The following is an excerpt from a book on the apostles of Christ. The book isn't about biblical counseling praxis, per se, but a pastoral counseling scenario did catch my attention:
Many years ago, a young woman made an appointment to see me while she was home during the Christmas break from the Ivy League university she had been attending. I had known her through high school, and three generations of her family had been a part of the congregation that I was serving. I looked forward to learning how she had been, but the minute I saw her, I could tell by her body language that she had not come to exchange pleasantries. She was tense and somber, and she did not take long to get to the reason she had made the appointment: "I've come to ask you formally to remove my name from the rolls of this church, because I no longer consider myself to be a Christian."
When I asked her what had led to such a radical change, she said, "To be perfectly honest, it is a matter of conscience. I grew up believing what my parents taught me, that God created human beings. However, now that my world has widened and I have encountered other realities, I have concluded that it is the other way around. I think that human beings are the ones who have created God. People just believe what they want to believe. Faith is something that people create out of their own selfish desires, or wishful thinking, then project what they want to be true on to their screen of belief. I see faith as a game of make-believe on a grand scale, and cannot accept that religion is valid." I have no idea how that young woman expected me to react to such a devastating critique of the core beliefs to which I had dedicated my whole life.
I acknowledged that the charges she leveled were some of the oldest and most persistent ever made against religious experience, and I said I was curious about where she had encountered this approach to religion in college. It was honestly chilling for me to learn that these opinions were promoted in almost every academic discipline to which she had been exposed. In political science, she had learned that Karl Marx said that religion is simply the opiate of the people, used by the oppressors of society to keep the underclass down. She was taught in introductory classes on psychology that Sigmund Freud's title for his classic work on religion was "The Future of an Illusion," in which he wrote that God was an illusion "of human origin." In drama classes one of the memorable lines she had learned for a role in a play was, "Religion is a chloroform mask into which the frightened and the weak stick their faces to avoid reality." Repeatedly she had been taught that religious experience is simply wish fulfillment without validity, manufactured out of one's own whim or need.
I admitted that, although I wished I could tell her there was no truth whatsoever in what she was saying, I could not. Time and again people have constructed their beliefs out of their personal desires and basis, just as she had said. Affirming her seriousness about these important issues of faith and reality, I asked her to do three things before she made an ultimate judgment.
First, I asked her to read the Gospel of Mark in one sitting. I told her, "It is no longer than a New Yorker profile and should not take you more than forty-five minutes to read. As you read that shortest of the four gospels, ask yourself if Jesus comes across as a weak and fearful person making up his own concept of God to avoid reality. Or, is it close to the truth that God allowed him to suffer trial and tribulation, rather than sparing him from it, particularly on the last night of his life? Like any other human being in the midst of a dreadful crisis, Jesus poured out his heart to God and begged that somehow he might be delivered. Notice that he concluded by saying, 'Yet not what I want, but what you want.' He conceded that he would accept what this Holy One wanted, even crucifixion. Whatever else you might say about Gethsemane, this is not a religion of wish-fulfillment.
"The second thing I want you to do is read about Saul of Tarsus in the Book of Acts, and take note of how passionately he was concerned about truth. He was a devout Hebrew who became one of the most significant leaders in first century Christianity. When Saul heard there was a group of people claiming that a crucified carpenter had been raised from the dead and was actually the Messiah, he considered their claim to be an appalling affront to his Jewish religion. He used every means within his power to stamp out this heresy and destroy those who embraced such fantasy. In that frame of mind, he was on his way to Damascus when Saul experienced a numinous, overwhelming light from heaven and heard the voice of Jesus. This transcendent force broke into his consciousness powerfully and brought him to a new conclusion of overwhelming clarity.
"Then ask yourself if what Saul experienced on the road to Damascus was something that he wanted to be true. Do you think it represented his finest wish that he created out of his own desire? Or, is it much closer to the truth to say that he encountered something that day that was the last thing he wanted to discover, because it meant that his opponents were correct and he was very much in the wrong? It meant that he would have to dismantle everything he had believed before that time, and rebuild his life altogether. Whatever you say about that process, it does not sound like wish fulfillment, nor does Saul seem like a weak and frightened person "sticking his face in a chloroform mask." He sounds more like someone who came in contact with a reality that he did not imagine, or even want, but was honest enough to accept as truth.
Finally, I said, "The last thing that I would like you to do is sit down by yourself, with pencil in hand, and write out the details of the kind of religion that you would create if you were the one who was going to determine the shape of it. Then ask yourself if the religion of your choice corresponds at all with what you find in the New Testament. Let me tell you my answer to that question ahead of time. If I were making up a religion to suit myself, it would not have anything in it about loving my enemies. It would not say anything about denying myself or taking up my cross. It would not mention judgment or forgiving seventy times seven. The beliefs at the core of the Christian revelation are clearly not what a selfish and weak person would want. In fact, the central Christian ideals cut directly across self-interest. No, what you find in the New Testament is not even close to what I think anyone would make up out of wishful fantasy."
To her credit, she was a truth lover just like Thomas [the disciple], and she did the things I requested over the months that followed. We had many conversations about her vigorous quest, and I am glad to be able to report that she did eventually come to an authentic Christian conversion…(The First to Follow: The Apostles of Jesus by John R. Claypool, 72-76)
I love the narrative approach to counseling that Claypool follows here. It reminds me of my friend Bob Kellemen's approach in Soul Physicians – an approach that locates the counselee within the greater story of salvation history. CCEF counselor Michael Emlet also discusses this approach in his book CrossTalk. But what I want to make special note of in this excerpt is Claypool’s sensitive pastoral tack; namely, that he not only relies on the self-authenticating truth of scripture, but also rightly discerns that his counselee will be affected by counseling rooted in the self-authenticating truth of scripture. Such a counselee is one that may claim to have left behind the fundamentals of the Faith, but in reality still harbors the hope that the foundations are built on solid ground. He or she remains, underneath it all, a disciple.
In his book Counsel One Another, Paul Tautges underscores the power of the Word of God in a disciple's life: "God's vision of discipleship requires a conviction that biblical truth is supremely authoritative and completely adequate for its task." In Claypool's account, the counseling approach didn't necessitate discussion of presuppositions, epistemology, or apologetics. Claypool rightly perceived that he didn’t need to "zoom out" from scripture, even while the counselee was questioning scripture – let alone the author of scripture Himself! But to make this call, the counselor needed to not only know the scriptures, but the counselee herself. Pastors, know your parchments and know your people!
