The Therapeutic Culture of American Christianity

I want to expand on and illustrate my observations from my review of Rapture Ready! concerning neurosis and pop Christian self-help. Let's take, as an illustration, Joel Osteen's best-selling book Your Best Life Now.

First, I'd like to note how Osteen's book isn't a crass "health and wealth" message. Osteen's book is less material than psychological in nature. Its contents easily parallel pop psychology self-help books only with a theistic twist. (Speaking as a psychologist, much of Osteen's book is just a watered down version of cognitive therapy, again with a God twist.) This psychological focus illustrates the point I was making in my last post. American Christians are approaching their faith to meet psychological needs. What kinds of needs? I claimed the needs were mainly neurotic, a distress that is largely self-inflicted from rumination, introspection, self-consciousness, worry, social comparison, and idiosyncratic obsessions or compulsions. Osteen's book helps confirm this diagnosis. Your Best Life Now can be largely seen as a manual to give a neurotic person the confidence, energy, and self-esteem to decisively step out of low self-esteem, lack of confidence, self-defeatism, and emotional rumination.

Take, for example, Osteen's Seven Steps that help move you toward Your Best Life Now:

1. Enlarge your vision.
2. Develop a healthy self-image.
3. Discover the power of thoughts and words.
4. Let go of the past.
5. Find strength through adversity.
6. Live to give.
7. Choose to be happy.

Psychologically, I'd like to quibble with some of this list (How does one "Choose to be happy"?). Theologically, I'd also like to quibble (although I like "Live to give"). But my point here isn't to argue with or make fun of Osteen, rather I want to use his book as diagnostic of the prevalent neurosis within Christianity and America generally. Look at Osteen's Seven Steps and then imagine the person they are offered to. That is, imagine someone with the opposite frame of mind from each of the steps. What does that person look like, psychologically speaking?

Neurotic, that is what they look like. Unhappy, low self-esteem, emotional baggage, negative self-talk, confused, a sense of malaise, and a feeling of underachievement.

Now let's be clear, this isn't just a Christian problem. Wander over to the self-help section the secular psychology books and you'll see that this is an American issue. Osteen's product is just aimed at a niche. Just add some God-talk to the routine pop psychological offerings found on Oprah and you have Your Best Life Now.

Now, is there anything wrong with all this? No. Low self-esteem is painful. So I'm for anything that can help people get out of these ruts. My concerns here are more about how books like Your Best Life Now can help us think about trends in the larger Christian culture. And when we do this what we find is that here in America we approach faith as therapy. Now therapy is a fine thing, but there are consequences for this focus. American Christianity is a therapeutic culture. And the trouble with this therapeutic milieu is that it is ego-centric and reduces the cross of Christ to a feel-good, psychotherapeutic intervention (Jesus Loves Me!, 1 Cross + 3 Nails = 4 Given, and the Jesus's footprints in the sand parable).

No doubt there is a therapeutic facet to the gospel, it is wonderful to feel loved and to self-identify as a Child of God. The concern is when the therapeutic focus is make the focal point of the Call of Jesus and, ultimately, getting stuck there. Church leaders know this. People flock to churches for emotional healing but rebel if church starts, after a time, making discipleship demands. We come to church broken and want to stay broken. We want to be comforted. Always. Who wouldn't?

And this situation creates problems when the Christian message begins to be filtered through the media and markets. Why? Because these outlets are consumer driven. We, then, via consumer choice, get to pick the gospel. Our needs shape the product. It becomes the message that I want to buy.

Again, it's not just the market facet that worries me, but the consumer needs (which I've argued are psychological) that are driving the market. Because the problem with the market is that it cannot shape or challenge those needs. It just meets the needs. It just reflects the needs. The market is not a master but a mirror. And that's the root problem. The market cannot challenge or shape us, it cannot produce Christ-followers. This is the problem with Christian retail. When I walk into a store I'm unlikely to find Christ there. Unlikely to purchase the true cross. Rather, as I slowly turn 360 degrees in my local Christian bookstore, I'm more often than not immersed in human needs, the gospel reflected through what will make me happy.