The Battle for the Bible

*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.

Reviewing the Situation

Picture the historical situation. American Evangelical pastoral care had moved from a focus on suffering and sin to a focus on self during the 100 years from the Civil War to the Civil Rights movement. In isolation from the insights of females and minorities, White male Evangelicals attempted to pull the pendulum back. Given the circumstances, not surprisingly, they pulled the pendulum toward a focus on sin without a commensurate emphasis on suffering.

The Battle for the Bible (The Readers’ Digest Version)

But there’s more.

Preceding and merging into this era, we have the battle for the Bible between fundamentalists and liberals. Theological liberals focused on “the social gospel” and easily accepted the theories of secular psychology. They supplanted salvation with self-realization, replaced theology with psychology, and changed pastoral ministry from shepherding to social work, psychologizing, and referring parishioners to therapists.

Fundamentalists pushed back hard. In reaction, and in an attempt to protect belief in the inerrancy and sufficiency of the Word of God, they:

1. Separated Heaven from Earth:

As fundamentalists rejected the social gospel, at times they pulled the pendulum back so far that they also threw the proverbial baby out with the bath water. They neglected the truth that Jesus came to give eternal life and abundant life now. Theology and ministry increasingly became about salvation from past sin and eternal life later, but decreasingly about sanctification now, abundant life now, and impacting the world now. It focused on rules and regulations (legalism) and on separation from the world.

2. Separated Truth from Life:

Fundamentalists observed liberals throwing out truth and theology. In their battle for the Bible, fundamentalists focused on theology, which was good, but did so often unrelated to life, which was bad.

3. Separated the Pulpit Ministry of the Word from the Personal Ministry of the Word:

In an attempt to counteract the diluted preaching and the watered-down theology of liberals, fundamentalists focused on the pulpit, which was good, but minimized the personal ministry of the Word (shepherding, counseling, comforting, Body life, one another ministry, etc.), which was bad.

Ironically, now no one was using the Bible for counseling! Liberals dealt with daily life through the “social sciences.” Fundamentalists dealt with theology and heaven, but minimized the use of the Bible for one-to-one personal ministry. Fundamentalist-Evangelical seminaries during this era often did not even have a single course on pastoral counseling.

The Climate that Birthed Modern Biblical Counseling

Now imagine being alive in this era. Imagine being a pastor with hurting and hardened parishioners. Imagine your options. You could turn to secular psychology to address the personal issues your people were bringing to you. Or, you could ignore their personal issues and just keep preaching from the pulpit theology unrelated to life.

So now, your task requires pulling back not one, but two pendulums—one that minimized truth and one that minimized life. One that preached and practiced the social gospel and one that preached the Word from the pulpit but did not practice historic shepherding.

What would you have done? How hard would it have been to pull these pendulums back with biblical balance on heaven and earth, on truth and life, on the pulpit ministry of the Word and the personal ministry of the Word, and on suffering and sin?

Where Do We Go from Here?

Tomorrow we’ll observe how the modern biblical counseling movement pulled these pendulums back, but did so with more of a focus on sin, and less of a focus on suffering. We’ll also share why early leaders feared focusing on suffering. What did they feel the ramifications would be?

In later posts, we’ll consider how their theological perspectives, their personal perspectives, their preaching training, and their views on emotions, all combined with their historical setting to “set them up” for moving from the Church’s historic focus on both sin and suffering.