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Does Psychology have any place in the Church?


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In lieu of continuing to hijack the "Other Services" thread I'll move this discussion here. Below are some of the things that have been said regarding this so far.



My contention is that psychology has no place in the life of a Christian individual or in the Church as a whole. The mind is intangible and therefore not an object. Any study of the mind is therefore subjective. I had to study psychology for my criminal justice degree, and not one thing in all those books ever pointed anyone to Christ; only by looking to self can man be healed according to psychology.

"Christian psychology" is paradoxical because Christianity, by definition, is trusting fully in Christ and following his word; psychology, on the other hand, is the study of the soul (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychology) outside of God's word, and is therefore counterintuitive to how the Bible tells us to live our lives for the sake of our souls. Also, notice on Wikipedia, an editable encyclopedia, there is no subheading for Christian psychology. :puzzled: As much as "Christian psychology" is being pushed in our churches, you'd think that Dr. Dobson or someone would have edited in a heading about "Christian psychology."
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You are totally right! The New Age and occultic philosophies of fallen man have no place in a Christian's life - you can't take error, mix it with truth, and then expect God to bless it - let alone work through it or own those philosophies as His, when they contradict His Word.

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Having been through neuthetic counseling training and seeing all of the prolems with modern Psychology, I should say the same thing. The fact is that there are areas of study that lead to understanding how the mind functions, and then there are studies to try to manipulate the mind. The former has a measure of merit, the latter does not. For a christian, our mind is renewed by the 'putting off' and 'putting on' principles in Eph 4:22ff. We are equipped with the knowledge of how to change our mind. How the mind works, and how various associations effect people then can be used within the boundaries of christian principles to better explain how sin effects the mind, and how the mind works. Like anything, its all how you use it and if you are willing to put enough energy into it to understand it through scripture. Just like any other science, it can be used together with scripture, or we can take its word above scripture. But to say it has no merit at all is reactionary. Its like saying biology has no place in the life of a Christian, because biology is the building blocks for the evolutionary model.

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BTW, having had a history with mental illness in my family, its easy to say that its worthless until you watch a loved one go into mental illness. When you watch as they turn into a vegetable not wanting to see you, telling you they do not love you, and watching as they adjust medicine that bring the person right back to the person they were. Chemical imbalances are real. The cause of them are unknown, and ultimately stem from our sin nature, but they are real. Working through those issues takes controlling our minds. Could my loved one have come through that state with just renewing her mind, I'm honestly not sure. The woman I watched during that time was so far gone that I have no clue how she could have. I for one an thankful for the doctors and medicine who cared for her. I think that there are deeper issues at hand, and everything must be worked through spiritually, but in this case the medicine helped move her toward the ability to start thinking right. I am grateful for it.

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Having been through neuthetic counseling training and seeing all of the prolems with modern Psychology' date=' I should say the same thing. The fact is that there are areas of study that lead to understanding how the mind functions, and then there are studies to try to manipulate the mind. The former has a measure of merit, the latter does not. For a christian, our mind is renewed by the 'putting off' and 'putting on' principles in Eph 4:22ff. We are equipped with the knowledge of how to change our mind. How the mind works, and how various associations effect people then can be used within the boundaries of christian principles to better explain how sin effects the mind, and how the mind works. Like anything, its all how you use it and if you are willing to put enough energy into it to understand it through scripture. Just like any other science, it can be used together with scripture, or we can take its word above scripture. But to say it has no merit at all is reactionary. Its like saying biology has no place in the life of a Christian, because biology is the building blocks for the evolutionary model.[/quote']

Nouthetic counseling is great and is a Biblical way for Christians to receive admonition from brothers and sisters in Christ.

As far as "how the mind works:" do we not have God's word on the inclinations of humanity? Did the apostles and Jesus Christ himself have to rely on their knowledge of how the mind works to spread the gospel? I say there is no place for psychology in the church because psychology is not found in God's word, our final authority. The teachings of the so-called science of psychology are against the teachings of Christ.

I say "so-called" science because when psychology is scrutinized as a science it falls farther than any other accepted scientific discipline outside the boundaries of the definition of science (Just do a Google search on questioning the validity of psychology and you'll find a lot of reliable resources to back this up. Even in the Wikipedia article, there is a section questioning its standing as a science.). All (yes, I said "all") psychological diagnoses are based on consensus, and not upon scientific testing. I will say that there are chemical problems in the brain, but that is outside the field of psychology. If there is a physical answer to your mental problem, you are sent to a MD, not a psychologist or psychiatrist; that is because they do not deal with tangible problems, only intangible.

That being said, your analogy to biology if flawed because biology didn't emanate from evolutionary theories: biological sciences were studied for centuries before Darwin.

I, too, have had family members who've had chemical imbalances, so I'm not speaking off the wall or out of inexperience.
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Who said anything about psychology in the church? Unless, of course, you mean amongst the body of Believers, for which I must whole-heartedly disagree. And who said that psychology had to be used to witness? And why do we disregard something just because it isn't in the Bible? A lot of what we have and practice today is not in the Bible. We are supposed to use the principles given in the Bible to discern between good and evil, not throw everything out that isn't in there.

No one here said that psychology should be used to solve any kind of problems, but it can be used to better understand the workings of the human psyche. And Dwayne's biology illustration is correct. Psychology has been around for years. Hippocrates was the person who first developed the theories of Melancholy, Choleric, etc. personality tendencies. Tim Lahaye further developed these personality characteristics by providing details on natural weaknesses and strengths for the personality types and the grace and principles that God has provided with regard to those weaknesses. Spiritual gifts are also, in a way, related to psychology. Spiritual gifts are Biblical and also provide certain tendencies to the person who has that particular gift. Gary Smalley has also provided some studies on personality types.

I think that we can all agree that we have different personalities that cause us to behave in certain ways. Some of us are more reserved, others more outspoken, we all have things that bother us differently than others. These are all personality related and there is nothing at all ungodly about studying them.

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As with our previous discussion on Yoga, you seem to be giving psychology a new definition as well. Just as stretching and exercises in themselves are not Yoga, looking at human behavior or personalities in itself is not psychology. By confusing these terminologies you are unwittingly (I assume) defending one of the most humanistic institutions of the last 2000 years: the study of the God-given, invisible portion of the human being from Satan-given perspectives.

To be clear, I am speaking of psychology in the church fellowship and in the church membership.

No one said that psychology must be used to witness, I was simply stating that one of our primary functions as Christians is not born upon by psychology; neither are any other commandments from God's word: that makes psychology unnecessary for the Christian, does it not? Its absence from God's word was only given as backing for the idea that it is not a necessity. Psychology is against God's word, so by that we have discernment that it should be thrown out.

What purpose outside of addressing problems is there within psychology?

All we need to know about the human soul is completely covered by the Bible. Who could tell us more than God?

Again, if you think that studying personalities is interesting and helpful, that is fine. Just don't call that psychology, because it isn't, especially if it is based on the Bible.

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I think that we can all agree that we have different personalities that cause us to behave in certain ways. Some of us are more reserved' date=' others more outspoken, we all have things that bother us differently than others. These are all personality related and there is nothing at all ungodly about studying them.[/quote']


I think most people would agree. I think the major disagreement comes from study that lays the cause outside of sin and man's sinful nature. I think there has been such a tendency to use psychology to absolve guilt in people that there is a necessary backlash against the false system.
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It is psychology, though. It's the study of the human mind, the study of behaviorism. Psychology is anytime that the mind is studied. That can be in the form of behavioral traits, personality, conditioning, etc.

As far as being unnecessary to the Christian's primary functions, biology is also unnecessary to the Christian's primary functions. That does not make the study of life wrong. How is psychology against God's Word? Psychology is not for addressing problems alone, but for better understanding why we do certain things or how our minds function. It is not all humanistic either. Consider biological psychology or cognitive psychology or personality psychology. You will notice that counseling psychology is a subtopic in the psychology wikipedia article. It's one aspect of psychology. Much of psychology is humanistic, just like most biology organizations and research centers today are evolutionist. Did you find a Christian biology article on wikipedia? Then by some of the reasoning presented in this thread, it does not exist and should not be pursued by Christians.

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It is psychology, though. It's the study of the human mind, the study of behaviorism. Psychology is anytime that the mind is studied. That can be in the form of behavioral traits, personality, conditioning, etc.

As far as being unnecessary to the Christian's primary functions, biology is also unnecessary to the Christian's primary functions. That does not make the study of life wrong. How is psychology against God's Word? Psychology is not for addressing problems alone, but for better understanding why we do certain things or how our minds function. It is not all humanistic either. Consider biological psychology or cognitive psychology or personality psychology. You will notice that counseling psychology is a subtopic in the psychology wikipedia article. It's one aspect of psychology. Much of psychology is humanistic, just like most biology organizations and research centers today are evolutionist. Did you find a Christian biology article on wikipedia? Then by some of the reasoning presented in this thread, it does not exist and should not be pursued by Christians.

Psychology attempted to (from it's origin) diagnose the human condition in the absence of God. The word "psychology" is a greek word that means "to talk about your soul".

The modern advent of "christian psychology" is an attempt to inject God back into the discussion. The problem is that the Bible isn't the basis for "christian psychology", but the same basic philosophies of the "fathers of sociology" like Freud, Jung, etc.

Look at how confused you must be about Jung... you talked about his "good work", and his whole life was a study of false premises mixed with religious ardor to create nothing but helplessness and confusion.

Jung's work on himself and his patients convinced him that life has a spiritual purpose beyond material goals. Our main task, he believed, is to discover and fulfill our deep-innate potential, much as the acorn contains the potential to become the oak, or the caterpillar to become the butterfly. Based on his study of Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Gnosticism, Taoism, and other traditions, Jung perceived that this journey of transformation is at the mystical heart of all religions. It is a journey to meet the self and at the same time to meet the Divine. Unlike Sigmund Freud, Jung thought spiritual experience was essential to our well-being
# ^ Crowley, Vivianne (2000). Jung: A Journey of Transformation:Exploring His Life and Experiencing His Ideas. Wheaton Illinois: Quest Books. ISBN 978-0835607827.
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Kevin, you are being quite twisty on this one. :lol

Go to college and study psychology and all you will get is humanism.

Study Gods word and you will get everything you need to know about the soul and the mind from the one who created them.

I've done both and found the former seriously lacking and the latter all-sufficient.

That is my stand on this in a nutshell.

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Psychology attempted to (from it's origin) diagnose the human condition in the absence of God. The word "psychology" is a greek word that means "to talk about your soul".

The modern advent of "christian psychology" is an attempt to inject God back into the discussion. The problem is that the Bible isn't the basis for "christian psychology", but the same basic philosophies of the "fathers of sociology" like Freud, Jung, etc.

Look at how confused you must be about Jung... you talked about his "good work", and his whole life was a study of false premises mixed with religious ardor to create nothing but helplessness and confusion.

Psychology, as we know it today, did not originate from diagnosing the human condition without God. Take a look at this quote from wiki:

During the last quarter of the 19th century, psychology in the West began to be seriously pursued as a scientific enterprise. Psychology as an experimental field of study is commonly said to have begun in 1879, when Wilhelm Wundt founded the first laboratory dedicated exclusively to psychological research in Leipzig. Other important early contributors to the field include Hermann Ebbinghaus (a pioneer in studies on memory), William James, and Ivan Pavlov (who developed the procedures associated with classical conditioning). Sigmund Freud's psychoanalysis, though widely known, has had a contested relationship with the development of psychology.

It even states that Freud's studies are contested. Why? Because they were often unscientific. The science of the study of the mind, which can include personality, memory, neurological studies, conditioning, etc. is perfectly acceptable to the Christian. I'm not sure how it could not be. Certainly, some aspects are unbiblical, but the science as a whole? Most certainly not.

As far as Jung goes, sure, his theology was messed up, but does that mean that he had nothing to contribute? We cannot benefit from certain aspects of his studies? If it was scientific, then there is nothing wrong with learning from it.

Kevin, you are being quite twisty on this one. :lol

Go to college and study psychology and all you will get is humanism.

Study Gods word and you will get everything you need to know about the soul and the mind from the one who created them.

I've done both and found the former seriously lacking and the latter all-sufficient.

That is my stand on this in a nutshell.

Not sure how I'm being "twisty." I am in college and I studied both psychology and sociology at different times in the past two years. Yes, there was a lot of humanism that I found completely erroneous. It also allowed me to study some of the more accurate studies and hypotheses. I found Max Weber's work to be of some particular interest. It also allowed me to contrast humanistic psychology with Christian psychology, which is very different. I have always been interested in psychology, since I was very young. I even thought that I might like to be a psychologist at one point. I have found nothing in the science itself that is anti-Bible or anti-God. Certain aspects yes, but not the science.
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Why should sin, repentance or Christ play a role in psychology? By showing it's history, I was attempting to point out that it did not originate from man trying to diagnose the human condition apart from God. That was your statement, not mine. I never said that Christianity had to go hand-in-hand with psychology. It can, but it doesn't have to. Are you against science? Are you against the study of memory, personality and neurological disorders(which do exist)?

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