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

Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father James Wilson, 19th century hymn writer

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Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

Proverbs chapter 27 verse 17 tells us iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

And now, here's your host, Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon,

Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet

Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is

Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Friday on the second day of December 2022.

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 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. 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 Michael Brewster .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? 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 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'd 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 that's 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 lynch pin 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 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, 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, saved 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? 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 in the event that they're thrown from a horse and they're physically well, like they don't have a broken leg or whatever, 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 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, is 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 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 of 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? Well, 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. It says that 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 relearn 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? You are definitely correct. 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 are to this, but to simplify it for our discussion today, there are 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. 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. 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. The Bible has a lot to say about how we're to eat, 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 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 biologicalist 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 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

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 doctors too. 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 like 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 it'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.

You're sick and you 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 or 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.

And 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. Isn't that so? That's awesome. 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 ChrisHarnsen at gmail .com,

C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com. As always, please give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence.

And obviously, if this is about an intimate, personal, private matter over which you are asking, and I could readily see any time we have a biblical counselor on the program that listeners may have personal areas or issues that they want to discuss and that are so personal that they don't want to identify themselves.

Well, that's completely understandable. In fact, if it's a very personal matter, we would prefer you remain anonymous because we don't want anyone in your family or your church to be identified by virtue of your question when it is an issue of problematic matters or so forth.

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.

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Going back to 2005, one of my very favorite guests on Iron Sharpens Iron is

Dr. Joe Moorcraft. If you've been blessed by Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Dr. Moorcraft and Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia are largely to thank since they are one of the program's largest financial supporters.

Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming is in Forsyth County, a part of the Atlanta metropolitan area.

Heritage is a thoroughly biblical church, unwaveringly committed to Westminster standards. And Dr.

Joe Moorcraft is the author of an eight -volume commentary on the larger catechism. Heritage is a member of the

Hanover Presbytery, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone, and tracing its roots and heritage back to the great

Protestant Reformation of the 16th century. Heritage maintains and follows the biblical truth and principles proclaimed by the reformers, scripture alone, grace alone, faith alone,

Christ alone, and God's glory alone. Their primary goal is the worship of the Triune God that continues in eternity.

For more details on Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia, visit heritagepresbyterianchurch .com,

that's heritagepresbyterianchurch .com, or call 678 -954 -7831.

That's 678 -954 -7831. If you visit, tell them

Joe Reilly, an Iron Sharpens Iron Radio listener, from a tie in County Kildare, Ireland, sent you.

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mention Iron Sharpens Iron Radio and we will get 100 % of the profits from your purchase of $100 or more we're now back with A .M.

Brewster we are discussing why Christians don't need therapy and we do have an anonymous listener and the anonymous listener says

I was wondering what your guest thinks about AA and NA I have witnessed people who have been delivered from alcohol and drug addiction but I am very concerned about the

AA philosophy especially in our modern day which tells people they can believe anything is their higher power which means their

God including other people, animals or inanimate objects they also tend to have a strain of vehement anti -Christian thinking amongst them in many of their meetings not all because I do know that there are some anonymous meetings run by Christians I was wondering what your guest thinks about these, should they be participated in or avoided?

Great question obviously it's a huge need out there I believe the best thing to do is this first of all let me agree with the anonymous guest, yes

AA is, kind of had quasi -Christian roots when it first started, some of those concepts, some of the steps are, do seem very biblical but then as your listener said it's also true that they have some very un -biblical concepts in there could a

Christian participate in AA chew and spit, spit out the bones and recognize the preeminence that God is supposed to have in their lives and get help to one degree or another from the steps and I would argue yeah that is possible the question is why would we want to do that if there's a better option there's a program called

Freedom That Lasts created by Dr. Jim Berg, a friend and mentor of mine, a professor of mine as well, and Freedom That Lasts is a fantastic addiction program that is firmly rooted in the revealed truth of God, you don't need

AA when you have something like Freedom That Lasts and so I would say, there has to be a really fantastically amazingly great wonderful reason that a person that a

Christian would turn somebody to AA or would participate in something like that themselves when there are far better options out there again you have to be able to appreciate the physiological addiction that is present, the biological reality that these chemicals are addictive with also the spiritual realities that are there to only address one of those is to only address half the problem and if you've only addressed half the problem you still have the problem there are plenty of unsaved people who are not addicted to alcohol who are going to die and go to hell there are plenty of unsaved people who are not addicted to alcohol who are not pleasing the

Lord with their lives and there are plenty of Christians who are not addicted to alcohol but God is not at the center of that perfect example growing up, alcohol and substance abuse was never a temptation for me

I participated in tons of awful wicked things I never should have done and I did that for self -serving reasons

I was an idolater at best I was a double -minded man but I didn't get involved in alcohol and substance abuse because I honestly believe that the people who did that were ridiculous because I saw what happened to them when

I was the only sober guy in the room it's like, why would I want to be like that that was not a Christ -honoring reason to avoid alcohol it was self -serving, it was pragmatic and I promise you

God wasn't glorified by it so yes, there can be in psychology, in psychiatry, there can be some general truths which can hit home and yes, the

Christian could take and apply the right way and see some successes true successes that actually please and honor the

Lord because they make him preeminent in it but most people, especially ones given over to life -dominating sins are not spiritually mature enough to be able to make that connection to make that leap from the secular advice they're getting to the spiritual biblical truths that they need in order to address the spiritual issue yeah, as someone anybody who listens to my show with any regularity must have heard at some point or another that I am a former drunkard and I thank my

Lord, God, Savior and King Christ Jesus for delivering me out of that sin that damnable sin and God used as a primary instrument

Hebron Colony Ministries and I love to sing the praises of this organization whenever I have the opportunity the website is hebroncolony .org

it is located in Boone, North Carolina which is actually breathtakingly beautiful that area in the mountains they do not use 12 step program ideology

I happen to be very opposed to the 12 step programs for a number of reasons even if you go to the 12 steps there exists absolutely contradictory statements that make no sense for instance the second step is that you came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity that is the second step the third step made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood

Him how could you understand God rightly if you are not even sane so the orders of that don't even make sense there are universal truths as we were talking about before within the 12 steps but the other reason why

I am very opposed to the meetings especially the secular meetings is that they are even well known amongst those who are involved in these

AA and NA meetings to be a dangerous place on occasion and more frequently than anybody perhaps wants to admit for sexual predators who take advantage of the fact that there are women there and even young women there who are trying to get beyond and have victory over addictions which makes them very vulnerable prime targets

I even know a woman personally who was raped by an AA counselor so I would never in a million years send a woman of any age or recommend to a woman of any age to go to a secular

AA or NA meeting and I know that sometimes unfortunately in the legal system people are required to do this so especially if it's a woman that is for some reason required by law to attend these meetings,

I would try to get a pastor involved and sit down with a probation officer or whatever, whoever is involved in this to find an alternative to that I don't know if you have any follow up comments on that Aaron No, I completely agree with the concept of an alternative and in the day and age in which we live there are so many alternatives when

I used to work at Victory Academy for Boys in Wisconsin sometimes the courts were okay sending a young man to our program if he were being remanded to some sexual training course, some secular sexual training course, so I would definitely always pursue that option if it's available for sure

Great Rather than interrupt you mid -sentence because we do have to go to our midway break

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and as I said please as always give us your first name at least your city and state and country only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal or private matter we'll be right back with AM Brewster after these messages so please don't go away have you noticed the gap that exists between the

Sunday morning sermon and the Sunday school classroom or the small group study so often we experience great preaching from the pulpit but when it comes time to study

God's word in those smaller settings well let's be honest it leaves a lot to be desired it seems like it is nearly impossible to find good curriculum out there today that is true to the word of God and is built upon sound doctrine much less it's hard to find curriculum that will actually teach people how to study the

Bible Hi there my name is Jordan Too and I am the Executive Director of the Baptist Publishing House our ministry is dedicated to providing local churches with sound

Bible study resources our quarterly curriculum is titled The Baptist Expositor and for good reason we are

Baptist and we exegete the scriptures if you want to have a curriculum that teaches your people how to study the word of God I invite you go to our website download a free study baptistpublishinghouse .com

may God bless you When Iron Sharpens Iron Radio first launched in 2005 the publishers of the

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Iron Sharpens Iron Radio audience have been sticking with or switching to the

NASB I'm Dr. Joe Morecraft pastor of Heritage Presbyterian Church in Cumming Georgia and the

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M Brewster On our theme today. Why Christians don't need therapy The email address is

Chris Arnson at gmail .com Give us your first name at least city and state and country of residence. We have another anonymous listener who says someone very close to me has been diagnosed as a schizophrenic and when he went off his medication he attempted suicide is

Schizophrenia and other an other mental ailments like this

Biological and organic or are they something else? I know that there is a disagreement amongst professing

Christians in the biblical counseling Realm over this issue, and I don't know who to believe

Wow powerful powerful question and I'm honored honestly that you would ask it.

I hope though that you don't pull all of your stock in my answer I know that some listeners are just coming on I just want to remind this listener as well as everyone else to visit truth.

Love parent comm Forward -slash iron. I've put a bunch of resources in there

The first of which actually is called what's medical about mental illness and it's a it's a doctor biblical counselor who is leading this it was a conference for the

IBCD the Institute for biblical counseling discipleship and he actually speaks to This question about schizophrenia in particular he happens to believe that schizophrenia is one of just a couple legitimately biological issues that That are mentioned in the the

DSM which is the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders, which is like the psychiatrist Bible It's a huge very

I've got it sitting here right here in front of me. I've got the the newest one the DSF DSM 5 TR and It's probably like two inches or more thick and he thinks there's only a small handful of the ones in there are legitimately

Biological with legitimate biological pathologies and he happens to believe that schizophrenia is one of those

However, I tend to take a little bit more of a conservative approach meaning that I'm not going to swing to one side or the other

I have worked with many people in my time as a biblical counselor since the early 2000s Who I believe as best as I can tell from what

I see in Scripture Have been demon -possessed Now again, that's a controversial subject people have lots of different beliefs on that I think the scripture is very clear that demon possession exists that born -again believers

Cannot be demon -possessed About an unbeliever who is demon -possessed Oftentimes as we see in scriptures can exhibit what would seem to be multiple personality disorders

Now it's a M Brewster saying that all Diagnosed schizophrenics are demon -possessed.

No, he is not I'm simply saying that the reality is there are many

Different possibilities and I believe the biblical counselor is going to be exceptionally wise when when looking into this

He is going to make certain the person has had a full medical workup And he is going to do due diligence if he were to be working with somebody

Now the question within the questioner or an element within that last question was very interesting about coming off of Medication and then attempting suicide

The Oftentimes when people think of the bull counselors one of the things that comes to their mind is the fact that it never prescribed medication

And that's actually true. Most of us are not medical doctors And so we're not prescribing medication, but that they actually all take a strong stand against medication and that is an unfortunate caricature of the situation yes,

I would say for me personally the vast majority of Medications being Diagnosed today are unnecessary and harmful again.

Don't take my word for it If you go to truth love parent comm forward slash iron I have a number of different resources there from the

Association of certified biblical counselors Where doctors get on and talk about how to approach new medical research.

They talk about understanding hormones. They talk about Dealing what what are psychotropic drugs and so on and so forth the diseasing of anxiety and depression in our world today

Lots of resources there. It's gonna be very helpful for you But oftentimes this idea that well, hey,

I felt better with the drug is used as a justification that that's all I need

I went to my medical doctor. They gave me this drug and I feel better and I don't feel depressed anymore And so therefore all as well and then if they go off the drug, you know

They feel more depressed and they may do something foolish like attempt suicide or self -harm or something else like that There's a fantastic Resource, I believe it's the one called the diseasing of anxiety and depression, which is very helpful to this regard

There are so many factors involved in this question But the reality of the situation goes back to what I said earlier about the child on the playground with the backpack a nasty

Unkind child who is not nice to all the other boys and girls on the playground who has to carry around a 30 -pound backpack

May be Even less kind may be more short -tempered and to take off that backpack

That child is now not as grouchy as he would have been but is he glorifying God? Has his character been changed simply because the backpack was taken off and there's no we just removed some stressors in his life

That made him feel better and so therefore he's more inclined to be a decent individual and the same thing happens oftentimes with psychotropic drugs and other drugs that are

Given by psychiatrists. Yes, they relieve a physical stressor. That was putting some pressure on our lives

But my sinful response in light of the physical stressor was not it's not going to be helped because the physical stressor was removed

You've heard it said, you know, you can leave your sinful church and join another church and guess what? It'll be you know

It's a church full of sinners and the moment you even if everyone else were there were perfect the moment you step in you've brought

Your sin with you. We are the common denominator in all of our relationship issues, right? So The reality of the situation is that when we're when we're struggling with these things the deeper issue is me who

I am my sin When I remove myself from the difficult situation, I still take my sin with me

I still need to address that and this goes back to what we were saying earlier under the biological

Versus spiritual approach to this is that we need to stop Saying that things that God calls sins aren't sins we're we're so we're getting so much trouble when we do that and we were

I was mentioning earlier about this idea of emotions and I think this is super important this idea of like it's so important to feel good to not feel depressed not feel anxious

Well spiritually speaking. That's not true. In fact in the scriptures. We see that there is such a thing as a good shame a good grief a good sorrow

These things are valuable. They are for our growth and if we spend all of our time trying to Escape them all of the time

By medication or whatever the case may be. We're not necessarily going to be helping ourselves grow spiritually

We'll just be removing some of the temptations perhaps the stressors. The reality is that we are unchanged

Another illustration I think is valuable. We're talking about emotions is the roller coaster illustration

This is a parable. So, you know, there are some things I mean, you know There are some outliers, of course that will not be addressed by this parable, but stick with me for a second

Three people get on to the exact same roller coaster. Okay, they're in the exact same car One of these people is excited and they're brimming with exhilaration about the ride to come one is feeling extremely anxious because he can't believe that his secret crush actually agreed to ride this roller coaster with him and she's sitting right there and The third is petrified because he's on a roller coaster and it's uncertain how he got there and he thinks he's going to die

Now biologically what's interesting is that each person is not only experiencing the exact same roller coaster ride

They're also experiencing by definition the exact same emotion if emotions are

What what they are a physiological response to an external or internal stimulus?

These people are all experiencing a rush of adrenaline and a cocktail of other related chemicals

Now what is adrenaline adrenaline is a god -given tool designed to help us respond well to stress it makes us stronger makes us faster

It sharpens our thinking However, one person experiencing this adrenaline rush is feeling is would say that he is feeling exhilaration

One would say that he's feeling romantic attraction. One would say that he's experiencing fear But biologically, they're all the same chemical response

And this is really important to understand because the world says that emotions are external that starts with an external or internal experience that there's this internal physiological response that results in an external behavior

But unfortunately the world is missing one desperately important step. Yes, I can experience an external or internal Event we'll call it an event.

I can then experience an emotion which is an internal physiological chemical response to that event

However, what comes next is what I like to call an evaluation. It's an internal mental response.

It's an interpretation of what I'm experiencing and Then comes the external behavior what

I call the exercise So what's going on with these people on the roller coaster? Well this individual who is interpreting that adrenaline rush as a sensation of fear

He said he's evaluating it and he's saying ooh I'm experiencing fear This person will likely think that the best response to the situation is to get off the roller coaster as and as far away as Possible so he'll never experience that feeling again.

He sees the problem as being completely X outside of himself I'm afraid of this thing. And so I need to escape this thing

However, the one who interprets the sensation in their chest is excitement We'll think that the best response is to ride the roller coaster as many times as possible

So they can continue to feel that sensation that he has decided that he likes Now for the one who's hopelessly infatuated with the girl

To such a degree that he doesn't even realize he's on a roller coaster He said he's like hyper focus on the fact that his left arm keeps brushing her right arm

Every time they turn that guy only sees the rise of means to an end But the feeling is something he definitely wants to sustain but what's interesting about all of these people is that regardless of what they're experiencing regardless of how they interpret what they're experiencing if each

Person got stuck on the roller coaster in a continuous loop or just kept going through the the ride All three adrenaline responses would taper over time the perceived exhilaration the perceived fear the perceived elation would dim and The reality behind this parable is that adrenaline is merely a tool

It's a biological tool that God has given us. It's been given us to us to successfully navigate stressful situations but when we forget that and When we allow ourselves to interpret this is the key thing to interpret that adrenaline as something.

It's not We're not going to respond to the emotion or the situation the right way Cs Lewis makes this point when he talks about marital love and affection

He thinks that we need to mature in our love move away from that constantly desiring the suspenseful mysterious displays of overwrought

Romance that we do early on in relationships and we need to start appreciating that the grounded and significant experience of mature love

This applies to continual thrill -seeking as well Can we be content in our jobs and our entertainment when the adrenaline isn't coursing through our veins?

Obviously, you know a rational fear never helped anybody it distracts us from the real enemy which you know of an accurate perception

And it builds a straw man of which will always be the victim. I'm afraid of this. I'm afraid of that No, generally speaking.

I'm choosing to respond a certain way because of the feelings in my chest As a one final point,

I guess I was a speech teacher. I've helped many people they said, you know, I have stage fright I said no you don't you're experiencing adrenaline

Recognize it for what it is respond to it the truth of what's going on and use the tool

God gave you and You will find that what you used to interpret is fear

You actually recognize it's a good thing designed to help you give your speech better Because that's what

God gave us emotions. They're a gift they're a tool a tool to glorify him, but they're also a really important gauge and this hits on that this idea of interpretation, okay, so if I'm Work to glorify

God with our emotional responses in the same way to word glorify him with our eating and our drinking We know that okay But in the same way that a smoke detector in our house is there to warn us of a problem our emotions can also help

Us see what there's a spiritual problem in our lives if I'm experiencing strong emotions in line with God's will

All as well. Am I enjoying what God says is good. Am I angry in the right way about sin?

Am I jealous for God's glory? Well, then God is pleased But if I'm experiencing strong emotion out of sync with God's will

There's a problem Am I enjoying my sin? Am I angry about what God has brought into my life?

Am I jealous for my own way? So my emotions are being used to worship myself and they need to change

So this idea of this evaluation step, there's been an event I experienced an emotion now the evaluation kicks and I have to sit here and interpret what

I'm experiencing It's desperately important that we Christians do so in light of God's truth in light of scientific

Realities and not just because I was told oh you're experiencing stage fright or you're afraid of this thing

I need to see it for what it really is Excellent just to go back on something you said earlier you

Highly respect a physician if I'm not Mistaken that you feature in some way in your ministry who believes that there are probably just a couple of Things that are actual organic and biological things going on in the brain so that would such as Schizophrenia What was the other thing or two other things?

If you don't mind mentioning That's a great question And unfortunately, I would also have to go back and look at the same resource

Your listeners would have to check out to remember what those are I cannot at the moment.

Remember I will say this though to your question Had I been born in this generation

I Would have been so in trouble. I praise God for the fact that I was born in the 80s Yeah, a lot of this stuff was starting up back then but it was mostly in the secular hadn't

Inundated the church yet. So my parents, you know didn't put any stock in it See if it was 10 if there's 10 years earlier you would have known what

Candida You would have known the song Candida by by Tony Orlando and So to be honest just I mean if I'm using the

DSM 5 and I'm using Their descriptions I could easily easily have been diagnosed with ADHD OCD ODD, I would have been diagnosed with gender dysphoria.

I would have been diagnosed with so many These things that are considered today to be mental illnesses now the one

I like to really focus on a lot is OCD obsessive -compulsive disorder. I remember

I have distinct memories as a child if I were walking straight ahead and I glanced to my left and I saw something there that caught my eye or whatever else and then

I turned and I continued walking in my original direction Deep within my being

I would feel this compulsion that I had to look to the right

Equal and opposite turn to the right and then turn back to center to feel balanced.

Okay So I'm just walking down the road. I look to my left. I look at the ground Oh, look, there's a penny I pick it up.

I keep walking and now it's like I Have to turn to the right even though there's nothing there there's nothing to look at I just had to six seven eight years old

Constantly I dealt with this I would be sitting in church and I would something would catch my eye to the right hand side and I would look and then

I look back at the pastor and I just would not feel very uncomfortable Until I looked back to the left and equal and opposite direction.

I've heard adults say this by the way I've heard adults say they need to sit in the middle on the middle aisle of their churches because if they if they sit on The extreme side of the churches they feel like the room is gonna tip over It's a very similar type of experience, but I also clearly remember at the age of nine

I was in the shopping I was in a supermarket with my mom and we were walking along and we're

I Remember with such clarity there to my right was the meat a section and to my left were some some aisles

Just going you could look down the aisle and see to the front of the store And I looked left and Something caught my eye and I looked back to the right and I remember

I was staring at my mom I was following behind her and deep in my soul. I felt that that desire to look to the right and Chris I can't tell you why that was there.

I can't tell you if there were a biological reason I don't believe there were there was a biological reason

I can tell you why because it didn't need it There was no biological pathology because it didn't require a biological cure

What it required was this my nine -year -old self said this is Stupid I screamed at myself in my mind.

I said, this is stupid Why do I have to look to my right? There's nothing there.

I'm fine. Just keep walking Aaron That was one of a handful of times that slowly came after that event times when

I would feel that deep Impulse to do something compulsive and obsessive and I would tell myself stop it.

You're being stupid Now if you come to me and you want to talk about your OCD, I'm not gonna lead with stop it

You're being stupid. But but for me as a nine -year -old, I recognized it was dumb. There was no. Oh, I had to do that And you know what?

From I have no memories from there on up ever struggling in that way again so It's so easy

Detached from when we have the world screaming at us Oh you do that because you have a mental disorder you have a mental illness

You have this you have this this issue this biological issue and we're like, oh, okay.

Yes doctor Of course, you've gone to medical school for 55 years and you know what you're talking about And yes,

I'll believe you and I'll you know, I'll take the medicine But you know what we do to the doctors what we do to the pastors

We go to church to be told what to do without being discerning without doing our own study without knowing really what

God Expectations are and we go home and we just you kind of do what the pastor tells us to do and we think we're okay And we do the same thing we're not discerning with our doctors and we don't compare and contrast what he's telling me with what

God's Word says and I think I know again as a biblical counselor by God's grace in my own life

I've experienced it and I've seen many many other people experience that God gives Freedom he gives freedom from these these life -dominating issues with which we struggle and I praise him for that And I think that we just need to stop listening to the world.

That's one of the other points I like to bring up you know, it's it's this question of worldly versus divine the creator of a thing gets knows best how it works and knows best what

It needs and this is why God all throughout the Bible says Don't do what's right in your own eyes

Don't follow your heart Don't lean on your own understanding and said we're to follow him trust him submit to him obey him and live according to his expectations

But then we're like well No, this pop psychologist said that I'm feeling this way because I have repressed whatever dealing with you know

How my mom raised me as well. Hold on. That's not what the scriptures say There's this book

I linked also at truthloveparent .com forward slash iron called why Christians need Freud and The author argues that we don't need

Freud or Skinner or any of those guys from any kind of psychological like scientific perspective, right?

Really what they do for us is they unveil worldly? philosophical perspectives The philosophy is simply why you do what you do and as a biblical counselor

It's very important to me to not only understand why God wants me to do what I need to do But I also understand why I do what

I do why my counselees do what we do Identifying and addressing our philosophy some people call it our worldview is like the key to spiritual change

Why am I doing what I'm doing? How do I change? So yes, it's good to recognize, you know

These secular psychiatrists and to understand that their entire worldview is wrapped up in man. It is a hedonistic man centered religion and so often is not scientific in the slightest and When we understand that when we see it for what it is

And we have when we're saved from the delusion that these guys are actually practicing a science because the vast majority of them are not

Then we're freed from that that that slavish desire to just you know

Quote unquote do what our doctors say when it comes to things that the Bible identifies as sin

By the way, I just want a quick plug a book by my former pastor one of my former pastors

Mark Grimaldi who was formerly the pastor one of the pastors at Grace Reform Baptist Church of Long Island and Merrick now pastoring

Sovereign Grace Church in Greenbrier, Tennessee he wrote a book called

OCD finding hope and Christ on the edge of insanity and He also did a fascinating conducted a fascinating interview with me

That you can hear on the archive of our interpret Zion radio .com just type in Grimaldi G R I M a

L B I and that will come up and I think you'll be blessed by that, especially if you happen to be someone who battles with OCD Or has a loved one who does

I don't want to belabor the whole schizophrenic thing, but Because of this physician that you recommend considers it organic and biological

I'm assuming this must be something that can be detected through either cat scans or blood tests or some

Physical means if it's a physical thing Is that the fact what's? what's interesting about this and unfortunately,

I say it's unfortunate because He was at the time, but this

Lecture was Put out he was referencing really new research new research.

That was in his estimation pointing to What he believed to be a genetic reality going on also tied to other

Also where I'm looking for sorry, I'm lost a little bit I'm actually doing two things at once. I'm trying to answer your question while I'm pulling up his notes and going through them

And unfortunately his notes. I don't think mentions that particularly But if you go to truthloperin .com

forward slash iron and you listen to that very first one, what's medical about mental illness? He is going to Talk about that in particular toward the end of the discussion and he'll give his thoughts on that He doesn't get into a lot of detail

But he does address the question specifically as what he believes may be the biological underlying pathology that could

Account for what we oftentimes refer to as schizophrenia We have

Christopher in Western Suffolk County, Long Island, New York Who asks you constantly hear and see in the media?

That gender dysphoria is an actual thing That comes from something that is no fault of the person battling it

Even some of the more conservative spokespeople who dismiss the vast majority of Transgenderism as being not as the result of gender dysphoria

Still admit that there is such a real thing. Can you explain what it is?

You know, I wish I could I believe that we humans are foolish when we think that you know

When we claim that our science has it all figured out one of the things I think is very interesting is that And it's kind of is one of my last points about this

This secular psychological approach is it's variable Versus the consistent approach of the scriptures.

God's always perfect, but the psychological approaches are always changing Homosexuality transgenderism for years and years and years were mental disorders in in the

DSM things that Needed to be addressed and changed they weren't healthy. They weren't good but over time just like shock therapy and other types of therapies

They've you know, they've realized. Oh we believe differently about this now and Some of those things are good.

Like I'm glad they're not doing shock therapy anymore You know that wasn't actually helping people is actually harming people. But so is telling people that They they can choose quote -unquote to be a different sex

And so what I'm going to say for certain is the fact that to to reject how

God made us and To believe that I can become a different sex is delusional.

It is not based in reality I can say that for sure. I think though if I if I understand the question

There are people who disagree on the temptation aspect For example,

I have never been tempted to any type of homosexual sin But there are other people who are

Why is that? It's easy to point to Romans chapter 1 and to say that homosexual temptation is oftentimes the result of a continued and increasing in engagement with sin

The more I engage with sin the more other quote -unquote worse sins become more acceptable

Oftentimes that is that's how people get to that place and I've worked with many individuals and that's exactly what happened

They thought it was a gross thing before But they gauged more and more and more heinous sins until homosexuality was something that they thought they were they were homosexual

But other people argue that children Can you know can have homosexual urges a very young age and having not participated in all this stuff?

And so what I'm I'm gonna leave room for there being a legitimate question.

I'm not gonna say Chris that I 100 % understand all of your temptations

I've had all the exact same ones because I haven't you're tempted in ways that I'm not I'm tempted in ways that you're not but praise

God that Christ Understands he was tempted in in every way that a person can be tempted and he being

God Obviously did not give into that temptation and he being God wants to give us everything that we need to not give into those temptations so whether a person can argue that there is a

Natural quote -unquote temptation that one person has they kind of feel like they're not

They're not in their right bodies or whatever the case may be Whether you can argue that that exists or not.

It doesn't matter and this is why I can say it doesn't matter I may be tempted to lust after a woman who's not my wife

Because I happen to be attracted to you know, fill in the blank, you know blonde hair blue eyes, whatever or younger women maybe

But that doesn't make it okay To lust after that woman even though like it may be other men have never lusted after a woman who wasn't their wife.

Praise God That's great But just because I have used temptation to lust after this woman doesn't make it

Okay, because the Bible is very clear that that is a sin So, unfortunately, I cannot answer conclusively

I would tend to believe that from what I see in in the scriptures the extreme sexual sins are oftentimes the result of a lifestyle of Increasing sin that led to a desensitization that eventually led to that But I'm also not going to tell a person to their face that no as a as a seven -year -old

You didn't experience this type of feeling but you know what regardless it doesn't matter

Let's see what God's Word says about our identity in him. Amen, and it is interesting I have seen documentaries not to say that these documentaries are totally accurate

But I've seen documentaries and I can remember one specifically on PBS where they had a

Documentary was interesting and liberal PBS. They had a documentary about a church in New York City evangelical church that had an evangelistic outreach to prostitutes and they were used of God to win many people to Christ and they repented and some of these prostitutes were so -called transgendered people some of them were just identifying themselves as homosexual

But in every case when they were interviewing these the the males that were involved in this sin or these sins

Every case they said that they were molested by a male Neighbor or family member as a child every time that's often the case.

Yes. Yes So I don't know what the connection is to that but it is pretty spooky

Well, I'll mention it. I mentioned it earlier. I'll dig into it a little bit more here. I said that as a child

I would have been diagnosed with gender dysphoria and there are doctors who today would be telling my parents of my five -year -old self to pursue sex change therapy

Because now I don't have memory of this as well in my mind I've seen the pictures and I've had my mom tell me and I do have vague memories of this but basically the story goes that I went to my mom and I told her at the age of five that I wanted to Dress in a dress and I wanted to do all this other stuff this girly stuff

Now my mom will admit that she probably didn't necessarily do the right thing But what ended up happening was that she did my hair up curl it up like girly she put me in a little dress and pinafore with little socks and Mary Jane's and little lip gloss on my lips and I went flouncing around the house in a very feminine way

She got a picture of me on the swing with my little ankles crossed In a in a very interesting, you know girly fashion, but then after just a few minutes of that I said

I'm done It all came off and never again in my entire life Did I ever say to my parents nor did

I personally ever feel I can attest to that and said that as I grew older That I wanted to you know dress as the opposite sex or believe that I was the opposite sex and that also ended your career with Joe Biden's White House when you

Because I gave up on my dream as a five -year -old But you know that type of thing happens and you know

Why why did it happen? I you know, I don't know children are curious. They're imaginative, right? I dressed up as a

Tiger I dressed up as a goblin. I dressed up as lots of things I used to watch this old

TV show with Ron Perlman called Beauty and the Beast and Vincent was the Beast who lived in the sewers under New York City and I made my own costume to look like him

You know, why wouldn't a child an imaginative child just think to themselves? I'm just up you like a girl, right?

Well nowadays we're being told that that child who wants to do that. Oh, they're expressing some gender dysphoria or Maybe they just want to play dress -up.

Now. I'm not sitting here saying that yes, let your children, you know do that I don't know that I would have counseled my five -year -old self the same way that my parents did

But the reality of the situation is That the Bible speaks to this again the

Bible speaks to this and we don't just have to go following man's made up methodologies that deny

Our creator and how he created us, isn't it interesting and again you are a lot younger than me so I don't know if you remember this but It was a prevalent theme at one time on television in the 70s and perhaps some of the 80s a liberal theme that it was a horrible horrible thing to do to insinuate that a child was homosexual

Just because the boy liked to do girly things and the girl Like to do masculine things

And it was the liberals saying that don't you dare call that boy a queer and all that kind of a thing now?

They use that as a litmus test. Oh, you see that that child is transgender. We got to rush them off to a doctor to give them

Injections and surgically alter them and oh, I mean, they've totally reversed their rhetoric

Well, I remember that but I also remember too that for decades and decades If a man was wearing a dress on television, it was something to be laughed at It was something that we were to to find to be funny.

Yeah, like Jonathan Winters Milton Berle yes, exactly, it was always something to be funny and Until there was that switch

Shortly after the time where you know Ellen DeGeneres on her TV show back in the 90s

I think it was you know, it had that was being you know had a gay character on that show Shortly after that time we started to see more and more of the homosexual characters come out.

We also started to see more of the transgendered characters come out and we were supposed to See them through different eyes, they weren't supposed to be funny and there was that slow transition

Where now we're totally on the other extreme to even remotely hint that something like that is comical well, we would just be canceled and crucified because of that by the way,

I think I said Jonathan Winters when I was talking about Somebody dressing up like a woman to be funny

But if something in the back of my mind is making me think I accidentally said Jonathan Edwards You know those powdered wigs but anyway

But anyway, we got to get our final break. It's gonna be a lot more brief. Don't go away We'll be right back. If you're near retirement or thinking about retiring you probably have questions

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Tony Costa professor of apologetics and Islam at Toronto Baptist Seminary I'm thrilled to introduce to you a church where I've been invited to speak and have grown to love

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Unfathomable riches of Christ in his holy word and to enthusiastically proclaim

Christ Jesus the King and his doctrines of sovereign grace in Suffolk County, Long Island and beyond I hope you also have the privilege of discovering this precious congregation and Receive the blessing of being showered by their love as I have for more information on Hope Reformed Baptist Church Go to hopereformedli .net

That's hopereformedli .net or call 631 696 -5711

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Tell the folks at Hope Reformed Baptist Church of Coram, Long Island, New York that you heard about them from Tony Costa on Iron Sharpens Iron Hi, this is

John Hi, this is John Sampson pastor of King's Church in Peoria, Arizona Taking a moment of your day to talk about Chris Arnson and the

Iron Sharpens Iron podcast I consider Chris a true friend and a man of high integrity He's a skilled interviewer who's not afraid to ask the big penetrating questions while always defending the key doctrines of the

Christian faith I've always been happy to point people to this podcast knowing it's one of the very few Safe places on the internet where folk won't be led astray.

I believe this podcast needs to be heard far and wide This is a day of great spiritual compromise and yet God has raised

Chris up for just such a time And knowing this it's up to us as members of the body of Christ to stand with such a ministry in prayer and in finances

I'm pleased to do so and would like to ask you to prayerfully consider joining me in supporting

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Getting a driver's license running a cash register flipping burgers passing sixth grade

Do you know what they all have in common? They all require training assessments and certifications, but do you know what requires no training at all becoming a parent

My name is a M Brewster. I'm the president of truth. Love parents and host of its award -winning podcast

I've been a biblical family counselor since the early 2000s And what I've discovered is that the majority of Christian parents have never been

Biblically equipped to do the work of the ministry in their homes. That's why truth. Love parent exists

We serve God by equipping dads and moms to be the ambassador parents God called and created them to be we produce free parenting resources

Train church leaders and offer biblical counseling so that the next generation of dads and moms can use the scriptures to parent their children for life

And godliness, please visit us at truth. Love parent calm. Welcome back

A .m. Brewster. We have a final question or at least the final one. We have time to read

We have Christian in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania Who asks there is a disagreement about?

whether or not addictions or diseases or sins or both

What is your response an addiction has both a biological and a spiritual component to it oftentimes?

for example a child Who is born to somebody? Who's addicted to drugs that child can be born with an addiction that that right there is solely biological

There's no spiritual elements to that per se their body has just become dependent on a chemical and they need to be worked off of that however

Most people get into their addictions because of spiritual immaturity because of sinful thinking and not giving

God first place in their lives So the vast majority of people out there with addictions are in a place where there is oftentimes a chemical

Dependency, however, often there's also the reality that some of the quote -unquote addictions. I'm addicted to chocolate.

I'm addicted to Sex or whatever doesn't necessarily have the same dependency cycle that often substances do in those situations

Oftentimes it's leading more heavily on the spiritual issue side and less and less on the physical problem

Disease is one of those funny words. How are you going to define it? There are physical elements and there are spiritual elements to the vast majority of addictions.

And again oftentimes The person to have true freedom needs to must deal with the spiritual issues

But also have medical help if necessary to help it over any type of physical

Dependency there maybe yeah, I was really moved even to teary -eyed condition

Watching a Diane Sawyer interview with Matthew Perry who was that hysterically funny character

Chandler in the TV series friends he became an alcoholic and drug addict to a very serious level that even has in some ways

Seriously affected his physical appearance and what -have -you and I was agreeing with a lot of what he said

I was applauding him for his victories over these addictions but it really broke my heart when he said that one of the most wonderful things that occurred during his battle with these addictions is that he finally came to realize this was not his fault and that that is a very dangerous thing, isn't it when we solely look at these things as diseases and Absolve ourselves of any guilt in the matter of addiction

So true we need to follow what the scriptures say about our participation in our sin

Amen, well, we are out of time. It has been such a blast having you back in the program I am so happy that thank you

You are going to be a regularly featured guest every month on iron trip and Zion radio And I'm sure my listeners are thrilled about that, too and don't forget that the two websites where you can find out more about am

Brewster are Truth love parent calm truth love parent calm and also a m

Brewster calm That's a M for Aaron Michael and Brewster is spelt b r e w s t e r a m

Brewster calm Aaron I look forward to your next visit to iron trip and Zion radio

I want to thank everybody who listened especially those who took the time to write and I want you all to always remember for the rest