Christian Counseling

The difference between secular therapies and the Christian care of the pastor is that the secular therapies are based upon expected results which have been determined by observable facts, whereas the Christian care of the pastor is based upon expected results which have been realized through faith in what will be instead of in what has already been observed. While whatever methods have proven to be helpful within the field of psychology ought to be recognized by those in ministry, ultimately the ministry is based upon something that has not been successfully observed through science. There is often a secular set of beliefs behind the secular therapies employed within psychology. An example would be that in much of secular psychology the main goal is to get the patient to be reconciled with his or herself. Within the Christian care of the pastor is seen the central goal of reconciling the person to God. Only when a person is at peace with God will they then be at peace with themselves because the true conflict was one between the person and God. “Psyochotherapy has a great deal to say about the characteristics of thought and behavior but is little concerned with the character of the person. Especially in the more popularized versions of therapy (and that is often the level at which churches and ministers are involved), people are seen as a bundle of needs to be discovered, expressed, examined, and met. Such therapy keeps the person in perpetual dependency as he alternately whines and exults in the exploration of new needs. And it sustains the illusion that such needs are problems to be resolved, problems that can be resolved. In their more fatuous forms, psychotherapies suggest that problems discovered are problems resolved, that self-knowledge is self-healing. Christian faith, too, affirms the axiom, ‘Know thyself.’ But the discovery of our real selves is not through internal probing but external promise; becoming our true selves is not a therapeutic project but a vocation” (Neuhaus 89).

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Source

Richard Neuhaus. Freedom for Ministry: A Guide for the Perplexed Who are Called to Serve. (1992), pp. 89.