relying on prayer, not relying on the power of the Holy Spirit, not relying on the Scripture. And I've said that before, so I'm not going to belabor that.

Or using techniques that are contrary to Scripture. Each of the groups that we looked at of the various approaches usually has certain techniques that they use. And most often, they are not techniques that are compatible with Scripture.

The Bible consistently emphasizes skillfulness in serving the Lord. What we're driving at here is when you're going to counsel, you should be proficient in what you're doing. You don't want to go in and start counseling unless you have all of the basic presuppositions down and you have an idea of how you're going to do this.

That's why even NANC, or I guess it's ACBC now, in order to be certified by them, you have to have supervised counseling, some experience in how to do that. And it's always helpful to go to somebody who has been counseling for a while to find out how do you minister the word.

Technique is important. Just as in the Old Testament, the Israelites were told, use skilled craftsmen in the construction of the tabernacle. If you're going to go across the Verrazano Bridge, don't you want it to have been built by skilled craftsmen?

Same thing when we're dealing with souls. We want skilled craftsmen. And in fact, one qualification for an elder in the New Testament is that he is able to teach. And that implies a degree of skill. Not just anybody should get into the pulpit and start to preach.

There has to be a demonstration of skill. And the same is true of counseling. Christian technique is very simple. It's the skillful use of the word of God through the power of the Holy Spirit. That's in its basic form.

And the goal of Christian counseling, using Christian technique, is to affect change in the person. The Holy Spirit works through the biblical techniques, not through gimmicks or non-biblical and non-Christian techniques.

And every counselor uses a technique of one kind or another. There's no such thing as counseling apart from technique. The question is, is the technique a good one? That is, is it biblical? That's what you have to look at.

Or is it a bad one, non-biblical? The fact is, a biblical technique is commanded by the word of God. Study to show yourself approved unto God, a workman that need not be ashamed. So all throughout Scripture, to be skillful, to be proficient, to handle the word of God accurately.

And the same is true in counseling. Questions? Good? Okay. Al, would you close us in a word of prayer?