If applied wisely and in partnership with Scripture, many psychological principles can lead people down discipleship’s road.
—Louis McBurney
Years ago, a pastor attending Marble Retreat was trying to climb out of the deep gorge of despair. Several years before coming to Marble, she had taken her struggles to a psychotherapist and wound up in bed with him. Her troubles, as you might imagine, compounded exponentially.
In one of our first counseling sessions, I asked her what seemed like an obvious question.
“How have you dealt with your sin of adultery?”
A funny look crossed her face. “No one has ever called it that before,” the pastor said. “But it is sin, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is.”
Right then and there she repented. It was the catalyst to her recovery.
Later, the irony hit me: this pastor’s adultery had happened several years back, but apparently nobody in her church, denomination, or circle of friends had mentioned that what she did was a sin. Neither had the professional counsel she’d received after her affair. I was flabbergasted.
The Therapeutic Invasion
The North American church has been invaded by what some call the “therapeutic culture”—a culture that promotes openness, acceptance, and tolerance, with a value system of listening, empathy, and support.
This phenomenon began in the 1960s, in what psychiatry called the Age of Anxiety. The cultural unrest of that period conceived and gave birth to despair, a despair that has continued for some thirty years. Today’s lonely crowd has lost the capacity to cope. Many feel hopeless and aimless. The evening news reports the grim result: suicide, child abuse, spousal abuse, divorce, violence—the rates in recent years have skyrocketed.
Paralleling this despair has been the proliferation of support groups and professional counselors—the secular recovery movement—which provided many hurting people a safe, structured environment for dealing with their problems. By the late 1980s, in fact, seeing a counselor or attending a support group was considered chic; you had a doctor, a lawyer, and a therapist.
What began in the general culture, then, spread (some would say metastasized) to the church. Local churches allowed AA groups to meet in their facilities and sponsored support groups on divorce recovery, grief recovery, and overcoming sexual and drug addictions. Each spring Christian schools now graduate an army of counselors outfitted to help people work through their problems. These soldiers of healing find their way into local church settings or start counseling businesses. The language of recovery saturates the Christian air waves. At Christian bookstores, believers hungrily buy up millions of dollars worth of self-help books that tell how to set boundaries, identify anger, and discover patterns of family sin.
These changes have affected how pastors feel about what they do. As parishioners get help from counselors and fill up support groups, pastors can feel threatened. Their skills may seem obsolete. Leading Bible studies, preaching, visitation—these seem to be anachronisms. What good am I, a pastor may think, if people are getting all their good stuff from their support group? What’s my role around here, anyway?
One pastor came to Marble troubled. He felt like an outsider; everyone was “recovering” except him. “I’m supposed to be leading these people,” he said, “but I’ve never been where they’ve been. I don’t feel good asking them, ‘Hey, what do you have that I don’t have?'”
What are we to think of this new phenomenon?
Its Benefits
While some pockets of the church have embraced the recovery movement, others have criticized it heavily—and with good reason. Many philosophical elements of popular psychology are clearly at war with Scripture.
No doubt much of popular psychology is laced with narcissism. Self is often exalted above all. The word sin is no longer used. Many efforts to help people with their problems completely ignore the spiritual dimension. Everyone is a victim. Parents, spouse, genetics—these all get blamed while individuals in therapy seem to be absolved of responsibility.
But I’m not prepared to wash my hands of psychology. The tendency is either to reject or embrace it. I’d like to suggest a third approach: reject the non-Christian elements and embrace the principles that help individuals exhibit the fruit of the Spirit. In fact, if applied wisely and in partnership with Scripture, many psychological principles can lead people down discipleship’s road.
Here’s one helpful technique of therapy, for example, that breaks entrenched patterns of sin. Let’s say someone who is struggling with pornography comes to me. Using behavioral modification principles, I point out the pattern or steps leading to sin: the stimulus, immediate response, and habitual behavior. A stimulus might be his feeling anxious or tense or depressed. His immediate response is to seek release from that discomfort. And through the years, he’s developed an entrenched habit that acts like a tranquilizer: watching porno-movies or flipping through Playboy and then masturbating to release his anxiety. As soon as he feels a certain level of anxiety, the dominoes begin to fall: anxiety, pornography, masturbation. The pull seems inexorable.
When asked, men who fight this problem can often list, with great precision, the events leading to their action. By pointing out these patterns, I help a man identify the early stage, say, when he begins to feel anxious or tense. The stimulus will still be there—he still may feel anxiety—but his habitual response can change. Being aware of the dynamics and creating a new habit can halt the stimulus’ response/behavior chain. As soon as he recognizes what is happening, he can pray, read Scripture, or talk to a friend. In short, the therapeutic techniques can help him develop one of the fruits of the Holy Spirit: self-control.
Not only do insights and practices from recovery have practical benefits, they also build community. Our culture creates loneliness. In an age of despair, people need more than ever a place of hope, where it’s okay to admit your problems, where people accept you, where “everybody knows your name.”
That’s the genius of support groups, a tool we have found beneficial at Marble Retreat. The pastors and spouses who sign up for two weeks of counseling and support have been emotionally beat up and bruised by adultery, marital struggles, addiction, burnout, depression, or the vicious sheep in their flock.
For two-week periods, four couples meet together regularly with ample time for group sharing. We encourage participants to let down their guards and share frankly without fear of recrimination. The groups provide a safe place where any feeling is allowed and unconditional acceptance is the only rule.
One pastor came to Marble with his ministry and marriage hung up on the rocks of self-doubt. He felt extremely ineffective and threatened as a person and as a minister. Over the days he spent with us, childhood problems bubbled to the surface, deep-soul issues of acceptance and identity. As he grew up, the messages he received from his parents were uniformly negative. When he found Christ as an adult, his life turned around, but through the years he still agonized over his adequacy.
His time at Marble was a turning point for him. The group helped him to see himself in a different light, affirming who he was in Christ and what they appreciated about him. One of the discussion questions the group was asked to answer was simply, “What’s new?” That simple question came to have profound significance for him. It became the symbol of change in his life. In a recent letter, he wrote:
Well, what’s new? Me! That’s what’s new. Those first three words have had a powerful impact upon my life and those last four words are just beginning to sink in. I thank the Lord for the freedom that I am beginning to experience. For example, I often found myself calling myself “dumb” or “stupid” when I would forget something or mess up. I still do that, but I find it’s merely out of habit. When I do it now, there is no power in those words, and often I find myself chuckling about it.
You know, I’m really starting to like myself, and it sure is neat. I’m beginning to see that I have worth not because of who I am or what I do, but simply because God loves me. Can you imagine that? God loves me! I must tell you that it’s great to be loved.… And what is so neat is that God rescued me because he delights in me (Psalm 18:19). He delights in ME!
His letter went to all the group members, thanking them for helping him to understand God’s love. This is just one example of how the recovery movement within the church can offer a fresh witness of the gospel.
Link Therapy With the Word
However, the “therapeutic world order” places new burdens on church leaders. Today’s church culture, for example, puts a premium on pastors who are warm, relational, and vulnerable. What many churches want in a pastor is an empathetic support group leader; a healer who listens first, then makes poignant insights into people’s lives, nurturing them on the road to emotional health.
Not every pastor is wired for that. Nor should every pastor be. Though the ground has shifted, pastors must stick to being pastors. Someone must still point to the Word and to Christ—that’s always been in the job description of a spiritual shepherd. What’s happening in counseling and support groups must be linked with God’s Word. Here are several ways to make that happen.
- Encourage people to outgrow their status as victims. Children naturally interpret their world as orbiting around themselves. In a home, say, where the father gets drunk repeatedly, causing chaos and turmoil, a five-year-old child can easily come to believe, on an emotional level, that she is responsible for her daddy’s problems. I must be a bad person, she thinks, for allowing this to happen. She grows up feeling shameful and responsible for not only her daddy’s problems, but also for the problems of her husband and others.
Years later, let’s say, she finally gets into counseling. An initial step in therapy is helping the patient get in touch with her brokenness. She begins to see she wasn’t responsible for her father’s rampages. This revelation often causes a geyser of anger and resentment to spew forth—a necessary but painful step in the healing process.
While I may squirm at this anger, I shouldn’t squelch it or encourage her to deal with it quickly. Anger itself is not sin. When these feelings are identified, talked about, and accepted as valid, only then should I encourage her to take the next step of releasing them in forgiveness.
Yet, she must take this next step. Too often people stay angry and blame their parents and everyone else who has victimized them.
This is where pastors, in their preaching, counseling, and leadership, must play an important role. They must lead their people to where they can say, “What happened to me was awful. I wasn’t responsible for it, so I don’t have to assume guilt or shame for it. But neither do I have to be stuck there. The people in my life were fallen creatures just as I am. They sinned and as children probably were sinned against.”
We should expect anger and resentment, but must gently encourage, in due time, moving toward forgiveness.
- Link the recovered self with the serving Christ. One of the most important but gritty tasks of Christian discipleship is moving people from being takers into givers. In recent years, this has grown only more difficult. Those who have received counseling often feel released from the ought-to’s and obligations that before shackled them. As they get in touch with their own needs, which is necessary in the recovery process, they can become selfish, focused merely on their needs.
To move beyond that, they must see their self in relation to Christ. Their identity is not merely in discovering who they are but who they are in Christ. One is inwardly focused; the other Christ-centered.
Simply put, who we are in Christ is this: redeemed sinners. When we absorb this truth, it leads to sacrificial giving. When a person truly sees who he is in Christ, he is freed from the pride of thinking he’s better than others and also from the despair of feeling worthless. That change in focus reflects what Christ was modeling when he donned a towel and washed the disciples’ feet.
I’m reminded of Frank, who handled his insecurity by bringing the spotlight to himself and becoming jealously angry if anyone else was getting attention. After seeing the truth about himself, he stepped out of the limelight. He quit wearing flashy clothes and jewelry. He actually changed his child’s diaper for the first time, helped wash dishes with his daughter, went to his son’s Little League game, and took out the trash.
He went on to help in an inner-city soup kitchen in which nobody knew who he was. He discovered the joy of self-giving service rather than self-serving performance.
- Name sin. Not long ago, a pastor and I were talking about Jesus’ response to the woman caught in adultery: “Then neither do I condemn you. Go now and leave your life of sin.” I had to confess to this pastor that saying “Neither do I condemn you” was much easier for me than to say “Go and leave your life of sin.”
While we’re called to say both, the subtle pressure is to shy away from proclaiming the harder truths of the gospel. But pastors don’t have that option. To link the healing process with genuine biblical discipleship, we must name sin. We cannot be complicit in one of the glaring errors of secular psychology.
In my counseling, I occasionally have to say, even though it cuts across my grain, “Cut it out. You’ve got power; you can control your behavior. You don’t have to be a slave to these things.” While empathy is important, sometimes the call for repentance is more urgent. At some point we’ve got to say that certain behavior is sin, that God is more powerful than that sin, and that repentance is required.
Ask the Right Questions
One skill that helps us link a person’s behavior to God’s Word is asking the right questions. Our questions help people discover their deeper motives, to explore what’s going on inside.
I ask people questions like “What’s the payoff for how you are acting?” or “What’s in this for you?” I want to help people discover their underlying motivations and the results of their behavior. When they do, they sometimes discover the payoff is decidedly negative.
Many pastors, for example, come to Marble completely frazzled and burned out—they are workaholics. Most workaholics never stop to consider the end result of what they’re doing. Questions like “What happens when you do this or don’t do that?” force them to evaluate the consequences of putting so much time and energy into their work and so little elsewhere. Often they discover their drivenness originates in someone’s comment that they’re not good enough. They overlook three hundred compliments and become obsessed with one criticism.
So they push on to prove otherwise. Often they’re amazed to discover the bottom line of their workaholism: they are inadequate! Our questioning can hold a mirror to their lifestyle and help them toward spiritual growth.
A common story for pastors who come to Marble is that of Tim. He constantly had to prove his value, doing so by maintaining rigid control of programs and people. Though he pushed countless tasks to completion, he left many hurting people in his wake. He was unaware of what was happening and couldn’t understand why his critics called him cold and insensitive.
We explored his attitudes about himself and how that affected his attitudes toward others. As Tim began to recognize that his sense of worth was completely wrapped up in his productivity and projects, he began to realize that he often felt irritated with people who got in his way.
Now, with a new foundation of self-worth in Christ, he can take time to really hear others. He wrote that it feels so good to be able to listen to his parishioners, to understand them rather than give them a quick answer to get them out of his hair. He has a whole new vision for ministry, which now includes loving people and not just completing projects.
Cautions for Caregivers
Finally, let me add two caveats necessary in a church culture of gaping wounds and infinite needs.
First, make sure you’re helping people for their benefit, not yours. I entered medicine with a deep need to help others. Much of my makeup came from my mother’s temperament. She is a natural caregiver who was trained as a nurse. To this day, she still loves to hover over us kids and attend to the needs of her children. (And we all love having her mother us.)
Sometime during my medical internship, I realized a lot of my caring was for me, not for the person I was helping. I needed to be needed. That is a hazard for all caregivers, including pastors. We need to keep asking ourselves, For whom am I doing this?
Second, set limits on what you’ll do for people. This is as much for their benefit as for yours. At Marble, the couples who stay for two-week stints live together in a lodge a hundred yards or so from my home. Often the couples will ask my wife, Melissa, and me to come over in the evening and visit.
Early in our ministry, we took them up on their offer. But we soon discovered on those evenings that the group deferred to me, the leader, and the group dynamics changed. The group stopped interacting and doing the hard work of processing the ideas they had been exposed to earlier in the day. When I stayed away, they had to depend on themselves and on each other.
Likewise, if pastors become too involved in support groups and other recovery ministries, participants will look to them as the experts. In the end, the group loses. People need to struggle to find answers; this hard work is necessary for healing.
We’ll need to watch closely the number of hours we invest in certain individuals, or the time spent with a couple in marital counseling. The best thing for them may be for us to back off, letting them learn to fly on their own.
The recovery movement has nudged many in our churches for the first time to take a hard look at their lives. Skeletons are being evicted from dark closets, and compulsions are being brought under control. Many are feeling a new sense of emotional and spiritual freedom. The problems that propel many people into counseling and support groups are, in effect, wonderful opportunities for discipleship.
Meanwhile, as pastors, our mission hasn’t changed. Our job is to steer people in the direction of the Cross.
Copyright © 1997
