7. Directive vs. Non-Directive Counseling Pt. 2:

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8. Confession of Sin

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Okay, this is session seven in this series on biblical counseling, and the title of this one is

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Directive vs. Non -Directive Counseling. This is part two, so a little review, I think, is in order.

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When we first started, we did one whole session on an introduction to biblical counseling, you know, what it is.

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Second one was just looking at the crisis in counseling. There's so many competing schools of theology and philosophy and psychology out there that it really is our nation, the world as a whole, even, there's a crisis in counseling.

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People are hard -pressed. How do you know who to turn to, you know, whose school is correct?

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Third session that we looked at was the role of the Holy Spirit in counseling. And then we looked at two sessions on what euthetic counseling is from a biblical perspective, and then last week we started directive vs.

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non -directive counseling. And underneath that, we looked at Rogerian counseling.

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We looked at who Carl Rogers is, and we used Rogerian counseling as an example.

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We're not going to go through all the different schools. That would be ridiculous. We have over 200 competing schools of psychology.

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But we just chose Rogerian counseling because it's very typical of how secular humanists think.

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We looked at neutrality in counseling and saw that that was a myth. There can be no neutrality in counseling.

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You're either humanistic or you're biblical. There's no other choice, really.

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Then we looked at counseling and listening and how important it is for a counselor to listen. And listening is more than simply hearing, but listening to what the person is saying and how that affects their situation.

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So with that as a background, the next thing under directive vs. non -directive counseling is feelings and behavior.

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And this is such an important topic because psychology has really run amok with this idea of feelings and behavior.

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So we're going to look at, in Genesis 4, 3 -7, God sets forth the principle that behavior determines feelings.

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Okay? Look carefully. Don't just pass that over.

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Behavior determines feelings. And here's what I mean by that. Let's look at Genesis 4, starting in verse 3.

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So it came about in the course of time that Cain brought an offering to the Lord of the fruit of the ground.

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Abel, on his part, also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of their fat portions. And the

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Lord had regard for Abel and for his offering. But for Cain and for his offering, he had no regard.

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So Cain became very angry and his countenance fell. Then the

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Lord said to Cain, why are you angry? And why has your countenance falling? If you do well, will not your countenance be lifted up?

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And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door and its desire is for you, but you must master it.

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That account of the first murder, which we know

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Cain committed against Abel, is loaded with theology, but we're going to try to just break it down according to the counseling ramifications of it.

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Cain's countenance fell. Why? Because he didn't do well. In other words, he had sinned.

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And his sin started when he reacted wrong. In other words, he felt bad because he reacted wrong.

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He did something wrong, and what happened? His countenance fell. So extrapolating from that, people do not feel depressed because their emotions aren't working right.

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That's something that you'll hear, well, we've got to fix your emotions. No, when you're depressed, if you've done something wrong and there's a reason for you to be depressed, that means your emotions are working right.

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They're doing what they're supposed to do. Emotions are God -given, all right?

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But most people feel, most counselors feel that people are depressed because, well, there's something wrong with your emotions, so what's the first thing that they're going to do?

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They're going to give you a pill to straighten out your emotions. You're feeling depressed? Well, let's give you something that makes you a little bit livelier.

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Then when you go too high, what do you do? Well, let's take this pill to bring you down a little bit. And it goes back and forth such as that.

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When people are depressed, the real problem is behavioral. Some put it in a different way.

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People feel bad because of bad behavior. And putting it another way, feelings flow from actions.

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Are you getting the idea? Why do you feel the way you're feeling? It's because you're doing what you're doing. Oh, let me just say this too.

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What we're talking about here, we're not talking about people who are mentally ill, all right?

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This is talking about an otherwise normal person, so I just want you to make sure that we're not lumping everybody into one bowl because we know that there are organic reasons why people's brains don't function properly and there are issues such as that.

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But that's not the people we're talking about. We're talking about the otherwise normal... Quote, what is normal?

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But you know what I mean. Get the idea. The otherwise normal person, and now they're going into something has happened and they're depressed.

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Psalm 128, 1 -2. Notice, how blessed is everyone who fears the

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Lord, who walks in His ways. Notice what the psalm says. He who walks in His ways, that person is blessed.

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When you shall eat of the fruit of your hands, you will be happy and it will be well with you. In other words, when you're doing the things that you're supposed to be doing, things will go well and you will be happy.

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And again, remember, psalms are giving the general... Just because you're doing well doesn't mean you're always going to be happy.

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But that's the basic, the basis for it. Conscience is man's ability to evaluate his own actions.

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Conscience is very, very important. It is given to us by God for certain reasons.

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And your conscience in its natural state will give you the ability to evaluate your actions.

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And even non -believers can evaluate. They know innately, because they have the law of God written on their heart, even though it might be a shattered image, they know what is right and what is wrong.

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So when man sins, the conscience activates unpleasant, visceral and other bodily warning devices.

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In other words, when you sin, it's going to affect you. Your conscience is going to tell the rest of your body something is wrong and put out some sorts of warning.

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And it can be... It can be any type of bodily functions as well as emotional issues.

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The body... Well, actually, we'll get into that later on. So I'm jumping ahead of myself here, right?

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These responses serve as a warning for the need to correct wrong behaviour. Now, here

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I am going to jump ahead just a little bit. What happens when somebody becomes what they call a sociopath or a psychopath is their conscience is seared and they ignore the warnings of their conscience so long that pretty soon the conscience doesn't react any longer.

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And we see that in, like, serial killers and things of that nature.

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The physical discomfort is a God -structured means of telling man that he has violated God's standards.

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You know, we see this in action even in toddlers. When we were raising our children when they were very, very young, one of my kids took a piece of candy that he knew that he was not supposed to have.

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And then we couldn't find him. Why? Because he took the candy, went and hid behind the couch and was eating the candy behind the couch.

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Even at a toddler stage, he knew what he did was wrong, and so what did he do? He went and he hid.

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Does that sound familiar? Okay. So physical discomfort is

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God's structured means of telling you that you've done something wrong. And that's why some people, you know, they've done something.

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You know, I don't know exactly what it is, but I just don't feel right about it. That's God's law playing upon your heart, and you know innately that it's wrong.

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Vernon Grounds, who was a 20th -century theologian, said, Psychic pain is inflicted by the

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Holy Spirit as he creates the conviction of sin, a conviction which testifies that God's law has been broken.

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And the conscience can be put to rest by changing the faulty behaviour that activated it. That's exactly what

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God told Cain. If you do well, you've done wrong, but if you do well, you know, will you not be better?

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Will you not be well? So now we're going to take a little side trip into the nervous system.

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Okay. Does that make you nervous? Okay. The nervous system corresponds to the biblical approach.

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I'm not going to get very technical on this, but I think you'll see the benefit of going through this.

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There's two sides to the nervous system. Okay. The emotional and involuntary side.

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You can't control your emotions. You can control some outward manifestations, but if you're sad, you can't just all of a sudden say,

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I'm not going to be sad anymore. I'm not going to be sad. It doesn't work that way. Something has to change for you not to be sad.

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All right. The other side is the problem -solving and voluntary side.

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That's where you exercise your will and you can do something. All right.

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Your thinking ability, et cetera. So notice two sides. Involuntary, it's emotional.

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Problem -solving, voluntary side. All right. Changes in the person can only be made through the voluntary side.

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So you can change what you are doing and possibly even change how you're thinking by reading scripture and doing it.

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You may think that something's right. Somebody shows you in the scripture, oh, it's wrong.

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So you can change your thinking and thereby your conscience can be alleviated when you stop doing the thing that is biblically wrong.

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Does that make sense? That means personality change must begin with behavior.

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Now, I want to put a big caveat here. We're not talking about behaviorism.

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Okay. Behaviorism is merely looking to change behavior. That's not biblical counseling.

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That's actually humanistic counseling where we just have to change the behavior. This refers to sanctification, not justification.

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Okay. You can't will yourself justify. That's the sovereign act of God. All right.

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But you can impact change in your life, which is the sanctification process.

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We are all to become conformed to the image of Jesus Christ. So what is the sanctification process?

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Reading the word, seeing the standards that God has set. This is, as a Christian, this is what you must do.

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This is what you must not do. And the more you become conformed to the image of Christ, the greater your sanctification.

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Right? That's what we're here for. We believe in the doctrine of progressive sanctification.

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All right. This presumes the person has already been saved and has a new heart.

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This is why biblical counseling or euthetic counseling is only guaranteed effective on a believer.

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What do you do for a nonbeliever? How does a biblical counselor help a nonbeliever?

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Because you can't use the same process that you can use for a believer.

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So is the biblical counselor powerless then? Exactly. You give them the gospel.

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That's their biggest need. The biggest need is the gospel of Jesus Christ. Yes. That was a good move.

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All right. Now, and here is the key. The change that we are looking for is not behavior.

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It's from the inside out. The change in the heart is what will manifest itself in the change of behavior.

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Okay? And that's exact. In fact, that's really at the heart of biblical or euthetic counseling.

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What we're looking for is a change in the heart. Going back to our third session, there's the role of the

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Holy Spirit because you and I can't change hearts. All we can do is minister the gospel.

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That came out wrong. It sounded like, oh, we're desperate. No. The best thing you can do is minister the gospel.

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That's your function to the nonbeliever. What they do with the gospel, that's between them and God.

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Okay? Yes. As long as I give you my criteria, as long as the person is willing to listen to me and I give the gospel as many times as I meet with them, as long as they're still open for it, you don't have to worry about that going on too long because usually once they reject it, if they really mean it from the heart, they reject the gospel, they're not coming back.

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That's been my experience. Okay? The involuntary side controls the visceral and the vascular emotional responses.

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In other words, the bodily functions. What are your reactions?

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I want you to stop and think for a minute. What are your reactions when you're scared?

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I was going to tell you what my wife does, but she'd kill me if I told her. I'll do it anyway. If I scare my wife, she does a little dance.

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She screams and does a little dance, much to my delight. Don't you dare tell her.

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That's involuntary. She's not doing that on purpose. The same thing, you see a romantic movie and you start crying.

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You're not willing yourself to cry. It's part of the involuntary side that your soul is moved by something, and it's the involuntary side that causes you to cry or to make noises, to jump, or to do a little dance.

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The voluntary side controls the responses of the skeletal muscles, and those we do all day long.

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We know that. I can do certain things, whatever it is.

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That's what gives us the ability to work, to build, to create, and so it's very important.

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Now, communication between both systems is supplied by sensory pathways of the central nervous system.

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In other words, they are connected. They're not two completely diverse systems. There is a connection between them, but that means there is no direct access to the emotions.

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The emotions are indirectly reached through the voluntary system. This is why we say that behavior determines feelings and emotions.

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You can do something to reach your involuntary side.

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The first step, obviously, is having the Holy Spirit, who can affect that behavioral change.

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We come now to one of my favorite topics, Proverbs and counseling. If you're going to do any amount of counseling, you must be familiar with the

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Book of Proverbs. Proverbs was made for biblical counseling.

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Proverbs is a book of directive counseling, as opposed to last week we looked at Rogerian counseling.

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Proverbs is a book of directive counseling. Just look at a couple of verses in the introduction of Proverbs, Proverbs 1, 1 -3.

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Proverbs is Solomon, son of David, king of Israel. Remember, who was

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Solomon? Outside of Christ, the wisest man that ever lived. Look at Proverbs, to know wisdom and instruction.

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Right then and there, that blows Rogerian counseling away. According to Rogerian counseling, you never tell somebody that you're going to tell them something that they must know.

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What would Rogerian counselors say at this point? They're not going to ask you, what do you know?

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They're going to ask you how you feel. How do you feel about this? So look at the word to know.

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To discern the sayings of understanding. To receive instruction in wise behavior.

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Righteousness, justice, and equity. Look how directive that is. You can know, you can discern, you receive instruction, wise behavior, righteousness, justice, equity.

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These are all terms that are meaningless in the nondirective system. And in fact, if you try to talk about these things, they'll tell you that those are irrelevant.

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Proverbs was written to promote wisdom among God's people. Remember what wisdom is, the ability to handle life with skill.

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And so we're looking here at Proverbs 1, verses 7 and 8.

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The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. And again, that goes completely against the Rogerian system because knowledge is not the importance.

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Feelings is, emotions, that's what they're looking at. Fools despise wisdom.

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Despise. We'd never hear a Rogerian use words such as this. Hear, my son, your father's instruction.

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Do not forsake your mother's teaching. Notice, heavy on the teaching, the instruction.

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People who are emotionally, physically distressed, what do they need?

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They need the truth. They need to be instructed. What are they doing wrong? What are they doing right?

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A person is not depressed for no reason. There's always a reason a person will be depressed.

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And again, I'm not talking about hormonal or... I mean, there's some real serious issues out there that have nothing to do with sin but are hormonal in nature.

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But that's not what we're dealing with. Proverbs explains how God expects His children to live in a sinful world.

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And it contrasts the way the redeemed and the unredeemed sinners behave. A proverb is simply stated, a principle of living.

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That's what a proverb is. And by the way, Proverbs is a very interesting book even in how it's structured, and we're going to get into a little bit of that.

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Proverbs consists of statements concerning patterns of problem -solving in various areas of life and the consequences to which they lead.

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You'll very hear that, you know, to the wise, this will be his end. To the fool, this is their end.

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So it determines what behaviour they should be following and what the consequences are of either obeying or disobeying.

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Now, if you're going to use the book of Proverbs, you should know how it's written. It was written in a Hebrew form of poetry called parallelism.

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Alright? How many people know what a parallelism is? Only a couple.

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OK. Alright, so I'm going to tell you. That's good that most of you don't know, otherwise I just wasted all my time here.

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There's three major types of parallelisms. OK? First is synonymous. Second is antithetical.

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And the third is synthetic. And we'll go through each one of these.

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Synonymous parallelism compares two concepts that are similar. So you're looking for words such as like or and.

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And I'll give you an example. Proverbs 3 verses 13 and 14. How blessed is the man who finds wisdom and the man who gains understanding.

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Now, that's in poetic form of parallelism. And now notice, by the word and being inserted there, the two concepts are virtually synonymous.

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How blessed is the man who finds wisdom and the man who gains understanding. It's just two different ways for emphasis of saying the same thing.

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So you see the word and. For her profit is better than the profit of silver, and her gain better than fine gold.

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Profit, gain, silver, gold. See how they're similar concepts.

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Does that make sense? You'll find that throughout Proverbs. You'll also find it frequently in the book of Psalms.

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Antithetical parallelism can contrast two concepts that are usually opposites.

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So you look for words such as but. For example, in Proverbs 3 again.

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For the devious are an abomination to the Lord, but he is intimate with the upright.

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Notice. The devious, abomination, intimate, upright.

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Two contrasting principles. The curse of the

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Lord is on the house of the wicked, but he blesses the dwelling of the righteous.

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So you see synonymous, you find like and antithetical, but is usually the word that you can see that would give you the idea of which it is.

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Synthetic parallelism introduces a concept and then expands it. It used to be easy for me to talk about this one because I used to say it's like a car antenna.

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But we don't have car antennas like that anymore, so I can't use that. Do you remember the old -time car antennas?

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You can pull it a notch and then pull another notch and then another notch. That's what synthetic parallelism is.

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You have the concept, you pull it, you expand it a little bit, then pull it a little bit more. So I'll give you an example.

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Proverbs 120 to 22. Here's the concept.

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Wisdom shouts in the street. That's the point that he wants to make. But the writer of Proverbs, in this case

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Solomon, he wants to expand. He wants to drive this home, so he expands on it.

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She lifts her voice in the square. It's not a different concept. It's just stating the same thing but adding a little bit more.

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At the head of the noisy street, she cries out. Notice, wisdom is still the one doing the action.

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At the entrance of the gates in the city, she utters her sayings, pulling it, expanding it even more.

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How long, O naive ones, will you love being simple -minded, and scoffers delight themselves in scoffing and fools hate knowledge.

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There you have another set of synthetic parallelism.

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Does that make sense? Do you see the difference? Hebrew poetry doesn't usually rhyme like a lot of our poetry.

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You know, this is one of the primary ways of using poetry, is through parallelism.

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And while most Proverbs are written in short, pithy sayings, as we've just seen in some of the examples, some of it is actually written in lengthy vignettes.

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For example, all of Proverbs 7 is warning to the young man to avoid the promiscuous woman.

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The whole chapter of Proverbs is warning against that.

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The first part of Proverbs 31 is advice to the king or those who are in authority, not to engage in strong drink and other things.

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The second part of Proverbs 31 extols the value of the excellent wife. So you can see that you have to know how to read it because the ones that are pithy sayings, maybe just one verse is worth studying because the next verse may have nothing to do with the verse that it follows.

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In fact, Greg Bonson suggested if reading the

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Bible is like medicine for the soul, Proverbs is like throat lozenges. You pop one in your mouth, ruminate on it, suck it until you get all the juice out of it, and then swallow.

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He says, but whereas you wouldn't want to do that with the rest of the Bible because you need context.

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But Proverbs is specifically written that way. So Proverbs clearly uses euthetic confrontation.

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And we'll see it because it disciplines, it gives advice, it reproves, it teaches, it instructs, it gives precepts, it gives commandments.

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So now let's talk a little bit about methodology. Methodology grows out of presuppositions.

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The biblical presupposition is that underlying the surface problem is a sinful lifestyle.

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It may be hidden, it may not be hidden, it may be overt. But that's one of the basic presuppositions.

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Rogerian counselors often use a method called transference, which is very interesting.

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It's the redirecting negative feelings towards another person. In other words, a person comes in and says, you know,

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I hate my father. The counselor may say, and this is going to sound weird, but well, listen, take those negative feelings that you hate your father with, direct them towards me as your counselor, and then hope the guy doesn't have a gun.

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This perpetuates and even multiplies sin. You're telling the person to have ill feelings towards you as the individual.

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So you're not solving their sinful issues, you're just redirecting them.

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And, for example, transferring hatred for one's father to the counselor. The biblical approach towards sin is a loving rebuke.

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That's the most loving thing you can do, is confront the person head -on, very directly, but in love.

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One of the things that you'll see in Scripture, when you're giving truth, it always comes wrapped in love.

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Instead of transference, the biblical counselor employs methods that bring about repentance, reconciliation, not acceptance.

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It's never okay to accept sinful behavior. Three reasons to reject the idea of transference.

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Counselors become a party to sin, sin is condoned, and it forces the idea that the end justifies the means.

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So, having examined Rogerian counseling, alongside the biblical approach to counseling, there's only one conclusion to be drawn, and that is simply this.

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Rogerian counseling, theory, and methodology must be rejected in toto. That means the whole kit and caboodle, the whole bag.

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Questions? Thoughts? Comments?

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Don't redirect your anger towards me. Go ahead. You're right.

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I'm not endorsing that, I'm opposed to it. Go ahead.

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Well, and again, the idea is, if you understand, that's why we went over the little study on the nervous system.

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If you understand how the nervous system works, the involuntary side, how can you transfer your feelings?

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Because feelings are part of the involuntary system. You can't will those feelings. It would be great if you could will them, you know, get rid of them just by merely willing them, but that's not the way it works.

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It's not the way God designed us. Any other thoughts?