December 2, 2022 Show with A. M. Brewster on “Why Christians Don’t Need Therapy”

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Introducing A. M. Brewster and the Theme of Therapy

And I'm thrilled to have back on the program a returning guest that you're going to be hearing a lot more often in the weeks and months to come on this program. His name is A .M. Brewster, and he's president of Evermind Ministries, a biblical counselor, author, podcaster, and conference speaker.

Today we're going to be addressing why Christians don't need therapy, and it's my honor and It's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, A .M. Brewster.

It's my honor and privilege to be back talking about a really super, like, huge and controversial.

Subject. Yeah, well, before we do that, for the sake of our listeners who have not yet heard you on the program, they missed our previous interviews, tell us about Evermind Ministries.

Yeah, I'd love to. So Evermind Ministries was started in the early 2000s, basically to keep God's truth at the center of the human experience. Yeah, it's really easy on Sundays, anytime that we go to church or we have our Bibles open, obviously to be focused on the things of God.

But then, you know, oftentimes we walk away and we forget what manner of men we are, and we become practical atheists, just kind of living life without any thought to what we just encountered in his word.

So Evermind Ministries wants to keep God's truth ever before our eyes, regardless of what situation we're in. So Truth, Love, Parent or Truth, Love, Family is part of Evermind Ministries, and that obviously keeps God's truth open and in front of our eyes in the everyday life that we encounter in our homes with our families.

We have the Celebration of God, which is designed to help us understand our call to be worshiping God and to be growing in our discipleship every moment of every day, and to be doing better this year than we did the previous year.

And Faith Tree, Biblical Counseling and Discipleship is also part of Evermind Ministries, and it's obviously focused on helping people in two different situations. One, helping people in crisis counseling situations, as well as helping people who aren't necessarily in a crisis at the moment, but recognize that they need to be continually growing and taking those next spiritual steps in their discipleship.

And then A .M. Brewster or A .M. Brewster Ministries is where I go, and I travel, and I speak, and I teach.

And I know your two websites are TruthLoveParent .com and also A .M .Brewster .com. That's A .M. as in MichaelBrewster .com, although I don't know if your middle name is Michael. What is your middle name?

You nailed it.

You got it, Aaron.

Michael Brewster. Well done.

Great.

Well, we are discussing, as you already mentioned, a controversial theme, why Christians don't need therapy. Now, there may be a lot of startled people in our audience who wrongly equate therapy and counseling as the same thing, because especially after hearing in your introduction that you are a biblical counselor, people may be thinking, what on earth is he talking about?

He is a biblical counselor as a part of his vocation. Why would he be opposed to therapy? So what is the difference?

Biblical Counseling, Secular Therapy, and Christian Counseling

That is a fantastic and necessary starting place. Before, though, I'm going to preface, this obviously is a topic that is huge and too big, too controversial to really unpack in two hours. And so I want your listeners to know that if they go to TruthLoveParent .com forward slash iron, I have carefully curated a ton of scholarly and yet easily accessible materials on this particular topic.

Most of these materials actually are from the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors, a group which I am part of, and also I pulled from the Institute of Biblical Counseling and Discipleship. So I hope that if anything sparks your interest, if we don't answer your question, if you're left with more questions and seeking more information on this subject, I hope you'll go to TruthLoveParent .com forward slash iron to get some more clarity.

Lord willing, though, we will be able to answer a lot of those questions today. And to your question just now, Chris, there's this movement for the past few years, a lot of evangelicals will have even t-shirts I've seen, Jesus plus therapy.

That's what they say, Jesus plus therapy. And this is them saying that in the same way that you need Jesus and a mechanic if you're having car troubles, and the same way that you need Jesus and a surgeon if you're having heart troubles, it's completely appropriate to say that we need Jesus and secular therapy.

A secular therapy being basically identified as the methodologies and the systems that come from the world in the realms of psychology and psychiatry, and a lot of people say that that's completely appropriate because in their minds, secular psychiatry is on the exact same level as an unsaved doctor.

You go to an unsaved doctor, wouldn't you, to have a bone set? Or if you're sick, then what's wrong with going to an unsaved psychiatrist for therapy? Now, we like to make a distinction in the biblical counseling world.

There's the secular psychology, and there's lots of different terms for that, including therapy. They also use terms like counseling and things like that. But there's also, on the other extreme, there's biblical counseling, and then in the middle, and of course, this is a continuum, but in the middle, there's Christian counseling.

Christian counseling is oftentimes referred to by themselves and by people in the biblical counseling movement as being integrationists because they take secular theologies and they mix it with the truths from God's word, and they present them oftentimes on equal footing in the same way that a person would say, hey, you have a headache, take this ibuprofen, and then, you know, and remember that Timothy also, you know, took care of his stomach with wine, right?

They kind of just put those two together. Oftentimes, integrationists, though, do lean a lot more heavily on the secular approaches and using less scripture, whereas the biblical counselor, which is the group that I fall into, we believe what Peter tells us that God has given us everything we need for life and godliness in the knowledge of Jesus Christ that we find through his word, and that the scriptures are sufficient to help us in every area where the Bible says it's sufficient to help us.

And actually, that statement right there, the Bible's sufficient to help us in every area where it says and claims it's sufficient to help us, actually ends up being the linchpin for the Jesus plus therapy crowd versus the no Jesus and only Jesus crowd.

Now, how do you respond to those Christians who defend even those who have therapy sessions, quote, quote, with secular psychologists and psychiatrists who say, well, my psychologist or psychiatrist addresses universal truths that are just basically things that they have come to believe through having these sessions with multitudes of people, and they see common trends among them, and they see how things have worked and how things have failed.

And there are things that are universally true. And of course, they will very often bring up the saying, all truth is God's truth. And because even we who believe in Sola Scriptura do not believe that everything that is true is recorded in the Bible.

We believe everything in the Bible, everything recorded in the Bible is true, but we don't believe that all truth is contained within the pages of Scripture. So they will bring those things up, and they will even bring up anecdotal evidence that these sessions, these therapy sessions work because they'll say, save my marriage, prevented me from committing suicide, got me out of drug and alcohol addiction, and we could go on and on and on.

How do you respond to those people?

Biological Versus Spiritual: The Core Distinction

Yeah, that's a really important question to ask. And I have four main points that I'd like to discuss with people when we have the opportunity to have a conversation. And it's a question of versus. There's a contention going on.

The first one is biological versus spiritual. The second one is worldly versus divine. Third one is partial versus complete. And the fourth one is variable versus consistent. And I would say that that particular question, the answer falls under the partial versus complete understanding of what we're dealing with here.

Let's use the old adage, I guess, of getting back on the horse. My kids have taken horseback riding lessons, and praise God, none of them have been thrown. But we have talked about, you know, in the event that they're thrown from a horse and, you know, they're physically well, like, you know, they don't have a broken leg or it's going to be really important for them and for the horse for them to get back on that horse, right?

That's not something you see in the scriptures, but it is a truism, you know, that experience and so on and so forth has taught us. And I agree. I think that psychologists and psychiatrists actually have one really great thing going for them.

They're fantastic observers. They do pay close attention. They do see trends. They see things that people tend to do and how they tend to respond to things. But though they're awesome observers, they aren't great prescribers.

And they're not great prescribers because they're missing a significant portion of what the issue is. Psychology, the word, if you break it down, in its original etymology, it's basically the study of the soul.

Unfortunately, secular psychiatrists don't believe in the soul. They see man as a completely biological being, and this goes back to the biological versus spiritual. They see us being a completely biological being.

And so any advice that they're going to give us is going to stop short of addressing what the Bible calls the spiritual needs that we have. And so can a Christian get thrown from a horse and say, if I don't get back on right now, I may be afraid of horses for the rest of my life.

This horse may not respect me, so on and so forth. Can they say that? And can they get back on? And can they, you know, can the horse learn and can the person learn and it work out well for them?

Yes.

But the question we have to ask as Christians is, is God inherently glorified by that situation? And I think that we Christians like to assume the fact that, of course, God is inherently glorified by the good things that I do.

But is that true? Unsafe people get thrown off the horses and get back on and calm their fears and so on and so forth all the time, but is God inherently glorified by that? No, Romans chapter 8 tells us he's not.

It's impossible to please God when we're in the flesh. So, if I'm living my life the way an unsafe person would live their lives, if I'm being pragmatic the way they would be pragmatic, what makes me think that God's going to be glorified by what I'm doing?

The reality is that the scripture reveals to us that doing the right thing isn't good enough. Doing the right thing in the right way also isn't good enough. There are people who will have done many good things in many of the right ways who will still end up in hell or who aren't glorifying God.

Now, people stop and they go, how is that even possible? The example I like to use is this. If I were romantically interested, if there was somebody who was romantically interested in you and you found out later that they just loved being with you and they went on all these dates and they got you presents and they treated you all the ways they wanted to treat you, but they had ulterior motives for doing so.

They wanted your money or their parents told them they had to date you or tons of other terrible motivations. It really wouldn't matter. Everything that they did and the ways that they didn't wouldn't matter because they're using you.

Well, God's the exact same way. Too often we Christians want to use God. The reality is the scriptures tell us that true obedience is only going to be done when we're doing the right thing in the right way for the right reasons.

The scripture said that we're to please God, obey God, glorify God. That says anything that we do that's not done in faith is sin. So, if I just get back on that horse, pragmatically rein that horse in to make it submit to my will or to overcome my fear, but God is not part of the equation, I'm going to argue that more often than not, I'm not really pleasing the Lord in that moment because it's really just all about me.

And I think that's where the secular psychologists really, the ones who have come through common grace and they've found that truth that it truly is truth, they're not going to understand it completely.

They're going to miss the most important part. They're not going to give Christ the preeminence in whatever it is. They're just going to focus on the pragmatism of how this truth can work for you and it ends up becoming man-focused.

And by the way, I'm sure this is a no-brainer to most of the people listening, but my guest is obviously not opposing physical therapy. If you break a leg skiing or you're in a car accident or whatever the case may be and you need to go to the hospital and re-learn how to walk or even speak if you've had a stroke, those things are legitimate forms of therapy, but we're not talking about that.

And I know that there are even some extreme Pentecostals that still exist that would even tell people not to seek that kind of therapy and it would be an evidence of a weak or absent faith, but we're not addressing that at all, obviously.

Am I not correct, Aaron?

Oh, you are definitely correct. And honestly, the biological versus spiritual is the biggest point that I think. When we wrap our brains around it, it answers so many questions. Can I dive into that? Do we have the opportunity for that?

Oh, yeah.

We have, before we go to the break, about 14 minutes.

Perfect. So we have to step back as Christians. We need to have a biblical anthropology. Anthropology is the study of man. If you study anthropology and systematic theologies and whatever else, lots of different parts to this, but to simplify it for our discussion today, there are basically two parts to man.

Now, that statement right there can be controversial for those who are trichotomists, who believe that man is made of a body, spirit, and soul. I am a dichotomist myself, believe that the scriptures teach that man is two parts.

We have a physical body, we could call it a biological body, and we also have a spirit. Genesis 2 -7 says,. And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground. It's his body. Breathe into his nostrils the breath of life.

That is his spirit. And man became a living being, and man became a soul. The soul, I do believe, is an entity unique from the spirit and the body, but it is not a third entity. When you take a body and you put it together with a spirit, you get a soul.

And when those two are separated, we are no longer souls. Our bodies are dead. We are spirits until we receive our new bodies. So, regardless of whether you hold to the trichotomist position or the dichotomist position, the reality is there is a material part of man and there is an immaterial part of man, and we know that to be true.

And from a biological standpoint, man does suffer legitimate physical issues, okay? I just want to acknowledge it, as you did right here, that real biological issues exist that have real biological pathology.

Pathology deals with cause and effect. Genuinely biological issues will have genuine biological pathologies. I had to do physical therapy when I broke my left humerus. I had to do physical therapy when my ACL exploded from my knee, okay?

We see this in scripture, 1 Timothy 5 .23. Paul didn't tell Timothy to pray more, necessarily. He may have said that in addition, but he says, No longer drink water exclusively, but use a little wine for the sake of your stomach and your frequent ailments.

I don't know how good Paul was in medicine, and I don't know if his advice helped Timothy, but what we do know is that Paul recognized, Hey, there's something wrong with your stomach. You've got something wrong with your issues, and drinking unpurified water is not helping you.

Drink the wine as well. It was a biological issue with a biological pathology, and so therefore a biological remedy was necessary. And that's true. Of all biological pathologies, they do require biological remedies.

And the Bible has a lot to say about how we're to eat and take care of our bodies. So again, please understand that I fully acknowledge the reality that biological problems can benefit from a biological treatment and oftentimes require biological treatment or therapy, whatever it may be.

Well, what about spiritual problems? Because we also are spirits. Man suffers spiritual, legitimate spiritual issues. We sin, we commit iniquities, we transgress. Now, sometimes there can be some confusion in this point.

For example, Paul often uses the word flesh to refer to our sin nature, and the word spirit to refer to our regenerated spirits. As I referenced Romans 8 before, we can't please the Lord if we're in the flesh, right?

He's not talking specifically there about the biological sin. That's a Gnostics got off on a tangent because of that, believing that all that was physical was sinful and the spiritual was perfect. That's what you see in the scriptures.

That's not what was being taught there. But the reality is, though, that we have spiritual issues in our, quote-unquote, flesh, in our sin nature, in our hearts. So we have these two separate entities, and yet there is a relationship between the two.

What's interesting is that the spiritual issues can affect the body. Now, I'm not going to suggest, obviously, that a person who's born blind or develops cancer did so because they sinned. We know from John 9, 2 -3, that that is not true.

Jesus patently put that to rest. I am suggesting that spiritual realities can influence our biological choices, which in turn affect our bodies. A lazy man turns on his bed like a door turns on its hinges, and there are legitimate physical consequences when that happens.

A self-indulgent man turns to food, sex, or substance abuse in his pursuit of satisfaction, and there are going to be legitimate physical consequences for that. So our spiritual side can influence our physical side.

And it's equally true that biological issues can affect the spirit. David spends much of the Psalms describing the spiritual turmoil he experienced as he underwent significant physical traumas. But here's the question.

Are influences the same as causes? This right here is the question all Christians need to answer. Whether or not biological issues cause problems in the spirit that only biological treatments can cure.

And that's the question I want all the listeners to answer for themselves right now. And maybe they say, I don't know, and that's a great place to be. But are there biological issues that cause problems in my spirit, that cause spiritual issues that can only be cured with biological therapy?

If biological issues cause spiritual issues, then it would make sense to treat the biological issue in order to resolve the spiritual issue. But if biological issues do not cause but merely influence our spirits, then the real cause of the spiritual issue needs to be identified and addressed.

And I'll just say right here that, biblically speaking, the Scriptures answer this question across the board with a resounding no. Biological issues do not cause spiritual issues. They may put stresses on us.

I sometimes describe it like a child on a playground. You send your child to a playground, they'll go and go and go and go and go, and they'll probably cry when you tell them it's time to leave. But you put a 30-pound backpack on your child and you send them to play on the playground.

That child is going to struggle. They might not want to play. They may want to go home early because it's hard. And that physical stress is difficult for that child. But the Bible is very clear that carrying that 30-pound backpack will never, ever cause your child to sin, to have a spiritual issue.

So there are some cautions. With everything we just said, there are some cautions as we're just discussing the biological versus spiritual that we need to recognize. First of all, we must never call something a sin if the Bible doesn't call it a sin.

It is not a sin to be physically sick. Now, my physical sickness may ever come about because I sinned, but it's not a sin to be sick. It's not always a sin to be sad. Okay? So we see that all throughout the Scripture.

On the other hand, we mustn't say that something isn't a sin if the Bible says it's a sin. What does the Bible say about anxiety and fear? What does the Bible say about self-worship, inappropriate grief, self-harm, denial of biblical sexual realities?

The Bible says that those things are sins. And for a professing Christian to step back and to contradict to God that, no, anxiety is not a sin, ooh, you have to be careful. Now, I'll say that anxiety is a very interesting one to bring up.

And I think a lot of our troubles in the church come from a superficial understanding of these realities. There are some very real biological reasons a person may feel anxious. I've had a couple of them in my life.

One in particular is a fungal infection called candida. Candida is a natural fungus in your body. And when there's too much of it, though, just like staph and so on and so forth, it can cause issues. And one of the issues is that you have a physiological response that feels like anxiety deep in your chest.

I've experienced that. I also experienced this coming through COVID. Man, people talked a lot about the COVID anxieties, those feelings that would be caused. But did I sin because I was experiencing that anxiety?

Sometimes yes, and sometimes no. Sometimes I allowed my mind to reject truth. And sometimes I fought that. And even though I was feeling that anxiety in my chest, I was still able to glorify God in my thinking.

But there is anxiety that comes solely from sinful thinking. It's not from anything biological. So to swing to either extreme, to say that anxiety is always spiritual, or to say that anxiety is always biological, is to be a fool.

We need to carefully look at the situation. We as biblical counselors are not medical doctors, and we strongly, strongly encourage all of our counselees.

Aaron, we have lost your audio. Are you still there, Aaron?

To go to the doctor, too much caffeine can cause anxiety. Go ahead.

Yeah, we lost your audio for a few seconds. I'm not sure if...

Oh, I'm sorry about that.

Maybe you could just repeat your last sentence to make sure our listeners got all of it.

Yeah, biblical counselors, we strongly encourage our counselees to make sure that they are physically healthy. Go to your doctors, make certain that you're getting the right amount of sleep, because lack of sleep, too much caffeine, fungal infections, there are so many things that can cause us to feel a certain level of what we would call anxiety.

But the reality of the situation is that sometimes our anxiety has no biological ties whatsoever. And so we really have to define our terms biblically. This is one of the things I come back to all the time with my counselees.

We use the word feel nowadays to mean everything from that I feel hot to I'm thinking something. I feel like that guy might not like me. No, you don't. You think he might not like you, or you believe he might not like you, or your opinion is that he might not like you.

You don't actually feel it. But we use this word feel in so many ways that we've detached any real definition from it. And we really need to, as much as possible, try to get back to basics when it comes to defining our terms.

For example, the term mental illness is self-contradictory. Before all the dictionaries went woke and started redefining all their terms for hundreds of years, the term illness always was understood to be a breakdown of physical tissues.

But the mind is something immaterial. You can have a brain illness. Your thinking can be disordered. But to suggest that there are biological cures for thinking that have no biological pathologies, that's speculative science at best.

But that's what the world has to do. When the world denies the fact that the spirit exists, everything has to be biological. They must find a biological reason for it.

By the way, you mentioned Candida earlier. I was wondering if I was in sin for listening to and enjoying Tony Orlando and Dawn singing Candida.

Oh, definitely. We're sick, and we need to see a doctor. You never even heard that, so I don't even know.

Oh, well, after the show's over, look it up on the video. That's right, on the YouTube. You are far younger than me, so it doesn't surprise me now that I think about it that you would not have recognized that song by Tony Orlando and Dawn.

I will definitely have to check that out now, because I'm wondering, is it a song about a place or a person? Was somebody named Candida, or was he singing about a fungus?

He definitely wasn't singing about a fungus. He was singing about a woman by that name.

There you go.

So I guess women, or should I say parents, should stop naming their daughters Candida. But actually, that's the only time I've ever heard of that as a name.

Nice.

We're going to go to our first station break, and if anybody wants to join us on the air with a question of your own, send it to chrisarnsen at gmail .com. C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com.

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But other than that, if you're asking basic, general questions, please give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence. Don't go away. We are going to be right back right after these messages from our sponsors.

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