Sin And Psychology
One of the newest and most fascinating of the sciences is psychiatry. In the field of medicine it is either highly regarded, or else looked upon as being a crack-pot fad, according as one does, or does not, subscribe to the extravagant claims made in its behalf. From the days of Sigmund Freud with his grotesque emphasis on sex as being the "all in all" of human behavior, on down through Jung and Adler, to our modern psychiatric hospitals, the study of the human mind has been an increasingly important feature of medical science. With the increasing tensions of our modern society, with mental crack-ups being almost a foregone conclusion under present living conditions, it becomes more and more important that those who have to deal with the souls of men be informed and intelligent as to this field.
But we want to point out a very dangerous feature in connection with this emphasis on psychology in modern thinking. And that is the tendency to regard all unusual or abnormal human behavior in terms of psychological inhibitions, obsessions, or compulsions; and to think only of the medical aspect of any given instance.
In more than a quarter century of gospel preaching, we have had occasion more than once to refer some troubled soul to a psychiatrist for treatment. There IS such a thing as mental illness. And when one is mentally ill, the care of a trained professional man is needed; just as is the case when one is physically ill. But in all of this emphasis on the quirks and queer thinking of the mentally sick, let us not forget that there is also such a thing as SIN. And nine hundred and ninety-nine times out of a thousand, it is SIN rather than sickness that is causing the anti-social and un-Christian behavior.
And right here lies the real danger. For the professional psychologist or psychiatrist is (except in rare cases) a man who does not believe in God, who does not recognize the reality of sin, who deals with all men much as a mechanic would deal with machinery. If a man has committed murder, the psychiatrist tries to probe and delve into his "sub-conscious" to see what dark and mysterious obsession drove him to it. So far as he is concerned, the murderer is a "sick" man rather than a sinful man. If adultery, or drunkenness, or theft, or lying are in the case, he deals with these as symptoms of some deep, underlying neurosis or psycho-neurosis.
But the believer in God recognizes that there is SIN in the human heart; he knows that because of man's rebellion against God, because of man's selfish, defiant, contemptuous unconcern for the things God has commanded, wrong doing and evil behavior are present. These things come out of a stubborn will, they are the actions of normal men; they are not the irresponsible and erratic behavior of people who could not help themselves. If men are under irresistible compulsions to evil, then they are not accountable, either to God or to man. It is because man wills to do evil, because he makes free choice, because he has the power to determine for himself whether he will, or will not, perform a certain act that he is a moral agent, and is answerable to God for his behavior.
It can be dangerous for one to become a "dabbler" in psychiatry. The temptation always is present to see anti-social and anti-Christian behavior in terms of some mental illness. We believe we have known more than one gospel preacher who has tried to practice "psychology" on some man who needed nothing more nor less than the gospel to correct his problem. We are much in favor of leaving psychiatry to the medical profession, and letting the gospel preacher confine himself to the preaching of the gospel of Christ. If a man needs psychiatric help, let him be referred to a competent psychiatrist. And for a preacher to try to qualify himself as a "counselor" or "psychologist" to treat mental illnesses strikes us as being rather absurd. No psychiatrist can be worthy of the name without a background of medical training. Indeed, it is required of accredited psychiatrists that they be medical doctors first; psychiatry is a specialized, highly specialized, field of medicine. It is no place for the untrained and uninformed to be experimenting.
Some training in psychology, perhaps, is good for the gospel preacher. But a thoroughly normal and healthy outlook on life in one's own individual life is about the best "training" we can think of to enable a Christian to recognize when some troubled soul is really in need of medical help. At most, a gospel preacher needs only enough training in psychology to recognize the difference between the man who is sick in his mind and the one who is only sinful in his soul. And the sinful soul needs the gospel — not psychology. Christ recognized sickness; and he also recognized SIN. The two are by no means synonymous.
There is much emphasis being placed in theological seminaries in recent years on "pastoral counseling."
Denominational preachers will no doubt go in for it in a big way. After all, what else have they to offer? They can't and won't, give men the gospel, to save them from their sin; so if they are to be of any help at all, they must needs dish out a little psychology to save men from their sickness! But the gospel preacher is reduced to no such straits. So long as he has the gospel of Christ to offer the sinner, he has the real anti-dote for ninety-nine percent of the trouble of those with whom he deals.
Psychology has its place. Let's keep it there, and not make it a substitute for the gospel.
— F. Y. T.