#61 Biblical Counseling Part 1 with Rick Thomas
The salient focus of our discussion centers on the distinct dichotomy between biblical counseling and its secular counterpart. We elucidate that biblical counseling is fundamentally the application of God's Word to the complexities of human existence, thereby fostering genuine transformation rather than mere behavioral modification. Our esteemed guest, Rick Thomas, shares insights on the historical context of counseling, highlighting that biblical counseling predates secular approaches, which have increasingly infiltrated the church's understanding of mental health. We emphasize the necessity for believers to grasp the sufficiency of Scripture in addressing life's myriad challenges, as opposed to relying solely on secular methodologies that lack a foundation in divine truth. Join us as we engage in this profound exploration of biblical counseling, aiming to equip listeners with the knowledge to discern and apply these principles in their lives.
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Transcript
There are two types of counseling which are biblical and unbiblical.
Speaker A:What does it actually mean to counsel someone biblically?
Speaker A:And what sets it apart from unbiblical or secular counseling?
Speaker A:In part one of this episode, we need to stop and think about the foundation of biblical counseling and how it was the initial type of counseling before being hijacked by secular counselors and counseling.
Speaker A:Join us as we take this time to stop and think about it.
Speaker B:Hello?
Speaker B:Hello?
Speaker B:Anybody home?
Speaker C:Think, McFly, think.
Speaker C:I'm thinking.
Speaker C:I'm thinking.
Speaker C:What were you thinking?
Speaker B:I'm trying to think, but nothing happens.
Speaker C:Didn't say anything.
Speaker C:Now just think about it.
Speaker C:You're listening to Stuck and Think About It, a podcast for the Christian thinker.
Speaker C:In a day when sound biblical preaching has been replaced by man centered entertainment and the church has become increasingly anti intellectual, this podcast will encourage believers to think biblically and theologically.
Speaker C:So please join me as we get ready to stop and think about it.
Speaker A:Greetings, friends and fellow saints and sinners.
Speaker A:Welcome to episode 61 of the Stop and Think about it podcast.
Speaker A:I am your host, Phil Sessa, AKA the Bronx Expositor, along with our producer, also host of the Breaking Bread podcast, Ishmael with no H, Claudio.
Speaker A:And today we have special guest Rick Thomas from Life Over Coffee.
Speaker A:Well, greetings, Rick.
Speaker A:Thank you for joining us on this episode of the Stop A Thing about it podcast.
Speaker A:Do you remember when you and I met?
Speaker B: I remember being up there in: Speaker A:You got the date, the place?
Speaker B:Were we in Brooklyn at a Baptist church?
Speaker B:A Reformed Baptist church?
Speaker A:Not too far off.
Speaker A:We were in North Shore Baptist Church.
Speaker B:North Shore.
Speaker B:North Shore Baptist Church.
Speaker B:Yes, I.
Speaker B:And I spoke on communication.
Speaker A:Yes, yes, Amen.
Speaker A:And I, I went that night because I was very excited that you were coming and, and it was such a blessing to hear that message and be trained unto you.
Speaker A:At that time.
Speaker B:I was so glad you didn't say we met in a bar.
Speaker B:I didn't know.
Speaker B:Well, I didn't know where we met, so I didn't know where this conversation was going.
Speaker A:We met a back alley.
Speaker A:No.
Speaker B:But we met in a church.
Speaker A:We met in a church.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Amen.
Speaker A:Well, I'm really, you know, you did good as far as you remembered the, the year and, and the state.
Speaker A:So, you know, that's probably the better than most people would remember because it's been several years.
Speaker A:So tell us a little bit about yourself and your ministry.
Speaker B:Yeah, we're in Greenville, South Carolina.
Speaker B:I'm Married to my wife, Lucia.
Speaker B:We have three children that have flown the coop.
Speaker B:So we are empty nesting at this stage in our life.
Speaker B: ipleship ministry and twin in: Speaker B:Prior to that, I pastored five years, and prior to that, I was leading a counseling ministry at a local church here in South Carolina.
Speaker B: But in: Speaker B:What it really is is discipleship, but we brand it as life over coffee because coffee is ubiquitous.
Speaker B:People know what it is.
Speaker B:They kind of get it.
Speaker B:But if you drill deeper into it, what it really is is biblical counseling.
Speaker B:And so we do biblical counseling, or we train people to do biblical counseling, but we call it life over coffee.
Speaker B:Because if I said we want to teach you how to do biblical counseling, I think most of the church would say, you know, I can't do that.
Speaker B:There's something about it that is mysterious or it sounds hard or whatever.
Speaker B:Now, there is some complexity there and some sophistication for sure, but everybody's called to go and make disciples.
Speaker B:And so what we do is we train people to do life over coffee, and that's what our ministry is.
Speaker B:I mean, there's more to it than that.
Speaker B:We have a school.
Speaker B:I write books, we do public speaking, etc.
Speaker B:But it is a discipleship ministry, to put it just in a short phrase.
Speaker D:Do you produce coffee as well?
Speaker B:Well, yes, we don't, but we do have a roaster.
Speaker B:And so if you.
Speaker B:If you went into our store, I mean, if we're going here, let's go there.
Speaker A:That's okay.
Speaker B:Tumblers and so forth and so on.
Speaker B:But we have a roaster in Florida, a plug to him, by the way, Christian kitchens, and they roast coffee, and so they do that for us.
Speaker B:So, yeah, I mean, the answer is yeah, and it's great.
Speaker B:It's great coffee.
Speaker B:And you can actually get a subscription and have coffee come into your door every week, month, or however you.
Speaker B:However you want it.
Speaker B:But, yeah, it's great coffee.
Speaker A:Biblically, you're the one who makes the coffee in the house between you and your wife.
Speaker A:Her name is Lucia.
Speaker B:Yeah, we call her Saint Lucia, but you can call her.
Speaker B:You can.
Speaker B:You can call her Lucia.
Speaker B:She's.
Speaker B:She's an island and in the Caribbean.
Speaker B:But I don't make the coffee.
Speaker B:I drink it.
Speaker B:She's actually the barista.
Speaker B:She has a.
Speaker B:She's very gifted in many ways, and she loves making coffee.
Speaker B:And I love drinking the coffee that she makes.
Speaker A:Okay, cuz somebody tell me as a biblical counselor, you're supposed to make it because the Bible says that.
Speaker A:That Hebrews.
Speaker B:Yes, the Bible says a lot of.
Speaker A:Things that people take out of context, such as that.
Speaker A:So tell us, so what is biblical counseling as opposed to unbiblical or secular counseling?
Speaker A:What's the difference?
Speaker B:Well, biblical counseling is the application of God's Word.
Speaker B:And so theology is absolutely essential.
Speaker B:Biblical counseling is applying God's Word to somebody's life.
Speaker B:And so you could say that studying the Bible is orthodoxy and the application is orthopraxy.
Speaker B:And those are the two key components to being mature, to growing up in Christ likeness.
Speaker B:The simple formula for wisdom is knowledge applied.
Speaker B:And so the Bible applied to our lives.
Speaker B:That's how we grow in wisdom.
Speaker B:And so biblical counseling is the application aspect, applying God's Word to our lives practically.
Speaker B:Now biblical counseling is exactly as it sounds.
Speaker B:We believe in the sufficiency of God's Word, as Peter said, that God has given us all things for life and godliness, as Paul said in 1st Timothy 3:16, that God's word is profitable for things, for teaching, for rebuking, for correcting, and for training in righteousness.
Speaker B:And so God's Word is the primary, all sufficient text that we use to apply in people's lives.
Speaker B:And so that is biblical counseling.
Speaker B:There is another form as you mentioned, I would say secular counseling.
Speaker B:And that's really just the world trying to figure out how to help people.
Speaker B:And so if you're going to reject God, you have to come up with an alternate plan.
Speaker B:We believe in creation, they don't.
Speaker B:So they came up with evolution.
Speaker B:We believe in God's Word as the answer to our problems.
Speaker B:They came up with their own Bible and their Bible.
Speaker B:By the way, for those who are interested, I'm using Bible in air quotes here.
Speaker B:It's the DSM 5, which is the Diagnostic Statistical Manual Edition number 5.
Speaker B:It's now it's Edition 5TR, which means text revised.
Speaker B:So they have actually revised the fifth edition of their Bible.
Speaker B:And so they use that.
Speaker B:And that's where you get all the acronyms, adhd, ocd, ptsd, so forth and so on.
Speaker B:All of that language comes from their Bible, comes from the dsm and that is secular counseling.
Speaker B:And so there would be, those would be the two competing entities, just like creation and evolution.
Speaker B:Now there is a hybrid of those two which is, it's called integration, where they integrate the Bible and the world and they come up with this version of counseling.
Speaker B:It's not biblical counseling, and it's messy, it's hard to discern.
Speaker B:Is commonly used within Christianity where they're just trying to blend two competing worldviews into this hybrid.
Speaker B:And that's called integration.
Speaker B:And so they would be three types of counseling, primarily biblical integration, and then purely secular.
Speaker B:I would be a biblical counselor.
Speaker B:Just one other thing is that the word psychology is a Greek word, psychologos.
Speaker B:Just like we have all the ologies within theology.
Speaker B:Bibliology means the study of the Bible.
Speaker B:Theology means the study of God.
Speaker B:Soteriology means the study of salvation.
Speaker B:Hermetology, the study of sin, anthropology, the study of man, ecclesiology, the study of the church, eschatology, the study of end times.
Speaker B:And there's more.
Speaker B:But psychology is the study of the soul.
Speaker B:That's what the word means.
Speaker B:And so in my view, God created the Soul.
Speaker B:In Genesis 2:7, God formed man out of the dust of the ground, breathed into his nostrils, and he became living soul.
Speaker B:So he created the psyche.
Speaker B:And as I referenced Timothy 3:16 a while ago, he breathed again into men and they wrote the Bible.
Speaker B:And so the purest form of psychology in the world is this Bible.
Speaker B:This is the word concerning the soul.
Speaker B:And so for all of our soul problems, we have the word for it, and it is the Bible.
Speaker B:And so psychology is actually a good word.
Speaker B:It's.
Speaker B:It is a Bible word when it's defined biblically.
Speaker B:Like all of the other ologies that I listed, Jesus was the greatest psychologist that ever lived.
Speaker B:We have the greatest psychology book that's ever been written.
Speaker B:And the more that we grow in learning theology and the application of it, we too can bring pure psychology to people's lives to help them to mature.
Speaker A:Amen.
Speaker A:Well, I really like some of the things you shared, just the.
Speaker A:The way you unpacked it.
Speaker A:So our Bible is immutable because it's unchanging, just like the character of God.
Speaker A:I noticed that you said we're on the DSM 5 and it's.
Speaker A:It's in a rev.
Speaker A:A revised version at this time.
Speaker A:So if it's in the fifth revision, if you will, that tells us it's not immutable, it's ever changing.
Speaker A:To my understanding, homosexuality used to be.
Speaker A:And what version of the DSM before they removed it?
Speaker B:The DSM 2.
Speaker B: in like: Speaker B:And the way the reason it changes is because there's multiple entities that really are working, and they're all lobbying from their position.
Speaker B:And so you would have the psychiatric community.
Speaker B:There would also be the LGBT community.
Speaker B:You'll have the pharmaceutical community as well, because they have a vested interest in creating these acronyms, adhd, for example, because, again, they're selling medication.
Speaker B:You also have the political lobby as well.
Speaker B:And so there's multiple lobbies that come together, and they all have their particular thing that they're trying to create or speak into.
Speaker B:That's the primary reason that it changes.
Speaker B:Of course, there's cultural changes, too.
Speaker B:And you mentioned homosexuality.
Speaker B:It did used to be a deviant behavior according to the dsm, and now it's, you know, moved completely out.
Speaker B:It's not a deviant behavior, and the same as gender dysphoria and those types of things.
Speaker B:And so it really moves along with the culture.
Speaker B:And so it's not anchored in anything other than the zeitgeist.
Speaker B:And as the zeitgeist continues to change, it changes with it.
Speaker B:And so basically, it has its feet firmly planted in midair as far as the Bible is concerned.
Speaker B:It's been anchored since it was.
Speaker B: The canon was closed: Speaker A:Amen.
Speaker A:Amen.
Speaker A:So my understanding is that a bunch of these guys, they kind of get together in a room and they vote on these things to mold and come up with the dsm.
Speaker B:Yeah, I mean, basically, it would be a simplistic way, and I don't know, you know, how it exactly happens if, technically speaking, if they get in a room.
Speaker B:But, yeah, there's a continual ongoing discussion and in some ways, negotiation and just going back and forth because everybody has their particular interest.
Speaker B:And again, the culture has a lot to do with it as well.
Speaker B:And so there's a lot of play there.
Speaker B:It mirrors the culture, actually.
Speaker B:I'm.
Speaker B:I'm 66 years old.
Speaker B:I was.
Speaker B:I came up in the late 60s and early 70s, and the culture was a certain way then, but it is nothing like that now.
Speaker B:Things that we would never do, never say never think, you know, we're just doing them just with no blushing and doing it in public spaces.
Speaker B:And it's just a different world.
Speaker B:And the DSM has evolved that way as well, which means it really has a degenerative effect.
Speaker B:Now, ultimately, the DSM is not a book that helps you.
Speaker B:It is a book that describes things.
Speaker B:And so it's called descriptive psychology, meaning all they're doing is describing how a person is behaving or how a person is iterating, like adhd for example, if they're meeting certain criteria, then they look at that criteria and put it up against, well, that's adhd.
Speaker B:Then from there, from the psychologist, they go to the psychiatrist, and the psychiatrist will give medication based on that label, adhd.
Speaker B:And then the medication, all it does is mutes the behavior.
Speaker B:So it just externally changes the person, but it doesn't do any heart work.
Speaker B:There's no solution there.
Speaker B:Again, it's just descriptive psychology.
Speaker B:It's important that they have those labels, because the labels, it serves several means.
Speaker B:For example, the label is tied to insurance coding.
Speaker B:And so if I get this label, then the insurance will pay for this diagnosis.
Speaker B:Also, this label will determine the type of medication that I have.
Speaker B:And then thirdly, that label gives me an identity.
Speaker B:I have adhd.
Speaker B:And so it gives them a way of thinking about their problem.
Speaker B:But again, it's just behavioral modification through medication.
Speaker B:Now, the Bible, on the other hand, we counsel the heart, we disciple the heart.
Speaker B:And so it's internal transformation.
Speaker B:As Paul would say in Ephesians 4, 22, 23, 24, put off the old person and renew the spirit of the mind and.
Speaker B:And put on a new person.
Speaker B:Finally, in Luke 6:45, Jesus says, out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.
Speaker B:And so we do not primarily do behavioral modification.
Speaker B:We do mortification of the heart.
Speaker B:There is a place for behavioral modification in Matthew 5, 24, 29 and 30, where Jesus says, your eye offends you.
Speaker B:Pluck it out.
Speaker B:I mean, there are some behavioral things that we should do, but the Bible is more sufficient than that.
Speaker B:It will not only modify behavior, but it will address root cause.
Speaker B:The DSM does not address root cause.
Speaker B:It is medicating a problem.
Speaker A:It makes assessments.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:Instead of testing for a sinful issue.
Speaker A:And then basically in the assessment, they match it with the label, and then it goes to the insurance company.
Speaker A:They could put it on.
Speaker A:I work in a public school.
Speaker A:They put it on the IEPs for students and so on and so forth.
Speaker A:So it's this sort of messy machine that's all trying to work together.
Speaker A:And there's no.
Speaker A:There's no resolution.
Speaker A:There's.
Speaker A:There's no heart change as the goal at the end of the day.
Speaker B:Yeah, and they're very honest about it in some ways, but they say it in the front of the DSM that we don't know why people do what they do.
Speaker B:And so we can just describe the behavior and then come up with a chemical that they can take to modify.
Speaker B:Ironically, that's what I did in the 70s, I called it pot.
Speaker B:Back then I would smoke marijuana.
Speaker B:It would modify my behavior as long as I was under the power of the narcotic.
Speaker B:And so it's really not different from that.
Speaker B:But one other thing is that they're not dichotomous.
Speaker B:They do not believe in the soul.
Speaker B:They're materialists.
Speaker B:And so they, they were just meat puppets.
Speaker B:And so because they are materialists, they see everything physical, organic, not non organic or spiritual.
Speaker B:We would believe in both body and soul.
Speaker B:And so because they are materialists, they're doing in these psychological world what the medical doctor does in his world.
Speaker B:It's just, it's just a body that a doctor is assessing, diagnosing and bringing solutions to.
Speaker B:Physically, in the psychological world, they're looking at the same materialistic person.
Speaker B:That's also why they can, that's why they can do an abortion, because it's not a soul.
Speaker B:There's no imago dei, this is just a sack of meat.
Speaker B:And so there's no value here.
Speaker B:But having a materialist worldview, it makes sense that what you would do is you would medicate it.
Speaker B:But if you, if you don't believe in the soul, that God created the soul, that there's an eternality to the soul, we do.
Speaker B:And we know that there can be this internal transformation that the Bible speaks to.
Speaker A:Amen.
Speaker D:So when you begin biblical counseling, is one of your goals, trying to debunk what the culture is or what the DSM 5 is teaching us?
Speaker D:Because like you said, it's their Bible.
Speaker D:And if we're not reading our Bibles, we're reading the world Bible pretty much.
Speaker D:So like, when you go into the counseling session, do you find resistance?
Speaker D:Because there are, there are those who uphold the culture.
Speaker B:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker B:And I don't, I don't try to debunk it for a couple of reasons.
Speaker B:One, I'm not a medical doctor, and so I would never, never, I've never have asked anyone to get off medication because that's not my call.
Speaker B:Two, I don't debunk it because this is a faith issue.
Speaker B:If a mom, for example, has seen her son change behavior because of the medication that he is on, and then I start going after that, she believes this works.
Speaker B:That's what I mean by a faith issue.
Speaker B:Faith and belief are the same words.
Speaker B:So she believes that this is the path.
Speaker B:And if I start saying, you know, this is wrong, then it begins to just destroy her faith.
Speaker B:The faith that she has in this diagnosis, the faith she has in the psychologist, the faith she has in the psychiatrist, the faith she has in the medicine.
Speaker B:So I don't talk about that at all.
Speaker B:You could say that it is a religion.
Speaker B:Because of that, it becomes an emotional issue.
Speaker B:And if I start talking about can become really emotional, I've always described it like a trapeze artist, where they're holding on to this, and I'm asking them to hold on to this, but there's some point in between where they're holding on to nothing.
Speaker B:And so for them to let go of secular psychology and grab hold to God's word, there's a moment in time where there they're holding on to nothing.
Speaker B:And so that is a very emotional and attentious time.
Speaker B:And so I try to be careful there by not telling them to let go when they don't even know what to grab hold to next.
Speaker B:And so what I do instead is I build a case for the sufficiency of God's Word.
Speaker B:And so the way that you, or one of the ways that you do that is just listen to what they are saying as a biblical counselor, as they describe their problems.
Speaker B:You listen at two levels.
Speaker B:They're talking up here about whatever's going on in their life, but I'm translating it biblically in the heart.
Speaker B:They may say that, you know, I don't like that person.
Speaker B:Well, there's anger here.
Speaker B:Maybe I've been hurt for decades from what my daddy did to me.
Speaker B:There's regret there, there's bitterness there.
Speaker B:There's unforgiveness there.
Speaker B:I remember one time I've done this several times in a counseling session, is that I will use a whiteboard and I'll draw a big heart on it.
Speaker B:And then I would listen to them talk for an hour, and I'll start writing these biblical labels inside of the heart.
Speaker B:And then when they're done talking, I will turn it around and show it to them.
Speaker B:Do you struggle with.
Speaker B:And these are all biblical labels, and so do you struggle with anger?
Speaker B:Yes, I do.
Speaker B:Do you struggle with unforgiveness?
Speaker B:Yeah, I do.
Speaker B:Bitterness, so forth, unforgiveness, so forth, and so on.
Speaker B:Anxiety, worry, fear, blame.
Speaker B:All of these are biblical categories.
Speaker B:And then I'll say something like this.
Speaker B:I mean, I wouldn't say it exactly like this, but this is what I'm thinking.
Speaker B:What if we address each one of these one by one, and you overcome them, and then we come back six months later and see whether you need medication or not.
Speaker B:Now, I say the first part of that all the time.
Speaker B:I don't say the second part.
Speaker B:I don't talk about medication in a counseling session.
Speaker B:I say, what about if?
Speaker B:Okay, so you agree that you struggle with these 15 things that are in the heart.
Speaker B:Imagine a life where you were free from all of those things.
Speaker B:Are you in faith to start working on those things?
Speaker B:And so I'm building a case for them to grab hold to God's word.
Speaker B:I never tell them to let go.
Speaker B:And I've had many people in counseling, you know, months down the road, where now they have a new faith, where they see the sufficiency of God's word, that they're not medicating their life, but they're actually being transformed from the inside out.
Speaker B:And so they make that decision themselves.
Speaker B:They work with their psychologist, work with their psychiatrist, and they begin to.
Speaker B:Many of them begin to go off meds because they just don't need them anymore because they have experienced an internal transformation through the word of God.
Speaker A:That sounds a little bit like when I was teaching my children to walk, and they would.
Speaker A:They would kind of hoist themselves up and hold on to the edge of the couch, and then I would move away from the couch and tell them, you know, to.
Speaker A:To come to me, and they had to let go of one thing.
Speaker A:And then, you know, if you will, in between me and the couch, they.
Speaker A:They were holding on to nothing, but.
Speaker A:And then, you know, they were able to realize, you know, that I would catch them if they fell.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:And they're looking at you like, are you out of your mind?
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:What are you asking me to do?
Speaker A:Exactly.
Speaker A:Exactly.
Speaker B:But, you know, when they do do that, as you've had that experience, they're over the moon.
Speaker B:And, you know, what has just happened, you know, once they make that crossing of the great divide, and now.
Speaker B:Now they're walking on their own.
Speaker A:So your goal for the counseling in the process is different from the goal that secular counselors have.
Speaker A:So.
Speaker A:And I.
Speaker A:I know you kind of mentioned it, but what would be the goal?
Speaker A:Because it seems that.
Speaker A:That the counseling always is going back to the psychologist, back to the counselor, time and time again, similar to how in Roman Catholicism, they always have to go back to the mass and go back to the priests for confession.
Speaker A:So what's the goal here in biblical counseling in contrast to secular counseling?
Speaker B:Yeah, you'll hear that a lot.
Speaker B:You know, like with Hollywood stars, for example.
Speaker B:You know, they have their therapist, right?
Speaker B:Actually, I want to be one.
Speaker B:I would love to be a therapist, because you never get over your problem.
Speaker B:And so, you know, I've Always wanted Brad Pitt or pick anybody.
Speaker B:It doesn't matter.
Speaker B:Tom Cruise, they pay me.
Speaker B:Tom Cruise would be great.
Speaker B:Pay me $5,000 a week to talk for an hour, and we do this for the rest of my life.
Speaker B:I think it's a great thing.
Speaker B:Thing.
Speaker B:But as you're implying with your question, the answer to what they're looking for is relief.
Speaker B:They're looking for relief from whatever's going on in their lives.
Speaker B:And so that relief, very similar to me smoking pot, you know, when I was 15 years old.
Speaker B:It does give you momentary relief.
Speaker B:It can give you a mental adjustment, let's say, but then you're always going back to the same thing.
Speaker B:So you need the medication or you need to meet with your therapist, and it's ad infinitum.
Speaker B:And so, again, the best that they can offer is relief.
Speaker B:In the biblical counseling or discipleship world, we offer change.
Speaker B:We offer transformation.
Speaker B:We see that initially in 2 Corinthians 5, 17, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.
Speaker B:And so God did not come to give us relief from our problems.
Speaker B:He came to completely change us from the inside out.
Speaker B:And those are two completely different worldviews.
Speaker A:Amen.
Speaker A:And so is it my understanding in Christian history that some of the first, quote, unquote, psychologists were the Puritans, and they engaged in what's called soul care.
Speaker B:Yeah, the Puritans did.
Speaker B: I mean, prior to: Speaker B:One was the medical doctor that took care of the physical problems, and the other was the pastor who took care of the soul problems.
Speaker B:And so they work together.
Speaker B:The Puritans have written some wonderful work on how to, you know, do soul care.
Speaker B:But in the.
Speaker B: In: Speaker B:And so it was no longer the medical doctor and the pastor, it was them.
Speaker B:Plus, now we have a psychologist.
Speaker B:And so we've created a third entity or a third category.
Speaker B:And they have done very well in their marketing.
Speaker B:I mean, the messaging has been great because many people in the church and even pastors would say this, you know, I.
Speaker B:You know, I can't speak to those issues.
Speaker B:You know, I can, you know, preach, and, you know, we can teach people God's word, but when it comes to these problems, we outsource it to a psychologist.
Speaker B:And so they have done well in their messaging.
Speaker B:And I would not know the stats, but there's an overwhelming number of Christians who actually believe that messaging.
Speaker B:I'm not saying out of ill motive at all.
Speaker B:They just don't know.
Speaker B:I mean, the work of the dsm.
Speaker B:I'm using social media and marketing as a way of communicating.
Speaker B:Carl Jung didn't know anything about marketing or social media, but the messaging was great as far as that's concerned and is so great that many Christians believe in it that we need a therapist and they don't really.
Speaker B:We would say that God's word is sufficient, but when you begin to unpack that, you'll hear many Christians say, well, you know, they have adhd, they have ocd, they have ptsd.
Speaker B:All of those problems are real.
Speaker B:I'm not saying that they're not real.
Speaker B:I'm just saying that label is going to take you that way.
Speaker B:You take the same problem and go that way.
Speaker B:You'll find more than relief.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Amen.
Speaker A:Amen.
Speaker A:I, you know, I like how you kind of just brought that, brought all that together and, and unpacked, you know, the sort of, the different players that speak to this.
Speaker A:And so it almost sounds like pastors and those in the church have helped the secular cause and said, well, you know, this area is for the expert over here and not see that as.
Speaker A:So I'm a pastor in a Church of Grace Baptist Church in Queens.
Speaker A:And so if I bought into that, it would say, well, you, you know, you have to go over here with something that is in the Bible that I preach from instead of saying, well, I can help you as well, because it's a problem.
Speaker A:And, and, and there, maybe there's a sin issue and the Bible speaks to it.
Speaker A:And so we can use God's word to help you to come to transformation and not just go over here and perhaps band aid the problem, and then you need band aids for the rest of your life.
Speaker B:Yeah, it's a, it's a complex issue.
Speaker B:And, you know, part of it is, is that, you know, pastors, when they get an M.
Speaker B:Div and M.
Speaker B:Div, they're not trained in psychology.
Speaker B:I mean, they may have a pastoral counseling class as part of their m divorce.
Speaker B:But because of what has happened with secular psychology, there is a whole other training curriculum, which actually is what I have.
Speaker B:I don't have an MD I have a master's in biblical counseling.
Speaker B:And so there's a whole other training regimen that needs to be here.
Speaker B:And we do have it.
Speaker B:You know, as far as a master's in biblical counseling, prior to psychology, know, taking over the culture, we didn't need that.
Speaker B:But the thing, I don't knock on pastors because they're trained a very particular way to take God's, to take God's word seriously, learn how to be sound, exegese, to have a good hermeneutic, to be able to craft sermons and to preach God's word, etc.
Speaker B:But over the past 150 years, there's this competing, competing doctrine, secular psychology.
Speaker B:And it kind of caught us off guard.
Speaker B:And so a pastor would look at that and say, I don't know what OCD is, I don't know what ADHD is.
Speaker B:I wasn't trained in that.
Speaker B:And they weren't, and it's not necessarily their fault.
Speaker B:But there has to be this awareness within each local church of what's going on.
Speaker B:Some of the things that I'm saying.
Speaker B:There has to be someone who understands these things and can help shed light on it and be able to help people to walk them through these, some of these complexities that I'm talking about here.
Speaker B:It should not be the lead pastor.
Speaker B:I think that would be unfortunate because if he was a biblical counselor, he would spend his entire week with two or three or five families and he would not be able to do the work of actually shepherding the sheep.
Speaker B:And it would be like a side hustle that would soon dominate his life if he focused on biblical counseling.
Speaker B:So pastors need to continue to get their M divs.
Speaker B:They need to continue to share God's Word faithfully as they do.
Speaker B:But they need to have this awareness that we need to have somebody here that can help address the application of God's Word problems that we have in the church.
Speaker B:Now, that's what we do in.
Speaker B:We come alongside churches supplementally to help them to understand, not to put a burden on the pastor.
Speaker B:I can imagine a pastor who's spending 20 to 25 hours a week crafting a sermon, and then he's got to meet with five different people for counseling sessions.
Speaker B:And then he has all the other things that he has to do with the administration of the church that would be too much for him to do.
Speaker B:And so we try to release pastors from doing.
Speaker B:It's almost like having an electrician and a plumber.
Speaker B:You need both of those.
Speaker B:One is trained this way, the other one's trained that way, and then both of them, Orthodoxy and Orthopraxi, they're working together.
Speaker B:And that's a true benefit for any local church.
Speaker A:When you look in your Bible, do you see some of these things that you mentioned that are like on the DSM chart, so to speak.
Speaker A:Well, you, you mentioned that you sort of take what people are saying, you write them in the heart.
Speaker A:But we, we see some of these issues in the biblical characters.
Speaker A:Let's say I preached through the book of Jonah and Jonah seemed to have anger issues, among other things.
Speaker A:We see Peter and, and the disciples, we see impatience.
Speaker A:So when you look at your, at your Bible, do you unpack some of these behavioral things, perhaps sinful things in the biblical characters?
Speaker B:Oh, yes, they become great illustrations.
Speaker B:All of them do.
Speaker B:Because, you know, people would talk about the Bible that, you know, the Bible is full of sin and sinful people, and it is, but it actually mirrors real life.
Speaker B:And so that's the beauty of these characters.
Speaker B:They were not saints or in the sense that they were sinlessly perfected.
Speaker B:They were just like you and me.
Speaker B:And so because they were, we're all born in Adam and so we're no different from them.
Speaker B:And so to see these stories in the Bible, they actually do become great illustrations.
Speaker B:You mentioned Jonah.
Speaker B:He was a racist, he hated the Ninevites.
Speaker B:He had several other problems.
Speaker B:You know, the anger.
Speaker B:He was very self righteous as he looked down.
Speaker B:And so, you know, who's not self righteous, who has never struggled with anger, who has never self righteous?
Speaker B:Racism is a form of self righteousness where you're looking down on somebody and thinking you're better than them.
Speaker B:And so who has not done that?
Speaker B:Or if you take Joseph in the Bible, who was sinned against, who has not been sinned against.
Speaker B: e see his attitude in Genesis: Speaker B:Well, who hasn't suffered?
Speaker B:We all have suffered to varying degrees.
Speaker B:But are we sovereignty centered or are we suffering centered?
Speaker B:It makes a whole world of difference.
Speaker B:And then we have Paul in 2 Corinthians 12, who had a thorn in the flesh, whatever that was.
Speaker B:There are some unchangeable things about us.
Speaker B:But he said, through my weakness, God's strength is.
Speaker B:Or God said, through your weakness, my strength is perfected.
Speaker B:So all of that is just a reflection of our lives.
Speaker B: aracters, Jesus, obviously in: Speaker B:And so trusting God in the most difficult situation in your life, there's a great illustration there.
Speaker B:And so yes, all the Bible characters, Peter's a wonderful one for many reasons.
Speaker B:Impulsiveness, for example.
Speaker B:And so God's Word is truly sufficient.
Speaker B:It's no different in that way than the actual lives that we live today.
Speaker B:We see ourselves in scriptures through and through.
Speaker B:James would say that the Bible is a mirror.
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker A:And all my looking through the book of Jonah, he was also concerned that if Nineveh repented, God might use Nineveh as is in as an instrument of judgment against Israel, who is living in disobedience.
Speaker A:And so there's this whole sovereignty of God thing in his mind as well.
Speaker A:But you know that he had this prejudice against a group of people and thought that Israel deserved God's grace, but not others, not those outside of Israel.
Speaker A:Israel.
Speaker A:And so, you know, this is why we need to go into all the world and and preach the gospel.
Speaker A:As we come to the end of today's episode, thank you to our guest Rick Thomas for sharing his time, wisdom and insight with us.
Speaker A:If you'd like to dive deeper into the truth and transformation Rick spoke about today, be sure to check out lifeovercoffee.com.
Speaker B:That'S our website address.
Speaker B:By the way.
Speaker B:Life overcome coffee.com our resources for the most part are free.
Speaker B:We are 501c3, so we generate resources that anybody can access on all things that the Bible speaks to which the Bible speaks to everything.
Speaker B:And so whether it's anger or marriage issues, parenting, pornography, addiction, etc.
Speaker B:Unforgiveness, bitterness, regret, on and on.
Speaker B:I write on those things.
Speaker B:We produce content in a read, watch, listen format so you can read, you can watch videos, you can listen to podcasts and again, all of it's free.
Speaker B:And that's what we do.
Speaker A:And to all of our listeners, thank you for tuning in.
Speaker A:And if you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to tune in next week for part two of Biblical Counseling.
Speaker A:And thank you for taking this time to stop and think about it.
Speaker C:If you would like to contact us, please email us the end at@stopandthinkcrewmail.com.
Speaker C:you can also visit our website at www.stopandthinkpodcast.com.
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