Are Psychologists the Literal Spawn of Satan?

People are tired of hearing nothing but doom and despair on the radio. The message of Christianity is that salvation is found in Christ alone, and any who reject

Christ therefore forfeit any hope of salvation, any hope of heaven.

The issue is that humanity is in sin, and the wrath of Almighty God is hanging over our heads.

They will hear His words, they will not act upon them, and when the floods of divine judgment, when the fires of wrath come, they will be consumed and they will perish.

God wrapped Himself in flesh, condescended and became a man, died on the cross for sin, was resurrected on the third day, has ascended to the right hand of the

Father where He sits now to make intercession for us. Jesus is saying there is a group of people who will hear

His words, they will act upon them, and when the floods of divine judgment come in that final day, their house will stand.

Welcome to Bible Bashed, where we aim to equip the saints for the works of ministry. We're your hosts,

Harrison Kerrig and Pastor Tim Mullett, and today we seek to answer the age -old question, Are psychologists the literal spawn of Satan?

Now, before we answer that question, Tim, I think it might be helpful if you could just sort of define that word, psychology, so that people listening will know exactly what we're talking about when we're using that word.

Okay, well, psychology is essentially a series of competing counseling philosophies which are aimed at trying to provide essentially a humanistic understanding of the soul.

So, the word psychology comes from two words in the Greek, ψυχή, meaning soul, essentially, or spirit, or breath.

And then you have the word λόγος, or λογία, which is essentially meaning the study of, in this kind of context.

So you put those two together and you get study of the soul. Now, as I said, psychology is not a monolith.

There is no singular thing that is psychology.

If you go to any number of psychologists, you're going to get different kinds of counseling, but then they're all essentially going to be rooted in some sort of secular or Darwinian worldview.

Now, I mean, there is what's called biblical counseling, and the biblical counseling movement is a rejection of secular humanistic psychology in that kind of way.

Essentially, what you're dealing with is you're dealing with some sort of counseling philosophy. And there are many, as I said, many competing counseling philosophies.

At a popular level, psychology is going to be essentially interacting with the

DSM categories or the Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, and that's going to provide essentially a competing worldview with that of the

Bible. Now, many understand or recognize that Freud is the father of modern psychology.

And one of the things that Freud sought to do intentionally was to start out with that Darwinian, that basic Darwinian assumption that the world essentially came into being at some point from nothing and somehow in some kind of Big Bang kind of framework, as they're arguing for now.

But the essential evolutionary philosophy of Darwin is that everything, life starts out in simple life forms and is evolving into some sort of complex life forms.

And so one of the things that Freud was trying to do was provide intentionally, I mean, you just read his works, he's intentionally setting out to provide an alternative to soul care.

So it used to be that if individuals had a problem, they would go to pastors to seek to interact and deal with it.

But this is, you know, Freud, the modern father of modern psychology, was intentionally setting out to provide a competing method of dealing with the soul or understanding the soul that wasn't based on religious presuppositions, but in a

Darwinian worldview. And that project has largely been successful. So today, you know, it is very true, even in the church, that if there is some sort of problem that a person is struggling with, whether it be, you know, an eating disorder or worry or anxiety or depression or anger or, you know, sadness or whatever it is.

I mean, different moods or motivation or whatever else. There's many, many, I mean,

I would say the vast majority of churches in America really have functionally zero answers to give to any individuals in those kind of situations.

I would say most of the basic issues of life. And we've surrendered that territory and given it over to psychologists.

So essentially, you're saying psychology is a

Darwinian or maybe a materialistic attempt at trying to explain issues pertaining to the soul.

Is that a fair summary? Yeah. I mean, all of your psychologies, whatever the counseling philosophy, you know, whether it's just rooted in, you know, behavior modification or whatever it is.

I mean, whatever the philosophy, you know, if it's Jungian psychology, if it's

Freudian psychology, whatever. I mean, it's all going to be an attempt to explain human behavior.

And so not only is it attempting to explain the basic questions of life, why do we do what we do?

These counseling theories or philosophies are not only trying to give us a vocabulary to deal with, you know, how to diagnose people, labels that we're going to put on people to describe their thoughts and behaviors.

But then it's putting forward some sort of solution to these basic problems that is not going to be found in the scriptures.

It's going to be found outside of that in some way. Okay. Well, I think that flows pretty naturally into our next question, which is, are psychologists literal children of Satan?

Yeah. Well, I think the literal answer to that question is probably not.

I mean, now, I mean, it is possible that Satan, who is the father of lies, did either himself or send fallen angels in order to copulate with all of psychologists' mothers and essentially produce half -human offspring, you know, like what happened in Genesis 6, the days of Noah with the

Nephilim and thereafter. That could be the case. You know, I don't want to dismiss that as a possibility.

But then when the Bible talks about humanity, the Bible does say that humanity is divided into two basic categories.

You have the sons of God and you have the sons of the devil. And that son of language there, so just to give you a passage,

John 8, 44, Jesus says to the religious leaders at the time, you are of your father, the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires.

He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand with the truth because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies.

Now when he says that to the Pharisees, he's not saying that they were literal offspring of Satan.

What he's saying is they're characterized by, they're both characterized by the character of Satan and then they're in some sense under the power of Satan.

So the Bible says the whole world lies under the sway of the evil one. And so there is a great enemy of our soul and they're basically essentially two humanities.

There are the sons of God, there are those who have Jesus as their father and whose desire is to do the will of Jesus their father.

And then there are those who are essentially running the playbook of Satan and trying to advance his purposes, whether knowledgeably or not.

And I would say that as a generalization, yes, psychologists are doing the work of the devil, obviously.

I say obviously, but it's obvious to me, but I would say it's not obviously everyone else, unfortunately.

That's why we're doing this podcast. So essentially psychologists are literal children of Satan, metaphorically.

Something like that, yeah. Not literal, but yeah.

Metaphorical, sure. So I guess you brought up the passage where Jesus is speaking with the

Jewish leaders of the time and he's telling them that they are of their father, the devil.

So does that mean that when we're interacting with psychologists or when we're talking about this subject, we need to view psychologists the same as we would view spiritual false teachers?

Is that what you're saying? Absolutely. Psychology is a competing worldview with the

Bible. It is essentially adopting the same kind of territory the Bible is seeking to address.

So I would say that psychologists are

Satan's priest. I mean, they're doing his work, and that seems like a strong term.

That seems like it's over the top. It seems like I'm being crazy, but you have to understand something. The reason why people think that kind of thing sounds crazy is because they don't actually understand.

Well, I'll say two things. First, so much ground has been lost in this territory that we don't even know where we're at.

So the issue is that it used to be that if you have a problem, let's say you're a teenage girl, right?

And you don't like the way you look. And so instead of having some sort of understanding of food and the purpose of food that you're going to derive from the scriptures or something else, like you're looking at yourself, you're comparing yourself with other women.

You don't like what you see. You're weighed down with insecurities. Maybe you have struggle in life and difficult problems in life or fairly trivial problems in life, whatever.

But then you look at food and you're trying to exercise some kind of measure of control over your life.

And so what you do is you go and either you binge and then you purge, right?

Or you refuse to eat at all. So in that kind of scenario, one of the things to realize is that there are labels for that kind of thing.

You call that anorexia or bulimia in the language of psychology. But the problem, though, is that I think

Christians, as they read their Bible, we don't even think to go to the scriptures and try to figure out, well, what do you do with that kind of thing anymore?

We just think, oh, well, she's suffering from anorexia or she's suffering from bulimia. Therefore, we don't have anything to say.

So you go talk to a psychologist or something like that. Now, the problem, though, is that in every one of these cases, you think about any of these labels that you're given, right?

Bulimia, anorexia, anxiety, alcoholism, depression, whatever.

The issue is that you have psychology, which is essentially looking at their book and going to provide a diagnosis for why that's going to happen.

So you're going to get a certain label, and those labels actually matter, OK? So for instance, just think about it this way.

If someone drinks too much alcohol and gets drunk every night and refuses to hold down a job, what do you call them?

A drunk. Well, we've had this conversation. Well, that's what

I call them, yeah. But the thing is, no one calls them. We used to say, hey, you're worthless drunk, right?

I mean, that's what you used to say, but then now we say, hey, you're suffering from alcoholism, right?

I mean, that's kind of what we say. And if you say, hey, you're suffering from alcoholism, well, it sounds like you're some sort of victim who's struggling with cancer.

And so here's the thing. The question is, should you look at psychologists as false teachers?

Semantically, isn't it very different to call someone a worthless drunk and to call them suffering from alcoholism, right?

And so what psychologists are doing, we look to them as if they're experts.

We grant them some kind of authority over us, and then we're working within their categories, and their categories are deeply meaningful.

Now, what do you do with that guy who's – with the worthless drunk, who you say, hey, he's been suffering for alcoholism for years?

I mean, you can imagine yourself being at a funeral, and then the kids of the dad get up and say, yeah, he suffered with alcoholism for years.

They present him in the language of victimization, and that language totally takes away any moral responsibility that man has, right?

And the problem there – like here's the problem. Like when you take away all moral responsibility, what you are doing is you are treating that person as if he's subhuman.

And not only that, you're taking away any hope that they have of the gospel, right? So how do we respond to the gospel?

We respond to the gospel like the good news of what Jesus did in faith and repentance. But you can't repent of an illness.

If you have cancer, you can't repent of getting cancer. That's the way it works. You can't. I mean so with every one of these categories, like when you label them in the language of victimization, what you're doing is you are taking away moral agency from a human being, and you're shutting off their hope of the gospel.

And that's the problem, right? So like that's the difficulty with this subject matter.

Well, okay. So if we're supposed to view psychologists that way, then is it possible for a psychologist to even be a

Christian if we're supposed to view them the same as we would any other spiritual false teacher?

Yeah, I mean that's a difficult question to answer because obviously there's thousands and thousands and thousands of psychologists in the world who are operating on some sort of spectrum as far as that goes.

Now as a generalization, I hope it's becoming more and more obvious to people that – and I think it really is becoming more obvious to people that people are tired of becoming drug addicts because they go to a psychologist.

And psychologists by and large as a generalization seem to think – and there's a movement of psychologists who are pushing back on this.

I'm not trying to overgeneralize, but the reality is that one in five women are on antidepressants right now.

They are functional drug addicts because they don't know how to handle their life. This is a huge problem.

So one in five women are on antidepressants, and basically that means that you have one in five women who are functionally hopeless.

And I think that's one in five being functionally hopeless and filled with complaints and everything else that's on the low end.

But I'm just saying that one in five of them are proving themselves to be that through use of antidepressants.

But here's the thing. So I don't think that all psychologists are to the same degree removing all moral agency or personal responsibility from people.

But the reality is that psychology and the Bible do not mix. They're competing worldviews, and they have been competing worldviews from the start.

And so as a generalization, it is very difficult. It is very, very difficult to look at a person who is a part of a profession that at its core is a competing worldview with that of the

Bible and doing great damage to the Bible and have any confidence about the state of their soul. That is very difficult to do.

I mean, it's like asking, is it possible for Robin DiAngelo or something to be secretly a

Christian when she's caught up in all the woke nonsense? Hey, this is a competing worldview here.

And any attempt really to harmonize this alternative worldview with the

Bible is inevitably—it's like oil and water. It doesn't mix. They're fundamentally set at odds at almost every single conceivable point.

And maybe we could talk about some of that. As a generalization, the

Bible says that of those individuals who cause these little ones who believe in me to stumble, it would be better for them that a millstone is hung around their neck and they are cast into the depths of the sea.

And as a profession and as a generalization, that is essentially what psychologists are doing.

They are removing personal responsibility from people. They're blaming spiritual problems on supposed theories about some sort of organic cause.

Functionally, what they're doing is they're cutting people off from repentance and destroying their hope of really providing a major stumbling block that keeps people from actually turning to the

Lord and dealing with their actual problems. And I can just give you example after example after example of individuals

I counseled who are just sitting there. I'll just give you one example real quick.

I know this is a long answer to that question. Look, this guy

I counseled, we'll call him Richard, who is a 30 -year -old guy sitting at home all day long playing video games in his parents' house.

And I'm trying to counsel him and he wants to get married, but he can't. And why? Well, why can't he go out and get married when he doesn't have any money and his parents won't let him and he doesn't have a job and everything else?

Well, why can't you go get a job? Well, because I'm suffering from ADD and he's on Ritalin and he's received that diagnosis.

And that kind of person, you look at him and say, hey, you're going to change your life. You're coming to biblical counseling.

You need to start reading your Bible. And it's like, I can't. I have my ADD. So the ADD is keeping me from living a productive life.

It's keeping me from reading the Bible. And I don't care what you say. You're able to spend 16 hours a day playing video games.

You can't read your Bible. This is a spiritual issue. And the person who gave him that label has functionally, is that person in the

Bible that the Bible says, it's better a millstone put around your neck and you cast into the depths of the sea.

You've given them some sort of moral excuse to fail to handle life at a more basic and fundamental level.

That label is functioning as a massive stumbling block to keep you from being sanctified.

And that's how those labels function in every single instance. You have a lady who's on antidepressants and who never gives thanks, has no joy in her heart, has no joy in her life.

And constantly complains, constantly grumbles. Do you think you have any ability to confront her and say, hey, you need to repent of that complaining and start giving thanks because the

Bible says that man's basic problem is he didn't glorify God or give thanks? No, she's going to wield her label of depression as a club against the

Bible. It's going to give her every excuse she needs to keep from actually having to look in the mirror and take responsibility for anything.

And that's how those labels function across the board. That's not exaggeration. That's the standard way they function.

And everyone knows it. So, yeah. So if you're a part of that and that's what your life is characterized by as removing personal responsibility from people by presenting to them this hostile worldview.

I don't see how you can possibly be not doing the devil's work at that point.

Right. So that's the point. OK. Now, I'm sure that maybe there's somewhere somewhere someone somewhere along the line who went to school and who basically has chucked most of that and, you know, still has his license and everything else and maybe doing a lot of good work.

And there's just a little bit of that mixed in there. But that's not my experience.

You know, looking at what's actually happening. Well, at the risk of kind of, you know, going off on a little side trail for a second.

Earlier, you mentioned that there was a movement of people who were rejecting psychology.

I don't know exactly what group of people you're talking about. Could you kind of flesh that out a little more?

Sure. So, I mean, Jay Adams was a guy who basically he taught at Westminster Seminary in Philadelphia.

But then there's a movement that started under the broad rubric of New Thetic Counseling, essentially.

And New Thetic Counseling is coming from a Greek word, New Thetaeo, which basically means to admonish.

And so there is a broad movement of people who, you know, he's one of the central people.

And it's kind of spread out from there to include a lot of people like Paul Tripp and at least

Fitzpatrick and that kind of stuff. And I don't know that it's as cohesive as it used to be, but there's plenty of guys in that kind of world.

Masters University out in California has a school that's just solely trying to do biblical counseling.

Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville. There is a program that Professor Stuart Scott came from Masters University in order to start a biblical counseling program at Southern.

And so there are schools out there that are doing that kind of thing. And there's some major churches out there.

But the thing that they became convinced of, and this was, you know, I think in the 70s and 80s when some of the stuff started taking off a little bit.

But they became convinced that the Bible is sufficient. So, you know, we have an authoritative Bible.

The debates of the past were all over, you know, inerrancy is the Bible without error. But then, you know, with the psychology discussion, the issue is not inerrancy is the

Bible without errors. The discussion is, is the Bible sufficient? So did God give us what we need in his word to tell us how to handle the basic problems of life?

That's the question. And that's the question that is essential to the discussion of biblical counseling versus psychology is, did

God tell us, you know, did God give us enough information in the book, in his book to help a drunk know how to repent of his drunkenness?

Did the Bible tell, give us enough information to tell a thief how to quit being a thief, right?

Or a kleptomaniac. If you want to remove all personal responsibility from that person.

Did the Bible tell us, you know, give us enough information to tell a girl who doesn't like the way she looks or wants to exercise some sort of control over her life, how to keep from throwing up in a bathroom, right?

And doesn't that just sound mean? Doesn't it sound mean? Side note, it doesn't sound mean to say it like that, but that's, that's the whole thing.

We're just so trained in the language of victimization that if you accurately describe what people are actually doing, it's like, how dare you?

It's like, well, no, I mean, like I'm talking in terms of moral categories, right? But anyways, so the biblical counseling movement was essentially a movement where people said, hey, you know, like we're tired of farming all these problems off to the psychologist.

I thought we're supposed to be shepherds, right? I thought that we believed the Bible was sufficient. I thought that we believed in a book that was supposed to help us to, you know, stand firm and to be strong and to resist the enemy and everything else.

And it seems like what's, you know, part of what's happened is like the church for so many years, you basically go to church and you learn 52 ways to be saved every, you know, every week.

Salvation message every week, right? But then you don't learn any like practical instruction on how to actually live life, you know, and deal with problems like self -control and anger and sadness and, you know, worry and everything else.

And the Bible has so much to say about these things. And so anyways, these guys, they started teaching on these subjects and what they wanted to do was develop a counseling philosophy and methodology that was coming from the

Bible and leaning on the Bible and not just let the pagans tell us how to care for people's souls, essentially.

It's funny that you mentioned, you know, the victim language. We're trained in the victim language.

It immediately made me think of, what's his name? Ray Comfort, right?

That's his name. And I'm sure you've seen his videos where he goes out and he's witnessing to people.

And one of the main things that he does is he'll ask people, hey, do you think you're a good person?

And obviously the answer is always, yeah, I think I'm a pretty good person. And so he challenges them by giving them a pretty simple test and he just reads off a few of the

Ten Commandments, you know. Well, he doesn't read them off. He just asks them, hey, have you ever stolen anything?

And the answer is always, well, with the stealing one, it's normally yes. Sometimes they say no to that one.

But then, hey, have you ever been angry at anyone? Yes, obviously everyone's been angry at someone.

And have you ever looked at someone with lust in your heart? Yes. Who hasn't, right?

The answer is always yes to those questions. And so he'll ask them, you know, so what do you call a person who steals things?

And they stumble over the answer because they know what the answer is.

But then they're not ready to say it for themselves. Right. They're used to thinking other people are thieves when they steal.

But then when you're forced to confront your own immoral actions, your own thievery, your own anger, it becomes a lot harder to say, well, you know,

I'm the I'm a thief. Actually, I'm a liar. You know, I'm I'm a fornicator, all those things.

And so it's funny to see how quickly they'll answer the first question. Hey, have you ever done this?

Have you ever done this? Have you ever done this? But then they're really reluctant to answer the set the follow up question.

What does that mean in terms of what you are? It's really funny to see. Yeah, well, this is why this is such an important discussion, because in order for a person to be saved, you have to first be convinced that you're a sinner.

Right. That's the problem. So the Bible says those who are well have no need of a physician. But those who are sick, I didn't come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.

OK, right. And then I the church really I mean, we. You bring up Ray Comfort, you listen to Ray Comfort.

But I mean, I I can't think of most people I've ever talked to. Most Christians I ever talked to think that Ray Comfort is fundamentally doing something immoral by.

Oh, really? That. Yeah. I mean, I don't know very many Christians who, like, really think, oh, man, that's a good way to evangelize people.

Wow. I did not know that. I thought that was a great way. Well, you think because you've read the Bible before.

But look, look, it's all friendship evangelism, man. Like you don't go out there and just like the first time you talk to someone like he didn't have the right to be heard.

He hadn't earned the right to be heard. He hadn't developed a friendship. He hasn't, you know, done life with them.

He hasn't he hasn't done any of that. And so you just go out there with you use the law as a club.

I mean, he's essentially, you know, someone that's like most people I know would consider a

Bible basher for sure. But but I mean, like the thing is, like, you actually look at the way people actually evangelize in the

Bible. I know, you know, John Baptist, Jesus, you know, John the Baptist says, you bird of vipers who warned you to flee from the wrath to come.

He didn't just go and have a cup of coffee. But I mean, that sounds a lot more like great comfort.

But here's the thing. If you destroy all these moral categories, here's the problem. Destroy all these moral categories.

Like, how are they going to repent? How are we going to see their need for a savior? Because all you're doing is you're you're like,

I mean, you're you're like Robin Williams, you know, coming along saying it's not your fault.

It's not your fault. It's not your fault. And that's what it is. That's what you're doing. And so you talked about anger.

I mean, and this is what's so absurd about this whole discussion. And people don't realize what's actually happening. Right now,

I have my computer open and I just did a simple Google or DuckDuckGo search because Google is the devil.

Right. So I just did a simple DuckDuckGo search for anger disorders.

OK. So he's asking, hey, have you ever been angry? Well, you know, you commit a murder because you determine all that.

Look at this. So while anger itself first result while anger itself is not considered a disorder, when an individual becomes unable to control the symptoms of anger or if those symptoms result in dangerous behavior, it may be considered an anger disorder.

Right. How does that person repent? Right. How does he repent? I guess

I guess take some medication or something. I don't know. Anger disorders. This is on AngerMentor .com.

Anger disorders, symptoms, science and therapies. One third of adults say they feel angry almost every day. Three quarters feel irritated several times a week.

Some are worried they're suffering from some sort of anger disorder. Right. So now look, see.

All right. So I mean, there's all sorts of anger disorders that you can come up with. A few down Mayo Clinic.

Right. Intermittent explosive disorders, symptoms and causes. Right. So what?

Wait. Intermittent what? Explosive. Explosive disorder. Yes. Symptoms and causes. Road rage. Domestic abuse.

Throwing or breaking objects or other temper tantrums may be signs of intermittent explosive explosive disorders.

These intermittent explosive outbursts can cause you significant distress, negatively impact your relationships, work or school.

Right. But notice how it's all like some are worried they're suffering from some sort of anger disorder. How do you repent of anger if you're suffering from an anger disorder?

Right. How do you do that? Right. And so like we're not doing the same thing. That's the problem. We are not talking in the same language.

All of these moral categories are being put in the language of disorder. And then you feel like you're a victim suffering from it.

And if you feel like you're a victim suffering from some sort of disorder, you are not going to repent of that. Right.

Right. That's the voice of Satan coming alongside saying, hey, hey, did God really say that?

Right. Well, he didn't know all that we know today in 21st century about science. Right. Because, you know, if you knew if you knew about science, then obviously men can be women if they want to.

And there's no difference between the two. But then somehow men are oppressing women, even though we don't know the difference between the two.

So, you know, it all makes sense because science and all that. But anyways. All right. Yeah. So Ray Comfort.

He's a good one. Go and look him up if you're listening. He'll show you how to witness to people.

Well, he'll show you how to effectively Bible bash, apparently. That's right.

OK. So we've discussed at length about why is psychology so harmful?

How should we view psychologists? So if it's if it's as harmful as what you're saying,

Tim, why is it become so popular? I mean, it's pretty much everywhere.

I mean, it's the go to. I feel like I can go online and people my age.

It seems like like tons of people I know are constantly saying things like, yeah,

I went and I saw my therapist to talk about this issue. Or, you know,

I'll be seeing ads more and more talking about, hey, you know, this counseling company that you can reach out to if you're having issues with depression or anxiety or anger, you know, whatever else.

It seems so prevalent in our society. So if it's so harmful, why is it so prevalent? Well, the whole world lies in its way of the evil one.

All right. Close it up. Move on to the next one. No, I mean, look, say it didn't say

Satan's basic thing. You know, his basic strategy is to say it's not your fault.

Right. I mean, if it's not your fault, you can't repent of it. You can't turn to the Lord. You can't find forgiveness. So we serve a

God where forgiveness is there. It's available. We have an answer to guilt and shame and condemnation.

And we can turn to the Lord and we can ask forgiveness for things. But you can't get that solution if you're not persuaded that anything's your fault.

I mean, that's essentially, you know, the basic problem in the garden is that Adam looks at Eve and, you know, or Eve first says, you know,

God says, why did you eat of it? And Eve says, well, you know, devil's fault. Devil made me do it. Right. And then

Adam says, well, you know, I did it because that woman you gave me. Right. So it's the lady's fault.

Blame it on the lady. And then not only that, blame it on you, God, because you gave her to me. I thought you, you know, you should have made a better one who wasn't going to try to get me to do something bad.

Right. But I mean, that's the basic thing. Right. So, I mean, part of it is like there really is a spiritual battle for people's souls.

And if you can persuade people that they're victims. Like you take away all moral agency.

Now, I mean, now I think psychology is like people are starting to become a little bit disillusioned by it.

And so psychology was the big thing, the big thing. And it's still like people haven't thought through it.

I want to give you several answers to the question you're basically asking, you know, why is it so popular? Well, I mean, because Satan, the first one is basically

Satan has a vested interest in taking away moral agency from people. Right. So with psychology, psychology was like it just held sway.

And, you know, for years and years and years in the church, because we just handed over problems to psychologists.

But then now, I mean, nutrition is kind of people are tired of becoming drug addicts.

One in five people are drug addicts who are basically taking tranquilizers every day in order to cope with life.

And it's not really helping. And there's a lot of side effects to that. And they're tired of it. So a lot of people have turned to, you know, nutrition to provide answers to those kind of things.

But then social justice is doing the same exact thing. Right. So, I mean, like social justice is basically just another mechanism that Satan is using to remove any personal responsibility for people.

So, I mean, if you have a crowd of angry people going out, looting and rioting, you know, what are they like?

Why are they doing that? Whose fault is it? Is it their own fault? Well, no, it's, you know, blame it on Whitey or whatever else. And so, like the issue is victimization.

Like that's what we're trying to do at almost every single point. Like we're clambering, you know, falling all over ourself trying to be the biggest victim in the society.

Because if you're a victim, all personal responsibility is removed. So as a ploy of the enemy, it's a clever strategy, obviously.

And if you have some sort of, you know, pseudoscientific mechanism of basically categorizing all sins as sickness, you can basically never have to repent of anything because you can just go to, you know, a pagan to give you a label to tell you why you don't have to repent of anything.

And there's a label for everything. For every single sin you can think of, there is a label for it. So there's that.

But then I think, yeah, so like that's, you know, that's Satan's strategy. The church, you know, ourself,

I mean, we have a lot to blame here because we used to think we believed in a

Bible that was actually sufficient and clear. That we could actually help people understand like what to do with how to handle life with.

But now we're basically, you know, for years and years, it's just like, well, I don't feel qualified to help a girl, you know, who throws up, you know.

It's like, I don't feel qualified to do that. One, she needs a girl to help her because she's not going to want to hear anything from a man.

But then two, she needs some sort of psychologist, some sort of pagan to basically help fix her problems because I'm unqualified for it.

But then I think, you know, we've basically, as a church, we don't really have a strong view of sanctification at all.

You know, the extent of most churches' understanding of sanctification is, you know, read your

Bible and pray. And I would say that those are good things to do.

And if more people would, you know, I would say if someone would spend, you know, five hours a day,

I'm not trying to diminish the importance of that. I mean, if you spent like five hours a day reading your Bible and praying,

I think probably a lot of your stuff would go away. Right, right. Anyways, you know, but,

I mean, the Bible has a lot more to say about how to be sanctified and how to stand firm in Christian life and, you know, how to fight the

Christian life than just, you know, read the Bible and pray. And the problem is that, you know, by and large, we haven't taught it.

We haven't taught it. And so people don't know, you know, so there's that too. But those are just a few reasons why

I think it's so strong. But, I mean, last one I would say is that obviously, man, hey, look, come on.

Like if someone comes along and tells you it's not your fault, you know, like that anger is not your fault.

You have intermittent explosive disorder, right? Or you have bipolar or whatever. You know, those like the fact that you have no gratitude in your life and that you're constantly miserable.

Oh, that's not your fault. You have depression. Who doesn't want to hear that, right? Who doesn't want to hear, oh, you're not to blame for anything that's going on in your life, right?

It's, you know, because of your past. It's because of abusive childhood. It's because, you know, all the mean people around you.

Or it's because you have some sort of label. Everyone wants that. Everyone wants some sort of label that says, hey, it's okay to go and, you know, loot the

Louis Vuitton store for reparations, right? So come on. Anyways, all right.

Yeah, I'm sure my wife would be – would want me to have a reason to go and loot the big fancy clothing store as part of reparations.

No, but look, I mean, look, bring it practical. I mean, you know, when you get mad at your wife, right?

I'm sure that she's done something that make you, you know, tempted to be angry at her. What is your original impulse?

It's like, oh, man, I'm a sinner, right? It's like, no, man, she's unreasonable and what a jerk and, you know, how dare you talk to me that way.

And like if you just wouldn't, you know, understand my needs and, you know, get my love languages and whatever else, then, you know, maybe everything would be okay.

And if you always just do what I want you to do and show me respect and, you know, oh, baby, as the

Bible says that you should, then everything will be all right. And I mean, all of us, we want to always – our fundamental problem is we want to blame shift.

Oh, yeah. At every single point. Yeah. I notice it a lot.

I notice that a lot when I'm driving. You know, I'm sure probably you know what I'm talking about too and probably most people who are listening.

But I find myself – so say I'm driving on the interstate, you know, there will be times where people will be driving really slow.

And so I like – I zoom around them sometimes just to try and get out from behind them.

And then I think to myself, golly, I wish all these slow drivers wouldn't always be on the road.

But then the minute that I'm driving slower and then someone zooms around me to try to get out from behind me, my initial thought is never like, oh,

I must be driving too slow or something. It's always like, wow, can you believe that person is trying to go so fast on the interstate right now?

I always immediately think to clearly the other person is doing something wrong.

And if they would just change the way that they're driving, then we wouldn't have any of the issues we're having instead of thinking like, hey, maybe

I'm just driving too fast right now. You know what I mean? No, I know exactly what you mean because I used to be a pretty angry driver myself.

Think about that, just being an angry driver. What do people who are angry drivers do?

They constantly engage in the traffic talk, right? Oh, look at that. Oh, man, he's pulling out in front of me.

What are you doing? Come on, I'm trying to drive here, right? All that kind of stuff.

You do that nonstop. I wanted to quit being so angry at driving. And the first step to quit being so angry at driving was to say, nothing that any one of these people do is making me angry.

I'm making a decision to get angry. They're not causing me to be angry. My anger is not coming from them, right?

They're not making me angry. I am choosing to be angry in response to what they're doing.

And there's plenty of practical steps that you can take to quit being an angry maniac on the road.

And I'll tell you, it's been years since I've been mad while driving. And I'm not saying that to pat myself on the back.

I'm just trying to say that every time I've talked about road rage in the context of a church, everyone gives me a knowing smile.

It's like, oh, yeah, it's impossible. And it's just like I look at them and I say, no, you know what? I haven't been angry in 10 years while driving.

If you repent of it and you take responsibility for it, you don't have to be a lunatic when you drive, right?

And no, I'm not going to sit there and wink at you and oh, yeah, yeah, no, I understand. No, it's wicked and it's evil.

And you need to stop because the wrath of man doesn't produce the righteousness that God requires. Right?

I mean, it doesn't. And so but then if you look at it and you say, I am angry because I am an evil, wicked sinner, not because of these people on the road.

Right? Right. It's me. It's my heart that is angry. It's not them.

It is possible to drive in Atlanta traffic and not be upset. I promise.

You know, it is. But but look, hey, it was. So I want to give one example real quick of how this victimization thing works.

And so because, you know, you could say this all day long and people just don't understand what you're talking about. But depression,

I just just talk about depression. OK, so here's how here's what happens.

So you go to the doctor and, you know, you feel bad all the time. You feel worthless all the time.

You have all this like you just don't know where it's coming from. You don't know what's going on or whatever else.

You go to a doctor and like they're going to run some medical tests on you and everything else and see if there's anything physically wrong with you.

And after they exhaust all that, you know, you're going to say, hey. And I mean, this happened to me when

I was in early college or whatever. I was depressed all the time. I went to a doctor. I always thought I was sick.

I didn't know what was going on with me. I couldn't understand where it was coming from. It's just like I just feel all this worthlessness.

I, you know, feel sick all the time. I felt terrible. I don't know what's going on. And doctor looked at me and he said, are you depressed?

I said, yep. And he said, well, that's what's going on. And then he wanted to give me some antidepressants. Right. And it's just like, well, hold on.

And that was one of the things that so there's nothing wrong with me. There has to be something wrong with me. You have to like none of the tests are showing that there's anything wrong with me.

No. But here you go to a psychologist. They're going to like there's a list of criteria they're going to use to determine whether or not you have depression.

OK. And so here's the here's the here's the list. OK. So the DSM five outlines the following criteria to make a diagnosis of depression.

The individual must be experiencing five or more symptoms during the same two week period. And at least one of the symptoms should either be a depressed mood or lost of interest in pleasure or pleasure.

Right. So five symptoms. So this is how you're determined whether or not you have clinical depression.

OK. No medical tests are going to be performed on you. Determine whether or not you have clinical depression.

You have to have five or more symptoms during the same two week period. And one of them should either be a depressed mood or loss of interest in pleasure.

So here are the here are five of these. So you have to have a depressed mood nearly most of the day and every day.

Right. Depressed mood. Depression. So they're going to ask you about your feelings. Do you feel depressed in order to determine whether you're clinically depressed?

They're going to ask you, do you feel depressed most of the day? Nearly every day. And if you say yes, well, check.

Right. So it's like a it's like a self -fulfilling prophecy. Right. And all it takes is for you to have depression is to say

I feel depressed. Right. So number two, markedly diminished interest in pleasure at all or almost all activities most of the day, nearly every day.

So look. All right. All right. Step number two question. Do you are you losing interest in pleasure? Yes. OK.

Check. All right. So then third, significant weight loss when not dieting or weight gain or decrease or increase in appetite nearly every day.

So depressed mood, diminished interest in pleasure, either a lot of weight gain or weight lost.

Right. So either you start to binge with food or you don't have any interest in it. For, you know, psychomotor motor agitation, essentially slowing down of thought, a reduction of physical movement.

So you just look slow. Right. Not merely subjective feelings of restlessness or being slow, but actually observable by other people.

He looks like he's moving slower than normal. Right. So then fatigue or loss of energy nearly every day.

So they're talking about your feelings. Right. Fatigue or loss of energy every day. Feelings of worthlessness or excessive or inappropriate guilt nearly every day.

Diminished ability to think or concentrate or indecisiveness nearly every day. Reoccurrent thoughts of death without a specific plan or suicide attempt or specific plan for committing.

Right. So now to receive the diagnosis that they must call a significant distress or impairment in social, occupational or other areas of function.

But notice there's nothing medical happening there. Right. Questions about lots of behaviors.

Right. Hey, is your arm does your arm feel broken? Yeah. Feels broken. Must be broken.

Must be broken. Well, I mean, but here's the thing. I mean, what do you do with a person like that?

Right. I mean, you're either leaning on these psychological categories and you're going to say, oh, well, look, hey, he's not eating a lot and he's lost interest in pleasure and he's depressed nearly all day long and significant weight loss or weight gain and fatigue and feelings of worthlessness and shame.

It's like, well, I think the Bible talks about what to do with the person who feels worthlessness or shame, doesn't it? Don't we have answers to worthlessness and shame?

Don't, you know, reoccurring thoughts of death. I mean, what does the Bible say about people like about unbelievers that they're held captive by the fear of death?

Right. Like, look, depressed mood nearly most every day. Like, doesn't the

Bible have a lot to say about Thanksgiving and giving thanks and, you know, give thanks for this, the will of God, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Don't we have answers to any of these things? And I think, yes, actually we do. And so don't you have like categories that you can work with?

So you're either going to work with the psychological categories or you're going to work with biblical categories. You're going to describe what you're seeing with biblical categories.

But then here's the thing, like the basic assumption of all psychology is that man is basically inherently good and that he's just a complex machine.

And if he's acting in an abnormal way, then the basic assumption is that the error in the system must be somehow related to some sort of biological reality because that's all they have.

And they don't understand that some problems are spiritual in nature. They're not physical problems.

But it has to be like if you're a materialist, secularist, it has to be a material problem. Right? Like that's the way it is.

That's the issue. So anyways, what else you got? So is psychology useful in any way at all for us?

Or is this a scenario where it's better to say, hey, let's just throw this whole thing in the garbage and find an alternative?

Yeah. Well, one of the things that biblical, you know, those biblical counselors who are much more careful in their words than me will say is that they'll say that there is no necessary relationship between psychology and counseling, meaning whatever, you know, whatever good that might come from a psychologist is going to be found in the

Bible anyways. And so if you believe the Bible is sufficient and it's clear and it's authoritative and it's a priority, if you believe those things, then you believe that God's given us a book and he hasn't left us in the dark.

And I mean, obviously, I mean, like, look, we have what we need in the Bible to help someone deal with like feelings of worthlessness or guilt nearly every day.

Right. We know what to do with people who are held captive by the fear of death. We know what to do with people who are filled with ungratitude and unthankfulness.

Like we have answers to these questions in the Bible. The careful biblical counselors would say that there is no necessary relationship between psychology and biblical counseling.

But, you know, secular counselors are often skilled observers in the world and can say things that actually are helpful despite the fundamental problems within their worldview.

And I mean, just an example of something like that would be Jordan Peterson and, you know, his 12 rules for life.

And a lot of them are largely like helpful, common sense, practical wisdom.

You know, just stand up straight with your shoulders back, go make up your bed, that kind of thing.

But one of the things to realize is that these are not remarkable insights and these are things that biblical

Christians should be saying if we had any knowledge of what the Bible says. Anyways, hey, you know what?

You want to change the world. Why don't you start by dealing with what you have? Right. And so the

Bible would say if someone is faithful over little, then they'll be given much to be faithful over.

That's essentially saying go make your bed. Right. So I don't have to listen to Jordan Peterson to get that.

But then here's the problem. It's just like trying to find good in psychologists because I'm sick and tired of the church, like giving over this territory to the psychologist.

And we need to wake up and realize that we've created a generations, several generations now of drug addicts who are depicted dependent on chemicals in order to just cope with life because I'm sick of that.

I mean, I do think that like trying to mine psychology for its valuable insights, it's like trying to, you know, mine a turd for nutritious value or something like that.

It's like, can you find some undigested food in there? Perhaps a kernel of corn that wasn't.

Sure. But why would you want to, man? Because like, here's the thing is so filled with filth. Like it's put in a filthy environment.

And that's, that's like, that's the problem. I mean, look at someone like Jordan Peterson for all the good things that he has to say.

He still ended up as a suicidal drug addict. Right. Okay. Like he doesn't know how to handle life.

And yet you listen to him in his interviews. And here's the problem. I mean, it's like you're listening to a person who, who, like he, he is reduced to weeping and he's reduced to tears over and over and over again in these interviews because he is so afraid that one time he's going to say something that's going to give his adversaries all the ammunition they need to destroy all the good impact that he's had.

And he's held captive by this like perfectionism that, you know, shows up in all of his 12 rules for life.

And it's affected him. It's affected the life of his daughter is now his daughter's like turned to this fad diet.

She's able to, you know, she's only able to eat steak with salt and pepper, or I don't even think pepper on it.

She's only able to eat like, like meat. Like that's the only thing she's able to eat. And she can drink, you know, vodka.

I was about to say, man, maybe I need to sign up for that diet. She can drink vodka or something.

I think there's like an example of her, like having pepper on her steak at a restaurant that reduced her to, you know, a severe out of control, you know, depression for several weeks because, you know, she was defiled by that pepper or something like that.

Oh no. I need, I need pepper. I need pepper. I mean, but look, I mean, it's just like,

I, here, here's the thing. I mean, okay. Yeah. You know, I'm glad, I'm glad he's telling people that,

Hey, you know, you, it's okay to be white male. Right. And why are we taking this like an all out assault on masculinity, but like physician heal yourself.

He doesn't even know how to handle life. Right. And those observations, they're not morally neutral.

They're coming from a legalist trying to earn his salvation that ultimately led him into despair and despondency because he realizes he's not perfect.

Right. And he doesn't have an answer to that. He doesn't have the answer to those, you know, the most basic and fundamental issues of life.

And if you follow him down that road and you look to him as, you know, your life coach or whatever, you're going to end up like him because he doesn't even see all the ways in which that legalism that is present in his thought is leading to the outcome that he's come to.

And so, you know, so why would you do that? Why not just go to the Bible to find the answers?

If you know what I mean. Right. Why go to someone who fundamentally has a worldview that's absolutely hostile to the

Bible at every single point? I mean, even a guy like that, he's still working within the victim categories of psychology like and all the baggage that comes with all those categories and personality tests and everything else.

I mean, it's just like that's not he's he's got he he is going to lead you to hell. You know, and that's what people, you know, you say that kind of thing and people's like, well, you know, obviously he's not going to help you save your soul.

Right. But maybe he has some good practical common sense stuff. But yeah, it's like. But it's like trying to find that corn in that pile of solid waste, there's all filter.

I mean, you know, I'm not trying to be gross. I'm just trying to say, hey, think about it.

It's all packaged in a worldview that is hostile to everything the

Bible says at every single point in it. And why bother if it is exhausting? I mean, I've listened to his podcast for years and I I'm frustrated the whole time

I listen to it because I'm sitting here thinking to myself like wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.

That's horrible advice. That's awful advice. Oh, you know, right. That was all right. But I have to do wrong, wrong, wrong, like 10 times to get to.

Oh, yeah, that was that was helpful. But I mean, if I already says that, that's why I know it's helpful, you know. So why did that just go to the

Bible? Trust the Lord, you know, right. Word. Right. He's he's he's not trying to confuse you.

He wants you to if you trust him and you go to the scriptures, everything you need to know how to handle life is there.

And so you don't have to go to pagans to help you to fix things. But anyways, that's a long winded answer to say, you know,

I don't think that there is any necessary relationship between psychology and counsel, psychology and biblical counsel.

And, you know, by and large, the problem is we don't know the Bibles, our Bibles well enough to actually even understand all the ways in which we're trying to be deceived.

You know, for many just another ramble. I mean, for many years, people thought the Disney movies, you know, the problems were.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. No, it's wrong with Disney is, you know, when Mufasa like falls off the cliff, there's a cloud of smoke that that is that says sex or whatever in it.

And there's a little message or something like that, you know, and there's all the witchcraft and everything else. And so if you watch

Disney movies, you're going to end up sacrificing and go to Satan or something like that. I mean, but the problem was it wasn't like that wasn't the danger of Disney.

The danger of Disney was the follow your heart nonsense that you can be what you want to be nonsense. You know, that was that was what that's our generation is living out a

Disney theology. And it wasn't the things we were worried about. But then we didn't know our

Bibles well enough to realize that all the lies that you could see in the transgender movement and the homosexual movement, all that stuff is being is, you know, filled by that same, you know, silly

Disney kind of message. Right. And every single point. So anyways,

I like that. That sounds very tweetable. The Disney we're all following Disney theology.

It's absolutely true. No, no, it for sure is. It for sure is.

I'm in one hundred percent agreement with you on that. I want to go back.

You said, but hey, no one wants to be that guy watching the Disney movie saying, hey, you know, that's the lie of the enemy. Let's pause it, kids.

You know, like, hey, that's trying to twist your brain. You're right. Right. Like, oh, good.

We're just trying to watch the movie. You know, it's just, hey, let me just watch The Lion King. Let me just watch it. But I mean, do you really want to stop the movie 20 times in order to do that?

No one's going to watch a movie with you anymore. And so it's just like, well, just let the kids watch it. Right. Well, then. Yeah. Then they grow up and don't know.

Like then they grow up and they feel like this deep emotional, like experience when, you know,

Elsa finally comes out of her closet. You know, it's just like, oh, man, that's my life. You know, I feel like maybe maybe maybe she's talking about me.

You know, it's just like be true to yourself, you know, be who you want to be. Maybe I don't feel like I'm a man, you know, like.

So anyways, go ahead. I wanted to go back. You know, you said you're talking about how the

Bible it has. God's given us the answers to all of these questions, all of these dilemmas that people face throughout life because of their own sin.

And so we know that God. You know, he doesn't he doesn't necessarily want us to be living in despair.

He doesn't want us to be controlled by things like alcohol or anger or whatever else you might go to a psychologist to help you deal with.

So and and I I would hope that you and I both would say the same thing.

Hey, when it comes to the person who's who is, you know, quote unquote depressed, when it comes to the person who is overcome with anxiety and worry and fear over everything, you know, kind of like how you're describing

Jordan Peterson. We would want to say, hey, you know,

I don't want to excuse you from your sin. But then I also don't want you to have to, you know, try and deal with this on your own.

So what would you say to that person? Where would you send that person? If we're not if we're not going to send them to a psychologist, where would we send that kind of person to?

Yeah, the whole point of the biblical counseling movement was to say that the fact that the average regular

Christian has all the answers that they need in the Bible in order to handle the basic issues of life.

And so the heartbeat of the biblical counseling movement has been from the very beginning that that that your standard everyday

Christian is competent to counsel. It's not just something for the experts. It's your standard everyday

Christian is much more has much more wisdom than the Ph .D.

in psychology on how to handle people in the Bible. And I mean, to most people, that just sounds absurd.

But I mean, it's just absolutely true. It's absolutely true because,

I mean, you have a different starting point. So, I mean, the starting point of the standard individual Christian is to say

I'm a sinner, right? And so, like, if you just take a standard individual

Christian who says, hey, my starting point is I'm a sinner, but God's a great Savior. And he's come in order to not only save me from heaven, but to fundamentally clean up my life.

Right? So you just believe that that's Christianity 101. That's basic, right? Holy Spirit comes to live inside of me, and I'm going to be conformed into the image of Christ.

And God started good work in me, and he's going to be faithful to complete it until the last day and everything else.

And, you know, where you have progressive sanctification, I get saved at a point in time. And then, you know, as I grow in the

Christian life, I'm going to constantly be put into death's end. And by his grace and through his help and by the power of his

Spirit, I'm going to be made more and more like him until the final day when I die. And then I'm going to be completely like him. Standard Christian who knows that, think about this.

Like, you just read the Bible. Just read the Bible. What are you going to find when you look at anger?

Right? Wrath of man doesn't produce the righteousness that God requires. Right? Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you along with all malice.

What are you going to see? You're going to see, like, examples even in the Old Testament. You know, curse it be their anger because it is fierce.

Right? Like, I mean, you're going to read, you're going to see that, hey, you know, Satan, he's filled with anger and murder.

And the Sermon on the Mount tells me that, hey, like, if I anger my heart against my brother, then

I'm a murderer. Right? And so what is that Christian going to do? He's going to say, hey, well, I think I probably need to repent of this.

Right? I need to repent of this anger. It's wrong. It's sinful. It's not helping me.

It's not helping my relationship. It's destroying my relationships. And whose fault is it? Right? The good man out of the good treasure of a good heart brings forth good.

The evil man out of the evil treasure of an evil heart brings forth evil. It's my fault. Right? Out of the heart the mouth speaks. Like, what's happening is me.

So this anger is my fault. So, like, a standard person reading their Bible, I mean, you could think of, you know, your standard person who never went to college and voted for Trump.

Right? Just the worst possible person imaginable. Right? Blue collar worker, voted for Trump, everything else.

Like, but then they read their Bible and, you know, they don't have some sort of PhD in psychology. And they say, hey, you know what?

I need to actually repent of my anger. And you know what a PhD in psychology is going to do? He's going to come up with some sort of label.

You have intermittent dispositive disorder. Oh, you know what? You alternate between periods of anger and then depression.

Well, you must be bipolar. And so, like, who's going to be the better counselor? That sincere person who read their

Bible and says, I need to turn from anger. And then they experience genuine life transformation because they sincerely, with a humble heart, say to God, God, this anger is my fault.

And I need you to help me with it. And I need to repent of it. And every time they blow up, they say, hey, Lord, will you please forgive me?

And then they go and they tell the other people around them, hey, will you please forgive me for blowing up on you? That person is going to have, like, a thousand times more beneficial counsel to give to a person, a

Christian who's struggling with anger than any psychologist ever will. So essentially, you know, if you're the person struggling with this stuff, you need to – there's two places you need to turn.

The first one would be scripture, right? And then the second one would be your friend who's a

Christian who also turns to scripture, right? Yeah, so the Bible says iron sharpens iron. And so one of the things that we're supposed to do is admonish one another, correct one another, exhort one another, rebuke one another.

God has given the church pastors and teachers to equip the saints for the work of ministry. One of the things that, you know, pastors should be doing is we should be the primary people who are counseling.

But then not only that, I mean, we should be teaching – we should be equipping other people to counsel other people and help them to deal with these basic problems of life.

I mean, the Bible talks about anger all the time. It talks about despair all the time. It talks about sadness all the time. It talks about guilt all the time.

It talks about all these things. It talks about body image. It talks about self -worth, all this stuff that we think the

Bible has the answers to, and they're not complicated answers, okay? And so – but yes,

I mean, like I – you know, my hope would be that, you know, a church would think to themself, just in simple childlike faith, we have everything we need in the

Bible. You know, I can go to the Bible myself. I don't have to have someone else go. But then if I'm in something that seemed messy and everything else, you know, there's wisdom.

The Bible says there's wisdom in abundance of counselors, right? And so, you know,

I would want people to definitely be – I would want people to definitely be – sorry, my phone is ringing.

I'd want people to definitely be looking to others in the church to help them with problems that they seem to not be able to do.

But there's that. So you're saying that essentially every

Christian is completely – well, every Christian who reads their

Bible regularly is equipped to be able to handle these sorts of situations and be able to encourage their friends and their peers who are facing, you know, stuff like overwhelming anxiety, you know, addiction to alcohol or drugs or whatever it is.

But then earlier in the episode, you also talked about different Christian colleges who are opening up biblical counseling programs as a means to sort of,

I guess, fight back against the psychology movement. So what exactly is the benefit of trying to go to one of these schools and getting an education as opposed to just, you know, at your average everyday normal genuine

Christian who does try to read their Bible and understand what Scripture says? What's the difference?

Yeah, let me clarify. I'm not saying every individual Christian is equipped to deal with every problem.

What I am saying is there's nothing to stop them from being. Okay. Here's the thing.

I mean it's just like you take a guy who with sincere faith reads the Bible from cover to cover.

Like let's say you take your standard blue -collar worker, Trump supporter, you know, take that guy, right?

And you say that he, like, reads his Bible ten times a year, right?

Well, I'm saying that guy is going to be much better equipped than the psychologist is, okay?

The problem is that your standard, you know, Christian is not reading their Bible hardly any, right?

Right. So your standard blue -collar Christian or your standard any kind of Christian, like they're not reading their

Bible hardly ever, and on any professing Christian ever.

I mean we're filled with like America's filled with nominal Christians, like particularly in the South and Bible Belt, and so we're not reading the

Bible and so we don't have anything to say because we don't know this book like we should, okay?

But then it's not like a mysterious book. I mean it's not hard. I mean

God's not – there's obviously like, you know, people who have various degrees of intelligence and everything else, and the

Bible says few should become teachers because they'll receive stricter judgment. But then the Bible does say to the standard everyday

Christian, admonish one another, correct one another, exhort one another, rebuke one another, make disciples, right? So while everyone might not be a formal teacher, everyone, if you just, you know, humble yourself before the mighty hand of God, go to the

Scriptures, actually learn them. And, you know, the easiest way to learn the Bible is to read it. Just read it over and over and over again.

You don't have to do all this complicated stuff. Just read the thing. Like the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two -edged sword, pierced between the divisions between soul and marrow, joints and everything else.

It is able to discern the thoughts and intentions of the heart, right? So like here's the thing, like you just read through the

Bible. The Bible will give you wisdom greater than your adversaries. Like if you just read it, you know, you don't have to do all this complicated stuff.

So I think – but then, you know, why is it helpful to have like pastors?

Well, I mean, I think having, you know, part of the way that like you can just go to the

Bible and God has a lot to help you, but then he has made the body in such a way that, you know, there should be some teachers, right?

Like there is a purpose of a pastor, and the purpose of a pastor is to equip the saints for the work of ministry. And so, you know, and part of like what these counseling schools are trying to do is to help people to demystify what's actually happening with psychology and open people's eyes up and prepare them to, you know, fight that fight, you know, and then to teach lay people that, hey, you don't have to be intimidated by – you don't have to be intimidated by these people with all these degrees behind their name.

I mean, you can just read the Bible, think the way the Bible wants you to think, think about the world the way the

Bible wants you to think. If you do that, you know, your impulse at every single point is not going to, you know, put some label on someone, some psychological label that removes their personal responsibility.

What you're going to do is you're going to think about the world in the categories that the Bible gives you, you know.

You're going to realize, hey, anger is a sin, right? Laziness is a sin. Sloth is a sin. A man doesn't provide for his own household.

He's abandoned the faith. He's a worse nonbeliever, you know. You're going to think the way the Bible wants you to think, and you're going to know what to do. Does that make sense?

Yeah. Now, you actually, yourself, you went to school for biblical counseling, right?

Right. Where did you go? Yeah, I went to the Master's University in Santa Corita, California, and then

I went to Southern Baptist Theological Seminary after that because I realized that, you know, along the way, kind of what happened is

I, you know, most people go into counseling because they're messed up, and that's kind of a running joke, but that was true for me.

I mean, I was in my early 20s. I didn't have any, you know, hope in life. I was severely depressed and didn't know what

I wanted to do with my life, and, you know, just trying to follow my heart, and my heart was just, you know, messing me up, you know.

That Disney theology, man, it messed you up, huh? Yeah, I mean, it basically just, my heart was filled with all sorts of wickedness and everything else, but then that left me guilty with no real answer.

But then, you know, when I became a Christian, I started, you know, just, I looked around, and, you know,

I had read all the psychological literature before, you know, and I saw that it just didn't have any answers and that it's just turning people into drug addicts.

And what was, like, really, for me, formative was

I just, I thought to myself, I mean, it's just like, hey, like, we have this book here that God wrote us, and it's a very big book, and, like, no one is going to persuade me that this doesn't have the answers to my problems, right?

So I've looked to answers everywhere else, and they've left me bankrupt and empty. I don't have anything, you know?

I don't have any answers here. But then it's just like I went to the Bible and I said, God, you know, you created the world, you exist, you're real, right?

You exist, you made the world, and you gave us a book in order for us to know how to live and to know how to honor you.

And so I'm just going to believe that you have given me what I need here in order to know how to deal with all these things that, like, no one has any answers for.

And as I read the Bible, one of the things I found is I found answers to everything. I mean, it has given a worldview to tell me how to understand my life and what was going on and how to deal with things.

And then I, you know, I thought to myself, man, I just want to go to school in order to learn how to, well, first to make sure

I'm not crazy, right? I guess you can kind of feel crazy if you're like the only one saying things like that.

It's like, well, I mean, there's all sorts of, I was exposed to like a whole school full of people who were all saying the same, or, you know, professors at different places that were all had the same convictions.

And so, but that's kind of why I went. And then along the way, it's just like, I thought, well, like the churches handed this job over to the psychologists and really this job of pastors to be doing it.

So that led me into wanting to get MDiv and be a pastor at some point. I thought, hey, the Bible has answers, let's give them to people.

So would you, maybe I'm putting you in a tricky situation asking this next question, but I'm sure there might be people who are listening to this episode and saying to themselves, hey, maybe this sounds like something that I want to do myself.

Maybe some of what you are, what you're saying about your own testimony kind of resonates with them.

And so would you recommend the places that you went to school? I mean, obviously when you go to school, you're spending a lot of time there.

You're getting to see a lot of the professors and what they teach and their methodology for conveying information.

So would you recommend those schools as a good starting place for someone who's saying to themselves,

I want to pursue the same thing. I want to pursue biblical counseling. I want to pursue being a pastor.

I would definitely recommend Masters University, beyond that. SBC is a mess right now, man.

They're lost in wokeness and everything. I wouldn't go there. So Masters is good.

Masters is good. Hey, but look, ACBC has a lot of good resources. What is that?

What is that? ACBC, just Association of Certified Biblical Counselors. Okay. And then, yeah, there's a lot of good stuff there as well.

And so just look into New Thetic Counseling. There's a lot of free stuff.

Okay. Free stuff out there too. You don't necessarily have to go to a Bible college or seminary. I would just read your

Bible a lot is what I would tell people. You want to help people read your Bible? There's no shortage. You can go to school, and you're not going to help anyone if you don't know what the

Bible says. Even going to a good school is not going to teach you the Bible. You're going to have to put in the time and work and make it a priority.

So if you want to help someone with the Bible, you have to know the Bible. 95 % of knowing the

Bible is reading it. Just read it a lot. Find a good church. But you only know how to find a good church if you read it a lot.

So don't skip that step. Well, I guess the last question I'll ask you is, first, how long have you been a pastor?

How long have you been doing Biblical counseling for? Yeah, I've been doing Biblical counseling one shape or form since 2006 or so.

Okay, 15 years roughly. 15 -ish years, yeah. I've been a pastor for roughly seven or eight years or something like that.

So maybe you could just kind of finish off by telling us an example of a time where...

I feel like a lot of people, when they hear the description of Biblical counseling, the fact that essentially what you're doing is you're telling someone, hey, look, you're the reason that you're having these issues.

So the reason you're depressed is because you're not thankful and the reason you're overwhelmed with anxiety is because you're not putting your trust in the things

God's promised or whatever it is. Obviously, there's gonna be a lot of people who hear that and they say, well, that's not gonna be helpful.

How are you helping a person by telling them that it's their fault to begin with? So could you just kind of give us an example of a time where, or maybe describe a situation, obviously leaving out the name of the person, where you met with them, you counseled them the same way you would counsel anyone and then

God really worked in that and really kind of delivered that person out of whatever scenario they were facing or whatever issue it was that they were having to deal with?

Yeah, well, I can give a scenario, but then I do wanna clarify.

Biblical counseling is not essentially saying every problem that you're experiencing is your fault.

Okay. So there is sin and there is suffering, right? Okay. So, I mean, for instance,

I mean, if your wife and your husband is beating you every day, you can't just, in a simplistic way, say, well, you deserved it, right?

Right, right. Because you're such a wretch. So, look, I mean, there's sin and there's suffering. I mean, and the opposite thing is true too.

I mean, if you're married to a contentious woman, I mean, you can't just, you know, as much as virtually, you know, responsibility goes one way.

I mean, if you're married to a contentious woman, it's not as if it's true that that is all, that any kind of suffering that comes from that is always in a simplistic way all your fault.

You may be contributing. I mean, both people, both people might be contributing to that in different ways because sin doesn't typically happen in a vacuum.

But, you know, there are like, you know, there is genuine suffering that happens from the poor choices of other people.

You know, if your brother, you know, like ran out on you and left, you know, at an early age,

I mean, you can't say, hey, that's all my fault and just, you know, you're a sinner and what do you deserve, you know, or whatever else.

And so biblical counseling is helping people deal with sin and with suffering.

Now there's righteous ways to suffer and there's sinful ways to suffer too. You know, so there's that.

So I just wouldn't want to reduce it to just, hey, it's all your fault, repent, you know? But I mean, in a lot of cases, it's like, hey, if you're angry, if you're angry, you know, step one, like, is it righteous or sinful?

Step two is like, if it's sinful, it's like, hey, you know, you need to, you got to own it. You know, no one's making you angry, you know?

So there's that, but. I don't know. I mean, I could give examples of other people, but I mean,

I could just give examples for myself and my life didn't change until I stopped blaming everything on everyone else in my life, you know?

So, I mean, being in early college, I mean, I'm like, look, I mean, no one has perfect, like, relationships in their life.

You know, everyone is tempted to say, hey, you know, if, like, my parents were better parents, then, you know, my life would be easier and, you know, everything else.

Or, you know, if we had more money, you know? So, I mean, there's any number. Like, if we had more money, we'd have more opportunities.

And I mean, this is all the social justice stuff that people are caught up in. It's just like, there's social inequalities in the world. Therefore, you know,

I was dealt a short hand and everything else, and the system's trying to keep me back. And I mean, everyone can say that.

Like, at a certain level, you could just say, hey, you know, my parents weren't perfect. Hey, you know, we didn't have perfect socioeconomic opportunities.

You know, we didn't have opportunities that the rich kids had growing up and everything else, right? And so,

I mean, just my own personal testimony was, like, I mean, I'm looking at my life, and it wasn't, my life didn't really start to change until I realized that, you know what?

Like, there's plenty of things I could complain about. But here's, like, for me, for so many years, like,

I just looked around and I said, hey, I don't know what it means to be a Christian. I don't see anyone who's really willing to do what the

Bible says, no matter what it costs. So therefore, I'm not going to go to church, and I'm going to give up.

I'm going to quit, right? But my life didn't change until I had, I just looked in the mirror and said, hey, you know what?

The only person you can trust is yourself. And, like, that's it. And apart from God's grace, you can't even do that, right?

Right. So you need God's help. You need Him to help you change. And I mean, I think for me, just looking at my own life and just saying, change didn't happen in my life until I quit blaming all my problems on my past.

I quit blaming my problems on my circumstances. I quit blaming all my problems on my situations. I quit blaming my problems on, you know, other people.

And just looked in the mirror and said, hey, you know what? Like, all I can do is be faithful to God and do what He says.

And, you know, that just little thing, little change right there that says,

Lord, you know, I, forgive me. I'm a sinner. I need your help. And I trust you that you can fix me.

That totally, you know, set me on a different path completely. You know, I mean, I can, you know,

I can tell you stories of, you know, I mean, I can tell you stories of people who, you know, blamed all their problems on, like, the food that they're eating, you know, and food became an idol to them and just trying to help them to see that, hey, you know what?

Like, your view of yourself is wrong and your view of food is wrong.

And you have to, you know, take responsibility for these things. Or just, you know, people living in sin and calling them to repentance.

I mean, you know, most of the time people get mad, but then sometimes they actually repent and turn from it.

And you see, like, dramatic changes in their life, but it doesn't happen apart from, you know, God's grace and God moving and everything else.

But anyways, you know, I guess there's plenty of stories like that.

Yeah. Yeah, that reminds me. Quick side note. Hopefully it's quick.

It reminds me, I've told you this story before, but, you know, when my wife was pregnant, it was a really hard pregnancy on her and she was really having a hard time eating pretty much anything and being able to, you know, drink enough water and eat enough food.

And so she was constantly, basically bedridden the whole time. I mean, she just didn't have any energy to do anything because she wasn't eating, she wasn't drinking and being able to hold it down.

And so right at this time too, everyone else, all of my friends and the people at our church, they were all in this going into new stages of life where a lot of them are getting married.

A lot of them are buying houses. And so they're talking about the plans for weddings. They're talking about the plans for purchasing homes and looking at, you know, appliances that they're gonna buy and everything else.

And so I would be sitting with everyone, listening to all their conversations, and then

I would feel profoundly sad because I was looking at everyone around me.

They're having all these really happy conversations about the new stages of life that they were all about to step into.

And then I looked at my own life and, you know, we had a baby on the way, but then

I was, you know, basically, it was a lot, a very difficult situation to try and go through.

And oftentimes, you know, I would have to go out in public and I'm by myself right now because my wife just couldn't even get up really.

And everyone else, you know, obviously they're having all these happy conversations. And so I found myself being profoundly sad for a long time, for a few weeks really.

And then eventually, we're all sitting around and I was listening to everyone talking and I was letting myself give in to the temptation to be really, you know, upset essentially because everyone else was having all these happy conversations and I wasn't getting to have any happy conversations.

And I kind of realized that in the middle of feeling sad for myself, and I thought to myself, what in the world am

I doing right now? What's happening? What's going on? Why am I letting myself feel sad?

I have so many reasons to be happy and thankful right now. All my friends are getting married and God says that marriage is a good thing.

And, you know, everyone's moving into homes that are closer to me so that I can see them more often and be in their lives more.

And God's been blessing them with homes and I'm sitting here with, you know, the gall to say that, you know what, in the midst of all this blessing,

I'm going to be upset and I'm going to be sad for myself. And once I kind of realized that, it really changed number one,

I think my outlook on everything, but then number two, I instantly became happier.

You know, when I was thinking about all of the ways that I should really be thankful, all the things that I should be thankful for,

I instantly became happier and the sadness that I was feeling pretty much went away entirely.

Now, you know, it was still difficult getting through the pregnancy.

I'm not saying it wasn't hard at any point, but then it was easier from that perspective, from the sadness perspective.

I found myself with so much more joy, so much more thankfulness and really what it took was just realizing, hey,

I'm the reason that I'm so upset right now. It's not anything anyone else is doing.

It's not my friends. It's not my friends having all these great things happening to them.

It's me being unthankful and ungrateful. Proverbs 14 .30

says, A tranquil heart gives life to the flesh, but envy makes the bones rot. Right, and that's what

I was doing. Here's the thing. If you sit on that for months and months and months and you sit on that and you sit on it, at a certain point someone says, hey, why do you feel down all the time?

Why do you feel miserable all the time? It's like, I don't know. You don't know because you're so far deep into it.

Right. You've been running down that track for so long.

There's no answers at that point, right? But I mean, it's funny. A tranquil heart gives life to the flesh, but envy makes the bones rot.

People who are depressed, they're full of envy. They're full of envy routinely. I'm not saying that that's the only cause of depression, but I'm just saying that as a generalization, the people who

I've met who are reduced to just a non -functional depression, there's generally, in a lot of cases, a long line of envy that has gone unrepentant.

You give them that label. You say, hey, it's depression. They're not dealing with the actual thing that can help them, and that's the problem.

That's why this is an important issue. It's not just like people think, oh man, you're just beating up on everyone.

It's just like, hey, you're just being mean to the poor depressed person who's laying there on the ground. It's like, you know what? Here's the thing.

You can become a drug addict and take tranquilizers and lay there, but there's no hope for you.

You're going to have to take those drugs for the rest of your life, and then you're going to become chemically dependent on them, and there's no answers for you there.

But if you say, hey, this is a spiritual problem. I need to fight with spiritual weapons.

The Bible says the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty in God for cast down strongholds and arguments and every lofty opinion that's raised against the knowledge of God.

God's weapons work. It's the easiest thing in the world. It's the easiest thing in the world for a

Christian to say, hey, I'm a sinner, and Jesus died for not just this sin, but for every single one of them that I'm ever going to commit.

The easiest thing to do is to humble yourself before the mighty hand of God and just to say, hey, I have sinned.

If you know that Jesus died on the cross to forgive you of all of it and that there's an answer to that, but there's no answers in psychology.

It's just like once a depressed person, always a depressed person. That's what you're going to be, and there's no hope for you, and it's just medication because you have some sort of brain problem.

It's like, what a hopeless mess that is. I'm going to be a drug addict for the rest of my life, and that's why it's an important thing.

It's just like, hey, you're not beating up on people. You're saying, hey, there's a path to this, but it's a path that requires humility that's only

God given, right? It's a path that requires repentance, and that's the very thing that you don't want, but that's the very thing that will give life to your flesh, right?

Yeah, I mean, I think it goes without saying, but there is genuinely, there's true deliverance from all of these things.

I mean, we don't have to suffer from all these things if we would just look to Scripture, see what it says, believe that all of it is true, and then actively pursue it, obviously with the help of the

Spirit, but discipline ourselves to be able to pursue these things, and it's crazy, really, how

God will bless that and how He often delivers us from these types of issues when we pursue

Him and we look to Him as our only hope. Well, and once you see, I mean,

I think it's once you see, hey, like for many people, once they see, like for the first time, like the

Bible delivering them from some specific problem that some sort of stronghold in their life, that's what it takes for them, for their eyes to be open, like for this conversation to make sense, but then if, you know, functionally, you know, you're just some nominal

Christian who never reads your Bible and you've never seen God deliver you from anything, right? Then you look at this and you just think, oh man, that's just nuts and you guys are crazy and you don't know what you're talking about.

It's like, but no, like once you see like what you're talking about, hey man, I could have went down, spiraled down a pit into just like hopeless, crippling despair, but like the

Bible fixed it, you know? It's like, oh man, like that gives you a whole new meaning in life.

And I mean, there's like, you know, my life hasn't been easy for the past 15 years. It's been remarkably difficult in certain ways.

But, you know, whatever has made me stable has been just the knowledge of whatever

God says, like it has been a light, you know, to my path and, you know, a lamp to my feet and everything else.

It's just to say, hey, you know, like God's word has answers to this and, you know, they're not hard to find, you know, so.

Yeah. Well, I think that's a good place to end on, really.

So this has been another episode of Bible Bash. We hope you've been encouraged and blessed through our discussion.

Now go boldly and obey the truth in a midst of a biblically illiterate world who will be perpetually offended by your every move.