On the surface, given the mental health crisis among our young people, this invitation seemed to be a good thing. But the emails I received, as the Chair of the Department of Psychology, were sharing some concerns. The speaker wasn't a mental health professional, and sometimes played fast and loose with their qualifications as an expert in mental illness. I discovered, upon investigating, that the speaker came from the Prosperity Gospel movement, and held the view that Christians shouldn't take medication for mental health issues. Our department passed along our concerns to those who had made the invitations.
I tell this story to highlight what I mentioned briefly at the end of the last post. There is within sectors of Christianity the belief that medications are to be shunned by Christians in the treatment of mental health issues.
The same goes for psychotherapy. In 1970, Jay Adams published the book Competent to Counsel, a book that kicked off the "biblical counseling" movement. In Competent to Counsel, Adams advocated for a "strictly biblical approach to behavioral counseling and therapy." Competent to Counsel is a notorious book in my field. For example, Adams argues that "mental illness" doesn't exist and that our psychological troubles are due to sin and human depravity.
As Christian psychologist, I bump into attitudes like this more often than you might think. Beyond thinking psychopharmacology and psychotherapy illegitimate, there's also a worry among many conservative Christians that psychology is too "humanistic." To be sure, there are tensions between how schools of psychotherapy and certain theological systems view human persons. You can see these tensions clash over something like the legitimacy of "self-help." In some theological systems, "self-help" is an oxymoron. Due to our sinful and depraved nature, we can't help ourselves. We just make ourselves worse. And yet, much of modern psychotherapy is premised on the notion of self-care. This is an issue we'll revisit later in this series.
The point to be observed here is that there's a lot of suspicion among some Christians concerning the nature and proper treatment of mental illness. Mental illness is denied as being real. Psychology is godless and humanistic. Psychopharmacology is akin to taking poison. Empirically effective therapies are dismissed and replaced with "biblical counseling."
If all that is one extreme, the other extreme is a "functional atheism" found among other Christians when approaching mental illness. By "functional atheism" I mean evacuating God completely from the mental health equation. In this view, mental illness is biological, so you take your medication. Therapy is a suite of techniques that, when used, gives us control over our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. Dealing with depression? We have cognitive restructuring. Dealing with a phobia? We have systematic desensitization. Dealing with anxiety? We have mindfulness practices. Dealing with a behavioral habit? We have conditioning techniques.
To be sure, depth, narrative, psychodynamic, humanistic, and existential therapies are not governed by this "let's pop the hood and fix what's broken" approach to therapy. Therapy is often, perhaps most often, a messy and deeply human endeavor. Shakespearian, really, in its pathos and drama. But therapy can often get trapped in a "mechanical" imagination. Just like medical doctors can get trapped. There can be a "plug and play" dynamic, like taking your car to a mechanic. For every diagnosis there is a corresponding treatment. Find what's broken and fix it.
My point is that when therapy is reduced to "technology" it becomes functionally atheistic. Your heart surgeon doesn't need God to do the bypass. Your car mechanic doesn't need God to replace the carburetor. And your therapist doesn't need God to help you with your depression. It's all just mechanical technology. No woo-woo needed.
And yet, mental health professionals are slowly coming to realize just how important faith and spirituality are to mental health. Study after study has shown that religious belief is predictive of psychological health and well-being. God is good for you.
People of faith energetically agree with this. God helps us in our struggles. Many of us wouldn't be alive today if it wasn't for God. And God is at the heart of the recovery community, enshrined in Steps 1-3 of the Twelve Step program:
- We admitted we were powerless over alcohol — that our lives had become unmanageable.
- Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
- Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
