LIBERTY UNIVERSITY JOHN W. RAWLINGS SCHOOL OF DIVINITY
Christian Counselling Therapy Embraces the Healing of Memories
A Paper Submitted to
the Faculty of the School of Divinity
in Candidacy for the Degree of
Doctor of Education in Christian Leadership (Ed. D) Department of Christian Leadership and
Church Ministries
By
Mary Gracias
Lynchburg, Virginia
10/2022
Christian Therapy Embraces the Healing of Memories
The theory of repressed memories has even infiltrated Bible-believing churches. A woman’s
tragic personal testimony of “repressed memories” was published in the magazine of a large
metropolitan church in the Chicago area. It was full of psychological descriptions relating her
inner battle between her “conscious mind and [her] unconscious mind.” She confessed to
having “repressed memories of sexual abuse,” but as her “flashbacks came more frequently,
[she] began to lose hold of what was real.” She was finally committed to a mental hospital,
where, she said, “I lost hold of the reality of God.”
She said she tried to imagine where Jesus had been during the time of her abuse, and the
image she conjured up was this: “I saw Him standing in a darkened corner. He was watching [as
she was abused]. His face was expressionless. His hands were in His pockets and He was leaning
against the wall,” in seeming unconcern. The image devastated her, and she lived with that
imagination for two years.
During that time, she said, “I didn’t want anything to do with the Bible,” and, though she
continued attending church, she did not find peace. “I was afraid of being stuck in the corner
forever—the little child inside me needed for Christ to move. If the little child’s hope died, all of
her childlike ways would perish—her spontaneity, her joy, her undying trust toward God and
life. And I would be left an empty shell.”
So she continued imagining Christ in His corner until she imagined Him reaching out to her
and saying, “Come and let Me hold you.” Instead of finding relief, “a new wave of memories”
hit her, this time involving satanic ritual abuse. Then she imagined Jesus saying to her, “Imagine
being on a warm beach playing in the sand…imagine being the princess of the sand castle…
imagine a warm tender creature.…”
She saw her defense mechanism as a gift from God to help her survive. “I went to the
beach in my mind. I got away from the horror and covered the horrendous with the beach and
a flying creature. And I forgot. I had found a safe place. Christ had demonstrated His love.” In
spite of His love, she admitted, “I still don’t fully trust Him.”
Her source of comfort was to return to her “safe place. He takes me there on His wings. He
comes by my side and strokes my hair. He whispers to me ways in which to survive, and even
thrive, no matter what happens.”21
Do you see a problem with this woman’s testimony and therapy? Nowh ere in the article is
it even hinted that she found Christ as He is represented in the Scriptures. Instead, she sought
comfort in imaginations that in no way resembled Jesus. Is it any wonder that she still finds it
difficult to trust in God?
Before publishing the above example, I contacted the church that had presented her story
to see whether the article accurately reflected the position of the church.
I received a two-page response to my inquiry that only increased my concern. The unsigned
paper, titled “Some Additional Thoughts on ‘Borne on His Wings,’ ” said that “someone with an
abusive past will inevitably have a distorted view of God.…” It pointed out that the woman in
question was “not…uninformed or biblically illiterate, but…a mature believer revisiting a deep,
unresolved wound.…”
The response stated that such psychic wounds, “like a physical wound, won’t necessarily go
away with new information. More than truth is often needed to heal such a person because
more happened to her than being misinformed.”
Then the letter states a commonly believed assumption of psychology: “Sometimes, like a
physical infection, our emotional wound has been ‘covered over’ without adequately healing,
and must be reopened. The wound may require ‘lancing’ to heal.”
I do not question the sincerity of the therapists who worked with this woman. But the
letter they sent powerfully illustrates my concerns. Psychologically driven systems consider it
“inevitable” that those who have experienced abuse will have a distorted view of God. But the
truth is that left to ourselves all humans have a distorted view of God. The solution is found in
His supernatural revelation about Himself, not in psychotherapy.
The letter states that healing often requires more than truth, pointing out that the woman
was not biblically illiterate, but was a “mature believer.” The respondent seems unaware that
being biblically literate is no sign of spiritual maturity. Obedience to the Word is the point. The
Bible isn’t just “new information.” It is God’s own revelation to man about our woeful condition
and how He can transform our hearts. It is not a matter of merely hearing the truth, but
following it (James 1:22–25).
Why does God tell us to leave the past behind (Philippians 3:13, 14) if it is necessary to
revisit, reopen, and resolve a wound by “lancing” it? And how does one “lance” a psychic
wound? For many therapists, this psychological metaphor has become an actual goal so
politically correct that few question its scientific or biblical validity.
A more powerful method of healing inner wounds is to apply the two-edged sword of
God’s Word, which penetrates so deeply that it reveals the thoughts and intents of the heart
itself (Hebrews 4:12).
The Danger of False Memories
In a column titled “Don’t Always Believe the Children,” Nat Hentoff reported a tragic result
that shows just how twisted psychological thinking can become. Hentoff relates a 1992 CBS
News report that a father was accused of raping and sodomizing his eight-year-old daughter,
even though she had told police that a stranger had climbed through her bedroom window and
attacked her. “ ‘Her description of the intruder,’ said the CBS report, ‘closely resembled a
convicted serial rapist. A footprint his size was found nearby. But Wade, her father—a Navy
petty officer with a drinking problem—was at home when the attack took place. And the
authorities immediately suspected him.’ ”
Hentoff writes, “Having been accused, Jim Wade was presumed guilty. Alicia was taken
from her parents and assigned to foster homes and to a county therapist who, after 13 months
of treatment finally heard the child say that her daddy did it.”
The problem was that the father was innocent, and was exonerated by incontrovertible
evidence that had been ignored for more than two years. A member of the grand jury said,
“The therapist kept telling the child she’d feel better if she’d just say, ‘Daddy did it.’ I think the
therapist was so convinced the father did it, she never listened to the child.” A family was
broken up and the eight-year-old girl was separated from her parents for 2–1/2 years because a
therapist had convinced a grand jury that the father was guilty.
Hentoff concludes, “In New Jersey and North Carolina, among other places…there are
people serving very long prison sentences because therapists, prosecutors and juries would not
listen to anyone but the children.”22
I cite the articles above not to deny the existence of sexual abuse. It is happening with
growing frequency, and the effects on the abused are devastating. But many of the reports are
questionable and some are fabricated, and the effects on those who are falsely accused are
devastating.
Secular Indictments of Christian Memory Therapies
Even in the cases of genuine abuse there is simply no evidence that mentally revisiting
one’s past abuse produces inner healing. There is no value in forcing a woman to relive the
incestuous attacks of a drunken father in order to forgive him, and the therapeutic technique of
imagining does not produce the inner healing so desperately desired. “Embracing one’s pain”
increases the agony and prolongs the cycle of despair. It does not heal the wounded heart.
The problem of therapy-induced memories has grown to ridiculous proportions. It has
become so widespread that family members “who believe someone has falsely accused them
or another relative of incest, pornography or even the worst of the worst, ritual sexual abuse
that includes satanic or occult activity,” have formed an organization called the False Memory
Syndrome Foundation.23 It is a stain on the evangelical Christian community when secular
newspapers report accusations that false memory syndrome “sufferers are victims of their
therapists, particularly Christian counselors who plant these ideas of past abuse in their
heads.”24
The same suburban paper related a story about “Jane,” a woman whose family had been
damaged by false accusations. She said that her sister “was unwilling to take responsibility for
her own problem, in this case, her weight; counseling became a crutch; the charge of sexual
abuse came at the suggestion of the therapist.” Eventually the accusing woman was put into
group therapy, and finally into a hospital psychiatric ward. There, it seems, the woman was
convinced that she had also experienced satanic abuse. Jane said, “I personally believe when
you open your mind up to things other than the Lord, that gives Satan an open playground to
open your mind to evil powers.”
Jane explains why people seem to respond to the victimization concept: “It’s a nice way
out.…In this generation of not wanting to take the blame, this is really convenient. And not only
does the therapist have a solution, but a lifetime client at $125 an hour.…The whole thing is
nuts. It’s tragic. I think these counselors should be punished.”25 Though the newspaper did not
endorse Jane’s sensible explanation for her sister’s behavior, it is amazing that secular
publications are blowing the whistle on questionable Christian therapy, while Christian
magazines are propagating this insidious doctrine!
Misplaced Focus
A third weakness of the healing-of-memories theory is that the focus is placed upon the
counselee, his suffering, and his past instead of on the God of healing, His power, and our
glorious future in Christ. You will not find this emphasis on the self in the Scriptures, but it
certainly i s found in psychological systems:
Conventional psychiatry holds that an essential part of treatment is probing into the
patient’s past life—searching for the psychological roots of his problem because once the
patient clearly understands these roots he can use his understanding to change his attitude
toward life.…[Standard theory believes] if a patient is to change he must gain understanding
and insight into his unconscious mind.26
Though the concept of memory is mentioned more than 200 times in the Bible, I have
found none connected to the healing of memories. The term imagine or imagination is found
some 40 times in the Bible, yet none of these relates to the healing of memories. Instead, the
Scriptures encourage people to remember God, His powerful deeds, and His righteous
attributes. Consider passages such as Psalm 78:35: “They remembered that God was their Rock,
that God Most High was their Redeemer”; Psalm 78:42: “They did not remember his power—
the day he redeemed them from the oppressor”; and Psalm 143:5: “I remember the days of
long ago; I meditate on all your works and consider what your hands have done.”
David pleads with God not to remember his past: “Remember not the sins of my youth and
my rebellious ways; according to your love remember me, for you are good, O Lord” (Psalm
25:7). One verse that may refer to psychic distress is Psalm 42:6: “My soul is downcast within
me; therefore I will remember you.” Even here, the healing involved remembering God, not
experiences of the painful past.
Why then do psychologists insist that their patients return to their past? Psychological
interpretation of memories is based on the concept that repressed memories damage the
psyche. As one Christian psychologist writes:
The reason [memories] hurt is because they tend to be mostly buried and emerge only
when they choose. The more painful these memories are, the more hidden and repressed they
become. They hide, as it were, in a corner of the deepest cavern of our minds. Because they are
hidden, they escape healing.
What do you do with a painful memory? You may try to forget it, or you may act as though
it did not occur. Trying to forget the pains of the past gives these memories power and control
over your life.…
How does healing occur? By facing your memories, remembering them, letting them out of
their closet. Henri Nouwen said, “What is forgotten is unavailable and what is unavailable
cannot be healed.”27
Where is the scriptural support for this theory? It does not sound all that different from
Freud’s concept of the unconscious.
The Concept of the Unconscious
In Freud’s twisted system, the mind is comprised of three distinct areas: the conscious
(thoughts, concepts, and ideas a person is aware of), the preconscious (ideas that are not in the
forefront of one’s mind but can easily be drawn out by an act of the will), and the unconscious
(ideas a person cannot be aware of due to repression). Carl Jung expanded the concept of the
unconscious to include not only one’s own past but also one’s collective ancestral past. Is
Freud’s theory of the unconscious a scientifically proven fact? No, but it is a sociological belief
so deeply ingrained in our culture that society accepts the concept without question.
Most integrationists teach it as truth. Christian counseling books are deeply colored with
this theory, and the general Christian public accepts it as though it were scripturally based.
Prosperity prophets take us a step further and equate imagination and the unconscious with
faith itself. The pastor of the world’s largest church writes in Solving Life’s Problems, “Many
suffer because of a negative way of thinking.…God works through the imagination. As long as
one allows these negative thoughts to be dominant, God himself is blocked from helping that
person, for imagination is even stronger than will power in controlling a person.”28
