Oil and Water – Christianity and Psychology

A Way that Seemeth Right  – from Psychoheresy Awareness Ministries –

There is a way that seemeth right unto a man,
but the end thereof are the ways of death. (Prov. 16:25.)

 No matter how personable and well-meaning a Christian therapist may be, he/she has been heavily influenced by an ungodly psychological perspective. Psychology thus becomes the tempting means for both interpreting Scripture and applying it to daily living. When people read the Bible from the psychological perspective of Freud, Jung, Adler, Maslow, Rogers, et al, they tend to conform the Bible to those theories and methods. Rather than looking at life through the lens of the Bible, they tend to look at the Bible through the lens of psychology.

Amalgamators, those who integrate psychology and the Bible, add the wisdom of men to fill in what they think is missing from the Bible. They take an age-old problem, give it a new name, such as “midlife crisis,” and give solutions from the leavened loaf.[2] They integrate psychological ideas with a Bible verse or story here and there to come up with what they believe to be effective solutions to problems they think are beyond the reach of Scripture.

One human problem after another is confronted with an integrated approach. This conveys the idea that one is getting the best of both worlds, and underneath this is the not-so-subtle idea that the Bible is insufficient and must be propped up by a strong psychology. Psychological counselors decide which of the almost 500 often-contradictory psychological approaches and which of the thousands of not-always-compatible techniques they will integrate with the Bible. Does anyone notice the contradictions in all of these integrations?

Even Christian psychologists chase one trendy idea after another, just like Don Quixote pursuing the parade of tilting windmills. Sigmund Freud is not quite as popular among Christians as Carl Jung, Carl Rogers, and Abraham Maslow are now. As Eric Berne became less popular, Alfred Ellis gained in popularity among Christian therapists. It all depends on which ideas and methods are in vogue and how well they are couched in Christian terminology. The church pursues both blindly and eagerly the psychological purveyors of perverse and unproven ideas and opinions with the same kind of loyalty and naiveté as Don Quixote’s servant Sancho. (Click here to read the remainder of the article)

by Martin and Deidre Bobgan | Jul 1, 2023 | “Christian Psychology”, Contending for the Faith, Psychology’s Influence on Church and Culture, Psychotherapy and Research