How Biblical Counseling Lost Its Way

*Note: If you’re disappointed that I’m saying that some biblical counseling is only half biblical, then please read my comments at the end of my first post in this series: http://tinyurl.com/n8k799.

My Premise

Some modern biblical counseling considers the seriousness of sin—sinning, but spends much less time equipping people to minister to the gravity of grinding affliction—suffering. When we provide counseling for sin, but fail to provide counseling and counselor training for suffering, then such biblical counseling is only half biblical.

Pulling Back the Pendulum . . . Too Far . . . One Way

Recall the situation pastors faced in the 1960s when hurting parishioners walked into their pastoral office. You could turn to secular psychology to address their personal issues. Or, you could ignore their personal issues and just keep preaching from the pulpit theology unrelated to life.

Those individuals who revived modern biblical counseling returned to the shepherding task of the personal ministry of the Word. However, when they pulled back the pendulum:

1. They feared that anything other than confronting sin would be a return to the social gospel.

2. They feared that focusing on life’s hardships might easily encourage evasion of moral responsibility and blame-shifting.

3. They feared that “empathy,” “non-directive responses,” and “passive listening” would be a capitulation to liberalism and secular psychology.

They pulled back the pendulum to the shepherding task of the personal ministry of the Word and to a focus on moral responsibility and sin—for which we all should be thankful.

Their pull went too far, was one-dimensional, and fear-based—from which we should all learn.

It is never biblical to ignore any part of our biblical calling out of fear that someone might respond in an unbiblical manner to our biblical ministry.

We do not have to shift blame to past traumatic experiences in order to be a biblical emphathizer, encourager, and hope-giver. It is not blame-shifting to recognize the biblical truth that being sinned against causes pain (2 Samuel 13, the lament Psalms, etc.). It is not blame-shifting to empathize with, console, and comfort our suffering parishioners and spiritual friends.

Our Calling to a Fuller Shepherding Response

Given the climate in which they lived, pioneers of the return to biblical counseling saw suffering as an occasion for revealing either faithfulness or sinfulness. That much we can applaud.

Their response, however, was primarily one-dimensional. They exhorted moral responsibility through the directive teaching of biblical principles. They viewed suffering exclusively as an occasion to warn against sinning. They explored suffering chiefly to discover sinful responses, to determine what responses would be morally appropriate, and to exhort such morally appropriate actions and behaviors.

However, the Bible and Church history demand a much fuller shepherding response to suffering and sufferers. It includes, but is not limited to:

1. Weeping with those who weep (Romans 12:15).

2. Comforting those who hurt (2 Corinthians 1:3-11 and over 100 occurrences in the New Testament of parakaleo—comfort and encouragement).

3. Sharing not only Scriptures but our very own souls—our selves—relational connection (1 Thessalonians 2:8).

4. Relating with the mutual care modeled within the Trinity (John 1, John 17).

5. Bearing one another’s burdens (Galatians 6:1-4).

6. Encouraging one another and scores of other compassionate “one another” passages.

7. Sustaining empathy and compassionate commiseration (the opposite of Job’s miserable counselors—Job 3-42) modeled by the Church Fathers, the Reformers, the Puritans, women throughout Church history, African American soul care-givers, etc.

8. The collaborative application of Scripture emphasizing the use of passages such as the Psalms of Lament in a consolatory manner as Martin Luther and countless heroes of the faith did.

9. The healing permission to and encouragement to grieve as those who have hope (1 Thessalonians 4:13).

It is simply not biblical enough to say, “Oh, of course we deal with suffering,” and then to “deal with it” simply by exhortation to moral behavior. Such is not a comprehensive, compassionate, biblical, historical shepherding response.

Where Do We Go From Here?

In subsequent posts, we’ll consider why, though acknowledging suffering, it became an underdeveloped element of biblical counseling, and why such counseling became private preaching with a moralistic, non-relational, directive bent.

Theological perspectives, personality issues, preaching training, and views of the image of God all combined with the historical setting to “set up” early biblical counseling for movement away from the Church’s historic practice and the Bible’s comprehensive focus on both sustaining and healing for suffering and reconciling and guiding for sinning.