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December 2, 2022
A. M. BREWSTER, president of Evermind Ministries, a biblical counselor, author, podcaster, & conference speaker, who will address:
“WHY CHRISTIANS DON’T NEED THERAPY!”
Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father James Wilson, 19th century hymn writer George Duffield, 19th century gospel minister George Norcross, and sports legend Jim Thorpe, it's Iron Sharpens Iron.
This is a radio platform in which pastors, 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 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?
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?
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.
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 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. Don't go away. We are going to be right back right after these messages from our sponsors.
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I'm Joe Reilly, a faithful Iron Sharpens Iron Radio listener here in Atai in County Kildare, Ireland, 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 O 'Reilly, Iron Sharpen's Iron Radio listener, from a tie in County Kildare, Ireland, sent you.
Here at Iron Sharpen's Iron Radio, praise God for the generous monthly financial support of Royal Diadem Jewelers, educated by and affiliated with the American Gem Society, Jewelers of America, and the Gemological Institute of America.
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This will ensure that your custom jewelry will turn out exactly as you dreamed, and well beyond your expectations. Visit royaldiadem .com. That's royaldiadem .com today. Sterling Vandewerker, owner of Royal Diadem Jewelers, his wife, Bronnie, his business partner and manager, Brian Wilson, and the entire family, thank you all for listening to, praying for, and supporting the work of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.
And don't forget, folks, a perfect way for you to bless yourself and others that you love, and help Iron Sharpens Iron Radio continue to exist at the same time, is by visiting the website of Royal Diadem Jewelers, that's royaldiadem .com, because they have an absolutely amazing offer they are extending to us for a limited time, and we don't know when the cut-off date will be yet, but they are giving 100 of the profits from any sale of $100 or more off of their website, or for a custom-designed piece of jewelry, which might be an engagement ring, it might be turning your church logo or your parachurch ministry logo into a piece of jewelry like a ring or a necklace pendant, or whatever your imagination will come up with, they will masterfully turn your idea, your dream piece of jewelry into a spectacular physical product, and I've seen their work, and they are mind-blowing, and I'm not exaggerating.
So for a limited time, if you get any of that done, or just purchase something that they already have in stock for $100 or more, and you mention Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, we get 100 of the profits. So please, try to contact them as quickly as possible, especially if you are considering purchasing jewelry for Christmas, or getting something custom-designed for Valentine's Day, or whatever the case may be.
Go to royaldiadem .com, royaldiadem .com, 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 kind of had quasi-Christian roots when it first started.
Some of those concepts, some of the steps do seem very biblical, right? But then as your listener said, it's also true that they have some very unbiblical concepts in there. Could a Christian participate in AA?
Chew and spit, right? 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 addictions 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, really fantastically amazing, really 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.
Because that's to say that you, I mean, again, 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. A 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 believed 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, you know, again, in psychology and 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 is, 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's 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're 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, you know, 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. And rather than.
Interrupt you mid-sentence because we do have to go to our midway break, I'm going to go to that break right now because it's only a matter of seconds before we have to do that anyway. Sounds good. And please keep in mind, folks, that the midway break is always a bit longer than the other breaks because Grace Life Radio, 90 .1 FM in Lake City, Florida, requires of us a longer break in the middle of the show because the FCC requires of them to localize all of their programming, including Iron Trumpets Iron, geographically to Lake City, Florida.
And while they do that by airing their own public service announcements and other local things, we simultaneously air our globally heard commercials in this break. Please use this time wisely. Write down as much of the information as you possibly can for as many of our advertisers as you can so that you can more frequently and successfully respond to our advertisers.
And we hope that that often means you will purchase their products, you will use their services, you will visit their churches, and you will support their parachurch organizations. But whenever you cannot do any of those things, there's one thing that anybody listening can do.
You can contact our advertisers through the contact information they provide in their ads and thank them for sponsoring Iron Trumpets Iron Radio. That is, if indeed you love the show and are truly grateful that there are men, women, and organizations out there who love the show so much that they want to share some of the money that God has blessed them with with us so that we can continue to exist.
If you're really grateful for that and happy about that, please thank our advertisers. That will go a long way in making them want to continue to renew their advertising contracts with us. So do that.
Contact their advertisers. Thank them for sponsoring the show. And also send in your questions to AM Brewster, to chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com. And as I said, please, as always, give us your first name at least, your city and state and country.
Residents only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and 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 Tew, 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 to 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 New American Standard Bible were among my very first sponsors. It gives me joy knowing that many scholars and pastors in the Iron Sharpens Iron Radio audience have been sticking with or switching to the NASB.
I'm Dr. Joe Moorcraft, pastor of Heritage Presbyterian Church in Cumming, Georgia, and the NASB is my Bible of choice. I'm Anthony Uvino,.
Founder of thereformrookie .com and co-founder of New York Apologetics,.
And the NASB is my Bible of choice. I'm Pastor Tim Bushong of Syracuse Baptist Church in Syracuse, Indiana, and the NASB is my Bible of choice. I'm Eli Ayala, founder of Revealed Apologetics and staff member with the Historical Bible Society, and the NASB is my Bible of choice.
I'm Pastor Josh Miller of Grace Bible Fellowship Church in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania,.
And the NASB is my Bible of choice. I'm Joe Bianchi, president of Calvi Press Publishing in Greenville, South Carolina, and the NASB is my Bible of choice. I'm Pastor Jake Korn of Switzerland Community Church in Switzerland, Florida, and the NASB is my Bible of choice.
Here's a great way for your church to help keep Iron Sharpens Iron Radio on the air. Pastors, are your pew Bibles tattered and falling apart? Consider restocking your pews with the NASB, and tell the publishers you heard about them from Chris Arnzen on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.
Go to nasbible .com. That's nasbible .com to place your order.
This is Pastor Bill Sasso, Grace Church at Franklin, here in the beautiful state of Tennessee. Our congregation is one of a growing number of churches who love and support Iron Sharpens Iron Radio financially.
Grace Church at Franklin is an independent, autonomous body of believers, which strives to clearly declare the whole counsel of God as revealed in scripture through the person and work of our Lord Jesus Christ.
And of course, the end for which we strive is the glory of God. If you live near Franklin, Tennessee, and Franklin is just south of Nashville, maybe 10 minutes, or you are visiting this area, or you have friends and loved ones nearby, we hope you will join us some Lord's day in worshiping our God and Savior.
Please feel free to contact me if you have more questions about Grace Church at Franklin. Our website is gracechurchatfranklin .org. That's gracechurchatfranklin .org. This is Pastor Bill Sasso wishing you all the richest blessings of our sovereign Lord, God, Savior, and King, Jesus Christ, today and always.
If you love Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, one of the best ways you can help keep the show on the air is by supporting our advertisers. One such faithful advertiser who really believes in what Chris Arnton is doing is Daniel P. Patafuco, serious injury lawyer and Christian apologist.
Dan is the president and founder of the Historical Bible Society. Their mission? To foster belief in the credibility of scripture as the written word of God. They go to various churches, schools, and institutions to publicly display a rare collection of biblical texts, along with a fascinating presentation by Mr. Patafuco, demonstrating the reliability of scripture.
Discover more about Grace Covenant Baptist Church in Flemington, New Jersey at gcbcnj .squarespace .com. That's gcbcnj .squarespace .com or call them at 908 -996 -7654. That's 908 -996 -7654. Tell Pastor Dunn that you heard about Grace Covenant Baptist Church on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.
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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?
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We are rural and urban, and we are always about the message of Jesus. Our mission is to have a noticeable spiritual impact on Long Island, New York, by engaging young people in the lifelong journey of following Christ.
Long Island Youth for Christ has been a stalwart bedrock ministry since 1959. We have a world-class staff and a proven track record of bringing consistent love and encouragement to youths in need all over the country and around the world.
Help honor our history by becoming a part of our future. Volunteer, donate, pray, or all of the above. For details, call Long Island Youth for Christ at 631 -385 -8333. That's 631 -385 -8333. Or visit liyfc .org.
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James White of Alpha Omega Ministries here. If you've watched my Dividing Line webcast often enough, you know I have a great love for getting Bibles and other documents vital to my ministry rebound to preserve and ensure their longevity.
And besides that, they feel so good. I'm so delighted I discovered Post-Tenebrous Lux Bible rebinding. No radio ad will be long enough to sing their praises sufficiently, but I'll give it a shot. Jeffrey Rice of Post-Tenebrous Lux is a remarkably gifted craftsman and artisan.
All his work is done by hand from the cutting to the pleating of corners to the perimeter stitching. Jeffrey uses the finest and buttery soft imported leathers in a wide variety of gorgeous colors like the turquoise goatskin tanned in Italy used for my Nestle All in 28th edition with a navy blue goatskin inside liner and the electric blue goatskin from a French tannery used to rebind a Reformation study Bible I used as a gift.
The silver gilding he added on the page edges has a stunning mirror finish resembling highly polished chrome. Jeffrey will customize your rebinding to your specifications and even emboss your logo into the leather, making whatever he rebinds a one-of-a-kind work of art.
For more details on Post-Tenebrous Lux Bible rebinding, go to ptlbiblerebinding .com. That's.
Ptlbiblerebinding .com. Charles Haddon Spurgeon once said, Give yourself unto reading. The man.
Who never reads will never be read. He who never quotes will never be quoted. He will not use the thoughts of other men's brains proves he has no brains of his own. You need to read. Solid Ground Christian Books is a publisher and book distributor who takes these words of the Prince of Preachers to heart.
The mission of Solid Ground Christian Books is to bring back treasures of the past to minister to Christians in the present and future and to publish new titles that address burning issues in the church and the world.
Since its beginning in 2001, Solid Ground has been committed to publish God-centered, Christ-exalting books for all ages. We invite you to go treasure hunting at solid-ground-books .com. That's solid-ground-books .com and see what priceless literary gems from the past to present you can unearth from Solid Ground.
Solid Ground Christian Books is honored to be a weekly sponsor of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. And remember folks,.
Please make your very first stop for all your Christmas gift-giving needs and gifts for any other occasion solid-ground-books .com. That is the website of Solid Ground Christian Books, whose ad you just heard, and they bring back into print and publish nothing but the finest in Christian literature dating back to the Protestant Reformation and extending forward to our modern day including such contemporary authors as Dr. James R. White of Alpha and Omega Ministries.
Please go to solid-ground-books .com, start purchasing your Christmas gifts and remember not only to purchase Christian books for those you know and love who are your brothers and sisters in Christ, remember those that are lost because throughout the centuries God has frequently used good, solid, biblically-based, gospel-centered books to lead the lost to Christ.
And that could be also those that you know and love who are still lost in their sins. So please go to solid-ground-books .com, purchase frequently, purchase generously. Always mention that you heard about them from Chris Orenson of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.
Before I return to my guest A .M. Brewster on our theme, Why Christians Don't Need Therapy, we just have a couple of more important announcements to make. If you love this show folks and you don't want it to disappear, we really need your financial help.
Go to ironsharpensironradio .com, click support, then click, click to donate now. You can donate instantly with a debit or credit card and if you prefer snail mail, the old-fashioned way, mailing in a physical check to a physical address.
There will be a physical address that appears on your screen as well when you click support at ironsharpensironradio .com where you can mail your checks, made payable to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. If you want to advertise with us, just as my guest A .M. Brewster and his board have decided to do, over which we are absolutely thrilled and still rejoicing and praising God for this wonderful gift to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.
Not only did they renew their advertising, but they more than quadrupled their advertising and we are so thrilled about it. But if that includes you, you want to advertise something, as long as whatever it is you want to advertise is compatible with what we believe.
You don't have to believe identically with me, but you need to be promoting something that is at the very least compatible with what I believe. And please send me an email as soon as possible to chrisarnsen at gmail .com and put advertising in the subject line.
We are in just as much an urgent need of your advertising dollars as we are in your donations. Please remember that I never want anybody listening who is a member of a biblically faithful church to give their own church where they are a member less money in order to give Iron Sharpens Iron Radio a financial gift.
Please don't cut into your giving that you have a lot of weekly to bless your own church in order to send us a financial gift. Never do that. This program was primarily founded on the principle of being a friend, a helping hand, a right arm, and a platform for the local pastor and the local church that are faithful to the scriptures.
We never want to do anything that harms the local pastor and church and perhaps even especially financially. So never give your own church less money to bless us financially. Also, if you're really struggling to survive, wait till you're back on your feet financially before you send us a gift.
Those two things are commands of God providing for church and family. Providing for my radio show is obviously not a command of God, but if you love the show and you have extra money collecting interest in the bank, you have extra money for benevolent, recreational, and trivial purposes, then please share some of that money with us if you don't want us to disappear.
Please, we need your help. Go to ironsharpensiradio .com, click support, then click click to donate now. Last but not least, if you are not a member of a Christ-honoring, biblically faithful, theologically sound, doctrinally solid church, no matter where you live on the planet earth, I have extensive lists of biblically faithful churches spanning the globe and I may even be able to help you find a church no matter where on the globe you live and I have helped many people in all parts of the world find churches sometimes within just a few minutes from where they live.
And that may be you too. Send me an email to chrisholmson at gmail .com and put I need a church in the subject line. That's also the email address where you can send in a question to our guest A .M. Brewster on our theme today, Why Christians Don't Need Therapy.
The email address is chrisholmson 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 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 truthloveparent .com 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 doctor, biblical counselor who is leading this.
It was a conference for the IBCD, the Institute for Counseling and 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 are mentioned in the DSM, which is the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, which is like the psychiatrist's bible.
It's a huge, I've got it sitting right here in front of me. I've got the newest one, the DSM -5TR 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, but an unbeliever who is demon-possessed oftentimes, as we see in scriptures, can exhibit what would seem to be multiple personality disorders.
Now, is 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 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 question or an element within that last question was very interesting about coming off of medication and then attempting suicide.
Oftentimes, when people think of biblical counselors, one of the things that comes to their mind is the fact that they never prescribe 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 truthloveparent .com 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 with what are psychotropic drugs and so on and so forth, the diseasing of anxiety and depression in our world today. Lots of resources there that can 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 is well. Then if they go off the drug, 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. 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? It was 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.
The same thing happens 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 is not going to be helped because the physical stressor was removed.
You've heard it said, you can leave your sinful church and join another church and guess what? It's a church full of sinners. Even if everyone else were there, we're 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 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, and 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 get in so much trouble when we do that.
I was mentioning earlier about this idea of emotions, and I think this is super important, this idea of 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 when talking about emotions is the rollercoaster illustration.
This is a parable, so there are some things, there are some outliers, of course, that will not be addressed by this parable, but stick with me for a second. Three people get onto the exact same rollercoaster, 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 rollercoaster with him, and she's sitting right there.
And the third is petrified because he's on a rollercoaster, 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 rollercoaster ride.
They're also experiencing, by definition, the exact same emotion. If emotions are 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, it makes us faster, sharpens our thinking. However, one person experiencing this adrenaline rush 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.
It 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, is evaluating it and he's saying, oh, I'm experiencing fear. This person will likely think that the best response to the situation is to get off the roller coaster as far away as possible so he'll never experience that feeling again.
He sees the problem as being completely 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 as excitement will 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 hyper-focused on the fact that his left arm keeps brushing her right arm every time they turn.
That guy only sees the ride as a 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 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 to us to successfully navigate stressful situations.
But when we forget that and when we allow ourselves to interpret, and 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.
C .S. 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 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, irrational 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, as a speech teacher, I've helped many people. They say, 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 as 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 this idea of interpretation, okay? So, if I work to glorify God with our emotional responses in the same way we're to 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 if there's a spiritual problem in our lives. If I'm experiencing strong emotions in line with God's will, all is 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? If 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 experience an emotion, now the evaluation kicks in.
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 world.
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 that 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, Jim. 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.
I hadn't inundated the church yet, so my parents didn't put any stock in.
It. See, if it was 10 years earlier, you would have known what Candida, you would have known the.
Song Candida by Tony Orlando and Don. To be honest, 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 of 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.
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 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 in 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 sit on the extreme side of the churches, they feel like the room's going to 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 I remember with such clarity there to my right was the meat section and to my left were 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 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, 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, Erin.
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 going to lead with stop it. You're being stupid. But for me as a nine-year-old, I recognized it was dumb. There was no reason I had to do that.
And you know what? I have no memories from there. I'm not 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 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 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 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 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. It's this question of worldly versus divine. The creator of a thing 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. Instead, 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 how my mom raised me. 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. A 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 need to 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 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 it's not scientific in the slightest. And when we understand that, when we see it for what it is, and 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 slavish desire to just, quote unquote, do what our doctors say when it comes to things that the Bible identifies as sin.
By the way, I just want to 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 in 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 irontropensionradio .com.
Just type in Grimaldi, G-R-I-M-A-L-D-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 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 interesting about this, and unfortunately, I say it's unfortunate because he was, at the time that 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, what's the word 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 this is one of my last points about this, this 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 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 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. It was actually harming people. But so is telling people that 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 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 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 engagement with sin. The more I engage with sin, the more other, quote-unquote, worse sins become more acceptable.
Oftentimes, 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 engaged in 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 have homosexual urges at a very young age and having not participated in all this stuff. And so, I'm going to leave room for there being a legitimate question.
I'm not going to say, Chris, that I 100 understand all of your temptations. I've had all 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 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 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 fill in the blank, blonde hair, blue eyes, whatever, or younger women maybe.
But that doesn't make it okay to lust after that woman, even though maybe other men have never lusted after a woman who wasn't their wife. Praise God, that's great. But just because I have this 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 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 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.
It was interesting. On 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 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 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.
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 Janes 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 very interesting 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 as a girl that I wanted to 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 threw up.
Because I gave up on my dream as a five-year-old. But that type of thing happens. And why did it happen? I don't know. Children are curious. They're imaginative. 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.
Why wouldn't a child, an imaginative child, just think to themselves, I'm dressed up like a girl. Well, nowadays, we're being told that a 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 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 liked 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 their litmus test. Oh, you see, that child is transgender. We got to rush him off to a doctor to give them injections and surgically alter them.
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 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 Ellen DeGeneres on her TV show back in the 90s, I think it was, 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 transgender 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, 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 something in the back of my mind, making me think I accidentally said Jonathan Edwards.
Jonathan Winters. You know, those powdered wigs. But anyway, we got to get our final break. It's.
Going to 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. How do you make your savings last? How much should you take out and when?
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This is Darrell Bernard Harrison, co-host of the Just Thinking Podcast, and the NASB is my Bible of choice. I'm Pastor Tom Buck at First Baptist Church in Lindale, Texas,.
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Here's a great way for your church to help keep Iron Sharpens Iron Radio on the air. Pastors, are your pew bibles tattered and falling apart? Consider restocking your pews with the NASB and tell the publishers you heard about them from Chris Arnzen on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.
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I'm Dr. 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, Hope Reform Baptist Church in Corham, Long Island, New York, pastored by Rich Jensen and Christopher McDowell.
It's such a joy to witness and experience fellowship with people of God, like the dear saints at Hope Reform Baptist Church in Corham, who have an intensely passionate desire to continue digging deeper and deeper into the 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 Reform Baptist Church, go to hopereformedli .net, that's hopereformedli .net, or call 631 -696 -5711.
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Costa on Iron Sharpens Iron. Hi, this is Jon. Hi, this is Jon Sampson, pastor of King's Church.
In Peoria, Arizona, taking a moment of your day to talk about Chris Arnzen 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 Iron Sharpens Iron financially. Would you consider sending either a one-time gift or even becoming a regular monthly partner with this ministry?
I know it would be a huge encouragement to Chris if you would. All the details can be found at ironsharpensironradio .com where you can click support. That's ironsharpensironradio .com. 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, Parent 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.
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 are 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 is addicted to drugs, that child can be born with an addiction that right there is solely biological.
There's no spiritual element 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, 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 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 must deal with the spiritual issues, but also have medical help if necessary to help it over any type of physical.
Dependency there may be. 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 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 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 A .M. Brewster are TruthLoveParent .com, TruthLoveParent .com, and also A .M. Brewster .com. That's A .M. for Aaron Michael, and Brewster is spelt B-R-E-W-S-T-E-R, A .M. Brewster .com.
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 of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater Savior than you are a sinner.