GYC 2007: Be

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Generation. Youth. Christ. (GYC)

Healing the Mind: Psychology and the Bible

Magna Parks

Christians, Beware of Secular Psychology, Part 1

This is a three-part series, so I'm sure many of you all have other workshops you'd like to go to, but I'm so glad to see you here for this 1.

Before we begin, would you mind having, wowing your head with me to have a word of prayer?

06.15 Our Father which art in heaven, we're so grateful to be able to come before you.

We thank you for this day, another day that you've given to us.

And as we approach this topic, Father, I ask that you may give me the words to speak and that you may open the hearts of the listeners, that they may understand and be able to discern more the wiles of the enemy in this field.

We thank you so much for this conference and we pray for the other speakers as well, that the Holy Spirit may speak to them through those who are listening.

In the name of Jesus, your son, we do pray, amen.

Let me tell you a little bit about myself so you'll understand how I got into this topic.

I've been in the field for about 18 years.

I taught at Oakwood College for 4 and a half years and then at the University of Tennessee At Chattanooga for 2 years then I got into private practice after that.

So I had a little Wide range of work in this area and I've been doing this when I first came into the field of psychology I thought I was going to revolutionize the church because I was going to mix what I learned in psychology with the bible and I thought that I would help everyone with their problems didn't work out that way about 2 or 3 years ago I ran across a sermon by Pastor Richard Ophiel online, and he started attacking through, not me directly, but through his sermon, many of the things I had learned as a psychologist.

Initially I wasn't very happy, but as I started to study this more and the Holy Spirit opened up avenues and places for me to go and read and learn more about this, I had to confess that what he was saying was true.

And then I had a brief opportunity for a little over 2 weeks to work with as a staff member with Dr.

Neil Nedley, and that really opened my eyes.

I thought I was coming up there to help, and I learned a lot more than I helped, and I was grateful for the opportunity.

Nelly and many of the things that I've learned, it's been hard for me to continue my practice the way I was doing it before.

So at this time, I've suspended my work from my private practice and I'm asking the Lord what he would have me to do.

So you all keep me in prayer with that, okay?

And I'm not saying that it's wrong to go into private practice, but for what the Lord has shown me, I cannot continue to practice the way I'm practicing.

Let's look at Christians beware the dangers of secular psychology.

How many of you all are in psychology or thinking about going into psychology?

Well, prayerfully, some things will be shared with you that will make you seriously consider and contemplate what the Lord would have you to do in this area.

Read this with me, beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world and not after Christ.

I did a little bit of study in this area, and Paul was talking to the church at Colossa and was warning them about false teachers coming in.

And what he found was the false teachers were effective in deceiving the people because they mixed truth and error.

And so he was warning them, beware lest any of these men spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit.

Now from the beginning of time, Satan used truth and error.

This verse in Genesis 3, 4, and 5 tells us, And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die, for God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be open, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.

Now when we look at that we see that there is a little bit of truth there, right?

But I wanted to point this out because he mixed truth and error to deceive our parents, Adam and Eve.

The servant of the Lord tells us the track of truth lies close beside the track of error and both tracks may seem to be 1 to minds which are not worked by the Holy Spirit and which therefore are not quick to discern the difference between truth and error and if you look at the picture you'll see that the tracks as they go further along they look like they're coming together do they not?

And that's what happens with truth and error when they're mixed together and unless our minds are worked by the Holy Spirit we're not going to be able to discern in so much that's why the Bible tells us Jesus told the disciples and those who are listening in so much that if it were possible they shall deceive the who?

And I'm bringing all of this up because I think this is a good groundwork to understand how secular psychology has come in and infiltrated, I like to use that word, our lives at home and in the church, because it's not a clear, glaring error.

This is taken from the Sermon of the Lord again.

In these days, when skepticism and infidelity appear in a scientific garb, we need to be guarded on every hand the advantage he satan takes of the sciences sciences which pertain to the what human mind is tremendous here serpent like he imperceptibly creeps in to corrupt the work of God and when something creeps in imperceptibly can you see it?

No, it's something, it's like a snake that's what I thought of when I heard that word comes in and you don't see it right away through the channel of phrenology psychology now I must add when she was mentioning psychology back then, it was a little different than it is now.

But I still thought this quote would be appropriate.

He comes directly to the people of this generation and works with that power which is to characterize his efforts near the close of probation, which is right now.

Mark the influences of these sciences, dear reader, for the conflict between Christ and Satan is not yet ended.

The sciences which treat of the human mind are very much exalted.

And she put this in here, which I thought was very applicable.

They are good in their place, but they are seized upon by satan as his powerful agents to deceive and destroy souls and we're going to see that as time goes on.

Let's just give you a brief little history, psychology lesson.

Psychology, there's a lot of definitions out there but the most simple 1 is that is the study of mental processes and behavior.

Mental processes that goes on in the mind and behavior what we do and it's taken from these are the latin root psyche which is soul and back then when they use the word soul they meant mind and ology whenever you see ology added to a word you know it's the study of that particular area psychology grew out of philosophy each theory behind each therapy provides a philosophy of life and a theology of man why we are the way we are and how we change in fact psychotherapy resembles religion more than it resembles medicine.

So psychology's roots are in philosophy and because of that I had a slide up there, I guess I don't have it, I had slides talking about some of the philosophers that contributed to the beginnings of psychology such as Aristotle, Socrates, and René Descartes.

So let's look at some of the major clinical and counseling psychology theories.

Many of you all have heard of Sigmund Freud.

Most of the time when I tell people I'm a psychologist, that's what they ask me.

Do I come into your office and sit on a couch and tell you all my problems and Freud was the 1 that gave the picture of that particular picture of psychology.

Freud's theory is very large and it encompasses a lot of different ideas so I thought I'd just kind of truncate it down to these 1 or 2 concepts.

Freud says that who we are depends on what?

He also tells us to resolve our problems we must talk about and understand what happened in our childhood.

You need to understand childhood to understand some of the problems you're having as an adult.

And I believe that hook, line, and sinker.

In fact, I believe that probably up until maybe last year I thought I didn't believe it.

But as I started to analyze how I worked, I saw that I was still holding on to that.

Then we have humanistic theory, which is the 2 major founders here are Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow and again I'm sure you all have heard these names.

They basically believe that we are born what?

We're born good from the very beginning and it's life experiences that cause us problems.

They also tell us that problems develop because others love and accept us with conditions.

They're conditions that people place on their love and acceptance of us.

That's why we have problems according to Maslow and Rogers.

Then they believe our problems will be resolved if our needs are adequately fulfilled and if others love and accept us unconditionally.

That's how our problems will be resolved according to the humanistic theorists.

Maslow was bold enough to say this, I sometimes think that the world will either be saved by psychology in the broader sense or else it would not be saved at all.

If you look at the backgrounds of these individuals, Freud was anti-religion, as you probably know.

Maslow started out in the, I'm sorry, Rogers started out in the seminary and then started to get disgruntled with some of the things he was learning and decided to go in the field where he could just think more freely and not be restricted and so he became a psychologist which is exactly what happens and then maslow was influenced by a lot of zen and buddhism in his thinking so when we incorporate these we have to recognize the roots of these theorist thinking The encroachment of the psychology way into Christianity has been a subtle, gradual movement.

In other words, as she says, imperceptible, which began in seminaries and pastoral counseling classes.

Pastors were concerned about their parishioners seeking help outside of the fold, and so they availed themselves of the wisdom of men in order to minister to souls.

I was curious, I wondered how does psychology start to come into the church and I did a little research and I found out that what was happening was that pastors didn't feel sufficient to help the parishioners' needs, their congregations' needs with the psychological problems and so they started to go to psychologists and pastoral counselors to help them with the problems.

Actually, let me just let you know that I do have this first presentation.

I've written a book, and those who are interested in more information can purchase that to help our ministry So I think it will take long for me to read that I'll try as best as I can but we'll see this comes from a history of pastoral care in America pastors believe the lie that they could only deal with spiritual matters and that only those who were psychologically trained were equipped to deal with psychological matters.

Through the years as a psychologist I've received many calls from pastors saying can you help with this family?

Christians, Beware of Secular Psychology, Part 2

Our Father which art in heaven we're thankful again to be able to come before you and as we start this session We ask for your Holy Spirit to come and give us direction guidance and wisdom father This is a difficult topic because it Tugs at so many of the things that we've held dear to us And I just pray that you may give me the words to share, to begin to get us to look at things a little differently.

And Lord, you know that I'm in the process of searching and seeking myself.

So I ask that you may grant wisdom even in this area.

In the name of Jesus, your son, we do pray.

Those of you who heard this before, close your ears, okay?

Let me tell you a little bit about myself so you'll understand how I got to this place.

I am a licensed psychologist and I've been a psychologist for 18, 19 years.

I taught at the university level for 7 years, taught at Oakwood 4 1⁄2, 5 years, and at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga for 2 years.

Following that I've been in private practice.

I've been at all ends of the spectrum when it comes to psychology.

I've worked on the university campus counseling students.

I've worked with children, even though I'm not a child psychologist, I've done a little work with children, testing and evaluation.

I've done research, because when I was at the university, we would do research with the students.

So I've kind of touched all aspects of it.

About 2 or 3 years ago, I was on the internet and I ran across a sermon by a pastor.

And in that sermon, he attacked a lot of what I had learned.

And I went to my husband and said, I cannot believe this man is writing this.

And as I began to study more and more about this, I said to myself, there is something here that I need to pay attention to.

And I started doing my own studying and then I was blessed with the opportunity to work with Dr.

Nedley for a little over 2 weeks in his depression recovery program and I learned even more about true healing.

So when I came back to my practice I said to my husband, I don't know what I'm going to do because most of the things I've been using in my practice is not biblical neither is it helping people.

Tell you what though, I was patting my pocket because if I saw people for 6 months or so once a week, I was getting very good money, wouldn't you say?

But people, something I failed to mention in my last session, people were feeling better, but they were not getting better.

Why would a person have to see someone for 6 months and on to obtain healing?

And, You know, I just realized something.

Oh, I'll be talking about that in this session, about how looking, always focusing on the past does not help us.

But I started to realize that, and so I am right now not in my practice because I'm asking the Lord to show me what direction I need to take.

It means that we're living a little differently because the money is not as good, but my husband and I have started a ministry called Being Good Health because he is a student, correspondent student through Uchee Pines, and we're now focusing more on helping people with their health, and I use the mental health piece that I learned with working with Dr.

So you all keep me in prayer as I go through this process.

However, as I've been reading and learning about this, the Lord revealed to me, you need to start sharing with people what you're finding of how psychology is coming into our homes, into our individual lives, and how it's coming into the church.

I would sit in church sometimes and I'd hear someone say something from up front and I'd say to my husband, Al, that's based on psychology.

And He would say, you know what, you need to start speaking of this so people can realize this.

In the last session I talked about self-esteem.

I mentioned that the whole concept of self-esteem is based on secular psychology and even the research is showing now that people with high self-esteem have more problems with drugs and alcohol, have more problems with hostility, have more problems with violence.

Even psychologists are starting to realize that now.

All of these things, self-esteem has not turned out to be the panacea that everybody thought it was going to be.

And then I looked at the Bible and looked at how the Bible tells us to deny self, to esteem others better than ourselves.

And I talked about how that contradicts how secular psychologists are saying we should exalt self.

Then I talked about the fact that the Sermon on the Lord has a quote where she says, this does not mean we should not have a proper self-respect because we don't push esteeming of self doesn't mean you go down thinking bad about yourself and that you're worthless.

We ought to have a proper self-respect based on how we live before God, based on following our conscience.

That when people base their self-esteem on external things, they're not going to do as well in school.

They're going to have more problems interpersonally.

But when we base it on, I think the researcher says, living according to morals, etc., then we will do better.

This is the hardest 1 to explain to people, this thing about unconditional love because God loves God's love does show some unconditionality to it but as I explained in the previous session the deception about psychology is that it mixes truth and error together and when truth and error is mixed together she tells us the track of truth and the track of error lies close beside 1 another and it can appear to be 1 to minds that are not worked by the Holy Spirit and psychology has some great things in it the problem is the basis of it is sometimes not good this unconditional love came from Eric Fromm a psychologist who has nothing to do with religion and says we should describe love as supreme and unconditional and from there we grabbed that and started to push this unconditional love and started to say that people should have unconditional love for 1 another and then Rogers, Carl Rogers, I'm sure you all have heard of him he talks about unconditional acceptance saying that we are naturally born good so if we're naturally born good and if people just leave us alone and don't put any conditions on us we will just grow to do everything that's right does the bible tell us that?

The bible tell us that there's none that do us good, no not 1 and the carnal mind is enmity against the law of god so that's why I caution people about unconditional love and unconditional acceptance because when you look at the roots of that it has a lot of humanistic concepts to it.

Now, I will say, there is some unconditionality to God and love because Romans 5, 8 tells us God commendeth his love towards us and that why will we yet sinners Christ died for us.

The problem is what has happened because of us as our human minds we take this unconditionality and say to ourselves oh that means I can eat the way I want, I can dress the way I want, I can worship the way I want because God loves me unconditionally.

So there's the good part about the unconditionality where he does love us without any conditions, but then there's the other part of how far is that going to take us?

You've heard of Maslow with his hierarchy of needs, right?

That you have to have the physical needs met, then the safety needs, then the loving belongingness needs, then the esteem needs, and we will be self-actualized.

And his idea is that if you don't get these lower needs met then you'll never reach to the pinnacle of your self-actualization and we've taken the same needs focus and brought it into our lives and our church that's what the whole seeker sensitive movement is based on Have you all heard of that?

You've heard of Whig-Warren, Purpose Driven Church.

All of these churches and these movements are based on the idea that these people will not come to church if I just preach the regular things to them so I have to meet their felt needs like Maslow says you have to meet certain needs and they'll grow higher I have to meet their needs so I'm gonna have all kind of things going on at church to meet their needs and then they will come in.

It sounds good, the problem is we stay at that needs and people are not growing spiritually.

I want to read something to you that I read in the last 1.

Rick Warren, I'm sorry, Bill Hybels of Willow Creek is now starting to question this move, this push that he has about felt needs and they're now saying we made a mistake this is Bill Hybels from Willow Creek what we should have done when people cross the line of faith and become Christians we should have started telling people and teaching people that they have to take responsibility to become self-feeders, meaning we can't just always feed them by fulfilling their needs and everything.

We should have gotten people, taught people how to read their Bible between services, how to do the spiritual practices much more aggressively on their own.

So many people are starting, they're starting to realize that this push we have is not helping people as much as we can.

That's kind of a quick run-through of what I did before and I did the best that I can.

So we need to move on to the second part of this presentation, the dangers of secular psychology part 2.

And I will say there is a true psychology and We're going to talk about that later on.

So I'm not downing psychology in general and I also want to say I would love to see...

Anybody going into clinical counseling psychology here?

I'd love to see some of our people get into psychology where they study the brain and the workings of the brain and all of these things.

So psychology has some very good aspects to it.

Usually we get into it and we want to do the counseling but there's so many.

This whole social psychology, I used to teach social psychology in college and there's a phenomenon known as group think.

Y'all remember those where they would show, the research would show that people are afraid to speak up in a group if the whole group thinks a certain way?

And I used to use that to explain what's going to happen at the end of time.

Some people will not believe some of the things that the government and church and state when they get together is pushing, but for fear of the group they'll go along.

So I'm saying all of this to say, psychology has some wonderful things in it.

My problem is when they start to talk about the nature of man and how we should change.

And that's what I'm gonna be addressing, or am addressing in these workshops.

Christians, Beware of Secular Psychology, Part 3

I hope you all don't fall asleep on me because you know what happens after lunchtime.

We're gonna start because we have a lot to cover and maybe more will be coming.

Let's start again with the word of prayer, shall we?

Our Father and our God, again, we thank you for this opportunity to come before you.

We thank you for the physical food you've blessed us with and as you continue to work through the presenters, we pray that the spiritual food may be given as well.

We thank you so much for those who have turned out for this workshop and I ask again that you may touch my lips and give me the words to say that will enhance understanding in this area and maybe open up some avenues that we can look at as to where we can turn back to your word and your truth.

We thank you again Lord for this opportunity.

In the name of Jesus your son we do pray, amen.

How many of you all were not in any of the other 2 workshops?

So we're going to have to do a little recapping to kind of get you up to snuff here.

In my first session, we talked about some specific psychological theories that has come in and affected us as Christians.

1 was about the self-esteem and I talked about how self-esteem is something that's pushed by psychologists but is in contradiction to the Bible because the Bible tells us that we need to deny self and esteem others more than self.

And I also presented some research that where psychologists are starting to realize that people who have problems, many of them have high self-esteem.

Problems with hostility, violence, emotional disorders, Most of them have, as we're finding out, high self-esteem.

That hasn't reached down to the level of what I call pop psychology yet, but if you're looking at the research area, they're starting to show that self-esteem is not turning out to be what we thought it was.

Then I talked about unconditional love and acceptance.

Oh, my husband's supposed to be taping me.

Unconditional love and acceptance, which, well, from the very beginning I talked about how truth and error are linked together in psychology, and that's why it's hard to distinguish that it's something we need to stay away from.

And the Bible shows us how Satan has used this from the beginning of time.

When you talk about unconditional love, there is some truth to the fact that God loves us unconditionally.

And I mentioned Romans 5, 8, God commended his love towards us and that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

There's nothing we have to do to obtain God's love.

The problem that has come about is that we've taken the humanist's definition of unconditional love, which means don't say anything to me about anything because you're supposed to love me unconditionally and God does too.

And as a result, that means don't say anything about how I dress, how I eat, how I worship, because God loves me unconditionally and you should too.

So that's where the danger comes in there.

And then I talked about meeting felt needs and the whole seeker-sensitive movement coming from people like Bill Hybels and Rick Warren, where the idea is that I'm not going to get people to come into the church who would never come to church unless I minister to their needs, which has some truth to it.

The problem is they're ministering to needs and then forgetting about the real reason why people are in church.

And that comes from, I believe, psychology.

Well, I'm not only saying what I believe.

If you look at some of these people's books like Bill Hybels and Rick Warren, you'll see a lot of psychology weaving in and out of there.

And so in meeting people's felt needs, we can sometimes forget that the real need is their spiritual needs.

And then in the second session, I talked about emotions and how we as Christians should be placing emotions secondarily, but as psychologists, it's a primary thing.

I was taught as a psychologist that I should focus on people's feelings when they come in.

And have them just spend sessions talking about feelings and that's not according to the Bible.

The Bible does acknowledge emotions, but psychology places it too much in the forefront and we have to be careful with that.

Many Christians now are seeking therapists and counselors.

And I talked about how I used to advertise myself as a Christian psychologist until I thought the Lord started to open up my eyes about this.

And I recognized I was using the same psychological theories and just throwing in some scriptures here and there to condone that I was a Christian doing Christian therapy.

So beware when people are advertising themselves as Christian psychologists and Christian therapists You have to really measure them against the Bible to see how much they are really using the Bible.

And for those of you who don't know a little bit about my background, let me repeat that as well.

I've been in the field of psychology for 18 years.

I taught for 7 years, 4 of those years at Oakwood, 4 to 5 years at Oakwood, and then 2 years at the University of Tennessee in Chattanooga, and then I've been in private practice for the last 12, 13 years.

I'm not in private practice right now because I'm trying to see what the Lord wants me to do, given all these things that he's revealed to me in the last couple of years.

I can't continue to do that work because I'm using these theories of man that's based on things that are not biblical.

So I'm in the process of asking the Lord to show me what to do and some of what I'm going to share this afternoon is some of the things he's brought to me, but there's a long road ahead of me.

And many of you all have come to me saying, what do I do?

Series

Healing the Mind: Psychology and the Bible

Major Depression: Insights from the Bible

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