How Reliable Are Psychology Studies?

The Atlantic recently published How Reliable Are Psychology Studies? It's an illuminating article, well worth your time, with helpful and encouraging suggestions and directions for a way forward.

Redemptive Communication

A redemptive strategy for engaging readers and hearers is summed up in these six communication tasks:

1. Know the people with whom you are speaking.
2. Love them genuinely.
3. Enter into their questions, their defining experiences, their terminology.
4. Retell their story in a fuller way than they are able to tell it, creating dissonance.
5. Show and tell the truth of God and his gospel of Christ in a fresh and personally relevant way.
6. Hold open a door of invitation to come in.

—David Powlison, "Giving Reasoned Answers to Reasonable Questions," Journal of Biblical Counseling 28, no. 3 (2015): 5–6.

All of a Piece

Powlison:

Our struggles and temptations are more alike than different. An elderly man facing a health crisis is tempted to worry in ways similar to the high school senior waiting for the answer to her college application. Our circumstances can be vastly different, but the human heart tends to respond to hard things by anxiety, irritation, and pleasure-seeking. It is in those places we learn to cry out for mercy to the living God who hears and is near.

—David Powlison, "Where Do You Start," CCEF Now (2007): 3.

Don't Be Afraid

"'Do not be afraid' is the most frequent command in the Bible."

—David Powlison, "Where Do You Start," CCEF Now (2007): 3.

The Idolatry of the Self

Iain Provan:

The fundamental idolatry described by the Bible lies also at the heart of the varied modern idolatries: the idolatry of the self. The self is set at the center of existence as a god; ultimate significance is found in god-like individual autonomy, self-set goals and boundaries. The sacred is defined in the first instance in relation to the self. The shadow of Nietzsche looms large. Self-expression and self-actualization are important themes in this religion, and evident in every corner of society from the advice columns of newspapers and magazines to schools, where sometimes the point no longer seems to be to learn things but to 'find oneself' and to be the best person that one can be. We are constantly urged, in fact, to believe in ourselves and to better ourselves—in our individual choices and actions, and in accordance with our personal ambition, to make and to remake ourselves in our own image, or in some other human image of perfection. We are invited to pursue the body beautiful, to take control of our personal health and fitness, to invent our own value and belief systems, with a view to gaining personal fulfillment. We are given ever-increasing permission to ignore and, if necessary, to dispense with whatever and whoever stands in our way in this quest, be it life in the womb, children, husbands and wives, the poor, foreigners, or the aged. 

—Iain Provan, "To Highlight All Our Idols: Worshipping God in Nietzsche's World," Ex Auditu 15 (1999): 33.

Indiscriminate Peace Not Enough

Calvin:

Let us fight for the cause of righteousness, that is to say, for what is just. It is not enough to make an indiscriminate peace. The basis of peace is the recognition that God rules among men: his rule joins us together so that we serve him with one accord. . . . Indiscriminate peace is different. Today, for example, when disputes arise, would-be know-it-alls who bravely play the role of peacemaker rush to reach a settlement—any kind of settlement—without first considering who is right and who is wrong. 'Come on,' they say, 'let's divide down the middle.'

—John Calvin, Sermons on the Beatitudes, transl. Robert White (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 2006), 56.

Trying to Do for Ourselves What Only God Can Do

David Wells:

The language of the self is not interchangeable with human nature. They are two entirely different things. The self is the way we think about ourselves when we are inhabiting a psychologized universe. Human nature is how we think of ourselves in a moral universe, and, as understood in the imago Dei, it is how we think of ourselves in God's universe. This is our entry into a Christian worldview. . . . This substitute language of the self, with the whole overlay of techniques that goes with it, is a false trail, a dead end. 

Why is this? May I gently suggest that the reason is that the essence of pride is finding in the self what in fact can only be found in God. So pride leads us to think much about the self and much of the self. We imagine that within ourselves we have power enough, wisdom enough, and strength enough to find our way out of our own painful realities. Inevitably, though, very finite preoccupations are substituted for those that are eternal. Here is the "autonomous self" at work. 

The self movement has tapped into this by offering self-mastery through the right technique. It encourages us to think much about the self and much of the self. It is an industry that lives off of and for pride. As such, it offers a way to dissolve all the internal aches and heal all the internal wounds that life inflicts as we try to do for ourselves what in fact only God can do.

—David Wells, The Courage to Be Protestant: Truth-lovers, Marketers, and Emergents in the Postmodern World (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008), 167–168.

The Majesty of Grace Lost on a Psychologized Evangelicalism

David Wells:

The majesty of God's forgiveness is lost entirely when we lose what has to be forgiven. What has to be forgiven is not just what we do but who we are, no just our sinning but our sinfulness, not just our choices but what we have chosen in place of God. This belief in our inherent innocence is belied by the kind of life we all experience, and, more importantly, it is also contradicted by Scripture. When we miss the biblical teaching [concerning sin and sinfulness], we also miss the nature of God's grace in all its height and depth. In biblical faith it is God's grace through Christ that does for us what we cannot do for ourselves. In this kind of psychologized evangelicalism, grace works only around the margins of our self. It completes the bit that we cannot quite get done by ourselves. 

—David Wells, The Courage to Be Protestant: Truth-lovers, Marketers, and Emergents in the Postmodern World (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008), 167.

The Self, Self-Esteem, and Social Maladies

Since the 1960s, the self has been at the center. David Wells pens about a consequence of this sad state of affairs, and a significant problem:

Virtually all educators and psychologists appear to have agreed with this. Not only so, but there is now widespread public support of the myth that poor self-esteem explains bad behavior, failing academic work, acting up, antisocial attitudes, violence, divorce, racism, and the entire drug culture. All of this is rooted in a loss of self-esteem. Indeed, so pervasive is this myth, so impervious is it to the facts, that much educational policy has been confidently funded, at both the federal and state level in the United States, to address this matter. 

The problem is that study after study over the last four decades has been unable to show any correlation between low self-esteem and all the social maladies that have supposedly followed. Nevertheless, the myth is now so well established, preserved in place by so great a public desire to keep it there, by so large an industry with an interest in its preservation, that it borders on heresy to question it.

—David Wells, The Courage to Be Protestant: Truth-lovers, Marketers, and Emergents in the Postmodern World (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008), 156.

Wise Love No Simplistic Pursuit

"The challenge of love, of course, is that it is so multi-faceted. It runs the gamut from taking a bullet for someone to kicking them out of your house."

—Ed Welch, "Boundaries in Relationship," in JBC Must Reads: On Relationships (CCEF: 2013), 63.

Responding to Criticism in Marriage with Gospel-Grounded Humility

Over at CCEF you'll find good counsel (as usual) from David Powlison on responding to criticism in marriage.

The Mother Phobia of All Phobias Conquered in Christ

Speaking of the implications of Christ's victory in the cross over Satan, Sinclair Ferguson discusses these under four headings: theology, doxology, ministry, and missiology. Under the rubric of ministry, he says this about the significance of Heb. 2:14-15 for pastoral counseling:

The thesis of the author is that through the fear of death men and women are subject to lifelong bondage. Our deepest fear, the fear of death, is a mother phobia which gives birth to all the phobias of life. "An overdose of fear," writes Calvin, with insight, "comes from ignorance of the grace of Christ." The angst of man, and many of the spiritual neuroses of our day, must therefore be analyzed in these terms as aspects and symptoms of bondage to Satan, or as aspects of his malevolent efforts to hinder Christian believers and to rob them of their joy in Christ. The ministry of the Word, and the work done confidentially in pastoral counseling, must accordingly be sensitive to this whole dimension of Christian life and warfare, and provide "precious remedies against Satan's devices."

Christ is not offered to us in the gospel as a panacea for our fears. But he is a deliverer from that bondage to Satan which engenders the fear of death and gives rise to all manner of other fears. Pastoral counseling must always therefore have the one great fear in view, and Jesus Christ the deliverer as the divinely appointed remedy. We need to appreciate at the deepest level the fact that the words "fear not" were so frequently on his lips.  

—Sinclair Ferguson, "Christus Victor et Propitiator," in For the Fame of God's Name: Essays in Honor of John Piper (Wheaton: Crossway, 2010), 187.

Are We Just a Nation of Nutters?

"In America, we have one-third of the world's psychiatrists, two psychotherapists for every dentist, and more counselors than librarians."

—David Wells, The Courage to Be Protestant: Truth-lovers, Marketers, and Emergents in the Postmodern World (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008), 140.

Jack Spratt on the First Law of Dietetics

The good Doctor on dietetics:

Now you will often come across people who advocate ways of living or methods of treating diseases which completely ignore that [no two of us are alike], and which are therefore obviously wrong. I have often said that the first fundamental law of dietetics is just that old word which tells us that:   

          Jack Spratt could eat no fat,
          his wife could eat no lean.

Quite right! It is amusing in one sense but on the other hand it is a very vital, fundamental principle for dietetics. Constitutionally Jack Spratt and his wife are different, and to suggest that the same diet would be the best for both persons is to be guilty of a fundamental fallacy.  

—D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Spiritual Depression (Hannibal: Granted Ministries), 9.

The Real Value of the Psalms

Lloyd-Jones:

The simplest description of the five books of Psalms is that they were the inspired prayer-and-praise book of Israel. They are revelations of truth, not abstractly, but in terms of human experience. The truth revealed is wrought into the emotions, desires, and sufferings of the people of God by the circumstances through which they pass. 

It is because that is such a true description of them that the Psalms have always proved to be a great source of solace and encouragement to God's people throughout the centuries—both the children of Israel and the members of the Christian Church. 

Here we are able to watch noble souls struggling with their problems and with themselves. They talk to themselves and to their souls, baring their hearts, analysing their problems, chiding and encouraging themselves. Sometimes they are elated, at other times depressed, but they are always honest with themselves. That is why they are of such real value to us if we also are honest with ourselves. 

—D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Spiritual Depression (Hannibal: Granted Ministries), 9.

The High Road to Morbidity

Lloyd-Jones:

Avoid the mistake of concentrating overmuch upon your feelings. Above all, avoid the terrible error of making them central. . . . Do not spend too much time feeling your own pulse, taking your own spiritual temperature, do not spend to much time analysing your feelings. That is the high road to morbidity. 

—D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Spiritual Depression (Hannibal: Granted Ministries), 114–115.

Bad Feelings, Unconfessed Sin, and Getting Rid of It

Lloyd-Jones:

How are we to deal with this problem of feelings? I shall put forward a number of suggestions. The first is a very practical one—it is just this. If you are at all depressed at this moment you should make certain that there is no obvious cause for the absence of joyous feelings. For instance, if you are guilty of sin, you are going to be miserable. "The way of the transgressor is hard." If you break God's laws and violate his rules you will not be happy. If you think that you can be a Christian and exert your own will and follow your own likes and dislikes, your Christian life is going to be a miserable one. There is no need to argue about it, it follows as the night the day, that if you are harbouring some favourite sin, if you are holding on to something that the Holy Spirit is condemning through your conscience, you will not be happy. And there is only one thing to do, confess it, acknowledge it, repent, go to God at once and confess your sin, open your heart, bare your soul, tell him all about it, hold nothing back and then believe that because you have done so, he forgives you. "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." If unconfessed sin is the cause of your unhappiness I should be wasting my time and yours by going on with my list of other causes. How many are trapped at this point. Let us be perfectly clear about it; let your conscience speak to you; listen to the voice of God as he speaks through the Spirit that is within you, and if he is placing his finger upon something, get rid of it.

 —D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Spiritual Depression (Hannibal: Granted Ministries), 114.

How to Get Rid of Self

Lloyd-Jones:

There is only one way to get rid of self, and that is that you should become so absorbed in someone or something else that you have no time to think about yourself. . . . And as you become absorbed in the love of God you will forget all about yourself. "The spirit of love!" [2 Tim. 1:7] It will deliver you from self-interest, self-concern, and from depression about self, because depression results from self and self-concern. It gets rid of self at all points. So talk to yourself about this eternal, amazing love of God—the God who ever looked upon us in spite of sin and planned the way of redemption and spared not his own Son but delivered him up for us all.

What then? Go on to think of the love of the Son in its breadth, its length, its depth, its height; go on to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge. Think of him who came from the courts of heaven and laid aside the insignia of his eternal glory and was born as a babe, worked as a carpenter and endured the contradiction of sinners against himself. Think of him into whose holy face men spat and on whose brow they pressed a crown of thorns and into whose hands and feet the nails were hammered. There he is on the cross. What is he doing there? There he died for us, that you and I might be forgiven and reconciled to God. Think of his love, and as you come to know something about it, you will forget yourself.  

And then, love to the brethren. Think of other people, their needs, their concerns. Shall I go on? . . . Think of other people, look at those people perishing in their sins. Forget yourself. Cultivate love for the lost and love for the brethren in the same way, and love for the greatest and noblest cause in the world, this blessed, glorious gospel. . . . If you are consumed by this spirit of love you will forget yourself.

—D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Spiritual Depression (Hannibal: Granted Ministries), 103.

You Must Live with Your Self as Long as You Live

 Lloyd-Jones:

There is no profounder change in the universe than the change which is described as regeneration; but regeneration—the work of God in the soul by which he implants a principle of divine and spiritual life within us—does not change a man's temperament. Your temperament still remains the same. The fact that you have become a Christian does not mean that you cease to have to live with yourself. You will have to live with yourself as long as you are alive, and yourself is your self and not somebody else's self.

—D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Spiritual Depression (Hannibal: Granted Ministries), 95.

"Conservative" Evangelicalism's Faith Healers

Non-charismatics have their faith healers too, you know. That is, "conservative" Evangelicalism looks to faith doctors as well for what ails her to defeat her demons. And they are—not for all Evangelicals (don't misunderstand), but for many (we must admit)—the psychotherapists. That's right: the professional counselor. At least this is so in my quarters. And it is there where "the moral has died," and the empty secular self reigns supreme.

David Wells writes of this shocking development. He speaks of what happened when psychotherapy "drifted away from its original context in medicine . . . where Freud had placed it. . . ." Here's what happened:

Ironically, the profession began to look like a substitute religion, with its "priests," dogmas, rituals, orthodoxies, and heresies; what it offered sometimes looked like spirituality built on secular assumptions. And soon, rank amateurs were offering their own therapies and treating themselves. 

Psychotherapy is both peculiarly adapted to the late twentieth century and a telling representation of it, psychologist Lucy Bregman has argued. It has arisen out of the sense of emptiness and meaninglessness that many modern people experience, and it could not have survived in a traditional society. It belongs amidst the complex, pressure-filled modern world, with its dense cities and technological conquests. It is an expression of that world with all of its human cost, the personal dilemmas it forces, the hollowing out of life that it effects, and its narcissism. It is at once both the proffered cure for and the symbol of the troubled, empty self. And, most importantly, it is a secular spirituality. In substantiating this point, Bregman says that even though its metaphysical framework is often obscured, psychotherapy nevertheless has such a framework. It is a means to "revision" the self; it has become a technique for "self transformation." It is, in Bregman's words, "a new framework for the ordering of interiority, for interpreting life's meanings and each person's place in the cosmos." It is, however, a metaphysic in which the moral has died.

And in the book Wells argues strongly (with tears, one senses) that herd-Evangelicalism has embraced this substitute religion in droves. The professional counselor, even of the "Christian" variety, who has embraced secular assumptions and this "substitute religion," routinely is held in high esteem by what I'm calling the herd-Evangelical.

—David F. Wells, Losing Our Virtue: Why the Church Must Recover Its Moral Vision (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 110–111.