Are Pastors Better at Counseling Than Therapists?

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Christianity, Salvation, and Divine Judgment

Welcome to Bible Bashed, where we aim to equip the saints for the work of ministry by answering the questions you're not allowed to ask. We're your hosts Harrison Kerrig and Pastor Tim Mullett, and today we'll answer the age-old question, are pastors better at counseling than therapists?

Now Tim, as we kick this episode off, what Bible verse do you have for us related to the topic question?

So Psalm 19, 7 -9 says, The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul. The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple. The precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart. The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes. The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever. And the rules of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.

A bit of a longer one than normal. So how does that relate to the question at hand here?

Well, one of the things that we're told is that psychologists are essentially engaging in some materialistic form of soul care. So the word psychology is a compound word. Sukkos means soul. Logos means, essentially in that context, the study of.

So it used to be that people understood psychology to be the study of the soul. But at this point, obviously, with our materialistic glasses, we no longer believe there is such a thing as a soul. But then the Bible truly is designed to address problems of soul care.

So the law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul.

That is pretty ironic that the term still references soul. But then in our society, I mean, everything's pretty materialistic at this point. There's got to be a physical explanation for everything, right?

Right, right. I mean, it really is remarkable how materialistic most people are as it relates to this topic. So they look at someone who has anxiety, who has depression, and they can't conceive of how this can't possibly be some kind of biological problem in terms of this ideology, for sure.

Yeah, and that's pretty evident, you know, especially because of recent events that have happened. You know, we put out a tweet just the other day essentially making this point, saying pastors are better equipped.

I don't even think we said they were better equipped. It probably wasn't even the strongest statement we could make, but we said that pastors were better equipped than therapists to help you handle depression and anxiety.

And a lot of people agreed with that, but then a lot more people got very upset with that kind of statement. I mean, you saw all manner of responses. There were certainly some who were trying to have some kind of conversation and discussion about it, but most of them were essentially lighting their hair on fire.

I mean, that was the overwhelming response, was people just lighting their hair on fire over this kind of statement and jumping to all sorts of strange conclusions. And I think ultimately for a lot of the people, it did come down to this issue where their response is essentially, every time you say something like this, the response is normally a lot of them are going to say, Oh, so when you get diagnosed with cancer, are you going to go to your pastor?

And you just kind of have to laugh at that response because it really does demonstrate just how much the point you're trying to make is true. There are so many people who look at depression and anxiety, being overwhelmed by sorrow or by worry or fear, and they will sit there and tell you that this should be put in the same exact category as something like cancer or a broken bone in your body, where we would say, Yes, with something like cancer or a broken bone, there's objective tests that can be run to determine whether or not you have broken a bone or whether or not you have cancer.

And then there's medical treatments that you can choose to undergo that are meant to at least try to heal you of these different medical issues that you're having. But we would say anxiety and depression absolutely do not fall in that category.

Right, Tim?

Yeah, it's amazing. I really have a hard time putting myself in the shoes of a person who thinks this way. Meaning, there was a time in my life where I was a professing Christian, but I really didn't read the Bible all that much.

But even during that time in my life where I was a professing Christian who didn't read the Bible, was not trying to make a scriptural case for the things that I think and believe. I still understood at a pretty fundamental level that there were issues like this, like anxiety and depression were issues that people had to take basic personal responsibility for.

So, meaning, most of my life, this has just been such an obvious kind of presupposition that you take into almost every single encounter to where, right or wrong, I understood it was a convenient excuse that people made where they would blame their feelings on other people.

But growing up, I always thought that was a game that people were playing where if you press them a little bit, they would be reasonable. The idea that you can just take your feelings of sadness, you can take your feelings of worry, and just blame them on your biology in some kind of simple way, it's always struck me as crazy.

I guess I just have a very hard time understanding the kind of person who is legitimately blaming anxiety, depression. People will bring up PTSD as if it's some kind of gotcha concept to where, oh, I bet we have people on this thread who are going that route with it.

I bet you're the kind of person who thinks that PTSD isn't real either, don't you? What they mean by that is they imagine that because we're saying that anxiety and depression are not medical problems, that somehow we believe that PTSD is not real.

That's the way they'll word it. It's like, well, if you're saying that me witnessing a scary event means that I'm fundamentally unaccountable for the fear that I might experience in response to that scary event for the rest of my life, then, well, no, I don't believe that I'm fundamentally no longer able to have personal moral responsibility for my thoughts, my feelings, my fears anymore.

But, yeah, person after person after person who are screaming at us, because of what you did, this is your fault. You should take responsibility for this one. No, the person after person who are screaming at us because of this, I mean, they really are fully stepping into the materialistic worldview.

They fully are expecting people to treat anxiety, depression, PTSD as equivalent to cancer. I mean, and what was so funny about it is they kept on, in order to establish this, they kept on bringing forward the chemical imbalance theory of depression.

I guess they didn't get the news that this has largely been discredited in the past couple years. So that's kind of funny. As they call you idiots and morons and fools, they're not even up to date on the basic science at that point.

But very few people in that debacle tried to make any effort whatsoever to establish any of the things that they were saying on the basis of anything other than their own pure subjective opinion. But, yeah, no, it was amazing to watch.

Anxiety, Depression, and Personal Responsibility

Yeah, and I think the thing that's really troubling with it is when you start going that route and you start blaming anxiety and depression on this sort of, there's a physical explanation for why I'm overcome with worry or grief or fear, whatever it might be, the question then becomes, well, where does that stop?

Does anger, do I just have, whenever I, I'm overwhelmed with anger all the time. Does that mean I have a physical explanation for why I'm angry all the time? And that means that I'm no longer held accountable for my own actions.

What about the man who is constantly overcome with anger and he starts beating his wife because he's overcome with anger all the time, but he has a physical explanation now for that. Is he now scot-free from all of his actions because he's got a, I mean, it's just a disease for him, right?

And I mean, how far does it go? I mean, I know people do think this way, but do addictions, like, hey, you're constantly drinking alcohol, but that's not your fault. It's just because of the way, what your body is suffering from a certain disease, it's not your fault.

And how far do you take that? I mean, like, you know, if you're addicted to certain sexual sins or lusts, does that, are you no longer accountable for those things? It just feels like you can take this sort of explanation and then just basically run it over almost any sin that you could commit and say like, hey, look, it's not my fault because there's a physical explanation for this.

I mean, certainly that's what people are doing. And I mean, there are psychological labels for all the things you've mentioned. I mean, if you have fits of anger, then you can describe that in the DSM language of intermittent explosive disorder.

Or, you know, if you have back and forth periods between depression and anger, then you can call it bipolar. I mean, certainly if you're a vet and you take out all of your PTSD on your wife, you can get a free pass to do that so long as you have that label.

So, yeah, no one wants to criticize veterans. So, basically have a free pass if you're a veteran to abuse your wife and your family and not take responsibility for your life or anything along those lines so long as you blame it on the labels for sure.

But, yeah, I think this is a game that it selectively works, it's selectively applied. And a lot of it depends on other factors. So, a lot of this is determined on the basis of the language of intersexual, you know, categories of victimization.

So, depending on how many of these intersexual victim categories you have, you might be able to get away with these things more than others. But, yeah, I mean, certainly this is a game that people play.

It's like any of the things on the left. There's so many of the things on the left that, you know, they don't make sense when you think about them for any length of time. But it is a game of victimization that you're allowed to play so long as you don't run into certain categories.

You know, running roughshod over other protected classes essentially. So, yeah, I mean, you'll have any number of people who will play the alcoholism is a disease game.

Right.

Yeah, so long as it's not the white male who is letting that alcoholism lead him into, you know, sexually abusing a woman or something like that, right?

Right.

At which point then all the categories of victimization are out the window and, you know, he is a scoundrel. So, you know, this is just a game of this is a very sophisticated game that I mean, in some sense it's sophisticated, in other sense it's really just kind of ridiculous and, you know, brain-dead kind of game.

Blaming all your problems on these stupid labels. But, yeah, you can get away with it as long as you're not running afoul of the other priorities.

The Limits of Psychological Labels

Well, and the thing that really came out to me in a lot of the replies was when you think this way, not only are you essentially putting yourself in a position where you now have to excuse just about any sin that anyone can commit, but then it seems like you're also extremely or, you know, lowering significantly the responsibilities that a pastor has over his congregation in terms of shepherding them.

I mean, you know, there were people who were claiming to be pastors coming into that thread and, you know, they were essentially saying something along the lines of, Pastor here, this is completely false.

If you're struggling with these things, you need to go to a trained professional. And I'm sitting there thinking, you are supposed to be the trained professional. You are supposed to be the one who is helping them through these issues in their life.

And you're willingly no one's paying you to come on here. No one's asked for your opinion. You have seen this, and you are coming on willingly, admitting that you are insufficient for the role that you signed up for, if you are actually a pastor.

I'm sure some of them were probably lying, just to try and, you know, drive the point. But, you know, if you're actually a pastor, and your thought process is, Hey, I'm not a trained professional. I can't help you deal with these spiritual issues in your life.

Well, I mean, like, what are you doing? What's your job? What is your job at that point? If your job is just to say, Oh, yeah, you're struggling. You're overcome with fear all the time. Yeah, go talk to the guy who's incentivized to keep you coming back to him over and over and over again for as long as possible.

He'll probably be able to better help you than I will. That seems like an embarrassing thing to admit. You're basically just admitting that you are incapable of doing your job.

Careful, Harrison, because, I mean, you have to remember that these are the same people who think that church can be virtual, and these are the same people who think that, you know, being a video screen pastor, where you pipe in pastor to multiple congregations across, you know, different areas in the city, that that's such a thing, you know.

So online church is real. Virtual pastors are real. So these are the same kind of people. I think we're at an all-time low, like, in terms of our standards for what pastors should be able to do.

Yeah.

You know, the idea that you could literally counsel someone through an issue like Jesus talks about in the Sermon on the Mount seems to be asking too much at this point.

Pastoral Counseling and the Sermon on the Mount

Yeah.

Why do you worry about your life?

Well, I guess because you have mental disorder, and I don't want to touch it because I don't want to get sued, you know. So there's that, you know. Paul says, be anxious for nothing.

You know, praise the Lord.

These pastors are saying, not my territory, man. Not my territory.

Praise the Lord that God sent us finally 2 ,000 years later. He sent us therapists so that we could finally, as Christians, start dealing with these issues. Right, Tim?

Well, they're all euphemisms. When you call a psychologist a therapist, you know, that's them LARPing. They're live-action role-playing as medical doctors at this point. But all the language is just euphemisms.

You know, psychologists are not therapists. They're not doctors. They're not healers. The medication they give you is not medication. Giving someone a sedative, giving someone a stimulant, you know, these things are not medicine.

Yeah, certainly these are mind-altering drugs that you're giving people, you know, giving them sedatives, giving them stimulants, whatever it is that you're giving them for the sake of trying to fix their, you know, brain problems, so to speak.

But, yeah, no, these are not therapists. This is not medicine. These medical-sounding labels, they're not medical labels. But, yeah, it's crazy, man. It's crazy to think about the level of delusion that people have fallen under at this point to where you're talking about, like, two weeks of sudden unexplained sadness that lasts, you know, more days than not, you know, that has affected your life to such a degree that you can't handle the basic responsibilities of your life.

We're being taught to treat that. Just normal life problems, sadness, despair, hopelessness, is filled with excessive guilt. You're trained to treat that as a medical problem at this point because, you know, the psychologists have packaged their labels in this medical-sounding language, and that's about all it is at this point.

Right, right. And it was funny, too, because that post, after I don't know how many days, probably three or four days, it finally got a community note put on it. And, you know, normally those community notes, they're meant to essentially disprove whatever the post is.

So basically, the community notes on Twitter, they essentially, people will find posts that are false, and then they will put a community note on it explaining it's false and here's why it's false. But then on ours, they couldn't really do that, so then all they did was just say, this is an opinion.

These guys are stating an opinion as a fact.

Right, they're stating an opinion as a fact, when in reality it is just an opinion. And so I think that, really, I think that does say a lot about what exactly is going on here. The fact that, I mean, millions of people saw that.

Millions. I think it was at like four or five million people saw it. And the best explanation people could give was, oh, this is an opinion. I think that says a lot about the actual statement we made.

I mean, it is a statement. It's not an opinion. It's a statement of fact, which we can find in Scripture. Right, Tim?

Scripture, Soul Care, and the Role of the Church

Well, sure.

Yeah.

God in his word has given us everything we need for life and godliness, to the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence. I mean, you mentioned this in the language of pastors. Like pastors are better equipped than therapists, quote-unquote, to counsel people through anxiety and depression.

But that's even an overstatement at that point to where, I mean, it's not as if it's just true that pastors are more equipped because they're specially equipped. No, I do think pastors are specially designed by God to help deal with these soul problems for sure.

They should be doctors of the soul. But at the same time, I mean, the Bible says this about the standard church member. So, I mean, there are people on there who are basically saying, I'd rather go to a plumber than go to a pastor to deal with these.

And I said, you know, I responded to that with, well, you know, a Christian plumber is more competent to counsel than psychologists. I mean, but that's what Paul says, you know, Romans 15, 14. I myself am satisfied about you, my brothers, that you yourselves are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge and able to instruct one another.

These are not complicated issues. Anxiety, depression, these are not. These are normal life problems that certainly the Bible has a lot to say about. You know, Christians should not be those who grieve as those who have no hope.

You know, we shouldn't be given over to hopelessness and despair. The idea that a Christian should be characterized by sudden, unexplained sadness for a two-week period of time that basically for more days than not and has significantly impacted our ability to take care of the basic responsibilities of life.

I mean, these are normal life problems. These are not problems that most people throughout the history of the world have thought required specialized medical care for one. You know, for two, they don't even require specialized, you know, top therapy, if you want to put it that way.

So these are just normal life problems. And for most of the history of the world, if you see a guy just sitting there curled up in the fetal position, refusing to go to work because he's so sad, most of his male friends would have come along at that point and poured a cold bucket of water over his head and start maybe kicking him and telling him to get up and quit being worthless and move on with his life.

But, yeah, it's amazing. We treat a lot of these problems with far too much seriousness than what they deserve.

Yeah.

Anxiety, fear, these are normal life problems. And it's not even a case that you really even need a pastor to deal with a lot of these things. You just need a friend who's going to love you and not going to treat you in an overly serious way when you're wanting to give up on life.

Yeah.

Well, and, I mean, ironically, it is a pretty depressing thought to think, well, what did Christians do before therapists came along, before therapy came along, before we—.

They had actual answers.

Right, right.

They actually fixed it.

Instead of creating a customer for life who had to pay $200 a week in order to talk about their problems, and then you give them—you turn them into a drug addict. They didn't stay depressed forever. They didn't stay anxious forever because they actually had answers before that.

Right, right. And which makes sense when you think about Scripture and you think about—I mean, think about all the people who faced significant trials throughout Scripture. And just go read the Psalms and ask yourself, does this sound like a person who stayed weighed down by sadness and sorrow all the time?

Does this sound like a person who is constantly plagued by fear and anxiety? The ones that were actually turning to the Lord, the ones that were actually being faithful, do they sound like the people that were constantly dealing with these things?

Or do they sound like the people who went through seasons in life, maybe, or moments in time where they dealt with these things and then they ended up constantly turning back to the Lord and the Lord was helping them, delivering them from these things, granting them repentance from these things, reminding them of His goodness, reminding them of His faithfulness.

And then they're fine again, right? And I think sometimes—I didn't see this a lot in the comments of the thread, probably because it just didn't really get to this audience as much, but you do see people kind of—a lot of people will refer back to Charles Spurgeon and the fact that he was apparently—I didn't know this, but I guess he dealt with overwhelming sorrow a lot.

And so people will look to him and say, Oh, so you think that Spurgeon is terrible and an unfaithful pastor and blah, blah, blah, whatever, this and that. And I think that's always been a confusing response to me, too, because number one, no, I don't think just because you struggled with a particular sin for a long time doesn't necessarily mean that you are— and you're disqualified from ministry necessarily, depending on what that sin is, obviously.

But then number two, while I do appreciate Spurgeon, and I think he's put a lot of helpful stuff out there and he's taught a lot of helpful things, he's still a human being who is very capable of sin.

And so to present him as if, Hey, Charles Spurgeon dealt with this, so it's obviously not sin, is almost like, Well, do you think he was perfect? I mean, do you think he was blameless? Could he have gone and died on the cross for our sins?

No? Okay, well then he must be able to fall into the same sins as the rest of us are tempted to fall into. I didn't see a lot of that, but then it is a confusing response that a lot of Reformed people who don't necessarily agree that— who still believe—ultimately what's really going on is even the Reformed Christians ultimately still believe that this is a materialistic problem, this is a physical problem, depression and anxiety.

Whereas we would say and the Bible would say that it's primarily a spiritual problem. And they're just using guys like Spurgeon as the excuse to be able to justify it, saying, Hey, look, here's a really faithful guy, he struggled with it, therefore you're wrong.

Yeah, they'll mention Spurgeon, they'll mention Elijah in 1 Kings 2, to where after he kills the prophets of Baal, he figures out that Jezebel is seeking his life and then he wants to die. And then they take that as an indication that, you see, he suffered from depression too.

A lot of what's happening is you have equivocation. You have them basically taking the psychological categories that have very specific meaning and then they're applying them backward to very specific situations.

Yeah, I mean, there's no real evidence that Elijah had hopelessness and despair that was fueled by guilt for a two-week period of time. I mean, yeah, he had a moment where he was down and he didn't remember the deliverance that God had just accomplished through him and just gave into hopelessness and despair.

So certainly he had a moment like that, but that wasn't him characterized by a two-week period of time where he's unable and unwilling to fulfill his responsibilities. In fact, God feeds him with the birds of the air and strengthens him and sends him on his way and he moves on with it, right?

So a lot of what's happening in these discussions is you have people like this who have moments where, yeah, they're not responding to those moments in a perfect way, but then you're being asked to then use that as a license to say that it's okay for a Christian to live there for long periods of time and sanctify that as if it's a permanent disorder, not just a momentary weakness that a Christian may go through.

So those are just two very, very different things. And the same thing with Spurgeon. I don't know to what extent he is characterized by sorrow that was reasonable and to what extent he is characterized by hopelessness and despair that is totally contrary to the fruit of the Spirit in his life.

I don't know. I'm not as familiar with his own personal story as all that, but certainly Spurgeon is not in the Bible and certainly he should not be used to overturn what the Bible says about the fruit of the Spirit and how we should respond to trials and what it looks like to count it all joy when we fall into various trials.

I mean, certainly there are difficulties that accompany ministry, and anyone who has been in formal ministry for any length of time knows that there are difficulties that come with that. There's difficulties that come from having loved ones who turn on you, who have people that you love and care about and are devoted to seeking their good, view you as a villain, think the worst about you, listen to gossip and slander about you, put your actions in the worst possible situation.

I mean, certainly there's sadness that comes from that. There's sorrow that comes from that that ought to be a godly sorrow. So I wouldn't want to paint some caricature of ministry that it's just all happiness every day and everything is wonderful and it's all great and there's no cost to be paid and your enemies won't be those of your own household at times.

That's really not the way it works. So yeah, ministry's hard. It has its fair share of trials, but the godly person will count it all joy. They won't give themselves over to paralyzing hopelessness and despair to the extent to which Charles Spurgeon gave himself over to hopelessness and despair.

He's wrong. He shouldn't have done that. It's pretty simple. So yeah, I think certainly there's much to be said about all that, but none of that takes away the hope that the Bible gives us in the Scriptures.

So certainly the Scriptures are given to us to be a source of hope. And contrary to what everyone says about this topic, I mean, the worst thing you can possibly do is just give a person a free pass to live in their feelings in perpetuity forever.

It's not being mean to them to basically say, hey, this doesn't have to be your life. In fact, that's where the real hope is. The real hope is that God can change you to the other most for sure.

Spiritual Sorrow, Charles Spurgeon, and Elijah

So do you think that Christians should ever go see a therapist?

Oh, I mean, if they were actually therapists,.

I may encourage them to. No, we have very different worldview, very different assumptions. I come, the goal of my, when I'm trying to counsel someone, the goal that I'm pursuing is the goal of teaching them how to glorify God and submit to His will and to understand their problem in light of creation, fall, redemption, and Christ.

So I have a fundamentally different understanding of the nature of their problem. I have a fundamentally different understanding of the solution that's going to be found in the Gospel. You know, the best that a psychologist is going to do is give them some kind of behavior modification techniques or to help them rely on themselves, give them self-focused counsel, self-focused change.

I mean, the best they're going to give them is workspace righteousness. We just have different medicine that we're giving to people.

Okay. Yep.

Okay. Well, I think that's a good place for us to wrap up the episode on. So thank you, Tim, for answering all of our questions. And it was certainly interesting to see all of the, you know, all of the terrible responses to that tweet.

And, you know, I mean, just extremely concerning, especially from people who claim to be Christians. And to see such a low view of pastors and the Scriptures themselves, that was very discouraging. But, you know, all we can do is keep saying the same things, you know, teaching others and praying that, you know, God will change their hearts and help them to see even, I mean, even science, you know, like the studies you were referencing earlier that are coming out and disproving all the stuff that they're coming to us and calling us idiots for, you know, and then they're bringing up debunked scientific, you know, explanations and theories for all of these things.

You know, what do you do besides keep telling the truth and praying? So thank you for answering all those questions related to that. We want to thank all you guys for listening to us and supporting us week in and week out.

We enjoy getting to put together these episodes and talk about these issues, even if you do get, you know, 5 .4 million people that are all ready to, ready to take your head off if they got the chance over saying something plainly true.

You know, it's a pleasure to be able to do that. And it's not all, you know, doom and gloom. There's certainly a lot of people that would agree with us and they were vocal about that, so that was nice to see.

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And we'll see you guys on the next one. Transcribed by https://otter .ai.