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Be careful where you get help and counsel from.

There is an ad on television (and elsewhere) that I have been seeing pretty often of late, which I find to be somewhat annoying. It is about a counselling network that offers people a range of therapists to help them with whatever their problems might be. It seems to be a worldwide outfit that “will match you to one of 32,000 licensed therapists based upon your location, preferences, and therapist availability.” This counselling service is called BetterHelp.

Now, let me say at the outset that we all likely need help in various ways. We all have issues, so getting a bit of counsel or guidance can be a good thing indeed. So let me explain what it is that bothers me about this service. There are several things that can be mentioned.

As to the 30-second television ad, a main thing it says is this: “Therapy isn’t about becoming a different person. It’s about coming home to the person that you’ve always been.” More on that in a moment. A second and related thing is what first meets the eye when you go to their website. It is this: “You deserve to be happy.”

Why Secular Therapy Falls Short

What is the problem with those statements? Well, I am writing from the viewpoint of a biblical Christian. There are a few issues that I have. A crucial concern I have is this: the fundamental thing that lies behind our problems is spiritual in nature. We are made in God’s image; we are alienated by God through sin and selfishness; and the only way we can find real healing and wholeness is when we get right with God through Christ.

Before explaining this further, let me say that I know nothing about the 32,000 counsellors or therapists who are available here. Some might be quite helpful. Some might even be Christian. Likely, most are not. And even Christians can get some limited help from non-Christian therapists. Moreover, some folks can get unhelpful counsel from Christian therapists.

But my point remains. If our problems at heart are spiritual in nature, involving our broken relationship with our Creator, then getting therapy that either ignores or minimises these spiritual realities will of necessity be quite limited, and perhaps even counterproductive.

Any therapy or counsel that plays down the fact that we are whole persons and that we must come to terms with our relationship with God will ultimately be of only so much value. Sure, if a person has had a bad experience with his father, for example, and is bitter and unforgiving, then often a non-Christian counsellor will try to deal with the bitterness and the issues of forgiveness and so on.

But the thinking behind the two statements I just mentioned makes all this much more difficult to achieve. One of them is the notion that we have some sort of right to happiness. The idea that we deserve to be happy and that this should be our end goal in life is fraught with all sorts of danger.

The truth is, some people are happy or get their cheap thrills when they hurt or abuse others. Some men are happy when they rape women. Some others are happy when they exert hyper, abusive control over their children. Some get much pleasure in cheating on their wives or stealing things. If simply being “happy” is the be-all and end-all here, then anything goes – including decidedly harmful, immoral and illegal behaviour and activities.

The Christian Alternative: New Birth, Not Self-Discovery

The Christian knows that happiness is NOT our chief goal in life. It is holiness, which comes as a result of being in right relationship with God. Mere happiness is NOT what we exist for. As C. S. Lewis famously once said, “I haven’t always been a Christian. I didn’t go to religion to make me happy. I always knew a bottle of Port would do that. If you want a religion to make you feel really comfortable, I certainly don’t recommend Christianity.”

Or as he put it in Mere Christianity:

What Satan put into the heads of our remote ancestors was the idea that they could ‘be like gods’—could set up on their own as if they had created themselves—be their own masters—invent some sort of happiness for themselves outside God, apart from God. And out of that hopeless attempt has come nearly all that we call human history—money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery—the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy.

The reason why it can never succeed is this. God made us: invented us as a man invents an engine. A car is made to run on petrol, and it would not run properly on anything else. Now God designed the human machine to run on Himself. He Himself is the fuel our spirits were designed to burn, or the food our spirits were designed to feed on. There is no other. That is why it is just no good asking God to make us happy in our own way without bothering about religion. God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing.

See more on Lewis and happiness here.

Another issue I have with the ad is what it highlights as its main message: NOT becoming a different person but becoming who you already are – whatever that means. But it is exactly who we are that is the problem. We are selfish sinners who, by nature – fallen nature – put self first and others last.

What we need is not just more of who we are by natural birth, but what we can become by spiritual birth. Jesus said we must be born again. Just becoming a better sinner is not what we need. We need to become a new person in Christ with new values, new goals, new aspirations, new desires, and new divine abilities to help us live the lives we were meant to live.

We are not only to say no to the old man, but we are to put it to death. The biblical counsel to crucify self and put on Christ is the only genuine way to become the person God always wanted us to be. It is the only way to find substantial healing, growth, maturity and wholeness.

Wise Counsel: Finding the Right Balance

I repeat: there is some helpful counsel that non-Christians can and do give – no doubt about it. So I am not saying that believers should stay clear of all non-Christian therapists and helpers. But two more aspects of this can be briefly mentioned. As I said, not all Christian counsellors are all that helpful.

Just as all Christian preachers and pastors need the leading of the Holy Spirit and the guidance of God’s word to feed the flock and build up the church, so too, all Christian counsellors need the Spirit and Scripture to effectively help others.

Sadly, it can often be the case that so-called Christian counsellors have simply taken holus-bolus secular and humanistic counselling principles and ideas, and left out God’s word and God’s Spirit. They just rehash the world’s methods of guiding others, which at best can be a real mixed bag in terms of actually helping people.

Related to this is my second point: I actually know of some folks who were active Christians and dedicated workers in the church who chose to go to secular humanists for some counselling, and as might be expected, they ended up abandoning their faith and leaving their church. That is some of the bitter fruit of relying exclusively on secular counsellors and ungodly therapists.

If folks have needs and they want to avail themselves of the sorts of services being offered in this ad I have been discussing, they can go for it. I will not stand in their way. But at the very least, the Christian should think twice before heading down that path. They should check things out carefully before committing.

If they are a church member, they would likely have access to a godly and wise pastor to get some help from. And some of the bigger churches even have their own counselling department with dedicated stuff to help members who need godly counsel.

We need caution and discernment here. I reiterate a few points by way of summation:

• Not all non-Christian therapists are a waste of time – perhaps most can offer at least some help in various ways to others – Christians as well as non-Christians.
• Not all Christian counsellors are always helpful, for various reasons.
• But at the end of the day, this fact must be kept at the forefront of our thinking: we are whole beings: intellectual, volitional, emotional, moral, social. But we are also spiritual beings. So any therapy that leaves out this key component of who we are and of the God who is there will of necessity be incomplete, if not harmful.

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Republished with thanks to CultureWatch. Image courtesy of Adobe.