Curriculum @ Chrisitan Univ. vs. Secular
My topic is determining why, or why not, Christian Univ. and Seminaries are choosing to use “secular” counseling courses in their curricula rather than the Bible or
known Christian authors. I have contacted about 20 universities that differ in their beliefs and rationale. There are numerous books written on this subject, which I
have not read all, but know they exist. The Chair of my department left to my discretion the validity of proving if there is a legitimate reason for this choice. So
far, my research has only proven that they either believe that the mind can be retrained/healed through secular methodology, and healing “emotions” is no different
than healing the flu; or they firmly believe that there is no room in Christian counseling for foolish secular models such as Adler, Freud, Ellis, June, Piaget,
Erickson, etc., and the Bible is where emotional healing comes from. I DO NOT KNOW IF THIS HYPOTHESIS CAN BE PROVEN. Some schools have FAITH AND BELIEVE IN GOD’S
ABILITY TO HEAL SUPERNATURALLY, both body and so
I just sent a lot of data to another writer, and trying to figure out how to upload data to you… for now, here is a copy of the info without attachments. It comes
from an article written by Sam Williams of the Christian Counseling Coalition dated July 27,2011
P. Tripp, ?we forget that the Bible is not an encyclopedia, but a story of God?s plan to rescue hopeless and helpless humanity?We cannot treat the Bible as a
collection of therapeutic insights. To do so distorts its message and will not lead to lasting change.? (Instruments in the Redeemer?s Hands, p. 9)
(See Powlison, JBC, Vol. 25, No. 7, Spring 2007, p.5-36)
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This priority should be the dominant theme in the teaching of Christian counseling. There is a developing consensus in Christian soul care that the time for a recovery
of our own identity as distinctively Christian soul-care givers is well overdue (Robert C. Roberts, Eric Johnson, Larry Crabb, Tim Sizemore, and David Powlison).
According to Eric Johnson (2007) a Christian psychology must be shaped primarily by the Christian Scriptures, as well as Christianity?s intellectual and ecclesial
traditions.
P. Tripp, ?we forget that the Bible is not an encyclopedia, but a story of God?s plan to rescue hopeless and helpless humanity?We cannot treat the Bible as a
collection of therapeutic insights. To do so distorts its message and will not lead to lasting change.? (Instruments in the Redeemer?s Hands, p. 9)
Sam Williams article Secular Psychology, Christian Psychology and Christian Counseling July 27, 2011
From the perspective of our definitive narrative, the secular psychotherapies are in need of both repentance and redemption, not because they are all wrong but because
they are fundamentally wrong about the most important things.
Christian Counseling begins, not with advice and guidance, but with an announcement and an invitation. This is the Missio Dei, the mission of our God. This God has
written to his world in a text that makes universal claims about people, problems and change, and desires that his subjects proclaim this good news to everybody
everywhere.
Teachers of counseling must realize that Carl Rogers was not the originator of Person-centered counseling, God is.
The Bible is a collection of books and letters to persons, by persons, from a Person, about a Person. And, as Christians we believe that lives are transformed, not by
principles but by a Person.
Christian Counseling is Messianic ? We believe that a power/person greater than ourselves has come and can restore us to sanity. The redemptive power of the Gospel of
God should be central to the process of change and counsel.
John Piper, ?All counseling issues involve the exaltation or the denigration of Jesus Christ. Either our attitudes and feelings and behaviors are making much or making
little of Christ. We were created to make much of Christ. There is no true success in counseling if a person becomes socially [or morally] functional without conscious
dependence on and delight in Jesus Christ. This is the means and goal of all health.?
So, Christian counselors in training must develop a loyalty to the church and a humble recognition of their own limitations. The biblical plan for change is bigger and
broader than the secular model, which sees change either as a personal self-help project or as just you and me meeting in my office for 1-2 hours per week.
David Fitch (2005) in The Great Giveaway
?Christian counseling is finally accepted in the church. Ironically, all this takes place amidst devastating postmodern critiques upon modern psychotherapy. Amidst the
evangelical and American acceptance of psychology?s legitimacy, postmodern thinkers question its authority, challenge the kind of character it produces, chastise its
alignment with individualist, self-centered culture, uncover the nonscientific interpretive nature of its enterprise, and assail it for its complicity with certain
power interests of society. In short, the purveyors of postmodern hermeneutics shake the foundations of psychology as practiced in the modern world. And they reveal
just how much we evangelicals are married to modernity in the ways we collaborate with therapy as an extension of the church?these postmodern critiques awaken us to
the possibility that the church may be ?giving away? the spiritual formation of her people to the modern therapists?
As postmodern thinker Michel Foucault enumerated, the psychologist is one of modernity?s pervasive means of structuring the self, what Foucault labels as the ?
technology of the self??Psychotherapy therefore is a powerful form of spiritual formation?Christianity and psychology do not necessarily lead to the same truth and
experience. Instead, they are two different ways of interpreting our reality, producing two different ways of experiencing and living in the world. Indeed, it is
possible that psychology and Christianity may diametrically oppose one another?Psychology and Christ therefore form two different kinds of people. We can no longer
naively say psychology is true because it is science and ?all truth is God?s truth?. Now the all important question for the Christian entering therapy becomes, out of
what story will I allow my life to be formed, Jung (or some other theorist) or Christ??
Christian counseling is therefore incorrigibly missional and messianic, aiming to bring God?s Word to the world created by God and which only God can redeem and renew.
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