60 minutes, 2012
Rating: 8/10
A good friend with a bad father was, as a young man, sent by his church to a local Christian counseling center to get help controlling his anger. But instead of addressing what he could do about his anger, the counselor had my friend talk again and again about how bad his father was. There might have been some need for the counselor to get a basic understanding of my friend's history, but there was no need for the counselor to encourage him to repeatedly rehash the sins of his father. This was a violation of the fifth commandment and something that simply should not have been part of any Christian counseling. But as Bard Bigney explains in this DVD lecture, most of what goes by the name of Christian counseling is nothing but secular psychology baptized with a few Bible verses.
Many years ago, after planting a church, Bigney was overwhelmed by the number of people who needed help with their problems. So he went looking for a good counseling center he could partner with.
I went to the YellowPages.... picked out a dozen or 15 Christian counseling ministries.... And I made myself a list of good questions..... "What is your understanding of man's condition, from birth?" You would be shocked at what Christian counselors were saying! Why? Because they've been trained more in psychology and Freud and Maslow and Skinner than God's Word.... And they would say, "basically good." I'd say, "Basically good? That's not what the Bible says!"
