There are Six Crucial Issues in Contemporary Biblical Counseling.
Picking one over the other five is difficult as there are several that are
significant i.e. Number Three “The relationship between human
responsibility and humans suffering and human suffering needs a great
deal of clarification” and Number Four “We need to press much further in
understanding the biblical data about the counselor-counselee
relationship”, which are both significant issues and important aspects in
Contemporary Biblical Counseling. However, in my opinion, Number Six
“The relationship of biblical counseling to secular psychology needs to be
publicly clarified” is the most crucial issues in Contemporary Biblical
Counseling. Having a standardized way of providing Biblical counseling is
important. Understanding that there is some overlap in secular
psychology and the Bible’s truth but that ultimately God’s Word is most
significant in finding answers to counselee’s problems.
There are three strategies for clear presuppositional thinking
relating to biblical counseling with evangelistic and apologetic strength to
“redeem error by replacing distorted bits back within their proper biblical
framework” (Powlison, p. 256). Strategy 3 or otherwise referred to as
Beauty 3 in the text is discussed using intellectual and secular
psychology, Christian and Non-Christians into a useful partnership as the
contemporary Christian counseling will be successful in integrating Biblical
truths with secular psychology (Powlison, 2010). If we as counselor’s do
not know how to help others heal from their problems using insights into
the field of psychology and effectively being able to apply our knowledge
of the God’s Word to “reframe everything that psychologists see and hold
dear, and to reinterpret it into the categories of biblical truth” we could
lose opportunities to share God’s love, grace, and mercy with our
counselees (Powlison, p. 257).
In Appendix 4, Powlison makes the distinction for a Presbyterian
Church in America (PCA) pastors who are knowledgeable about the Bible,
history of the church and ability to preach Gods Word however PCA
pastors are not examined on how they will provide counseling ministry to
individuals (Powlison, 2010). Using this example about the PCA pastors,
they may be ill equipped to provide effective biblical counseling using
parts of psychology to support a counselee with the problem they are
seeking help for, depending on what lens the pastor is using to counsel.
Mr. Baker stated in this week’s lecture that “we have the ability
to be responsibly eclectic, to study a material that does not come from
the work of Biblical counseling (and) to discard that which is not useful, to
embrace that, which can help us ” which provides an opportunity for
Christians in the psychology field to be mindful of how to integrate Biblical
truth into their clinical practice (Liberty University, 2013).
References
Liberty University. (2013). Issues in Contemporary Christian Counseling.
Liberty University
