The Pottage of Psychology

The Church is exchanging its birthright of scriptural admonition and help and discipline for the pottage of psychology. We needn't imagine that Jacob's pottage was tasteless and not nourishing.... Unless psychology is SQUARELY based on scripture (or science, which is in turn based on scripture), the price includes accepting human wisdom where God's is available and different. The price includes waffling on the issue of sin. The price includes not allowing the body of Christ to grow and mature as it exercises its gifts in obedience to God's direction, relegating all the "hard" problems to "trained professionals."


Excerpt from a private letter

Seized Authority

[T]o read the New Testament letters is to read about the same common concerns that psychologists are charged with handling. God, however, charged the Church with these problems. Secular psychology initially was seizing authority from the Church. Now the evangelical church is actively foisting off these "psychological" problems onto psychology, having accepted the whole renaming bit that comes with the false dichotomy of mind-spirit. The Church is abdicating its responsibility.


Excerpt from a private letter

Original Sin

We are condemned not merely because of our sins but positionally, from conception, we are in sin, until we accept Christ. (Gen. 8:21, Psalm 51:5, 14:1-3). There is a universal moral law that reveals our sin state even if we have never heard the Gospel. True, it may be twisted and blunted and obscured in a few (usually weird and backward) societies, but it is there.


Excerpt from a private letter

Long-view Optimism

[T]hough the battles I am involved in are going the wrong way, the essential victory to secure the war has already been won. Short-view pessimism, long-view optimism.


An excerpt from a private letter

Facts vs. Wisdom

Doctors are concerned about keeping up with the literature, which is absurd on its face. There are millions of articles published in English alone relevant to medicine every year. If you are so aware that you could hone them down to one percent of what is published, you would have a daily reading load so heavy that you could never keep up. We have confused data with understanding, and the acquisition of massed of so called facts with wisdom. It is particularly telling that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Medical schools never mention the Lord in any positive contexts, whatever. We have grown away from the wisdom that was, perhaps, once there in medicine. Once we dropped the integrating capacity of Scripture, the data no longer makes any sense.


Excerpt from an interview with Dr. Terrell

Presuppositional Medicine

Medicine itself is an empirical endeavor; we look at how things are. We look at the natural man. Yet medicine cannot tell us how things should be. Medicine is empirical in a lot of ways -- in its application -- but in its formation and its fundaments it is presuppositional. And the only proper presuppositions are those of Scripture, which are best stated in the Westminster Confession of Faith and the Larger and Shorter Catechisms, or documents like that, such as the Heidelberg Catechism.


Excerpt from an interview with Dr. Terrell

Recapturing Supervision

How may overarching supervision of the medical care by Christians be recaptured by the Church?

1. Church discipline of physicians who are practicing gross sins. So you have no abortionists in your congregation? Do you have those who refer for abortion?

2. Church discipline of members who are practicing gross sins. It is neither kind nor healthy to overlook gross sin.

3. Preaching the Word to the Church, with applications to health where they are present. This is not the same as locating biblical "support" for current medical practice.

4. Teaching the word to the Church, with applications to health where they are present.

5. For #3 & 4 above, the issues which relate to health taught in Scripture include: "parenting," marital relations, indebtedness, work habits, Sabbath-keeping, addictionism, education, etc.

6. A diaconal ministry instructed and involved in helping Church members ask the right questions of physicians during illnesses, politely but persistently.

7. Visitation of the sick. For the hospitalized ill, seeing to it that appropriate visitation is taken seriously by the hospital staff.

8. Anointing with oil and prayer for the sick.

9. Developing a working relationship between physicians and pastors in which the pastor is not the junior partner, for the identification of the source(s) or patients problems.

10. Nouthetic counseling for Church members. De-medicalize the management of problems-in-living through the use of cooperation with a physician who appreciates the proper position of medicine in the health equation. Not everything felt in the body is originating from the body.

11. Escape the straightjacket. The medical profession's viewpoint on health and disease is very narrowly conceived.

12. Physicians at every level of the system need to have an appreciation of the prior probabilities of disease, and to use it in helping patients prioritize their health issues among the other issues of life.


Excerpts from Physician and Pastor: Co-Laborers

Treasure of the Heart

[C]hurches need to talk about money. Not only the kind that members give, but how the portion that members retain is spent. Church members give something on the order of 2% or so of income. Medical care is consuming 13% of the gross national product. There is an idolatrous disproportion here. The gospel message has competition in the world, and it is measurable at a pocketbook level. Where a man's treasure is, there will his heart be also. Some of the other places in which money can be spent than on services labeled “medical care” may have as much or more actual productivity for health.


Excerpts from Physician and Pastor: Co-Laborers

Healthy Work

To be employed is health-promoting. Counseling from Eph. 4:28 ("He who has been stealing must steal no longer, but must work, doing something useful with his own hands, that he may have something to share with those in need.") will have healing and preventive qualities. We have too much, "I can't work because I'm too sick." We have too little, "You're sick so much because you are not employed."


Excerpts from Physician and Pastor: Co-Laborers

Neglect of the Heart

Our priorities in medicine are badly skewed. The heart is the neglected sine qua non of health in the U.S. today. Jesus said, “For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, and foolishness. All of these things come from within and defile a man. (Mark 7:21-23) We need this kind of “kardiology” for our spiritual and physical health.


Excerpts from Physician and Pastor: Co-Laborers

Godliness is Greater

1 Tim. 4:8 "For bodily exercise profits a little, but godliness is profitable for all things, having promise of the life that now is and of that which is to come."

Physical elements have a place. Godliness has a greater place, not only for the here and now, but for the hereafter, also.

Limitations on the Disease Model

The medical profession's perception has become so limited to the theoretical constructs known as “disease entities,” by which is meant only the physical causes and manifestations of disease, that it is unable and unwilling to see that mankind is a living, breathing spirit folded into a body. Pastoral counseling offers one major avenue to instruct the medical profession and other onlookers, as it instructs the direct recipients.

Of the many possible examples, one of my favorites is a two-page ad for the anti-viral drug Zovirax appearing in many medical journals. Page one of the ad shows a downcast young woman seated alone in a sidewalk cafe lamenting that genital herpes has put her into “solitary confinement.” Page two shows the same girl smiling and in the convivial company of another young woman and two very nice-looking young men. The girl was in “solitary confinement” only in that she could not fornicate. Better living through chemistry “solves” the problem by enabling her to fornicate somewhat more freely. The ad treats of the issue of genital herpes as though it is merely a matter of viruses, their DNA structure, and chemically substituting a different base in the thymine, guanine, etc., pairs. The acceleration of this kind of narrow thinking is traceable to about 1960. Since that time, all of our venereal diseases have increased in frequency, greatly, with the addition of new diseases such as AIDS.


Excerpts from Physician and Pastor: Co-Laborers

Flee Immorality

I Corinthians 6:15-18 "Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a harlot? Certainly not! Or do you not know that he who is joined to a harlot is one body with her? For, 'the two,' He says, 'shall become one flesh.' But he who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with Him. Flee sexual immorality. Every sin that a man does is outside the body, but he who commits sexual immorality sins against his own body."

The anemic Church of Common Morality feebly recommends fleeing sexual immorality, then counsels that you approach it with a condom in hand, tacitly teaching that flight from that immorality is not possible.

Medicine Without the Word

Matthew 4:4 "...It is written, 'Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God."

Medicine is sustenance of the same sort (though of lesser necessity) as is bread. To try to live by medicine without the Word of God is destined for frustration and failure.

Pursue Wisdom

Prov. 9:10 - 11 "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, And the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding. For by me your days will be multiplied, And years of life will be added to you."

Do not send young people off to college to pursue a degree if they do not have the beginning of wisdom. Is a fool in possession of a degree and much data more useful than one without?

Giving Away Years

Prov. 5:7-13 "Therefore hear me now, my children, And do not depart from the words of my mouth. Remove your way far from her, And do not go near the door of her house, Lest you give your honor to others, And your years to the cruel one; Lest aliens be filled with your wealth, And your labors go to the house of a foreigner; And you mourn at last, When your flesh and your body are consumed, And say; 'How I have hated instruction, And my heart despised reproof! I have not obeyed the voice of my teachers, Nor inclined my ear to those who instructed me!"'

It is a mark of our departure from the authority of Scripture that we think we need "evidence" such as that provided by "medical research" to tell people to be sexually pure.

Healthy Parenting

Pastors and teachers who teach God's law are promoting preventive medicine when they teach what are now called “parenting” skills from Scripture. The number of medical contacts resulting from unbiblical parent-child relationships is large, including: preventable accidents, drug abuse, venereal disease, functional abdominal pain, tension headaches, illegitimate pregnancy and more. Small children whose parents, for example, tolerate “sass” or disobedience, as in a church nursery, can be provided with inexpensive, powerful health maintenance without any physician involvement whatsoever. Nouthetic counselors can admonish the parents on the fifth commandment and its applicability in the present life and in the life to come.


Excerpts from Physician and Pastor: Co-Laborers

Healthy Memorization

Prov. 3:1, 2 "My son, do not forget my law, But let your heart keep my commands; For length of days and long life And peace they will add to you."

Why has catechizing and memorization fallen onto such hard times? When we do memorize, do we choose those passages that are more of a "pick-me-up" for momentary use and discard than deeper study?

Unhealthy Day Care

[T]he widespread use of group day care facilities needs to be challenged. While it seems reasonable that a family may delegate at times portions of its child care duties to others, the family retains the responsibility for what occurs. Day care just cannot be as healthy as a biblical family. A toddler enrolled in day care can expect to be bitten by another child within an average of 73 days. While siblings within homes also bite one another, the toddler at home is not going to be surrounded by 20 other toddlers who are in the prime "biting age." One mother just cannot give birth to that many children in a short period of time. It requires collecting them from many households.

The risk of infectious disease in day care is two to four times greater than for children cared for at home. This includes gastrointestinal infections, which are also carried to other family members at home. Otitis media also is increased in day care children.

You would expect such information would impel reasonable people toward a view that small children, if possible, are better cared for in homes than in group day care, and that policies to support that end would be the best ones. Instead, as example of the narrow way medicine has of conceiving of problems and their solutions, listen to the "answer" of the researchers of a major review of illness and day care, persons at the Bush Institute for Child and Family Policy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "... government intervention is justified when a market fails to measure adequately the true costs or benefits of a given market transaction. ... It seems reasonable ... to recommend specific regulatory provisions ... regulations requiring parents to demonstrate that they have been following a schedule of health visits for their child, (such as that recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics.)"

That government policies encouraging two-parent wage earner families built into the tax structure and otherwise is the problem is not even considered. That changing policies to reduce the demand for group day care is a better approach is ignored.


Excerpts from Physician and Pastor: Co-Laborers

The Health of the Family Structure

We [should] consider the power for health that intact families which have biblical authority structures possess. "Children in single-parent families are 20 percent to 40 percent more likely to suffer health problems." Pastoral counselors who work to sustain marriages are also very powerfully engaged in the physical health of the household. You are strengthening a locus of government which is far more powerful to maintain health than is medical care. Would we in medicine not dream to be able to reduce health problems by 20% to 40%? ...

Pastoral counseling which points out the family's primary responsibility to care for its own has health power.


Excerpts from Physician and Pastor: Co-Laborers