Genre-Sensitive Use of the Psalms in Counseling

Part 1 of a 2 part series. In this article, Ken Langley argues that the Psalms are crucial to counseling: the truth that “strikes all the chords of the soul.” Langley maintains that the God-centered poetry of the Psalms works to affect and alter emotions, imagination, and aesthetic sense. The Lord produces love, trust, need, fear, hope, and joy towards Himself. Langley illustrates this through case studies of a rationalistic pastor, a unemotional husband and a fearful woman and shows how the Psalms work a more vivid faith and a more honest humanness. Part 1 is in JBC 20:3 and Part 2 in JBC 21:2.