psykologi og den kristne. Del 1

The Christian and Psychology 

by Gary Gilley 

Kap 1: The Christian and Psychology

THE CHRISTIAN AND PSYCHOLOGY 

By any standard psychology has had a major impact upon the Christian community during the past thirty years. Whether that impact has been positive, negative or simply neutral is often the topic of hot debate. Evangelicals seem to have been polarized into one of three or four camps: 

1) Integrationists believe that since all truth is God's truth the integration of scriptural truth with psychological ''truth'' is no big problem. As long as psychological ''truth'' does not contradict the Bible it can be trusted. The Narramores as well as Minirth and Meier would be good representatives of this camp. See Bruce Narramore's book, The Integration of Psychology and Theology. 

2) Nonintegrationists, on the other hand, believe that it is impossible to integrate God's Word with the psychological views of man. They insist that the Bible and psychology have no common ground. In this camp would be Jay Adams, the Bobgans, and Jim Owen. An excellent book defending this position is Owen‘s book, Christian Psychology's War on God's Word. 

3) A third view would separate biblical truth from psychological truth and make no attempt to reconcile the two. The idea behind this position is that the Scriptures deal with spiritual and theological issues, while psychology handles mental and psychological problems that are outside the scope of the Bible. lf one has a spiritual problem they should turn to the Bible; if one has a problem such as anxiety, guilt, self-acceptance, insecurity, etc. they should turn to psychology. 

Then there are those who would claim to be biblical counselors who simply borrow the best that psychology has to offer without actually integrating it with the Word. Larry Crabb takes this approach which he calls ''spoiling the Egyptians'' (Effective Biblical Counseling, p. 47-56). The following is what Crabb has spoiled from the Egyptians (secular psychologists) that he feels is necessary to his system. As can readily be seen, Crabb is an integrationist whether he accepts that title or not: 

Man is responsible (Glasser) to believe truth which will result in responsible behaviour (ElIis) that will provide him with meaning, hope (Frankl) and love (Fromm) and will serve as a guide (AdIer) to effective living with others as a - self and other - accepting person (Harris) who understands himself (Freud) who appropriately expresses himself (PerIs), and who knows how to control himself (Skinner) (ibid. p. 56). As we write this paper, we realize that Christian Psychology has become somewhat of a ''sacred cow. As Jim Owens states in Christian Psychology's War on God's Word, ''The presuppositions and counseling methods of psychology have become so integrated into evangelical thinking at every level that to venture criticism is to invite wrath and censure. The 'discovered' truths practiced by 'Christian' psychology are fast approaching the status once reserved for Scripture.
Yet, it is important that we analyze that movement in the light of the Word. 

What is Psychology 

The word itself means the study of the soul. 

Minirth and Meier give a broader definition in their Introduction to Psychology and Counseling, ''Psychology is the scientific study of the behaviour of organism."

Basically psychologists try to find out what makes people tick and how their minds work. Psychology might be thought of as the study of how living creatures are able to interact with their environment and each other, and how they cope successfully or unsuccessfully with that environment'' (p. 15). 
In other words, psychology is the study of how people live, why they do what they do and what can be done to help them live better. These subjects, by the way, are addressed rather directly by the Scriptures; yet Christian psychologists minimize this truth. For example Minirth and Meier say, ''One would hardly expect to find material related to the field of psychology within the Scriptures, except where they directly illustrate or discuss a particular aspect of human behaviour'' (Ibid., p. 16). So, while the Bible claims to be sufficient to equip us for every good work (2 Timothy 3:15, 16) and to provide, through the knowledge of Christ, everything that we need for life and godliness (2 Peter 1:3, 4), Christian psychologists inform us that psychology and Scriptures do not even deal with the same issues. 
How sad that would be if it were true, especially since modern psychology is barely 100 years old. Were the believers before the era of psychology without resources for dealing with life and its problems? Are we to believe that God neglected to include instructions on handling life's difficulties through the inspired authors of Scripture, instead waited until recently to reveal those instructions to godless men such as Freud, Jung, and Rogers? 

We find this hard to believe and in direct contradiction to the Bible's claim of sufficiency. It is very important to understand that when we speak of psychology we are not talking about a cohesive body of belief, but a wide range of opinion and theory, it is estimated that there are today over 250 major psychological philosophies and thousands of systems within these. Of course the many theories are often in conflict. So, when we speak of psychology we have to clarify which system we are talking about. Although there are many psychological systems, the big three are psychoanalysis, behaviourism, and humanism. 

Del 2 kommer 27. mars.