16 Self-Assessment Questions to Ask Ourselves As We Evaluate Other Counseling Models

A Word From Bob 

Today’s post is a shortened version of 3 Nouthetic Cautions About Nouthetic Critiques of Others: From John Bettler. In that longer post, John Bettler asked,

In our desire to biblically assess counseling models, have we been unfair to the views of others, inaccurate with the text of Scripture, and insensitive to the pain of our counselees?

I then developed the following 16 counselor self-assessment questions for us to ask when we are evaluating other models of counseling.

6 Self-Assessment Questions About How We Evaluate Others 

Here are six questions we could be asking ourselves today. 

1. Are we honest about those with whom we disagree?

2. Do we fairly and accurately present what others actually say and teach about counseling?

3. Do we at times misrepresent or distort the counseling views of others?

4. Do we highlight only our perceived negatives of the counseling positions of others, or do we seek to also highlight the strengths of their counseling positions?

5. Do we strive in all integrity to represent the counseling views of those with whom we disagree, not in their worst light, but in their best possible light?

6. Do we know and present the counseling views of those with whom we disagree, not in a caricature, but in actuality and reality? 

5 Self-Assessment Questions About How We Use Scriptures  

Here are five questions we could be asking ourselves today. 

1. In seeking to critique the counseling views of others, do we twist Scripture to substantiate our critique?

2. Do we view Scripture through the grid of our counseling model, or do we view our counseling model through the grid of Scripture?

3. Rather than studying Scripture in context, do we find proof texts that we take out of context in order to critique the counseling views of others?

4. In critiquing the counseling positions of others, do we miss the purpose of biblical passages and make Scripture say something different than God intended?

5. In seeking to build a case for scriptural authority, do we rob Scripture of its authority by twisting it to fit our counseling views so we can triumph over the counseling views of others?

5 Self-Assessment Questions About Our Care for Counselees

Here are five questions we could be asking ourselves today.

1. Are we more concerned with critiquing “wrong” views of abuse, suffering, and trauma than we are with caring for people who are facing abuse, suffering, and trauma?

2. Are we so focused on our “version of the truth” that we miss God’s compassionate concern for and comfort of the suffering, abused, and traumatized?

3. Do we spend more energy nouthetically correcting the wrong approaches of others than we do compassionately caring for the hurting?

4. Are we developing comprehensive biblical approaches to suffering, abuse, and trauma that see people holistically as embodied-souls—impacted in body and soul by suffering, abuse, and trauma?

5. Do we trivialize the problem and pain of suffering, abuse, and trauma by focusing on arguing against the failures of certain secular approaches?

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