Psychology is on the throne and rules the day in a good many contemporary churches. Not just in liberal churches, either. Good, solid evangelical congregations have been swept along by the current of faddish and superficial psychological trends. These add up to a therapeutic approach to Christian faith.
It is evidenced by the language employed: transactional analysis, sensitivity training, behavior modification, reality therapy, stimulus hunger, stroking, etc. This jargon is indispensable for those who wish to play the new therapy game. It is being played by clergymen in churches all over the country. All it takes to play (even if you are the leader), is a nodding acquaintance with Thomas A. Harris’ I’m OK – You‘re OK and/or Eric Berne’s Games People Play. Of course, if you have also read B. F. Sl..inner‘s Beyond Freedom and Dignity you have a commanding edge on the other players.
The object of this religion-cum-psychology approach is the healing of persons. All at once popular writers on psychological themes have discovered that all of us are sick. It is not enough that the Gospel should be preached to us, that the full-orbed message of Scripture be taught us. We need more than the divine remedy. We need the powerful medicine of popular psychology. Our fevers will not subside until we have learned the secrets of TA (transactional analysis), and have received our needed quantity of “strokes” (encouraging and flattering words).
Are you a fulfilled person, total man or total woman? Do you manifest aggressive self-awareness? Does your personality exude self-confidence? If your answer is not a ringing affirmative you need to get the message. Never mind what the New Testament has to say about the self—we have an up-to-the-minute word on the subject. You cannot be a healthy self unless you are a happy self. Is it not self-evident that everyone has the right to be happy? All right, then. Let‘s get with it. Accept yourself, love yourself, be good to yourself. You have a mate who is making you unhappy? Well, since it is your right to be happy, dissolve the marriage. Both of you may then have improved your chances for happiness.
Healthy mental attitudes must be developed. Think wholesome, positive, constructive thoughts. Fill your days with song and gladness. You will nnd enthusiasm for life increasing and your joy intensifying. Life is beautiful when you enjoy psychological wholeness.
The basic problem. Now, what is wrong with that scenario of the Christian life? Much in every way. For one thing, the discipline of psychology is far too complex to be mastered by reading a few popular books on the subject. Most preachers who are “into” this type of therapy are little more than rank amateurs totally unqualified to tinker with human psyche. Competent therapists –psychiatrists, psychoanalysts and clinical psychologists undergo years of rigorous education and supervised clinical training before they are licensed to practice. And even then their work i.s far from fail-safe. Psychology is not an exact science and it is not an ancient discipline. It is a relatively new development in the arena of the therapeutic arts. Theories informing psychotherapeutic techniques and procedures vary from school to school and from year to year.
Moreover, the presupposition that everyone is sick and in need of some kind of psychological straightening out is not shared by the Christian‘s Source Book. The Bible talks about our basic problem in terms of sin. Some of us may be sick, but all of us are sinners. The Good News is proclaimed against that universal background. Jesus Christ offers pardon, reconciliation, eternal life. Freud, Jung and Alder all together cannot match that combination of gifts!
The Church is a therapeutic, healing community, but not because it has mastered the latest procedures of behavior modification theory. It heals because it shares the love of God with people who cannot live without love. In the fellowship of the Church men and women know themselves to be cared for, accepted, forgiven. Grace operates in the transactions of human beings, in the Body of Christ. And grace heals.
Touching and hugging are in vogue in many churches these days. Members are encouraged to have physical contact with each other. I wonder how many preachers who advocate this business know the Esalen story—nude encounter groups carrying touching just about as far as imagination permits. This California institution pioneered touch technique without regard to Christian ethical concerns.
Warm bodily expressions of brotherly love and entirely appropriate within God’s family, if reasonable propriety is observed. Men are still men and women still women after conversion to Christ takes place. We do the cause of Christ no good if we act as though it were otherwise.
Misdirected attention. I am also disturbed by the self-centered focus of the therapeutic interpretation of religion. In fact, the New Testament emphasis is in quite another direction. Jesus does not teach selflove, self-affirmation, self-confidence to His disciples. He calls for self-denial, for losing one’s life, for bearing the cross. The attention of Jesus’ disciples is directed away from themselves to a world in the throes of death. They hear the appeal to give themselves in self–forgetful mission to rescue the perishing.
Introspective preoccupation with one’s ego-needs is not the way to personal fulfillment, according to the Scripture. Concern for the other is the passion that drives the Christian. To bear one another‘s burdens is to fulfill the law of Christ. So unselfconscious, in this respect, is the apostle Paul that he can say of his new life, “I have been crucified with Christ: the life I now live is not my life, but the life of Christ lives in me” (Gal. 2:20 NEB). We misunderstand Paul if we think this statement expresses contempt for his own person. On the contrary, the noblest style of personal life is that exemplified in Jesus Christ who loved not His own life even unto death. Self-sacrifice in redemptive service is the highest fulfillment of selfhood, the deepest joy a human being can know.
Sacrifice links our lives with the Crucified. The third day comes for all so identified, the day of resurrection. But no route to immortality is shown us that does not go by way of suffering, loss and death.
The biblical focus. Much mischief has been wrought in biblical interpretation by the oft-expressed view that the beatitudes of the Sermon on the Mount constitute Christ’s prescription for happiness. “Happy are the poor in spirit,” we have been told. The pop psychologists in clerical robes take over and explain how that pleasant prospect comes about. Obviously the text means that when a person becomes a follower of Jesus his problems and troubles vanish. Life is evermore a pleasant parkway down which we travel, smelling the roses along the way! Happiness is our appointed mood.
Nonsense. What Jesus talks about in the beatitudes is far more significant than our subjective feelings. Feelings are evoked by a multitude of circumstances and events. The “blessedness” of the child of the Kingdom is not circumstance-induced. It is his status before God that is in question. “Blessedness” is divine approval, support and providence at work in the believer‘s life. It is a reality which sustains us no matter what external conditions confront us. Persecution is no picnic. Sorrow is not happiness. But these are two of the conditions to which “blessedness” is attached in Matthew chapter five.
God promises no rose gardens in this life. “In the world you have tribulation” (John 16:33). HappIness understood as freedom from care, is not held out as a biblical objective. Faithfulness to God and service to fellowmen are the twin foci of .Christian existence: “Thou shalt Jove the Lord thy God . . . and thy neighbor as thyself” (Luke 10:26, 27).
There is a great deal to be learned from research into the dynamics of human behavior. It is not my intention to put down the dedicated work of social scientists. The study of personal transactions and con· flicts tells us much about the causes of hostility, fear and insecurity.
I only plead that the Church be the Church, and not a pseudo-psychology clinic. God’s Word has power to heal and to save. The Church is called to proclaim a far greater message than that contained in the best textbooks of the therapists. Freud and his followers have soapboxes and forums aplenty. Let us who confess Jesus to be the Christ continue to preach the Word.
Reprinted with permission from United Evangelical Action (Winter 1978), official publication of the National Association of Evangelicals.
Fred Thompson is president of Emmanuel School of Religion, Johnson City, Tennessee, a former pastor for 25 years and a writer of Christian periodicals.