“Is Masturbation Always a Sin?” It’s a simple answer: ‘No, but lust is.’ Shifting our focus from sinful masturbation to sinful lust will not only lead us to more proper confessions…but may provide great help in moving us along towards sexual obedience.” Identifies the stages of temptation and sin, where the final stage is actual acted out sin. “But lust is the sin,” and the battle needs to begin early in the process.
Hebrews, James and I and II Timothy, Jude. When God speaks, Adams hears clear, pointed teaching, not vague sentimental talk. No abstract theologizing, no indecision, no ambiguity, no handwringing, no mystical and mystifying flights of religious sentimentality.” Adams’ strengths are refreshing, but need three complementary truths. First, Adams sounds more tough than tender, more the voice of imperatives than the voice of promises. Second, Adams’s stance is to speak as the proclaimer of truth, not the recipient who becomes proclaimer, the counselee who becomes counselor. Third, Adams’s speaks exclusively from the authoritative stance, and does not hedge against authoritarianism nor teach the mutuality and one-anothering that makes up the bulk of counseling in the body of Christ.
“The Book of Daniel and Godly Counsel: Part 2” Looks first at the model of personality presented in Daniel, a model that treats people as worshipers. “People always put something in the place of God as the ‘truth’ with ultimate defining power.” “Mocking the idols” is one of the most effective ways to confront them. Second, looks at Nebuchadnezzar’s insanity to illustrate the importance of sin in any discussion of normalcy or pathology. “The story teaches more about human self-promotion and hauteur that it does about insanity. The king in his glory, and the king in his ‘schizophrenic’ state, was deranged and in need of counsel.” Third, considers the apocalyptic sections of Daniel as a rich resource for counselors. It is addressed to the imagination, and vividly shows sufferers that hope, power, and control are found in the Most High God.
Third in a series on how wise data gathering can help counselors open the blind eyes of counselees. Describes strategies to achieve the goal, based on 2 Corinthians 10:3-5. First, locate the strongholds. Find the specific places where blindness structures the way a person thinks and acts, and specifically listen for places a person is angry, defensive, closed, or blame-shifting. Second, demolish the pretensions, the false things a person thinks to be true. Look for inaccurate views of self, God, and circumstances. Third, take every thought captive to Christ, helping people to think biblically about these things. [Letter to editor about this article, and response by Tripp, in 15:3]
“Modern Therapies and the Church’s Faith:” Christianity has a self-conscious, self-proclaimed competitor in the modern secular psychologies. We would expect conflict over truth (Who is right?), love (Who has the right to work with people?), and power (Who can make it right?). But the church has been intellectually derivative and practically weak, losing her heartland in the cure of souls. We have fresh opportunities today because of weaknesses in the psychological establishment and because of the existence of robust biblical counseling as an alternative. One key to effective engagement with the psychologies is to radically reinterpret what psychologists s ee and care about, from a Christian world view.
“Psychology and the Life of the Spirit:” Excerpted from Roberts’s book Taking the Word to Heart. The modern psychologies are foreign spirits in the church, “alternative spiritualities.” They intend their ‘words’ to be taken to heart, to shape our souls, and their therapies are potent methods for planting their ideas in us so that we may grow in the shapes that they ordain.” The scientific ideal is hard to maintain in psychology “where questions about meaning and value so naturally arise and may operate where even the scientific practitioner himself is not aware that they are controlling his work.” “The kind of psychology dealt with in this book makes general claims about human nature, the meaning of life, and what constitutes living well, and can be regarded as scientific only in the broader sense that allows the views of Aristotle, Kierkegaard, and Aquinas to count as scientific psychology.”
“A European Looks at Christian Counseling in America:” Swiss pastor discusses how his interest in pastoral counseling arose, his efforts to bring counseling ministry into the local church, and his observations about the Swiss and American scenes. In counseling, “everything that happens in America is popularized and then brought to Switzerland.” The personal problems faced in Europe are the same. Though Swiss are more reluctant than Americans to seek help, they are more organized and systematic intellectually. American churches give much more attention to issues of marriage and family than Swiss do. But Americans tend to be distastefully polarized, fighting on the basis of stereotypes rather than sitting down together.
“Authors and Arguments in Biblical Counseling:” I needed the clarity, beauty, power, insights, and grace that biblical counseling provides, but I also needed apologetic arguments to help convince me it is true and sufficient. The first section looks at various authors who have written defenses of biblical counseling or critiques of modern psychologies (Adams, Vitz, Kilpatrick, Bobgan, Powlison Ganz, Bulkley, Owen, and Almy). Identifies each author’s central concerns and arguments, and the audience that each approach is likely to reach. Identifies three areas where the biblical counseling movement needs to improve its apologetic: the manner and tone needs to be gracious, not belligerent; the arts of persuasion need to be refined; a more consistent presuppositional epistemology needs to control. “Psychology, like any secularized discipline, is both a dangerous catalyst to the church and a target for reinterpretive ministry.”
“The Mystery of Regeneration:” a cordial letter to the editor raising concerns over some discussions on “presumptive regeneration” with a reply by the editor.
Presents case study of a classic “psychologized” person, a young woman caught up in the literature and therapies of the Recovery Movement. Counselors need to do a number of things to effectively help such people. Don’t underestimate the hold of their current beliefs. Remember you are counseling a person, not critiquing a book. Don’t give her what she’s already tried. Care for her in ways that communicate, and get to know her and her world. Build slowly. Reinterpret her experience and world biblically.
