NXR Podcast - THEOLOGY APPLIED - Biblical Counseling 101: The Sufficiency Of Scripture
Aired: 2021-08-25
Duration: 01:01:11


=== Biblical Counseling Defined (03:47) ===

[00:00:00]  Hi, welcome to another episode of Theology Applied.
[00:00:02]  I'm your host, Pastor Joel Webbin with Right Response Ministries.
[00:00:06]  On this episode, I was privileged to have as a special guest Dr. John Street to discuss the topic of biblical counseling.
[00:00:14]  Hope you enjoy.
[00:00:15]  Applying God's Word to every aspect of life.
[00:00:19]  This is Theology Applied.
[00:00:27]  All right, so I'm privileged to be joined by Dr. Street with our episode today.
[00:00:31]  Dr. John Street, would you go ahead and just take a moment to introduce yourself to our listeners?
[00:00:35]  Sure.
[00:00:36]  I'm just a center saved by grace and by God's infinite grace.
[00:00:41]  He has placed me into a ministry whereby I have the opportunity to teach, especially on a graduate level, biblical counseling.
[00:00:51]  I do that to guys that are going through seminary.
[00:00:54]  And then we have a graduate program at the Masters University called the Master of Arts in Biblical Counseling.
[00:01:00]  We are coming close to getting approval for a doctoral level.
[00:01:05]  Program there at the university.
[00:01:07]  So we're really excited about that in the area of biblical counseling.
[00:01:10]  I'm really a former pastor.
[00:01:12]  That's what I have done for the majority of my ministry life.
[00:01:16]  But for the last 22 years since then, I've been a teacher and a professor.
[00:01:22]  So that's what I do.
[00:01:23]  I also function as an elder at Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California, where Dr. John MacArthur is the pastor.
[00:01:32]  And then I also serve as the president of the board of the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors, ACBC.
[00:01:39]  Which is a growing organization of around pretty close to 2,500 people nationally and internationally that are fully certified and around the world.
[00:01:50]  It's a really tight network of people that have been certified in the area of biblical counseling.
[00:01:56]  So that gives you a little bit of an idea of some of the things that I do.
[00:01:59]  But I'm really grateful for the fact that I have a wonderful wife who, by the way, in a day or two of our anniversary, we turn, we, Let's see, it'll be our 44th anniversary.
[00:02:11]  We have four wonderful kids, they all love the Lord, they're all grown, they're all adults.
[00:02:16]  Three of those four are married, and we have six grandchildren.
[00:02:22]  I didn't realize how good I was at spoiling until I had grandkids, but I'm especially gifted at it with grandkids.
[00:02:32]  I love spoiling the grandkids, so yeah, yeah.
[00:02:36]  Well, I mean, as I told you before we started recording, we moved from California to Texas, that's where I was born and raised.
[00:02:41]  And my wife, she was born and raised in San Diego.
[00:02:43]  California, but her parents got wise about seven years prior and moved to Texas.
[00:02:49]  And so we picked the North Austin area because that's where her parents settled.
[00:02:54]  And I was raised in Bay City, Texas, but my parents, they went ahead and retired early and relocated to this area as well.
[00:03:00]  So we've got our kids are super spoiled because they've got both sides of the grandparents.
[00:03:06]  And it's just, I love being a dad, but I'm a little bit envious.
[00:03:10]  I can't wait to be a grandparent because it's just, you just get to hang out, have fun, and then drop them off with mom and dad for all the discipline and training.
[00:03:17]  Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
[00:03:18]  Yeah, it's kind of nice.
[00:03:21]  Okay, great.
[00:03:21]  Well, let's just go ahead and dive into it.
[00:03:23]  Our topic is biblical counseling.
[00:03:25]  And man, I've had some struggles with this, you know, just being a pastor when I was a pastor in San Diego.
[00:03:33]  And I haven't really encountered any of this thus far with the new church plant here in Texas.
[00:03:38]  But I remember in San Diego, you know, a lot of young people, I was young myself, and so attracted people who were kind of in that same demographic, 20s and early 30s.

=== Beyond Just Listening (15:09) ===

[00:03:47]  And, um, Man, people just felt like it's not real counseling.
[00:03:52]  Biblical counseling is not real counseling.
[00:03:54]  You need a trained professional license.
[00:03:57]  You know, it's got to be secular counseling.
[00:03:59]  And they always kind of, you know, which it was, I always thought of Samuel, you know, when the people ask for a king and God says, you know, hey, Samuel, it's okay, you know, and kind of soothes his ego a bit.
[00:04:11]  You know, they're not rejecting you as prophet, they're rejecting me as God, they're rejecting me as king.
[00:04:15]  And, you know, but people, you know, they always make it about the pastor because what are they going to say?
[00:04:19]  If they're professing Christians, they're going to say, the Bible's not sufficient, it's not enough.
[00:04:23]  Now, I'm convinced that I think a lot of professing Christians, that's what they actually believe.
[00:04:28]  But they'll pin it on the pastor instead.
[00:04:30]  They'll say the pastor's not sufficient, right?
[00:04:32]  He doesn't have enough education, experience.
[00:04:35]  And so they opt for these other forms of counseling.
[00:04:38]  And so, can you help us with that?
[00:04:40]  Sure.
[00:04:41]  Are there valid other forms of counseling, or does it need to be biblical counseling?
[00:04:45]  And if so, what's the distinction between biblical counseling and secular counseling?
[00:04:50]  Well, obviously, this is, you start off with a good one because we get this all the time in the area of biblical counseling and people questioning what's really going on here.
[00:05:00]  Don't we need someone that has an advanced degree in therapy or psychotherapy or psychiatry in order to be able to deal with the serious problems that people have?
[00:05:13]  And right from the outset, I think it's vitally important to start off and talk about the fact that counseling itself was an endeavor that was a part of the very fabric of the New Testament church.
[00:05:27]  In fact, there's far more counsel given in the New Testament than there is sermons.
[00:05:32]  There's lots and lots of personal counsel, lots of corporate counsel that's given throughout the New Testament.
[00:05:39]  And if the Bible is your authority and your final authority, and I think the resurrection of counseling in our contemporary world today, biblical counseling that is, is a direct result, a natural result of the Reformation, because the emphasis was upon the sufficiency and the superiority of the Word of God over.
[00:06:03]  Churches and church councils, and so on, and especially church organizations like the Roman Catholic Church.
[00:06:09]  And so the Word of God becomes paramount.
[00:06:13]  And this is something that we believe was practiced and have come to a conclusion was practiced by the early church in the first few centuries of the church.
[00:06:29]  And then somehow, as time went on in the Middle Ages, it was eventually lost.
[00:06:37]  And a lot of this could be attributed to key people like Thomas Aquinas and his whole view of the fact that there's still enough goodness in man for man to reason towards God and choose God rather than God choosing him.
[00:06:52]  And of course, the empirical observations that are made by Thomas Aquinas and several theologians since then set the stage later on for psychology.
[00:07:04]  Then, when you get in the Enlightenment, obviously the Bible and God is thrown out.
[00:07:09]  Now, as authority, especially in the secular domain.
[00:07:13]  And now there is no authority except for man.
[00:07:18]  And so you still have man with problems.
[00:07:20]  So now psychology becomes a natural humanistic way to deal with man's problems.
[00:07:27]  It's a natural historical result of atheism, it's a historical result of naturalism and especially relativism as well.
[00:07:39]  So, the problem is nowadays is that what has really destroyed counseling is the professionalization of it, where now only a professional with a high degree can counsel people.
[00:07:58]  And for Christians who have listened to that in the world and become a part of that kind of thinking that's in the world, then it's a natural question to say, well, wait a minute, if you don't have a professional degree in counseling, then you're not qualified to do counseling.
[00:08:13]  And we would argue that if a person is not well schooled in good biblical theology and good solid doctrine, you're not qualified to counsel.
[00:08:24]  It's just the opposite.
[00:08:27]  In fact, doctrine qualifies you to counsel.
[00:08:30]  When you sink your soul into doctrine, that qualifies you to counsel.
[00:08:35]  So that is a commitment to the sufficiency of the Word of God.
[00:08:42]  Would you agree that part of the reason why?
[00:08:45]  You know, being your soul rooted in good, sound biblical doctrine qualifies you to counsel because the point of counseling is the improvement of the person, and which means you have to have a correct anthropology.
[00:08:59]  You have to actually know who man is in his fallenness, and you also need to know who man is meant to be, which means that you recognize the truest, the God man.
[00:09:09]  And so you have to know who man was meant to be by God and know who the person of Jesus Christ.
[00:09:15]  Who is truly God, but he's also the truest man, that this is what humanity was supposed to be.
[00:09:22]  And then you also have to understand sin, the doctrine of sin and total depravity and fallenness and all these kinds of things and temptation.
[00:09:29]  And so you have to have anthropology, you have to have theology.
[00:09:32]  Theology being able to say, this is particularly in our doctrine of God.
[00:09:36]  So not so much the Father and the Spirit, but the Son.
[00:09:39]  This is who the Son is, and He's the perfect Adam.
[00:09:42]  This is who man is meant to be.
[00:09:44]  And then our anthropology, this is who man is in light of sin.
[00:09:48]  So, I know the starting place and I know the finishing place.
[00:09:52]  Whereas the secular counselor, they don't know who man is.
[00:09:55]  They don't even know who you currently are, much less who you should be.
[00:09:59]  Why are Christians going to them for counsel?
[00:10:02]  Right, exactly.
[00:10:04]  In other words, Christians are basically going to people who are essentially trained in atheism and psychology is essentially atheistic.
[00:10:14]  Every counseling system that I'm familiar with, and just in the United States alone, there are 350 different counseling systems.
[00:10:22]  That you could separately identify.
[00:10:24]  Every counseling system is atheistic at its core in the sense that there is no God.
[00:10:29]  It's very anthrocentric rather than theocentric or Christocentric.
[00:10:37]  It's radically different than what we would do in terms of biblical counseling because we're focused on helping a person to be God's kind of man, God's kind of woman, first and foremost, whether you feel better or not.
[00:10:51]  Our goal is not to help people feel better.
[00:10:53]  Our goal is to help them be God's kind of man, God's kind of woman, to honor Christ even through the difficult circumstances in their life.
[00:11:01]  And by the way, when you start doing that, then generally you will feel better.
[00:11:06]  God will bless your life.
[00:11:08]  You do, the Bible is full of promises that when you follow the way of wisdom, then your life will be extended.
[00:11:16]  You'll have a more peaceful life and a more blessed life.
[00:11:20]  It just doesn't guarantee that.
[00:11:23]  Sometimes when you do all the right things, Life actually gets harder, it gets worse, suffering becomes greater.
[00:11:30]  Our goal is not just to help people get through their problems.
[00:11:35]  Our goal is to teach them to be God's kind of man, God's kind of woman in the midst of their problems.
[00:11:41]  We want them to bring glory to God and learn how to do that.
[00:11:46]  And so that goes back to a fundamental belief in the sufficiency of Scripture.
[00:11:50]  Now, if you ask the evangelical, conservative Christian anywhere in America today, do you believe in the sufficiency of Scripture?
[00:11:57]  I would say that 99% of them would say, absolutely, I believe in that.
[00:12:00]  But what they mean by that is, They mean that the Bible is sufficient to get us to heaven.
[00:12:06]  In other words, it has all the information I need in order to show me how to get to heaven.
[00:12:11]  And certainly, I don't disagree with that part of it, but the Bible is far more than that.
[00:12:17]  I remember years ago, Jay Adams used to say people talk about pie in the sky by and by.
[00:12:23]  All right.
[00:12:24]  Well, the scripture was given to us so that we can begin to slice the pie now and enjoy our life in Christ now, not just.
[00:12:33]  Somewhere eventually in heaven.
[00:12:35]  So we believe that the scripture is sufficient to deal with the serious soul problems of life now.
[00:12:43]  It's sufficient to be able to do that.
[00:12:45]  And in fact, it is not just sufficient, it's superior to anything that the world has to offer in terms of psychotherapy or psychology.
[00:12:55]  Now, does psychology have any value at all?
[00:12:58]  Yeah, I think on some levels it has a descriptive value.
[00:13:01]  Oftentimes it describes problems well, but it doesn't have a prescriptive value.
[00:13:06]  It doesn't teach you how to deal with those problems from a biblical point of view or from a Christian point of view.
[00:13:13]  It's going to always provide worldly answers.
[00:13:17]  So we can diagnose, but it can't cure.
[00:13:22]  Exactly.
[00:13:23]  Exactly.
[00:13:25]  Sometimes it can identify where problems are and even describe some of those problems well.
[00:13:31]  But even when they do that, then they clump those symptoms together and then put a label on them.
[00:13:37]  Like schizophrenia or like bipolar problems or our manic depression, or and you'll look those up in your Bible and you're not going to find that terminology.
[00:13:48]  You'll say, Well, the Bible doesn't deal with that issue.
[00:13:50]  No, no, no.
[00:13:51]  All of those psychological labels that are part of the diagnostic and the statistical manual, the APA volume five, all of those are just labels put on clusters of symptoms.
[00:14:04]  When you look underneath that at the clusters of symptoms, all of a sudden, The Bible starts to jump out at you because it starts to deal with all the symptomology that those particular groupings deal with.
[00:14:18]  It doesn't use the secular terminology.
[00:14:22]  And this is the reason why, in my counseling, I want my counselee, the person I'm working with, to think in biblical terms, not in contemporary psychological terms about the problem.
[00:14:32]  Because a person will come in and do a presentation problem of, you know, I have bipolar depression or I have.
[00:14:40]  Paranoid schizophrenia, or, and you're not going to find those particular terms in scripture, but I want them to use biblical terms.
[00:14:48]  And when you start to think of your problems in biblical ways, all of a sudden the Bible becomes no longer a question book, it's an answer book.
[00:14:57]  It opens up, it puts handles on your Bible when that happens.
[00:15:02]  And this is what we want for people.
[00:15:03]  So, what is counseling?
[00:15:05]  Biblical counseling essentially is a form of discipleship.
[00:15:09]  That's what it is.
[00:15:11]  When you're discipling someone, oftentimes that's new in the faith or haven't been discipled before, you're teaching them who God is, who Jesus Christ is, who the Holy Spirit is.
[00:15:22]  You're teaching them about the scriptures, the importance of the study of scriptures, and good hermeneutics.
[00:15:27]  And you're teaching them about the church and the importance of the church and all of this stuff.
[00:15:31]  But as you're doing that, you will keep bumping into personal problems.
[00:15:36]  Those same people you're working with have marriage problems or they struggle with fears or anxieties or depression.
[00:15:42]  You keep bumping in those personal problems.
[00:15:44]  Well, we don't ignore those in our discipleship.
[00:15:49]  Instead, counseling becomes a targeted form of discipleship.
[00:15:53]  It's where you zero in on those particular problems and bring the word of God to bear on those specific problems.
[00:16:00]  Problems in that person's life.
[00:16:03]  And actually, biblical counseling is what the world would call depth therapy.
[00:16:08]  It's the deepest thing you can do because it is the only thing, the only thing that changes the heart of man.
[00:16:15]  It's the only thing that changes.
[00:16:17]  And that's the core issue of what we're dealing with.
[00:16:21]  It's the heart, how the heart operates, that kind of thing.
[00:16:25]  That's really helpful.
[00:16:26]  I like what you said just a little while ago.
[00:16:28]  You said, you know, that.
[00:16:30]  Biblical counseling that provides answers to man's problems.
[00:16:34]  And I think that's one of the hang ups that I've witnessed that professing Christians will experience as well they're underneath this illusion that counseling doesn't tell them what to do.
[00:16:45]  It doesn't give them answers.
[00:16:45]  And it's not supposed to.
[00:16:47]  That it's supposed to just listen, you know, where the person lays back in the couch, you know, and tell me about your childhood.
[00:16:55]  And then it mainly just asks questions, asks questions, asks questions, never really prescribes anything, never really gives any answers.
[00:17:02]  And the only thing that really ever is said definitively is some form of affirmation.
[00:17:08]  And I think that's a lot of people's view of counseling is that counseling asks questions, which I know in biblical counseling, you need to ask questions.
[00:17:15]  And there is a physical component to biblical counseling.
[00:17:18]  We're not Gnostics, and so we recognize that there's the soul, there's also the body.
[00:17:22]  And it's are you exercising?
[00:17:23]  Are you sleeping?
[00:17:24]  Those things matter.
[00:17:25]  God, we have a physical existence.
[00:17:27]  And so biblical counseling isn't this pie in the skies, over spiritualized, so it asks questions.
[00:17:34]  Wants to diagnose the problem, wants to understand things correctly, wants to assess the physical as well as the spiritual, all those things.
[00:17:40]  But then it also gives an answer.
[00:17:42]  It also says something.
[00:17:44]  And it says it with courage and with authority and gives people something to do.
[00:17:50]  And I think that's one of the big hangups that people are like, wait, I wanted counseling.
[00:17:55]  And you're telling me that this is what the word of God says.
[00:17:58]  And you're even telling me the word of God says that I'm wrong.
[00:18:01]  And they're like, this isn't counseling.
[00:18:04]  You know, it's like the picture of counseling that people have developed today is counseling just listens.
[00:18:11]  It never tells me, it just listens and affirms.
[00:18:15]  Would you agree with that?
[00:18:16]  Yeah.
[00:18:16]  Have you experienced that hang up?
[00:18:18]  Well, especially non directive therapies.
[00:18:21]  All right.
[00:18:21]  And these non directive therapies think it's actually a criminal to give them any kind of direction because they believe that basically in contemporary psychology that the answer is found within the person.
[00:18:33]  So you don't want to direct them because you direct them from outside of them and you're going to steer them away from the answer within them.
[00:18:39]  And we would say from a biblical standpoint that when you get your life into trouble, your answer is not within, because that's going to lead you down a destructive, into a destructive lifestyle.
[00:18:50]  We would say the answer is in the truth of the Word of God, trusting that, following what the Word of God says.

=== Imputing Righteousness Through Confession (15:20) ===

[00:18:57]  So God and His Word is the focus of all of counseling for us.
[00:19:03]  And we would add this that the primary context for counseling is the local church.
[00:19:10]  Our goal here in our graduate program at the Masters University and what we train pastors in is not to set up counseling clinics.
[00:19:19]  We're not interested in setting up any counseling clinics.
[00:19:22]  If you're in the program and you want to go and set up a counseling clinic, then you're in the wrong program.
[00:19:28]  Every other program in the world does that, especially secular models do that.
[00:19:34]  We want to return that person down to the local church under the authority of the local church with hopefully godly appointed elders who oversee what's being dispensed in terms of counseling.
[00:19:48]  They oversee the doctrine, they oversee the truth and the life of the person who's the counselor as well as the counselee.
[00:19:55]  And that's where counseling is the most effective, where that person is attending and worshiping the Lord on a regular basis under the preaching and the truth of the Word of God.
[00:20:06]  And so, where you have powerful preaching and you have powerful counseling together, those are the two most powerful change conduits in a person's life that the Holy Spirit can use.
[00:20:22]  Holy Spirit is the one who ultimately brings the change, but those two conduits.
[00:20:26]  As far as what God uses.
[00:20:28]  Right.
[00:20:28]  The Spirit of God working in conjunction with the Word of God.
[00:20:31]  The Word of God preached and the Word of God counseled.
[00:20:34]  And both.
[00:20:34]  So I completely agree.
[00:20:36]  Another piece that I've noticed is I think also, you know, so the preaching of the Word, the counseling of the Word, and being surrounded by the people of the Word, which you already kind of alluded to.
[00:20:45]  But I think, again, secular counseling, by contrast, again, there's this stigma of, you know, that counseling should be very, very, very, very private.
[00:20:58]  Right.
[00:20:58]  So I go to this therapist that I pay $150 an hour or whatever, whatever it may be.
[00:21:02]  Maybe that's cheap these days.
[00:21:03]  I don't know.
[00:21:04]  But, and, and the key is that, you know, I get my 45 minutes to an hour and I never see them outside of that context.
[00:21:12]  There's no real accountability.
[00:21:14]  And so I don't see them.
[00:21:16]  If I ever do see them, I'm not supposed to approach them or talk to, you know, and so it's just I go on living my life with no surveillance, no accountability, no watchful eye.
[00:21:27]  And, and then just, you know, I just have it in my calendar that.
[00:21:30]  Pops up, you know, once every couple weeks, and I go into this room with some nice, you know, waterfall sounds in the background, and I sit down with someone who really does not know anything about me except what I choose to tell them.
[00:21:42]  Whereas, you know, when a pastor counsels or another, a fellow Christian, because it's really just discipleship, so a team or an individual of biblical counselors underneath the guidance of the elders in a local church, chances are they're going to know something about the individual and not just what the individual tells them, but they're living in a community.
[00:22:01]  It's the preaching of the word, the counseling of the word, but then they're living in community of the People of the word.
[00:22:06]  And so they're going to see if their marriage is on the rocks.
[00:22:11]  Or they're going to hear from some, you know, it's just that accountability.
[00:22:15]  There's a visibility.
[00:22:16]  And I think people don't like that either.
[00:22:18]  They want to go to church for the preaching of the word and some community and friendships.
[00:22:23]  But when it comes to real problems in their life, because there's often, you know, people instinctively know that those problems, they bear some responsibility for that.
[00:22:32]  So there's a shame attached.
[00:22:33]  So they want to go outside of their community.
[00:22:36]  Of friends to this very private place where they can share only what they want to share and where there's really no consequence, relational consequence.
[00:22:47]  Would you agree with that assessment?
[00:22:48]  Yeah, I think a lot of people believe that.
[00:22:51]  They really want the seclusion of being in a private situation where, in that type of situation, you're no longer accountable.
[00:23:04]  But if I'm in a local church and I'm being counseled by a qualified pastor or someone in that church that's been well trained in scripture and in good doctrine, and I'm being counseled by them, then they can see you on Sundays.
[00:23:20]  They can see you at other times during the week.
[00:23:22]  They can see your spouse.
[00:23:25]  It's immensely helpful for me, even serving as an elder, if I know the woman that I'm counseling and I know her husband.
[00:23:35]  All right.
[00:23:36]  Because, and other people know them.
[00:23:39]  And I have a chance.
[00:23:40]  I'm always upfront with them.
[00:23:41]  Listen, I know so and so is your best friend.
[00:23:44]  I'll say to them, I want to be able to go and talk to your best friend about their perspective on your problem.
[00:23:53]  Now, people get scared of that because they have this false view that they think there is such a thing as a super Christian, that there are people out there that don't have any problems.
[00:24:04]  We're the only people who have problems.
[00:24:06]  That's not true.
[00:24:07]  If the truth were known from pastoral staff down through all the congregations, Everybody struggles with it.
[00:24:13]  There is no super Christians, it doesn't exist.
[00:24:16]  And this is what the body of Christ was intended to do Galatians 6 1.
[00:24:20]  We're supposed to bear the burdens of one another, help one another.
[00:24:25]  First, we have to bear our own burdens, but we have to bear one another's burdens.
[00:24:30]  And that's part of living within the dynamic framework of a church.
[00:24:36]  That's what should be happening, where Christians are counseling one another, they're helping one another.
[00:24:42]  There are no super Christians.
[00:24:44]  It doesn't exist.
[00:24:46]  And that's what I think leads to that isolation type of idea.
[00:24:50]  And that's the world has contributed to that.
[00:24:52]  Again, the professionalization of counseling has done that, it's led to that.
[00:24:58]  And the individualization of the focus of a lot of Christianity today has led to that too.
[00:25:08]  Because a lot of you can see this, especially in the Roman Catholic Church, it's about me going in with the priest into a little private closet.
[00:25:17]  And sharing all of my sins privately and that kind of thing.
[00:25:19]  That's the individualization.
[00:25:21]  When the New Testament is all about the corporate relationships that the believers have, there's a high value set on reconciliation.
[00:25:32]  That's why we don't teach conflict resolution.
[00:25:36]  That's a worldly idea.
[00:25:38]  We teach biblical reconciliation.
[00:25:41]  Resolving conflict is only one small step in the broader process of biblical reconciliation.
[00:25:47]  It's much more comprehensive where that relationship between those people that formerly were in conflict with one another now is fully and completely reconciled and better than it was before.
[00:26:01]  Better than it was before.
[00:26:03]  Totally and fully reconciled where now they're a blessing to each other.
[00:26:08]  There's a deep, abiding friendship, a brotherhood, sisterhood that's going to be there.
[00:26:14]  That's got to be there.
[00:26:15]  That's part of the dynamic body life of the Fellowship of the Church.
[00:26:20]  Yeah, amen.
[00:26:22]  It's interesting that you mentioned the Catholic priest and the confessional booth kind of analogy.
[00:26:27]  With that, do you think, because I think that's another thing that I've noticed in my pastoral ministry when it comes to counseling?
[00:26:35]  I think sometimes individuals say they want counseling, but I think what they're really looking for is confession, a context for them to confess with as little visibility.
[00:26:49]  Accountability and shame attached to that confession.
[00:26:53]  And so I think, you know, it seems as though a lot of people who want counsel, what they really want is they want to unburden themselves.
[00:27:01]  They want to confess their sins to someone where there just won't be a whole lot of consequences, which is very different than I want counsel because counsel says I'm going to confess some things.
[00:27:17]  Confession is going to have to be involved.
[00:27:20]  But it's not just I want to confess my sin, it's I want to change.
[00:27:24]  I actually want to change.
[00:27:25]  I want to be a different person.
[00:27:27]  And that's right.
[00:27:28]  Whereas it seems like a lot of individuals, they're not really interested in change.
[00:27:32]  They're interested in alleviating their conscience momentarily by confessing.
[00:27:39]  And I think confession and confessing and changing are two different things.
[00:27:44]  You have anything you'd like to add to that?
[00:27:47]  Yeah.
[00:27:48]  Sometimes in my, and I give numerous illustrations, we don't have time to go into them here, but over the past 45 years that I've been involved, In pastoral counseling, I'm absolutely convinced 60%, at least 60% of the counseling that I've done of people who are depressed, the real issue was guilt.
[00:28:07]  All right, the real issue.
[00:28:09]  And now that's not true of everybody that's depressed, but the vast majority of them.
[00:28:14]  Once you start dealing with guilt issues and handling guilt properly from a biblical perspective, then it's amazing how the depression or the moodiness or the sorrow or sadness.
[00:28:30]  Begins to dissipate once their conscience is clear, helping them to deal with that.
[00:28:38]  Now, and we live in a world where guilt today is the enemy.
[00:28:43]  It's like a toxic.
[00:28:46]  They treat guilt as if it's the enemy.
[00:28:49]  In the Bible, guilt's not our enemy, guilt's our friend.
[00:28:53]  If you have a red light come on the dashboard of your car, you don't pick up a hammer and smash that red light, you don't do that.
[00:29:02]  You pull the car over, you open the hood and see what's going on.
[00:29:05]  That's what the world does with guilt.
[00:29:07]  They smash the red light, they try to get rid of the guilt.
[00:29:13]  And a lot of people that are on SSRIs, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or antidepressants, or anti anxiety medications, a lot of them have unresolved guilt issues that go way back in their life.
[00:29:28]  Nobody's ever helped them to deal with those particular issues.
[00:29:31]  It's something that has gone on for years and years, and they anesthetize themselves.
[00:29:36]  With antidepressants.
[00:29:39]  When you're not really getting at the core issue, you're covering over the real issue with an anesthesia.
[00:29:46]  It's like giving an anesthetic to somebody who's sitting on a cat tack.
[00:29:54]  You know, they feel better for a while, but once that anesthetic wears off, then guess what?
[00:29:58]  The tack comes back.
[00:29:59]  Once the antidepressants wear off, guess what?
[00:30:01]  The guilt comes back.
[00:30:03]  And all of a sudden it's still there.
[00:30:06]  And I could just cite.
[00:30:08]  Last 45 years, just example after example of that in counseling where that's the case.
[00:30:13]  So, we live in a world treats guilt like it's toxic, like it's horrible.
[00:30:18]  It's not, it's a friend.
[00:30:20]  It's like the smoke alarm that goes off in your house.
[00:30:23]  You don't destroy the alarm when it goes off.
[00:30:25]  You go find out what the problem is.
[00:30:28]  Why is this going on in my life?
[00:30:31]  And the Bible helps you to find that and dig that out.
[00:30:35]  Yep, it's the grace of shame.
[00:30:36]  And I completely agree with you.
[00:30:39]  I've been fond of, you know, in my preaching, I always tell people that the gospel doesn't create a guilt immunity.
[00:30:47]  The gospel, for those who believe it and are born again by grace alone, through faith alone, and Christ alone, I would say that in being a Christian, I experience guilt exponentially more than I ever did as an unbeliever.
[00:31:02]  Guilt has actually increased because I have so much more of a sensitivity to sin.
[00:31:09]  And anything that offends the Lord.
[00:31:10]  And so the gospel doesn't create people who are immune to guilt or a guilt free zone, shame free zone, safe zone with trigger warnings and all that.
[00:31:19]  The gospel doesn't do that.
[00:31:21]  If anything, it intensifies guilt because of the conviction of the Holy Spirit and giving us eyes to see our sin for what it is in light of the holiness of God.
[00:31:30]  But the gospel then provides a place where we can run with our guilt that ultimately is able to deal with that, not cover.
[00:31:40]  Merely covered.
[00:31:40]  We are covered in the robes of righteousness of Christ through faith, but ultimately the stain is removed, is the double imputation of it.
[00:31:48]  So it's not just that our sinful bodies are covered with Christ's robes of righteousness, but no, our sin was imputed to him.
[00:31:57]  He who knew no sin became sin on our behalf, and his righteousness imputed to us.
[00:32:02]  So it's that the great exchange, the double imputation, so that the stain is actually not merely covered, not just rubbed into the carpet, you know, so you can't see it quite as clearly, but it's actually.
[00:32:13]  Extracted, it's removed.
[00:32:15]  And then it's not just bringing us back to a state of innocence, but as you said, like with reconciliation, it's actually taking us to a place we've never even been before because it's not just removing guilt, but it's imputing righteousness.
[00:32:29]  So, in the same instance, the same experience, the same memory that used to scream our guilt now screams the forgiveness of the Lord Jesus and the righteousness that we have in Him.
[00:32:39]  Right.
[00:32:40]  And so, but people, you know, you said earlier, you know, that, you know, we think that guilt is our enemy, but guilt is our friend.
[00:32:46]  And you think of the world.
[00:32:48]  And I can't help but think that the reason why those who are not, maybe they are Christians, but they're perhaps immature in the faith or whatever it is, or they're rebelling in a particular instance, but for the world certainly, and then for some Christians who are not walking in the truth, keeping step in the truth of the gospel, guilt looks like an enemy.
[00:33:10]  We would call it an enemy.
[00:33:12]  But for the Christian who is walking in maturity, they're going to say, Guilt is my friend.
[00:33:17]  And I think the reason why is because truth is.
[00:33:20]  Is our friend.
[00:33:21]  And I think that's kind of the key thing.
[00:33:23]  And the world would claim that too.
[00:33:24]  The world would say, We love truth.
[00:33:26]  Speak your truth.
[00:33:27]  We're all about the truth.
[00:33:27]  We're just seeking truth.
[00:33:28]  The truth of our nation and when it was founded, the 1619 Project.
[00:33:32]  At every level, it's always truth, truth, truth.
[00:33:34]  So the world doesn't say we hate truth.
[00:33:36]  Nobody's that obvious and just come out and admit that they hate truth.
[00:33:40]  Everyone claims, everyone's making a truth claim, and everyone claims to be a friend of the truth.
[00:33:45]  And so the reason why the world views guilt as an enemy is because guilt is not in line with their view of the truth.
[00:33:53]  Because, in their view of the truth, they're not guilty.
[00:33:56]  But for the Christian, the reason why we're a friend of guilt is because guilt is true, because we recognize, yeah, that's true.
[00:34:03]  I am guilty.
[00:34:05]  I am guilty.
[00:34:06]  And we never call the truth an enemy.
[00:34:08]  We never run from the truth.
[00:34:11]  But the world, the reason they're running from guilt is because they're running from the truth.

=== Guilt As A Friend Of Truth (08:11) ===

[00:34:17]  Would you agree with that?
[00:34:17]  Anything you'd like to add to that?
[00:34:19]  Yeah.
[00:34:19]  Well, and a biblical, good biblical definition for guilt is culpability or liability.
[00:34:26]  The truth.
[00:34:27]  That's what it is.
[00:34:30]  And we have an absolute standard where the world talks about truth, but their truth is constantly changing.
[00:34:35]  And their truth is very, very subjective from individual to individual.
[00:34:38]  That's a truth for me.
[00:34:40]  Maybe it's not a truth for you.
[00:34:41]  But for us, there's a truth independent of us.
[00:34:44]  There's an absolute truth that we follow, we're committed to.
[00:34:49]  Once you're committed to that absolute truth, then you have something beyond yourself that you can point to that is a reliable guide because it's rooted in the very character of who God is.
[00:35:00]  That's so key.
[00:35:02]  And by the way, that's the reason why we're so committed to the sufficiency of Scripture, because God.
[00:35:08]  It's rooted in the very character of God.
[00:35:10]  God does not do things incompletely.
[00:35:13]  All right.
[00:35:14]  For example, what did God, what did Christians do?
[00:35:18]  I should ask.
[00:35:19]  What did Christians do for almost 1800 years until a Jewish man by then that was a God hater by the name of Sigmund Freud came along and developed what we understand to be modern psychology today?
[00:35:37]  You know, did somehow God.
[00:35:40]  Leave out truth for all of those Christians for almost 2,000 years until Freud came along, and now we've got answers to the deeper issues of life?
[00:35:50]  I don't think so.
[00:35:51]  I don't think that's the very character of what we know God to be, he never does things incompletely.
[00:35:59]  There is this comprehensiveness to what God does, and when he does it, he does it completely, and it is sufficient for us in the time in which we live.
[00:36:10]  That's it.
[00:36:11]  So key.
[00:36:12]  That's really good.
[00:36:13]  All right.
[00:36:13]  So let me play the devil's advocate here and tee you up.
[00:36:17]  I'll give you a tee ball here for you to knock out of the park.
[00:36:20]  All right.
[00:36:21]  So let's say you're my pastor, Pastor Street.
[00:36:25]  So I don't have a biblical counselor, but I've been seeing this great Christian counselor.
[00:36:30]  Yeah.
[00:36:31]  What would you say?
[00:36:32]  Well, I would talk with them a little bit about what their problem is at this particular point.
[00:36:38]  And I would say to them that.
[00:36:41]  Anytime you attempt, usually a Christian counselor is a person who tries to take some tenets from secular psychology and blend them or integrate them together with what the Bible has to say.
[00:36:55]  Anytime you do that, then the Bible gets watered down.
[00:36:58]  Every time that happens, the Bible gets watered down.
[00:37:00]  You're not getting pure doctrine with it.
[00:37:02]  You know, I know that sometimes it's referred to as spoiling the Egyptians or that kind of thing, which is a cute way to refer to it.
[00:37:10]  But it's interesting that the first Quote unquote, and I'm speaking historically, Christians to advocate integrationism was around the 1880s with Roman Catholicism.
[00:37:25]  Roman Catholic priests were the ones who did it.
[00:37:27]  Why?
[00:37:27]  Especially in the Western world, because Roman Catholicism, wherever it's gone, has tried to, in a sense, blend in with whatever the cultural values were.
[00:37:38]  You can go all around the world, to Africa, to Brazil, you know, and you can see all the different shades of Roman Catholicism.
[00:37:45]  Because they blended in with it.
[00:37:47]  Well, for the Western world, science was really big, psychology was really big.
[00:37:51]  And so Roman Catholicism developed a way by which they could try to blend contemporary psychology and what psychology had discovered with the Bible.
[00:38:04]  And they were the very first to call it integrationism.
[00:38:10]  Well, later on, Christians picked up on that.
[00:38:14]  And there's a historic reason why that happened.
[00:38:18]  And it's primarily because from the 1850s to the 1950s, 1960s, conservative evangelical churches were primarily evangelistic centers.
[00:38:30]  They were revival centers.
[00:38:32]  Part of this was the moody, sankey revivalism in the 1800s that turned churches from being genuine New Testament churches to being revival centers.
[00:38:43]  So you heard John 3 16 from the pulpit every Sunday, but you didn't hear anything deeper or more serious than that.
[00:38:53]  Yeah, exactly.
[00:38:54]  You didn't hear that at all.
[00:38:56]  It's John 3 16 from every passage in the Bible.
[00:39:00]  And so.
[00:39:01]  But people during that time still had problems.
[00:39:03]  They had problems in their marriage, they had problems with depression, they had problems with severe anxiety and fears.
[00:39:09]  So they had nowhere to turn.
[00:39:10]  They weren't getting into church.
[00:39:12]  So modern evangelical Christianity turned towards psychology and integration psychology.
[00:39:25]  They've actually borrowed from the Roman Catholic Church.
[00:39:29]  That can be easily traced, by the way, that integrational idea.
[00:39:35]  And tried to blend these things together.
[00:39:38]  Well, there are so many things that are at odds.
[00:39:41]  I mean, so directly at odds.
[00:39:44]  Psychology doesn't believe in God.
[00:39:45]  We believe in God.
[00:39:48]  Psychology doesn't believe that there's absolute truth.
[00:39:50]  We believe that there's absolute truth.
[00:39:52]  Psychology doesn't believe in the power of the Holy Spirit.
[00:39:55]  We believe in the power of the Holy Spirit.
[00:40:00]  Psychology trusts in and aims at trying to help man be a better man.
[00:40:09]  We aim at and trust in the Word of God changing people in order for them to bring greater glory and honor to the Lord Jesus Christ and to their God.
[00:40:22]  Those are diametrically opposed epistemologies.
[00:40:27]  They're going in opposite directions.
[00:40:30]  And so to pretend that you can blend that atheism with a serious theism, Is ridiculous.
[00:40:42]  It's absolutely ridiculous.
[00:40:44]  So, anybody that's going to a Christian counselor is that kind of person who that counselor is trying to blend those kind of things.
[00:40:55]  And it's interesting.
[00:40:56]  A lot of integrationism started with in Arminian and semi Pelagian churches.
[00:41:03]  That's where it started.
[00:41:04]  A lot of Nazarene churches, those kind of things.
[00:41:07]  And you think about it semi Pelagianism and Arminianism and Psychology has a lot in common because both are very man centered, right?
[00:41:16]  All right, that's it.
[00:41:18]  And then only later on in the more reformed faith did others in the reformed faith go the psychology route, which I believe is the opposite of their reformed faith.
[00:41:31]  Yeah, it's going the opposite way.
[00:41:35]  They're less reformed when they do that.
[00:41:38]  Why do I say that?
[00:41:38]  Because again, they're going back to.
[00:41:44]  In a sense, Roman Catholicism, when they do that kind of thing, because it's trusting in man, it's making man the center of the universe, man the object of everything, rather than having Christ and God Himself being the center of counseling and bringing everything under the understanding of who God is and who Christ is.
[00:42:05]  So there is a radical, radical difference.
[00:42:09]  So they're not consistently reformed when they buy into that integrationism, who they got from.
[00:42:18]  Arminian and semi Pelagian churches who got that from Roman Catholicism.
[00:42:25]  And you can see how this can be easily historically traced.

=== The Need For Biblical Theology (05:05) ===

[00:42:28]  I teach an entire class, an entire semester on theology and the psychologies.
[00:42:39]  And basically, what it is, it's a history of how people have traditionally dealt with soul problems from the secular mind into the Christian mind and the history of the church and how the church has done that.
[00:42:54]  So, this can be easily traced.
[00:42:58]  So, when you're going to a Christian counselor, I think that people like that are very.
[00:43:02]  Well intentioned.
[00:43:03]  I don't take away from that Christian counselor's motivation.
[00:43:06]  I think they want to help people.
[00:43:08]  That's wonderful.
[00:43:09]  They may even have high degrees, master's degrees, PhD degrees in psychology, but that disqualifies them from a biblical standpoint to give counsel.
[00:43:21]  They should have advanced degrees in studying the Word of God, using good hermeneutics to study the Word of God, studying good doctrine.
[00:43:30]  Then they're qualified in order to.
[00:43:33]  Be able to give counsel.
[00:43:35]  I remember one prominent Christian psychologist who had, for years and years and years, had a very prominent nationwide radio program.
[00:43:43]  On a regular basis, I'd be driving in the car listening to his program, and he'd be saying on there, You know, I'm not a theologian, but I'd almost scream at my radio, Then you shouldn't be giving out counsel.
[00:43:56]  All right?
[00:43:57]  I'm not a theologian, he'd say.
[00:43:58]  Wait a minute.
[00:43:59]  Well, then why are you giving out counsel?
[00:44:01]  You should be a theologian if you're giving out counsel.
[00:44:05]  You're giving out counsel to the Word of God.
[00:44:06]  That's the most loving thing you can do, is give people the truth of the Word of God.
[00:44:13]  That's so key.
[00:44:15]  That's so helpful, Dr. Street, because I think that's it's funny, like we've brought it kind of all the way back from the beginning of our conversations, but that's the very reason why I think a lot of people don't want to go to their pastor because they're a theologian and they don't see that having anything to do with what they perceive that they need.
[00:44:34]  I need counsel.
[00:44:35]  You're a preacher.
[00:44:37]  You're a theologian.
[00:44:38]  You know, like if I need to figure out the Trinity, I'll come to you, you know, but I need counsel for my depression.
[00:44:45]  And they don't see at all how these two things relate.
[00:44:48]  And, but they do.
[00:44:51]  And it's really a disappointment that I think, in my experience, there are some pastors that, well, I mean, as you know, there are good churches and there are bad churches.
[00:45:00]  There are good pastors and there are bad churches.
[00:45:01]  But speaking to the good churches with good pastors, I think there are a lot of, Faithful pastors who know their Bibles well and they know men well because they know their Bible well and what the Bible says about man and the sin that is common to man.
[00:45:17]  They know these things and they would love, I mean, they're just sitting there waiting to counsel their sheep.
[00:45:25]  They preach to them faithfully on the Lord's day, but there are so many more sheep that they wish would come to them and they won't.
[00:45:36]  And then some of those pastors, you know, it gets so severe where they have to go to the sheep.
[00:45:40]  You know, and hey, I'm sorry, I've got to intervene here.
[00:45:43]  And sometimes the sheep listens, and sometimes the sheep bites and gets upset and leaves the fold.
[00:45:48]  And it's tragic.
[00:45:50]  But I think one of the big hangups is just that people, they've just put this sharp divide between the pulpit and counseling, theology and counseling, you know, all these things that, yeah, it's just that I think is from the pit of hell.
[00:46:07]  I think it's a lie.
[00:46:08]  And it's deceived a lot.
[00:46:10]  So let me end with this last question because I think some of our viewers will probably.
[00:46:13]  Be wondering, what about medicine?
[00:46:17]  When are there any cases for medicine?
[00:46:20]  And let me just throw out kind of an example.
[00:46:24]  Let's say, you know, you're a woman and your husband has severe, he's ex military, he has severe, or he's been diagnosed with severe PTSD.
[00:46:37]  And you guys have been to psychologists and psychiatrists, these kinds of things, and they have all said the same thing severe PTSD, and he must have this kind of medication.
[00:46:48]  And, you know, you're listening to, you know, this woman, hypothetical woman's listening to this episode and saying, yeah, I believe everything that you're saying, Dr. Street.
[00:46:57]  I want my husband to sit down with the pastor.
[00:46:59]  And yes, I want the word of God to come to bear on his life.
[00:47:02]  And I know there are soul issues.
[00:47:04]  There are spiritual issues at play.
[00:47:07]  And I know that that's even the majority of it.
[00:47:08]  But I think there might be some sense in which, physiologically, he's fried.
[00:47:16]  He needs.
[00:47:18]  So are there cases like that?
[00:47:19]  How does the biblical counselor handle the physical side of the person?
[00:47:25]  Yeah.
[00:47:26]  There's another area where I think people have a huge misconception about biblical counseling.
[00:47:30]  They think all biblical counseling is against medicine.
[00:47:32]  And we're not at all.

=== Addressing Spiritual And Physical Needs (10:11) ===

[00:47:34]  In fact, biblical counseling is very committed to hard science.
[00:47:38]  Now, not soft science.
[00:47:40]  Why do I make a distinction between the two?
[00:47:42]  Because hard science is based upon causation, where there's direct cause and effect.
[00:47:48]  Soft science is based upon covariation, which is causes that seem to be related to effects.
[00:47:54]  Psychology is very much soft science.
[00:47:57]  And we're interested in hard science.
[00:48:00]  If there are medicines that are really addressing real human problems, That are physiological problems, biological problems.
[00:48:07]  We're all committed to using those particular medicines as part of the general grace of God in our lives.
[00:48:15]  We're grateful for that.
[00:48:17]  And in fact, even some of the psychotropic medications that are used today, I think, are part of the grace of God too, because there are so many people out there in the world.
[00:48:30]  The majority of the people in the world are never going to come to Christ.
[00:48:32]  We know that.
[00:48:33]  Jesus told us that.
[00:48:35]  The way to destruction is very broad.
[00:48:37]  The way to glory is a very narrow path.
[00:48:40]  Very narrow group of people will ever be really saved compared to the entire corporate population of the world, past, present, and future.
[00:48:52]  Very few will be saved.
[00:48:54]  But out of all those people, there are going to be lots of people who are very mentally disturbed, suffering.
[00:49:05]  Forms of insanity.
[00:49:06]  And the Bible uses insanity.
[00:49:08]  In fact, the Old Testament Hebrew word for insanity has the concept of being intensely self centered, incredibly self centered, self focused is the idea.
[00:49:19]  Ecclesiastes chapter 9 and verse 9, there talks about the heart of evil and man's heart is full of evil and insanity.
[00:49:32]  Every person on the planet has the capacity in their sinfulness to be totally insane.
[00:49:38]  We all have the capacity to be able to do that because of the evil and the sinfulness that are part of our heart.
[00:49:44]  So, most people are not going to become Christians.
[00:49:46]  They're not going to follow the word of God.
[00:49:47]  So, what are we going to do with those people who want to hurt themselves or hurt other people?
[00:49:51]  Well, put them on drugs.
[00:49:53]  I mean, that's part of the grace of God.
[00:49:55]  Put them on drugs.
[00:49:56]  There's not enough padded cells in this world to put these people.
[00:49:59]  So, give them chemical handcuffs, right?
[00:50:03]  That's part of the grace of God that needs to be given.
[00:50:07]  Who is committed to being God's kind of woman, God's kind of man, to pleasing him, bringing glory to him, committed to the word of God with their whole heart?
[00:50:16]  They love Jesus Christ.
[00:50:18]  Then, if there are no biological reasons, no physiological reasons to take that medication, then let's work on this from a biblical perspective.
[00:50:29]  All right?
[00:50:29]  Let's work on this.
[00:50:31]  Now, I'm not a medical doctor, even though I've done lots of reading and lots of About medicine and drugs.
[00:50:38]  I'm not a medical doctor.
[00:50:40]  So I don't, as a counselor, I don't put anybody on any good medication.
[00:50:44]  I don't take anybody off medication.
[00:50:46]  It's ethically improper for me to do that.
[00:50:49]  And I wouldn't do that.
[00:50:50]  When somebody comes to me and says, I'm on some kind of antidepressant or anti anxiety med, I say, okay, what dosage are you on?
[00:50:59]  What kind of medicine are you on?
[00:51:00]  Because I want to look up the side effects of that, of some of that.
[00:51:04]  And I said, okay, well, let's try working with your problems from a biblical perspective.
[00:51:07]  I don't tell them to go off their medication.
[00:51:09]  They start working on their problem from a biblical perspective.
[00:51:11]  They are the ones who eventually come back to me and say, You know what?
[00:51:14]  I'm not sure I need this medication.
[00:51:15]  Then I'll say to them, Listen, don't go off of it cold turkey because you could crash.
[00:51:20]  Go back to your doctor, ask to be put on a decreasing dosage.
[00:51:24]  Let him know that you're receiving talk therapy, which is the world's terminology for biblical counseling, to replace that.
[00:51:31]  And every single time, Joel, that that's happened, I've been able to successfully guide that person off of their medication.
[00:51:41]  To the point that they don't need it anymore, and they're relaying upon the word of God.
[00:51:45]  It takes a while for some people, longer for others, to be able to learn to trust it.
[00:51:51]  It's a trust thing.
[00:51:54]  And there is growing evidence, by the way, in two areas, and I'm talking about hard science now.
[00:52:00]  There's growing evidence that says that most antidepressants basically work only because of the placebo effect, because the person thinks it's going to work.
[00:52:11]  Okay.
[00:52:12]  But there's growing evidence for that.
[00:52:14]  The second thing is that a lot of people now that are being diagnosed with schizophrenia are people who have been on antidepressants or anti anxieties, which are the stronger medications for several years.
[00:52:27]  Now they're manifesting schizophrenic tendencies.
[00:52:30]  That's a direct result.
[00:52:32]  I'm not saying this, secular scientists are saying this, direct result of being on these antidepressants for long term type of thing.
[00:52:39]  Now they're manifesting even more severe problems long term.
[00:52:43]  Schizophrenic things.
[00:52:45]  So I'm saying to the believer, and now you got to remember that all counseling is pre counseling until that person comes to Christ.
[00:52:52]  You can't counsel an unbeliever with the word of God.
[00:52:56]  The only thing the Bible says is you can evangelize them.
[00:52:59]  Because at best, the word of God is a set of suggestions to an unbeliever, at best.
[00:53:04]  And even if you get them to follow the word of God and they're still an unbeliever, what have you done?
[00:53:09]  You've created a really good Pharisee, right?
[00:53:12]  They're following the truth of the word of God, but not for the right motives, not for the right desires, not because they love Christ.
[00:53:18]  You've created a way to live.
[00:53:19]  You will have a better life because there are practical benefits to obedience.
[00:53:24]  I mean, God knows He's saying this is the way you should live.
[00:53:26]  Life tends to go better with you.
[00:53:28]  So, like guys like Ben Shapiro, who are an incredible example of God's common grace, he probably has a better marriage and better kids and a better life than the God hating atheist who's just trying to stick it to the heavenly man.
[00:53:41]  But at the end of the day, he's heaping up judgment for himself in eternity because we say borrowing, that's a charitable word, but really it's theft.
[00:53:51]  You're stealing God's rules for life without paying him the homage, the honor, the worship that he deserves.
[00:53:59]  Back to you, Beth.
[00:54:00]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:54:02]  And the more that that secular person follows the truth of the word of God, the further they are removed from the gospel because they're more convinced of their self righteousness because they're leading a much better life.
[00:54:14]  And self righteousness becomes their demon in this particular case.
[00:54:19]  So I was going to ask you real quick with schizophrenia, do you think there's, you said demon.
[00:54:23]  So I just, real quick, because it was on my mind, do you think that there is, in some cases, yeah, it could be the side effects of taking medicine, antidepressants, anti anxiety pills for a long time.
[00:54:33]  But do you think some of these issues might just be some good old fashioned demonic oppression?
[00:54:39]  If you got an unbeliever, yes.
[00:54:41]  If you don't have an unbeliever, I mean, if you have a believer, that's not true because a believer cannot be demonically possessed.
[00:54:49]  But now, can a believer have symptoms of schizophrenia?
[00:54:53]  Yes, I believe it can for a period of time.
[00:54:56]  That can actually happen for a believer.
[00:54:57]  That's not demonic in this particular case, but it has to do with the way that they're functioning, their view and perception of life.
[00:55:05]  And you have to really get in and begin to address that perception of life.
[00:55:09]  I have whole long, lengthy lectures on dealing with schizophrenia from a biblical perspective.
[00:55:14]  Schizophrenia, by the way, is just a nice Greek term.
[00:55:17]  It was invented in 1906 by a German psychologistslash doctor who put two Greek words together.
[00:55:28]  It just means split mind, all right?
[00:55:30]  It means split mind.
[00:55:32]  Well, the Bible talks about being double minded.
[00:55:35]  All right.
[00:55:35]  The Bible talks about that, that kind of thing.
[00:55:38]  And so, can people be divided in their views of reality and switch serially from one view of reality to another?
[00:55:48]  Yes, people can do that.
[00:55:49]  That's not a disease of schizophrenia, that is a problem in their thought processes and what they really want in life.
[00:55:57]  And they can believe both realities are genuinely true.
[00:56:00]  Right.
[00:56:01]  So, those kind of things.
[00:56:03]  I would imagine a lot of that would come from.
[00:56:06]  Addicts, addiction, right?
[00:56:08]  You know, because there are people like, God bless their heart, you know.
[00:56:11]  I mean, it's sad, but they like maybe it's a single mother who has a kid who genuinely, who's, let's say they're not a Christian, but just by God's common grace, I mean, has a powerful affection for their child and a powerful affection for cocaine.
[00:56:28]  And you know what I mean?
[00:56:29]  They're just, they're divided.
[00:56:31]  And their heart is broken.
[00:56:33]  They're in tears.
[00:56:34]  They're a wreck.
[00:56:35]  Yeah.
[00:56:36]  Right.
[00:56:36]  Well, back to your question in terms of medicine.
[00:56:39]  In Proverbs chapter 31, it talks about the fact that give strong drink to him who's perishing and wine to him whose life is bitter.
[00:56:48]  I think alcohol is a good paradigm for any kind of drug that we use.
[00:56:53]  It's the paradigm in the Bible for any drug that we use.
[00:56:56]  Is there a proper use of this as a pain reliever, especially to those that are dying or perishing?
[00:57:02]  Absolutely, there is.
[00:57:04]  If there's going to be a psychotropic drug that's going to address a pain, You know, now I think a differentiation needs to be made between what is sometimes referred to as emotional pain and real, genuine physical bodily pain.
[00:57:19]  That needs to be distinguished.
[00:57:23]  But then Proverbs 31 7 says, Let him drink and forget his poverty and remember his trouble no more in this particular case.
[00:57:30]  So, is there a place for those kind of things if there is severe difficulty or if a person is close to dying?
[00:57:42]  Can that be given to them?

=== Distinguishing Medical From Heart Issues (02:59) ===

[00:57:45]  Yes, absolutely.
[00:57:47]  We're not opposed to those kind of things.
[00:57:49]  But for the Christian who's committed to what the Word of God wants to do, they've had a good medical checkup, there's nothing physiologically that's wrong going wrong in their body to the best of our knowledge.
[00:58:02]  Then let's work on this from a biblical perspective and really dig into heart issues here.
[00:58:09]  And let's see how God can work and turn this thing around.
[00:58:13]  That was fantastic.
[00:58:14]  That was really, really helpful, Dr. Street.
[00:58:17]  You know, when you were saying, you know, we follow the science, you didn't say that, but you know, the hard science and not the soft science, I kept thinking.
[00:58:22]  Every time you said soft science, I thought Dr. Fauci.
[00:58:25]  I just had to say it on the episode Dr. Fauci, that's a soft science kind of guy, man.
[00:58:30]  That's not hard science.
[00:58:31]  But all right, so let's go ahead and conclude our episode.
[00:58:34]  Is there any final thoughts you want to leave us with?
[00:58:37]  No, I think, well, the final thing is 2 Peter 1 3 says, We have everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of Him.
[00:58:45]  That's such a key thing.
[00:58:47]  And now, either that is true or the whole Bible is false.
[00:58:53]  And what are we doing playing Christianity?
[00:58:55]  All right.
[00:58:56]  Did God give us everything we need for life and godliness?
[00:59:00]  Yes.
[00:59:01]  And by the way, the whole focus of 2 Peter chapter 1 is the Word of God.
[00:59:06]  I mean, he concludes the whole chapter there at that particular point where he's dealing with what is the Word of God?
[00:59:15]  Well, let me read it to you.
[00:59:20]  So he says, but know this first of all that no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one's own interpretation.
[00:59:27]  For no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.
[00:59:33]  So the whole book of 2 Peter was written to warn about the coming of false teachers into the church.
[00:59:41]  And I think part of that false teaching is really psychology.
[00:59:45]  Psychology has come in the back door of the church.
[00:59:48]  While the church in the 1900s were fighting attacks on doctrine, attacks on the inerrancy and the inspiration of the Word of God, And the conservative church won all of those.
[01:00:00]  While all that was going on, psychology comes in the back door and undermines the faith of so many people, destroys the faith of so many people, where they really believe that the real answers to real problems is out there in the world.
[01:00:13]  It's not in the scriptures.
[01:00:16]  That's as sad as can be.
[01:00:17]  So that's a frightening, but I think very accurate assessment.
[01:00:21]  That was helpful.
[01:00:23]  Yeah.
[01:00:23]  Well, exactly.
[01:00:24]  That was very, very helpful.
[01:00:26]  Dr. Street, thank you so much for coming on the show.
[01:00:28]  I really appreciate it.
[01:00:29]  It's been my pleasure, and thanks for.
[01:00:32]  For your showing what you do and keep up the great work with the gospel there and in your church as well.
[01:00:39]  Yes, sir.
[01:00:40]  Thanks so much.
[01:00:40]  I appreciate it.
[01:00:41]  That concludes our episode.
[01:00:42]  Thanks for tuning in.

=== Gratitude And Gospel Invitation (00:26) ===

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