Psychotherapy:
popular Paganism – Judges 8
Judges 6-8 is the episodes related to
the judgeship of Gideon and Gideon’s defeat by 300 man army of 135,000 man army
of the coalition of the Amalekites and the Midianites. Last time we came to Judges 8 which is sort
of the mopping up operation where he finally wipes out and destroys the
remnants of the Midianite army and in the process of looking at that we saw
that after the main battle took place, up in the area of the hill of Moreh in
the valley of Jezreel, the armies if the Midianite coalition headed south and
when they headed south Gideon issued a call for the Ephraimites, the tribe of
Ephraim, which occupied the central area of Israel, the hill country, for the
Ephraimites to come and cut off their retreat at the fords of the Jordan. The Ephraimites did that and we saw cut off
part of the retreat and there they killed two of the generals, Oreb and Zeeb,
leaders of the Midianite coalition.
Another segment of about 20,000 or so
escaped across the Jordan and Gideon pursued them. On his pursuit of them across the Jordan he went past these
towns, Succoth and Penuel, and at those two places he sought aid and
sustenance, food and water for his troops, and he was denied. Now there are two things going on here with
these two different peoples that indicate teach us some things about the
spiritual life. As always what we see
here is there are those who reject the grace of God, they just don’t want to
orient to doctrine, don’t want to orient to the grace of God and want to live
their life on their own power, their own energy. And we see this represented in really two groups, (1) the
Ephraimites and (2) the inhabitants of Succoth and Penuel. So by analogy we can see that these groups
represent different types of believers.
There are three different types of
believers; we have the grace oriented doctrinally oriented believer as
represented by the 300 and by Gideon.
They’re trusting God, they’ve got what would appear in human viewpoint
terms to be an insurmountable problem, they’ve got 300 going against 135,000
and yet God has promised that His grace is sufficient for us, that His solution
is better than our solution and He’s going to demonstrate that through these
300, and He did demonstrate it. They
didn’t even have to charge in battle against the Midianite encampment, they
just did what God said to do and God brought confusion in the Midianites and
they began to kill each other and they became so panicked that they fled.
What man does typically is we look at a
problem and we say okay, this is my solution, God’s solution seems…well, a
little idealistic and I’m not sure how that can really work out so I’m going to
help God. And we compromise, and that’s
what the Ephraimites had done, they represented the compromised believer who
maintains a façade of Christianity.
See, they maintained this overt devotion to Yahweh but in terms of
really trusting God in the midst of the battle they were lacking. So they represent that kind of believer who
is overtly practicing Christianity, talks the talk, as it were, but doesn’t
walk the walk, has no real grace orientation.
This can be manifested as either the
legalistic believer who is self-righteous and relying upon his own efforts, his
own morality to somehow impress God, or it can even be represented by a more
carnal believer, but in this case we have more the idea of the legalistic
believer who has an external façade of obedience but no real grace orientation
and the Ephraimites, we saw, got their reward.
They were recognized by Gideon; at the end of the battle they went to
Gideon and they complained, why weren’t we called initially. That wasn’t part of the plan and Gideon very
wisely just calmed them down and said what you did was greater than anything I
did, you were the ones who defeated Oreb and Zeeb and you got the glory for
that. They got their reward. Remember when Jesus was talking to the Pharisees
that if you pray in public and you give your alms in public and you do it before
men, then truly you have your reward, you’ve been seen by men and you have that
public praise but it doesn’t count for anything spiritually.
So they got their reward but they are
not honored by God as people who trusted God.
You don’t find any mention of the Ephraimites in the faith hall of fame
chapter in Hebrews 11. You find Gideon
mentioned but you don’t find them mentioned.
They did what they did but it wasn’t by trusting God, it was in their
own power, their own ability, which shows us that human viewpoint strategies to
solve problems in life often work, at least on the surface, but that doesn’t
mean they have any spiritual value; it doesn’t mean that it glorifies God, but
somehow it seems to ameliorate the problem for us.
The third type of believer are those who
are just antagonistic to doctrine; they are either believers who are in rank
carnality and reversionism and they’ve compromised so much with human viewpoint
that now they are antagonistic to doctrine, or perhaps this third group represents
unbelievers who are antagonistic to doctrine.
Their thinking is so dominated by pagan concepts, by the thinking of the
cosmic system, the cosmic system is Satan’s thought form; it’s always
characterized by two primary elements, arrogance and antagonism to God. These are the twin pillars of satanic
thought and we will see them displayed again and again: arrogance, which is
self-absorption and self-promotion, and antagonism toward God, toward doctrine,
and towards the plan and purposes of God.
Now the Succoth and Penuel believers
represent those who are antagonistic to God because they won’t give any aid or
sustenance to Gideon. They are too
concerned about taking care of themselves and making sure that… well, Gideon if
you ultimately lose the battle we don’t want the Midianites to come back and
punish us so they were more afraid of man than they were of God. They were more concerned with what the world
thought of them than their relationship to God. And so Gideon comes back, after he defeats Zebah and Zalmunna,
the kings of Midian, after he defeats them he comes back and he physically
punishes the inhabitants of Penuel and Succoth in a very violent manner. And he does that because they have
compromised with the enemy and they are traitors to God and traitors to Israel.
What this all represents to us is the
fact that as believers we are on the same kind of mission. We go back to our generally analogy, that
the land of Israel, by analogy, represents the thinking of the believer, the
spiritual life, what we have positionally in Christ. It’s related to our positional inheritance, it is our possession
in Christ. Nevertheless, just as Israel
had to go into the land and physically, militarily take possession of it, even
though God had given it to them, they had to in God’s way…remember it’s not
only the end but the means, in God’s way they had to take the land that God
gave them, they had to take possession of it.
That represents the process of sanctification in our life. We have all
of these possessions positionally in our life but it’s our job to learn
doctrine and take control of every thought in our lives; we are to take charge
of every thought, renewing our mind, taking charge of every thought and
removing human viewpoint and replacing it with divine viewpoint in our
thinking. That’s the process of
spiritual growth, so we’ve been given a “seek and destroy” mission to take out
all of the human viewpoint and cosmic thinking that resides in our soul.
Now that’s a tremendous task because
most of us have become so infected with the human viewpoint thinking around us
we’re don’t even see it any more; it’s in the air we breathe, it’s in
everything we read, and so often it just seems so good. That’s the danger of cosmic thinking;
ultimately it’s based on human self-reliance.
It’s based on the concept that God helps those who help themselves. It sounds good and so much of human
viewpoint sounds good; it sounds like common sense. Why does it sound like common sense? Because this is what we’ve been taught all our lives, these
truisms that are part and parcel of the culture in which we grow up are taught
to us from the earliest stages of life so that they become second nature to us
and we frequently never or rarely look at them, take these ideas out and look
at them. Cosmic thinking has its own
problem solving approach, its own way of dealing with problems and personal
relationships, its own approach to success, its own way of handling money and
we have to root out these ideas.
Now the problem with cosmic thinking is
it’s deceptive. It often sounds good in
theory. We think it makes just good
common sense; often it produces the results that we would like to see produced
and so we think well, it must be right because we’ve got the results. That’s part of cosmic thinking, that’s
called pragmatism; it’s a human viewpoint system of thinking that if it works
it must be right. But that’s not what
the Bible says. There are a lot of
things that seem to work but they are done in the energy of the flesh and
they’re not done God’s way according to God’s Word and as a result they’re not
done with the power of the Holy Spirit and so even though they produce results
that we intended to produce, they don’t glorify God, they don’t count for
eternity and they don’t have any spiritual value.
As we grow up we develop deeply held
convictions about life that we pick up from our parents, from our peers, from
newspapers, editorials, people we admire, teachers, all kinds of different
things influence us with ideas. At some
time along the way we trust the Lord and we start to learn something about the
Bible and immediately there comes a conflict.
We see that the Bible teaches some things that might run 180 degrees
opposite of what we have been taught is true and right, and then we have to
make a decision. Are we going to
exchange the human viewpoint in our thinking for divine viewpoint or are we
going to say well, maybe that’s just that person’s interpretation, I don’t
understand it, maybe the Bible just got it wrong because this makes me
comfortable, this always seems to work for me, it’s worked for a lot of other
people so maybe I just don’t understand something so what we do is we
rationalize away the radical obedience to God’s Word because those concepts,
that the earth is only 5,000 years old or might only be 5,000 or 6,000 years
old, that’s so radical, everywhere we go they say the earth, the universe is
several millions, millions, hundreds of millions of years old if not billions of years old, how could all those
scientists possibly be wrong; let’s reinterpret the Scripture. So instead of challenging the human
viewpoint concepts that are around us we find it easier to compromise because
after all, we don’t want to be view as some sort of backwoods, backward, uneducated,
non-thinking fundamentalist. I mean,
how horrible could it possibly get.
So we have to make a decision, are we
going to go with what the Bible says, even though we may not understand it all;
are we going to make sure we understand what the Bible says and go with that or
are we going to stick with human viewpoint concepts.
Now what happens in this whole process
is that we often have to challenge truisms that are accepted by all, they seem
to be culturally accepted norms, culturally accepted procedures and
practices. What happens is often these
truisms become sacred cows, they become untouchable. I remember several years ago when I was talking with a friend of
mine who was looking for a pastorate and we had spoken several times over the
years about problems in contemporary churches, one of the problems is the
influence of psychology and counseling on churches; another was the popularity
of the Promise Keepers, this was in the early to mid 90s, there is also the
continued influence of contemporary Christian music and contemporary choruses
on worship and having a worship leader, he not the pastor any more but a song
leader, and a band up in front and all of these different forms, an a number of
other things that have become accepted practices in most churches. He said Robby, you can’t even question these
things, you can’t even put them on the table for analysis any more, if you even
raise the question, are you sure that’s Biblical, you’re out the door.
These are sacred cows that have become imbedded
within the church, concepts on church growth, concepts of marketing the church
are very popular today. Almost every
church has some kind of marketing program, marketing plan where you are
following a certain way of building your church so that you can go from a
church of 100 to a church of 5,000 over five years and you can graph it all out
and develop your mission plan and your mission statement and you go out and you
use all the techniques and tools of the business world in order to try to build
a large organization and if you even question that, in most churches, to most
pastors, you’re considered some kind of oddity, you’re a dinosaur, because
everybody is doing this, it’s just a normally accepted practice. What do you mean question this; I don’t have
time to worry about that, you go away, you people that just want to be Biblical
all the time, go find something else to do and let me build my church and have
mass evangelism programs and everything else.
And that’s the kind of thinking.
The issue is, we have to be willing to
challenge every single thought in our minds to see if its Biblical or not. That brings up another point and that is
there’s a lot of question as to just exactly what makes something Biblical.
What makes something Biblical is that it derives from the Bible. Most people, it’s Biblical if the Bible
doesn’t say don’t do it. That’s not
what Biblical means; Biblical means that you understand the whole framework of
divine viewpoint thinking in the Scripture and out from that you develop your
methodology as well as your end goals.
But in most churches and most seminaries and most pastors don’t concern
themselves with methodology as long as it gets the results. Now they don’t make it that clear, they
don’t come right out and say well the end justifies the means, but that’s what
their practice is and they don’t take the time to stop and really evaluate the
practice. So Biblical means that it is
derived from the Bible, that the Bible tells us not only what the goal is but
how to get there, how to live the Christian life and what the function of the
local church is.
Now as we look at this whole concept of
cosmic thinking, and that as believers our task is to seek and destroy the
human viewpoint concepts in our own thinking and to remove those from our soul
we have to look at and identify these things.
That’s part of the first step is to identify them. As I’ve thought about
the historical trends in America over the last 200 years I have identified four
basic undertows, strong undercurrents of cosmic thinking that affect every one
of us. What under girds all of these,
what they all have in common is that they all are supported by a subjective
view of knowledge that goes back to Immanuel Kant in the late 18th
century. We’ve studied that a little
bit in the past. They basically say you
can’t know things in themselves, you can only know your perception of things,
and that’s subjectivity and once you move the central point of knowledge from
outside to inside you lose the concept of objective principles and objective
standards and now everything is viewed through its subjective, internal
grid. It affects law.
I saw the other day where some 12 year old boy had brutally murdered a 6 year
old girl and he was sentenced to life in prison and the prosecutor was
answering questions; I was cooking or something at the time, during lunch and I
wasn’t really paying 100% attention to what was going on, didn’t hear all the
questions, but I could tell from his answers that the questions were well, why
are you so harsh, why life imprisonment without parole, and the answer that
kept coming back from the prosecutor, from the D.A., was that this is the way
the law is written; this was in Florida.
One commentator said the judge didn’t yield to public pressure, he
didn’t yield to sentiment, that’s emotion, he didn’t yield to anything, he just
did what the law said he had to do.
That’s saying that there’s an objective standard out there and no matter
how you feel, no matter what the extenuating circumstances might be, no matter
what the public pressure might be, you do what the objective standard says to
do. But when you live in an environment
that’s affected by subjectivism you do what is determined by your internal
perception or your internal feeling, and oh, this poor kid, locked up, only 12
years, I mean, he’s going to live another 60-70 years as a ward of the state in
the prison, well that’s just terrible, isn’t there some way we can avoid
that. It’s just this emotionalism and
subjectivism instead of an objective standard.
So what we see is what under girds these
four currents, these four undertows of cosmic thinking is this subjectivism of
knowledge, that man is the ultimate reference point for truth in the
universe. Now doesn’t that sound
familiar. That’s the theme of Judges,
“everyone was doing what was right in their own eyes. So there’s our point of analogy.
Now what are these four undertows; I’m not going to have time to develop all of
them but you can read them on your own; the first is Darwinism, both scientific
Darwinism in terms of the whole theory of evolution, the monkey to man or
amoeba to man scenario but also social Darwinism. In fact the joining of social Darwinism with capitalism created something
that was not true capitalism in the late 19th century and produced a
lot of what we know as the robber barons, just the survival of the fittest
mentality in business which lost all concepts of any level of compassion or
concern. As a result of that you have the
equal and opposite reaction, the rise of unions and other things like
that. It also impacted about 95% of
modern educational theory.
In fact, there’s an interesting book out
written by a man who formerly was teacher of the year in the state of New York
and in his book he basically argues that part of the impact of social Darwinism
on the robber barons in the late 19th century was to develop this
whole mentality of required public education, that everybody ought to be
required to go to school. And his
thesis, after several years of teaching, he was an excellent teacher, he
finally quit teaching in the public school system, and he’s arguing that this
whole concept of mandatory education is a fallacy and it comes as a result of
social Darwinism. I’m not saying that
he’s right; I’m just saying that he points out that that’s one impact of
it. Another impact of social Darwinism
was on the thinking of Adolph Hitler and the anti-Semitism of the Nazis. So Darwinism has had extreme impact in a lot
of different ways on our history in the last 150 years.
Sociology is another one, and one aspect
of sociology is in the realm of salesmanship and marketing and now on the basis
of salesmanship and marketing principles you have those applied to church
growth and the mission of the church so that most pastors are out there
marketing their church according the basic principles of salesmanship and they
don’t understand any kind of Biblical ecclesiology. You see, God provides the hearers, not man. Jesus said I will build My church, to the
pastor He said feed the sheep, but in most churches today who know who’s
feeding the sheep, they’re starving to death because the pastor is building the
church. And he’s doing it not according
to Biblical principles but according to the principles of salesmanship and
marketing.
A third undertow is social liberalism,
social as well as political liberalism which is founded on the concept that man
is not necessarily bad; man is not inherently evil. Now if you want to study that or if that’s a problem, you don’t
understand that, I would encourage you to read a book by a black intellectual
by the name of Thomas Soule, called Conflict
of Vision. It will twist your brain
a little bit but in that book he argues very coherently for the fact that the
basic difference between liberals and conservatives is that conservatives think
that man is inherently evil and liberals think that man is inherently good and
therefore perfectible. And that’s going
to change how you view almost every issue and problem in life. And that was the problem that came out of
subjectivism, Kant and subjectivism in the 19th century, part of it
was that man’s basically good and not evil as Christianity says. One of the problems, I think, is reaction to
that; that gave birth to the whole social gospel movement and in reaction to
that Biblical conservatives lost any sort of social vision for culture and for
society. And that was a problem; that’s
a problem for conservatives and for conservative churches is that we reacted to
the social gospel and said well, all we have to do is sit in church and fold
our hands and let society fall apart, and there was little concern expressed
for the poor or for social conditions and that was wrong. Prior to that there had been a tremendous
impact by conservatives on social situations, so that is something that needs
to be addressed.
Then the fourth undertow of cosmic
thought is psychology, transpersonal psychology, the idea that by getting
involved in talk therapy we can identify our problems and that our problems are
based in our environment and we can identify our problems and man can solve his
problems. So I started last time
looking at this whole concept of the Bible and humanistic or transpersonal
psychology because psychology has impacted the vocabulary, the categories and
the thinking; transpersonal has impacted all of us to one degree or
another. Anybody here who has used a
word like self-image in the last week has been impacted, you’ve picked up a
vocabulary word and a category that’s non-Biblical and it came directly out of
a psychological framework that was in rejection of Christianity. So we all have this and what we have to do
is learn to identify these things in our thinking so that we can root them out. That’s in essence what Gideon was doing, was
rooting out the compromisers in Israel.
So we have to root out the compromise in our own thinking.
Now whenever I look at a study like this
and engage in this and start talking about psychology I have learned that
there’s always somebody who gets offended. There’s always somebody who reacts
subjectively and there’s always somebody says well, you know, that’s just not
realistic or it really doesn’t work.
And usually what you discover is that this person, somewhere in their
past, in almost 50% of Americans or 60% of Americans have in their lifetime
been to some kind of counseling or psychological therapy, that usually there’s
somebody that because of their past, in their past someone they love has been
helped by psychology. Now I’m not
saying that people aren’t helped by psychology; that’s not the issue. The issue is not does it work, the first
always is is it Biblical. The second
issue then is application. It’s never
asking the question, does it work; when that’s the first question out of your
mind you’re a pragmatist and you’re not thinking biblically, you’re thinking
according to a human viewpoint system.
Now what happens is people go through various problems, either it’s a
problem with addiction or depression, maybe it’s a problem with your children’s
behavior, it’s very popular today to talk about kids with ADHD and all sorts of
other problems and the first thing we want to do is medicate the kids rather
than look at the parents and say hmm, maybe you need to spend a lot more time
as a parent teaching discipline to your children and teaching them how to
control their sin nature and look at the environment you’re providing as a
parent and what you’re teaching as a parent and quit relying on chemicals to do
your job for you. I’m not saying that
there are never problems that don’t need to be medicated; I’m just saying that
I think that too often we jump there too quickly. Or sometimes people have gone through marital problems or intense
adversity and in the midst of that they did the culturally accepted thing and
they went to a therapy session and somehow over five or six weeks or months
their problems were solved or whatever it was and they reached a level of
stability and functionality in life, so that was great and they’re happy and
now all of a sudden I’m saying that maybe that was wrong, it’s not Biblical,
and you just got involved in the cosmic system so there’s reaction. Well, don’t get subjective on me, relax and
let’s look at what the Scripture has to say and let’s look at what
psychologists have to say about their own system.
We always have to be careful not to be
deceived by the world system. The issue
is not were you helped, are you functional; the issue is are you advancing
spiritually, are you glorifying God, are you living the spiritual life
according to the ways that God said to live the spiritual life or are you
trying to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps and trying to achieve
happiness in life through psychological methodology or are you doing it
according to the application of doctrine.
Last week I started this study and I’ve
gone back and I’ve added things to the initial points so we’ll have to start
over a little bit. In 1941 C. S. Lewis,
in his book, The Screwtape Letters
forewarned us of the problem of psychology.
In his context the old demon Screwtape counsels the young novice demon,
Wormwood, on how to successfully tempt believers. And in his counsel he says: “Keep his mind off the plain
antithesis between true and false.” How
many times have you heard somebody say well you’re just too rigid, everything
you see is black and white, it’s either right or its wrong. C. S. Lewis says this is one of the
strategies of Satan, “Keep his mind off the plain antithesis between true and false,
and keep him in the state of mind, I call ‘Christianity and.’ You know, Christianity and the crisis,
Christianity and the new psychology, Christianity and the new order.” See that’s what’s happened is we have
compromised Christianity with psychology.
Point one, psychology, therefore, is one
of the most destructive aspects of cosmic arrogance that has become a respected
member of the Christian scene in the world today. We have just bought it hook,
line and sinker. There’s not a seminary around that doesn’t offer courses in
psychology and counseling, and when you get through with your required semester
of that you think gosh, I’ll never be a successful pastor unless I go study a
lot of psychology and counseling techniques because studying the Bible and
teaching doctrine just isn’t sufficient.
And that’s the impression that a lot of people give. Christopher Lasch in his book, The Culture of Narcissism, wrote: “The
contemporary climate is therapeutic, not religious; people today hunger, not
for personal salvation but for the feeling, the momentary illusion of personal
well-being, health and psychic security.”
You see, psychology is another religious
option. Psychology isn’t something
that’s scientific despite all of their claims.
All psychological systems are loaded with pagan assumptions about the
ultimate nature of reality. When asked
if psychology and religion are just two different ways of arriving at the same
answer, William Kirkpatrick, who is a professor of educational psychology at
Boston University, responds: “It is true that popular psychology shares much in
common with eastern religion, in fact, a merger is well under way. But if you’re talking about Christianity it
is much truer to say that psychology and religion are competing faiths. If you seriously hold to one set of values
you will logically have to reject the other.”
So let’s start off by defining a few
terms. When I say that psychology is a
destructive aspect of cosmic arrogance and paganism what I mean by paganism is
all thought forms erected independent of God and hostile to God. See, that’s the essence of satanic thought;
it is that I’m going to be God and I’m going to be able to live life and make
life work apart from God. So what we
see in the twin pillars of Satan’s thought in his fall is arrogance, his focus
on what I want instead of what God wants, and two, his hostility toward
God. So he developed an entire way of
thinking about reality, thinking about the universe, explaining the origin of
everything and how life can work apart from God and that’s what’s called in the
Bible cosmic thinking, what I also call human viewpoint thinking or
paganism.
The second definition of the term is
psychology. This derives from the Greek
word psuche, plus the Greek word logos, which means the study of
knowledge of the soul. Now the Bible
claims to have exclusive and sufficient and authoritative information on the
soul. God created the human soul; God
as creator is the one who has the right and authority to tell us what it’s
composed of and what its problems are and what the solutions to those problems
are. Man, on the basis of empirical
data, cannot come up with that information. So there is a competition right
there; psychology claims to have a realm of authority based on its own empirical
scientific data and the Bible claims to have exclusive authority in the realm
of the nature of the soul and problem analysis and problem solving.
The third point by way of definition is
that psychology is based on the assumption that man, based on empiricism, and
his own rational capabilities has the ability to plumb the depths of the human
soul and to explain human behavior based on the principles of scientific
methodology. Psychology is claiming
that on the basis of observation man has the ability to plumb the depths of the
human soul to define what it’s made of and how it works, how problems develop
and what the solutions are. In other
words, it is saying that empiricism is going to give us all of the information
necessary. Thus we conclude that there
is a conflict between the systems of psychology and their truth claims and the
Bible and its truth claims. So what are
we going to follow? Are we going to follow the Bible or are we going to follow
a humanly devised system of thought.
The third point, all psychological
systems, and there are over 400 different models of human behavior…over 400
different models. Let’s say you have a
marriage problem, you want to go to a marriage counselor. One of the first things you ought to be
asking yourself is what is their model of human behavior, how does that
individual think the human soul works, how to problems develop, is the human
soul material or not. You go to one
counselor and they’ll have a materialistic view, you go to another counselor
it’s another view. There are over 400
different models, which one is Biblical?
Is there a Biblical model? And
if you go to a Christian counselor do they understand that? Frankly they don’t, believe me. In my days at seminary this was such a hot
issue and for about ten years I studied almost every so-called Christian
counselor out there and not one of them builds a system on the basis of
exegesis alone; every one of them at some point or another is importing
categories and vocabulary. See,
whenever you import vocabulary from a pagan system you’re bringing with it that
baggage…that’s a good psychological term, see you bring with it the baggage
that goes along with it. So there are
over 400 models or theories of human personality and human makeup and there’s
over 10,000 different therapies. So
which one are you going to choose?
Which one is Biblical? You know
there’s not just one monolithic thing out there called psychology. And they all derive their information from
empiricism. Now the problem with
empiricism, it’s always limited by the data.
So that means tomorrow you can discover something that invalidates every
theory you have today.
In contrast to this the divine solution
is derived exclusively from a study of God’s Word. For 1850 years Christians were able to deal with the problems,
the adversities, the heartaches in life on the basis of doctrine alone, and now
all of a sudden we get the idea that you’ve got to have some knowledge of
psychology, otherwise you really can’t solve problems. What you’re saying by that is that for 1850
years they could never experience the Christian life, they could never have
joy, they could never have stability, they could never have happiness, they
could never know what real love was, they couldn’t have a Christian marriage
because Freud hadn’t come along yet, or Maslow or anybody else to gives us the
insights from psychology. That’s absurd
and heretical.
Look at what the Bible says, 2 Timothy
3:16, “All Scripture is God-breathed and is profitable for teaching, for reproof,
for correction, for training in righteousness,” why, purpose clause in verse
17, “that the man of God,” that’s a term for a believer, “might be adequate,”
now “adequate” sounds like sort of a weak word in English, it translates the
Greek word artios, artios means qualified, proficient,
competent, skillful. In other words,
the Scriptures are given so that you as a believer may be qualified,
proficient, confident and skillful to handle everything in life. So “that you may be adequate, equipped,” and
then we have the word exartizo,
notice the a-r-t in the middle, this is the verb form plus the
preposition ek of the noun
qualified. And exartizo means to be equipped, educated, edified and prepared. So this verse is saying that “all Scripture
is breathed out by God so that the believer can be qualified, proficient,
competent and skillful and be equipped, educated, edified and prepared for
every good work,” not some, “every good work.”
That means every single problem, every
difficulty we face in life we can find solutions in the Scripture. The ultimate issue is that God solved the
greatest problem we’ll ever face which is sin, and if God solved the greatest
problem we’ll ever face He can solve every other problem we face and He has
told us how. 2 Peter 1:3-4 states that,
“His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and
godliness,” everything, not some things, not most things, “everything pertaining
to life and godliness,” and the word godliness is the Greek word eusebeia which refers to the spiritual
life. There is nothing we face in life
that ultimately does not relate to our relationship with God, or that our
relationship with God doesn’t impact.
So when the Bible claims to give us everything pertaining to life and
the spiritual life, there’s nothing that doesn’t fit into one of those two
categories. So to say that we need to
go into any kind of empirical date in order to find solutions to problem in
life we are rejecting the provision of God.
This is given through the true knowledge of Him, of God, who called us
by His own glory and excellence [can’t understand word/s] that is His
character, His glory and excellence; He has granted us His precious and
magnificent promises. It’s doctrine
that gives us the solution.
Now when I say that the Scripture is
sufficient for everything in life, what do I mean by “sufficient?” We talk about the sufficiency of grace, we
talk about the sufficiency of the cross, we talk about the sufficiency of the
Scriptures. What does that word mean? That means as much as needed. God has given us as much as we need, He
doesn’t give us more than we need, that would be in excess. He gives us as much as we need, we don’t
need anything else. It’s ample, it is
satisfactory, it is all that is needed to accomplish a task. That’s what’s sufficiency means, that God’s
grace is sufficient for our weaknesses; that means that God’s grace provides
everything we need and nothing more; it’s not lacking in anything.
Now what happens, and maybe you’ve never
run across this but what always happens whenever I’ve gotten engaged in any
kind of discussion with anybody over these subjects is they come up with a
wonderful little statement so popular, “all truth is God’s truth.” This is point number five. Point number four was that the divine
solution is derived from a study of God’s Word which claims to be sufficient
and immutable.
Point number five is that the basic
rationale used to refute Biblical sufficiency is the saying that “all truth is
God’s truth.” Now what this is saying
is that all truth relates to truth that comes from the natural realm, from
observation, from empirical data, from scientific study, that all truth is that
truth, it is just as true and just as valid as God’s truth. So when we come to
truth as a result of scientific empirical observation, using a scientific
method we arrive at truth, then that is just as good, so we can merge those
together and we can bring our conclusions from psychology in and merge them
with the Bible and that will help us to solve our problem. Now there are real problems with this whole
concept and we need to really understand this.
This is a vital thing; you may have never run across it but trust me,
after I go through teaching this you’ll hit this. This is always there and if somebody doesn’t come right out and
say it, then they’re thinking about it.
Not only does this affect psychology it affects all other areas. Some of you guys are interested in reading
about Bible study and hermeneutics, it’s affecting hermeneutics, it’s affecting
linguistic theory, language study, exegesis, this concept that you can go into
other realms of human study and find truth on the same level as the truth in
God’s Word and merge them together for insight is infecting many areas of Biblical
study and theology, but the problems are all the same.
The claim here is based on a concept
called general revelation. General
revelation is defined as the non-verbal disclosure of the existence, reality
and power of God through His creation.
It’s the non-verbal disclosure; it’s the concept in Psalm 19:1, “The
heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament shows forth His
handiwork.” It’s that as we look out at
creation we can see the intricacy, the power and the marvel of creation and
know that this must have been created by an immensely knowledgeable and
powerful Creator. So it doesn’t tell us
any facts, it doesn’t communicate specific propositional information about God,
or salvation but it does indicate non-verbally that He exists, that He is real,
and it says something about His power.
This is seen in Romans 1:18-20, “For the wrath of God is revealed from
heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the
truth in unrighteousness, [19] because that which is known about God is evident
within them,” that means that every human being knows about God, “for God made
it evident to them.” That means every
unbeliever, every atheist knows God exists and “God has made it evident to them”
and you say why, how can we know that?
[20] “For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His
eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen,” it’s not clouded, it’s no obfuscated, it’s
clear, they “have been clearly seen,
being understood through what has been made, so that they are without
excuse.” [Tape turns]
It doesn’t give us the detailed
knowledge of God in a systematic theology but it’s enough knowledge and enough
information to where they are without excuse, they are accountable for that
information. That’s general revelation.
The second term is special revelation.
Special revelation describes what’s in the canon of Scripture. It is the verbal propositional disclosure of
the specifics of God’s existence, attributes, works, plan, purposes and
policies for mankind. In other words,
it’s Scripture, it’s the details of Scripture
that God is omniscient, He’s sovereign, He’s just, He’s righteous, He’s
love, He’s eternal, the specifics tell us what man’s problem is, that it’s sin,
and what the solution is, that it’s trusting Christ as our Savior. And that with our salvation God gives us the
Holy Spirit as believers in the Church Age and by walking by the Spirit and
being filling of the Holy Spirit we can advance to spiritual maturity. And that God has given us a solution to
every problem we face. That’s special
revelation.
Now let’s critique this statement,
develop your critical thinking skills a little bit this morning. Let’s critique this statement, “all truth is
God’s truth.” It sounds good and in some
level it is true. But let’s evaluate it
a little more thoroughly. First of all,
it assumes that all truth is equal, that all truth is equal but the fact is
truth exists in varying degrees of certitude.
The truth that we derive through scientific observation or specially
clinical psychology can be changed next week by further observations. To use a metaphor and an image that is very
popular among psychologists and psychotherapists, they haven’t even gotten below
the surface of the iceberg yet. An iceberg,
10% is visible, 90% is below the surface, and they use that to illustrate the
subconscious and unconscious. But 90%
of what can be known about the soul is hidden from empirical observation, so
anything they discover tomorrow can change what they hold to today so the truth
is not absolute truth, it is a tentative truth. And we mentioned last time when I went through this examples from
Mesmer who was one of the fountainhead thinkers that influenced Freud and Carl
Jung, that he thought that all illness were due to some invisible fluid in the
body system. Now we know that’s not
true any more, so some of the original thinking of even people like Freud and
Jung is rejected now by psychotherapists because subsequent data that was
discovered invalidated their theory. So
these theories are always in a state of flux.
I said last time that Anton Mesmer who
was one of the fountain heads of upper hypnosis and mesmerism in the early 19th
century is one of the key influential people in psychology and here’s a quote
from the American Psychological Association’s book on the history of
psychotherapy, “A Century of Change.” “Historians have found several aspects of
mesmerism and its offshoots that set the stage for 10th century
psychotherapy. They promoted ideas that
are quintessentially American,” notice that, it’s quintessentially American,
“and have become permanent theoretical features of our 20th century
psychological landscape.” But much of
it was rejected. Also much of Freud’s
original thinking was rejected, even though he set the stage.
“There are very few analysts who follow
all of Freud’s formulation,” says Morris Eagle, the president of the APA
psychoanalysis division. “Nevertheless,”
he says, “psychotherapists of all stripes still tend to share two of Freud’s
core belief.” Notice, “One is that our
behavior, thoughts and emotions stem from unconscious fears and desires.” Notice that; that’s a core concept, the
whole idea of the unconscious is so rooted and imbedded in the everyday thought
of late 20th early 21st century American culture that to
even question the use of terms like your subconscious and your unconscious is
not even acceptable to most people.
It’s a Freudian concept; nobody ever heard of that before Freud came
along, it’s not Biblical. Nobody in
1850 years of biblical exegesis ever thought of man as having an unconscious or
subconscious. We have memory, we have
habits, the Bible says, but we don’t have a subconscious or unconscious that
controls our behavior. That destroys
personal responsibility in decision making.
Eagle goes on to say, “The first of these is that our behavior, thoughts
and emotions all come from this unconscious, often rooted in childhood experiences,
and the other is that with the help of the trained therapist we can understand
the source of our troubles and thereby attain some relief.”
Now these two ideas are ingrained in
most people in our culture. But, that
could be change; there’s another way of looking at life completely and that’s
the Scripture.
A second critique of the statement, “all
truth is God’s truth” is that all truth does not rest on the same
authority. All truth does not rest on
the same authority. There’s a vast
difference between the authority of truth derived from human experience and
reason and truth that is revealed by God.
Scripture says that Jesus prayed to the Father, “Sanctify them by means
of truth, Thy Word is truth.” That’s a
different category of truth and a higher level of truth than that which we
derive on the basis of observation and reason.
A third critique is that there are wrong
assumptions here about the range and content of general revelation. When they say “all truth is God’s truth”
they want to make the “all truth” relative to general revelation, that I can go
out and discover things by observing human behavior and that’s part of general
revelation. Well, that’s wrong; general
revelation is restricted to non-verbal information about God’s existence, not
the nature of man, not the nature of mathematics, not the nature of the laws of
thermodynamics, but the nature of God and that God exists. So all truth is not related to other
categories in nature; just general revelation just gives us information about
God. This gives us, then, five things
that we must realize in terms of wrong assumptions about general
revelation.
First of all we must realize that the
soul is immaterial and it’s not open to empirical study. How much does it weigh? How big is it? Where is it located? How
does it get there? That’s not open to
empirical study, it’s immaterial; we can’t observe it, it’s not open to human
observation. We can observe its
results, its effects, but we can’t observe it directly. Morality, spirituality, and human
personality are subjects that are beyond the comprehension of science. You talk to any psychotherapist and his view
of personality is going to be different from the next one you talk to. We can’t observe it directly so we can’t
come up with any absolutes.
Second, man can observe many things
about human behavior but this is superficial and is open to distortion from
insufficient evidence or rejection of human depravity. See, if you reject man’s sinfulness, that
man is inherently evil, that’s going to shape how you interpret all the
data. It’s going to skew the
conclusion. So the framework, the
metaphysical framework that a psychotherapist brings to the data is going to
affect his conclusion. Scripture
clearly teaches the limitations of man; “the heart is deceitful above all
things, who can know it? Only God can
speak authoritatively and finally about the nature of man’s immaterial soul.
Fourth, there’s a vast difference
between observing general trends or patterns of behavior and the type of
specificity found in psychological models and explanations of personality,
behavior and problem solving.
Psychology comes along with all these diagrams and flow charts about how
everything works and everything is interconnected, tells you that okay, if
you’re in a situation and there’s abuse then this is necessarily going to
result in certain types of behavior twenty or thirty years later. See, that’s
what they’re really saying, and that kind of specificity cannot be derived from
the kind of general observation that we’re restricted to. So general observation can only produce
general trends, it can’t produce the kind of specificity that’s found in most
psychological models.
And fifth, general revelation cannot and
does not give information about sin, salvation and sanctification. And that’s what we’re talking about; when
you as a believer have problems in life it’s a sanctification issue, and you
can’t get information about that from general revelation.
The fourth critique of “all truth is
God’s truth” is that all truth does not fall on receptive ears. All truth does not fall on receptive
ears. Now I quoted earlier Romans
1:18-20. What we see there is men
suppress the truth in unrighteousness, they’re suppressing the truth of general
revelation in unrighteousness so what you’re ultimately telling me is that
people who have rejected Christianity and rejected the God of the Bible have
rejected absolute truth, so they’ve shut themselves up to only a relativistic
understanding of truth.
So what you’re telling me, then, is this
fifth critique, that fallible fallen men, who have rejected God
presuppositional, fallen men who reject Christianity, like Freud, Jung, Maslow,
many, many others, that these fallen fallible men who have rejected general
revelation about God are then going to be able to correctly categorize,
classify and interpret data from observing God’s creation about man? I don’t think so. See, they have begun by rejecting the only framework within which
they can ever understand the data. And
now you’re saying that just on the basis of observation they’re going to come
up… and see, there’s a difference between observing personality theory and
human behavior and coming up with a scientific law or mathematical law. Those are different; those are testable,
verifiable and repeatable. When we’re talking about the human soul and human
personality it’s not testable, verifiable and repeatable. Romans 1:22 says that these men, “Professing
to be wise,” these who reject God, “professing to be wise, they became fools.”
Now the sixth point is that there is no
such thing as Christian psychology.
This is a misnomer. We often
think well, I’ll go to a Christian counselor.
There’s no such thing as Christian psychology. A statement by the Christian Association for Psychological
Studies: “We are often asked if we are Christian psychologists. I find it difficult to answer since we don’t
know what the question implies. We are
Christians who are psychologists, but at the present time there is no acceptable
Christian psychology that is markedly different from non-Christian
psychology.” I want you to listen to
that: “We are Christians who are
psychologists, but at the present time there is no acceptable Christian
psychology that is markedly different from non-Christian psychology. I know Christian psychologists who are into
primal therapy; I know Christian psychologists who are Freudian; I know
Christian psychologists are in rational emotive therapy; I know Christian
psychologists in reality therapy but there is not such thing as a (quote)
“Christian psychology.” That’s the
point that this quote is making. He
goes on to say, “It is difficult to imply that we function in a manner that is
fundamentally distinct from our non-Christian colleagues. As yet there is not an acceptable theory,
mode of research or treatment methodology that is distinctly Christian.”
See, they’re rejecting the Bible as
their starting point just as much as the secular psychologist. Now there is such a thing as Biblical psychology. That’s when you get into the Scriptures and
you study the soul and the immaterial parts of man and you study what problems
are and we’ve studied stress and adversity and how the Bible says to call
problems. That’s called Biblical
psychology but that’s not what is known as Christian psychology. The problem is
that we often, in our environment and the world around us, we pick up a lot of
psychological vocabulary, terms like self-esteem, self-love, the child within,
subconscious, [can’t understand word] complex, terms like repression, we pick
up those terms from the world around us and they are all part of this
psychological framework and then we bring that category in and reinterpret the
Bible in terms of a modern psychological framework. Instead the Bible talks about sinful habits, sinful patterns that
we get into; it talks about self-deception, ignoring reality, denying our
sinfulness, ignoring God, suppressing the truth in unrighteousness; that’s the
terminology the Bible uses and we need to stick with a Biblical terminology
when discussing human problems and divine solutions. When we use modern psycho-babble to define this then we bring
psycho-babble concepts into the Scriptures.
Psychotherapy has seduced modern
American culture as well as Christian culture with its pseudo success and its
false claims. In the book, Manufacturing
Victims, Dr. Tana Dineen says that over ten million Americans seek the
services of the psychology industry each year.
She goes on to say “in the early 1960s 14% of the U.S. population had
ever received psychological services.
By 1976 that number had risen to 26%, however by 1990 at least 33% have
been psychological users at some point in their lives and in 1995 the American Psychological
Association stated that 46% of the U. S. population had seen a mental health
professional. Some even predict that by
the year 2000 users will be the majority constituting 80% of the
population.” The number of licensed
psychologists is doubling every ten years.
Why is it so popular? [blank
spot]
Dr. Jerome Frank who is a researcher in
psychotherapy states: “Psychotherapy is the only form of treatment which at
least to some extent appears to create the illness it treats.” Ralph Nader’s group came to this conclusion. “A distressingly large number of mental
health professionals take the position that everyone who walks into their
office needs therapy, frequently long-term therapy which often stretches for
several years to the tune of thousands of dollars; they create their own
market.”
That’s only the first seven of about
fifteen points; the good stuff is yet to come.