Who needs professional counselors when all we really need to do is
repent of our sin and obey God?

    This is a popular question among those in certain religious circles and I am surprised it was so long in coming to this website.  I will start with a statement of my position regarding the relationship of sin to the suffering and heartache we face.  I am fully persuaded that sin is indeed the root cause of all our ills and afflictions, physical, personal, interpersonal, national, and international.  It is the dispute over the validity and use of secular psychology that causes the confusion resulting in the polarized stance between those who advocate discipleship only therapy and those using secular tools within a Biblical orientation.

    The question posed strongly implies that everything can be dealt with by focusing on the hurting person's perception of what is the immediate sin.  Such a position can result in our overlooking the possibility that what we identify as the afflicting sin might just be a symptom of a less obvious and more pervasive sin, and the possibility that someone can suffer, not as a result of any sin of which he or she might be guilty, but from the effects of the sin of those who have impacted his or her life.  Before an infant breathes that first breath of air, that tiny body is already tainted by the effects of air, food, and water pollution to which the mother has been exposed.  Much more so does sin infect all of our environment.  A reading of the early chapters in Genesis reveals that when sin entered through Adam and Eve, its effect quickly spread to everything, including the land itself, making it fully pervasive and ubiquitous.  Let us take a look at several possible paths and mechanisms which sin might employ to impact a person and which types of counseling are helpful.

    The first, and most obvious way is that the person is reaping the consequences of a sinful behavior or mindset that he or she is willfully choosing to embrace.  This is a no-brainer.  The required action is to repent and commit to the Godly action or mindset.  The person still might seek counseling in regards to exploring options for effectively making restitution where that is applicable, or for needed support while coping with the consequences, but the need for counseling might easily be met by a wise friend or support group within his or her current circle of fellow believers.  This is the type of situation that can often be successfully dealt with within the church and is a fundamental benefit of identifying with a local body of believers.  If that person has difficulty coping with the consequences of his or her sin, then professional counseling might be sought as in the case of a young unwed mother who yielded to her boyfriend's demand to abort her pregnancy.  Some years later she had convicting dreams even though she "knew" God had forgiven her.  Cognitive therapy, and especially EMDR, is used to help such clients bring their emotional state into agreement with the truth of their forgiven state.

    A second way sin can affect someone is when that person is the victim (or target) of someone else's sinful act or mindset.  In this case, the potential client has done nothing to bring this on him or herself -- he or she is an innocent party that is injured.  There are several instances in the life of Christ that are a good example of this situation.  The victim's potential to respond to the instigator with a sinful action or mindset is the major risk for which to keep watch.  Otherwise, it can prove to be an opportunity for growth and service as the victim experiences injustice at the hands of a sinful perpetrator.  The victim might seek the same kind of counseling as in first scenario regarding ways to appropriately cope and respond in a productive way.  And if the consequences prove to be disruptive to his or her ability to function well, professional counseling might be sought.

    An example that comes to mind is of a policeman who found himself face to face with a man pointing a gun at him who refused to drop the weapon and raise his hands.  The officer shot the man and later discovered the gun was a toy.  It was an obvious ploy by the victim to manipulate someone else to carry out his suicide, and although the officer believed that, he still could not shed the haunting memory which interfered with his clearness of mind while on duty.  Again, therapies such as REBT, CBT, and EMDR practiced by professional therapists has been used to great benefit in such cases.

    A third way that a person can be affected by sin is physiologically.  Physical injury can set up a person for a life of discomfort, suffering, loneliness, poverty, sickness, or rejection by others.  He or she is the victim or target of the injurious action and could benefit from both the counsel of believers, as in the first scenario, as well as those in the professions of rehabilitation and career counseling.

    The person might not, however, have been physically injured but rather been born with one or more birth anomalies.  Sin has "blemished" mankind and it continues to this day to corrupt God's original design.  People with birth anomalies might well profit from the medical and cognitive interventions available from psychologists, psychiatric nurse practitioners, and psychiatrists.  A classic example  are those with the symptoms of Attention Deficit / Hyperactivity Disorder.  Prior to the 1900's, such folks were thought to be rebellious, undisciplined, selfish, careless individuals, or the product of inadequate parenting.  They were ridiculed for being slow learners, forgetful, restless, and a host of other choice names, over all of which they had little to no control.  And the parents had to suffer the stigma of all the names with which they were labeled for their apparent failure as parents.  It has been a long road to obtain the care and understanding these families have needed and it was professionals in counseling, psychiatry, and general medicine who pioneered the research in the belief that the cause was something other than sin on the part of the child or his or her caretakers.

    I have had men who sought counseling for issues that were a direct result of having ADHD symptoms.  Sometimes it resulted in the wife thinking they were signs of his not loving her, even being unfaithful.  Sometimes these men were labeled as spiritual deadbeats because of their assumed dislike of reading the Bible.  You can imagine the joy in those households when they gained understanding and the husband benefited from both medication and training on how to manage the symptoms.  Some were able to read their Bible and remember what they read for the first time in their life.  They were able to better carry out their role as a father and husband, all of which had been very difficult for them to do before getting professional help.  They wanted desperately to be men of God, but could not match the level of their peers.  And the wives were distressed because they did not understand what was happening.  So, whose sin is responsible in these cases?

    The fourth and final way I will offer to our reader as to how sin can infect and affect individuals is that of childhood training and past experiences.  The book of Proverbs tells us to train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not likely depart from it.  What a neat promise.  Neat, however, if you had the right upbringing which most of us did not.  That leaves the question: "What if you were trained up in the way you should not go?"  The fact of the matter is that we have all been trained, either by intentional design, or unintentional disorder.  Every one of us has been trained, that is not the issue.  It is the way we were trained to go that is the issue.

    The scary part of being trained improperly is that such a person considers him- or herself to be normal and the rest of us as different.  Put two of these together in a marriage and you have the recipe for disaster.  Put two of these together in a company, committee, or most any other social situation and you can smell trouble coming.  Their personal outward sin behavior is obvious to all, but if a discipleship only counselor were to stop there, he or she would be doing these clients a disservice.  Until the training they have had is examined for sin tainted assumptions and beliefs, they are likely to continue to live out their training despite the counseling.  The difference would be that they would recognize that they have sinned, feel guilty, and try to make amends.  But they will continually find themselves behind the curve, so to speak, and be frustrated by their best attempts to avoid the problem behavior in the first place.  This often results in depression, discouragement, a negative view of God, and withdrawal from church involvement.  These folks are good candidates for Bible based professional counseling.

    They represent the greatest challenge in my office because their backgrounds require so much effort to identify the beliefs, assumptions, and errant thought processing that are hurting them -- issues that they are not even aware they have because they seem so normal to them.  To get them to view their history with suspicion is a big step because then they can come to realize that their enemy is not their spouse, but the effects of sin that have accumulated and influenced both of them since childhood.  Their realization of this is often followed by a renewed love and bonding to each other as they support each other's efforts to identify and renounce a common enemy.  Put simply, they are working to bring every thought into subjection to Christ, and they can better do this once they have identified their distorted cognitive processes -- something most of us are not very good at doing on our own.

    So yes, sin is behind all of it, but it is not necessarily a sin committed by the afflicted person, his or her partner, or caretakers.  Sin uses the very mechanisms God gave us for our good and His glory to mess us up.  For example, God gave us the ability to learn things that go into our subconscious and work in the background for our good -- something akin to a computer TSR program.  Can you imagine what life would be like if you had to consciously remember every little thing in order to make a decision, discern truth, or respond quickly to a situation or request by someone?  It would be like having to remember all the things you first thought about when learning to drive an automobile every time you went for a drive.  How wonderful it is to be able to be "programmed" correctly and thus free to direct our attention to other significant issues while our programming works for us in the background.  How miserable it is to be programmed incorrectly and continually have to deal with the consequences and anger over being caught by surprise by those behaviors while asking ourselves, "Where did that come from -- I thought I had repented of that?" 

    Fortunately, God has given us the ability to discover and understand how He has created us -- to unlearn distorted thought processing, and learn to process information the way He would have us to think.  I am grateful for the many professionals who continue to research the chemistry and psychology of mind and the various learning and defense mechanisms.  I am grateful for the professionals who use this knowledge to equip and direct clients to more fully bring every thought and emotion into subjection to Him.