I’m Pondering… 

These are some initial ponderings—thinking out loud, if you will. Musing.

So…ponder with me…

You may recall David Powlison’s classic article from 1996, How Do You Help a “Psychologized Counselee”?  In his editorial, Powlison discussed biblical counseling with a counselee who views their problems through primarily psychological categories—a “psychologized” counselee.

I’ve been pondering a different, but perhaps related concept. I’m wondering about the issue of Counseling the “Biblicized” Counselee. By “biblicized, I mean:

The counselee who has mistaken ideas about what the Bible actually teaches about Christian living, Christlikeness, and the process of change. These mistaken beliefs are often influenced, sadly, by our modern Christian culture, more than by biblical truth.

Perhaps a Companion Book… 

I posted about this on my X (Twitter) account and on my Gospel-Centered Biblical Counseling Facebook group page. I had about ten times the responses I might normally receive. People were excited and positive about the need for help in counseling the biblicized counselee. Several people suggested I make it into a book.

So….

That got me thinking that perhaps this could be a companion book to my book Consider Your Counsel: Addressing Ten Mistakes in Our Biblical Counseling.

Perhaps it could be a somewhat similar title, such as:

Counseling the Biblicized Counselee: Addressing a Dozen Unbiblical Ideas Our Counselees Believe.

My Very Preliminary List of Unbiblical (Biblicized) Ideas 

If this were to become a book, I think I would start with some preliminary chapters on topics such as:

• What is a biblicized counselee?
• How does our current Christian culture, especially in the West, and including the modern biblical counseling movement, contribute to these unbiblical ideas about the Christian life?
• How might a counselor interact lovingly, patiently, wisely, and graciously with a biblicized counselee?

Then I would have several chapters (perhaps a dozen, but who knows) summarizing various biblicized ideas and discussing more specifically how to lovingly and wisely engage with biblicized counselees.

Some of my preliminary ideas about biblicized false beliefs include:

• Emotions are sinful (and empathy is sinful).
• Addressing the body in counseling is wrong (seeing us primarily as souls instead of embodied-souls).
• We should “suffer well” meaning that mature Christians should experience an absence of painful feelings and never lament.
• True biblical counseling focuses on sin, not suffering.
• The concept of “trauma” is purely a secular idea.
• Anxiety is always sin.
• Depression is always sin.
• Bodily interventions are secular and sinful.
• Wives should stay in an abusive home and submit to their husbands no matter what.
• Common grace descriptive research has no place in biblical counseling.
• Abuse victims should immediately forgive and reconcile with abusers.

These are all ideas that the biblicized counselee may assume are biblical, but they are not. 

Question for Discussion 

As I mentioned, I posted these preliminary ideas on X and Facebook. I then asked,

What “biblicized” false concepts do Christian counselees bring to you that you would add to this list?

I received so many helpful responses that I can’t even keep up with collating them. But here are the suggestions from other pastors, counselors, educators, and leaders that I’ve collated so far.

• Abuse victims should quickly think of ways they have contributed to the abuse.
• Marriage and/or parenting is your highest calling and the primary path toward your sanctification.
• Men want/need sex more than women.
• A wife must always meet her husband’s sexual needs.
• My story doesn’t really matter.
• Doubt always equals sinful unbelief.
• A godly home will automatically equal saved/godly children.
• Using psychotropic medication is always wrong.
• Biblical counseling will make all pain go away.
• Self-forgiveness.
• Setting boundaries is unloving.
• Forgive and forget.
• God will always give you good things and bless you if you obey Him. If anything bad happens to it is because you stepped outside of God given authority.
• Men should lead their families using the “power over” model.
• Women are “easily deceived” and cannot rightly interpret or understand the Bible.
• Suffering is always the result of sin.
• We always experience God’s presence the most/in the most powerful ways in times of suffering.
• Experiencing temptation is sin.

What Would You Add? 

What “biblicized” false concepts do Christian counselees bring to you that you would add to this list?

What are false ideas and concepts that the “biblicized” counselee assumes are biblical, but in reality they have more to do with the world’s foolishness than the Word’s wisdom?