Our upcoming Gospel Conversations conference (Feb 23-24 2017) has the theme “Let’s talk purity.” As you’d expect, this theme addresses the need for sexual purity in a world that doesn’t value it. It may be less obvious that this theme also address the importance of purity of counseling.
One of the most common questions from genuine believers about Biblical Counseling is how it differs from Christian Counseling backed by psychology. There are many ways to answer this, let me give you one answer.
If we are honest, we recognize that it takes careful study and discipline to correctly interpret and apply the Scriptures in our lives. A significant percentage of those who are born again admit this is a challenge. It takes significantly greater skill to analyze and assess a mixture of truth and error, and correctly separate the two. In my experience, those who champion the inclusion of psychological elements in Christian Counseling are often unable to perform this difficult analysis and separation correctly.
A positive, unity building way to explore this with a brother or sister in Christ is to work through a case study together and identify places that psychological approaches may be different from biblical truth.
In the end, it is more fruitful and productive to focus upon what the Bible itself teaches about counseling methodology and the multitude of common-to-man problems each of us face throughout our lives.
I am taking vacation time from work and travelling over 4000km to attend our upcoming conference. I hope to meet you there and have many gospel conversations with you!
For more information and a registration link visit our conference page here:
https://biblicalcounselingcanada.ca/conference/