by Janet Fife

Have you ever been told by a Christian leader that all your problems –
depression, mental illness, addiction – were due to your own sin? Have you
ever told a pastor of your abusive childhood or marriage, only to be told you
need to repent? Have you gone to a vicar for counselling, only to have a
Bible passage read to you, and informed that the solution is for you to put
those verses into practice in your own life? If so, chances are your leader has
been influenced by Jay E. Adams and what he termed nouthetic counselling
(from the Greek noutheteo, to admonish).

Adams (30 January, 1929 – 14 November 2020) was an American Reformed
theologian and pastor. His PhD was in effective communication and
preaching and he taught homiletics (the study of preaching) part-time at the
reputable conservative Westminster Theological Seminary. Eventually,
however, he was asked to teach pastoral counselling – although he seems to
have had little or no background in psychology or psychiatry. Adams was a
biblical theologian, so he developed his own method of counselling based on
expounding the Bible: if your only tool is a hammer, everything looks like a
nail. The prophet Jeremiah wrote, ‘Is not my word like fire, says the Lord, and
like a hammer that breaks a rock in pieces?’ (Jer .23:29). When the Bible is
used as a hammer on the vulnerable, the results can be further damage.
Adams was convinced that secular psychology and psychiatry undermined
Christianity. In 1970 Adams’ book Competent to Counsel was published, in
which he propounded a counselling method based on confrontation and
rebuke employing Bible passages. The book became enduringly popular and
has been used in theological training; generations of clergy and church
leaders have based their pastoral practice on it. Dozens of other books
followed, but Competent to Counsel is the one for which Adams is best
known. It might be thought that a book published in 1970 would be no
longer relevant, but Adams also founded the National Association of
Nouthetic Counselors (now the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors),
which still trains pastors in Adams’ techniques. It is a global operation,
based on the convictions that ‘God’s Word is sufficient, and that all believers
can be equipped to counsel one another’ (https://biblicalcounseling.com/).
There are a further three organisations based on the same theories and
practice. They offer certification in biblical counselling, but these counsellors
need not have any clinical training or awareness at all. They are not licensed
or certified to offer any kind of psychotherapy, and are not qualified to
diagnose or treat mental illness or trauma.

Adams questioned the very concept of mental illness; alcoholism,
depression, neurosis, psychosis, and homosexuality were all classed as sin.
The people he met in psychiatric hospitals ‘were there because of their
unforgiven and unaltered sinful behavior’. For him the purpose of counselling
was not to help the counsellee attain self-realisation, but to change their
personality. This was achieved by confronting the person with their sin: ‘the
more directive I became…the more people were helped. Spelling out and
getting commitments to biblical patterns of behavior after an
acknowledgement of and repentance for sin seemed to bring relief and
results.’

Larry Crabb, another proponent of ‘biblical counselling’, wrote in the
foreword to a book for sexual abuse survivors that a biblical approach to
counselling
‘must insist that our sinfulness, not how we’ve been sinned against,
is our biggest problem; that forgiveness, not wholeness, is our
greatest need; that repentance, not insight, is the dynamic in all real
change.’

As a sexual abuse survivor I’ve been on the receiving end of this approach
and it definitely did not bring either relief or results. In fact, it increased my
sense of unworthiness and shame and of my distance from God and other
people. Worse, it left me vulnerable to exploitation and abuse from others,
since it was hard to believe I deserved any better.

Rosemary Green, wife of the late Anglican evangelist Michael Green, was a
proponent of what she called ‘prayer counselling’ – nouthetic counselling
combined with ‘inner healing’ and deliverance ministry. In her 1991 book
God’s Catalyst Green describes her technique:
‘It is sometimes good to ask [the client] whether he knows any part
of Scripture he thinks is relevant. More often you will choose it, find
it while he is still talking, and pass the Bible to him…Then ask him
to read it aloud…One day [a client] read aloud some verses I
suggested from Hebrews chapter 12, then promptly slammed the
Bible shut. I asked her to open it again. She refused. I told her that
if she was not willing to see what God might be wanting to say to
her, there was nothing I could do to help her. I then left the room,
telling her she could find me in the kitchen if she wanted.’
The Greens spent years teaching this technique to ordinands and clergy in
the UK and Canada.

What exactly is wrong with this counselling approach?
Firstly, it assumes that the same answer will solve all human problems:
repent of your sin. This is like an A&E doctor treating every patient, no matter
what their injury or illness, by telling them their diet is to blame and ordering
them to change it, without offering further treatment. Or a police detective
telling every crime victim their driving is at fault. Most of us could improve
our diet and most have committed a traffic violation at some time, but that is
not necessarily at the root of our present dilemma. Many charismatic
practitioners, such as Green, will also assume that if the client doesn’t
respond ‘well’, in the counsellor’s terms, they must need deliverance
ministry. This shows a remarkable ignorance of psychological processes,
and is potentially dangerous in the case of people who are traumatised or
mentally unstable.

Second, biblical counselling is wrong because it fails pay attention to the
person who is seeking help. A pastor who has made up his/her mind at the
outset that the root problem must be sin isn’t listening. A counsellor who
riffles through the Bible while their client is still speaking isn’t listening.
Worse, they are making it very clear they aren’t listening. And it is the
listening itself which is healing. When we engage in deep listening to another
person we are making space for them – and that space is where God works
and they can begin to become whole. It is not for nothing that the name
Jesus can be translated ‘the one who makes space for’. Abuse of all kinds
overrides our personal boundaries and stunts the growth of our psyche.
Growth can only be resumed when those boundaries are restored and
maintained, and the person is free to explore who they really are when they
are not being limited or dictated to. A counsellor who imposes their own
choice of scripture on the counsellee, together with its interpretation and
application, is merely compounding the harm done by previous abuses.
Third, biblical counselling removes agency from the client and locates all the
power with the counsellor. I suspect this is a large part of the appeal for
many practitioners; it makes the pastor feel powerful and avoids the
vulnerability of opening up to someone else’s pain and sitting with them in
the darkness. It’s much easier to riffle through your Bible looking for a
favourite passage of your own, than to set your own agenda aside and really
hear someone else’s dilemma or anguish. Listening may raise questions that
challenge the counsellor’s own faith, and it will certainly entail sharing the
burden of the one who has come to us. But sharing each other’s burdens is
exactly what we are called to do: and in doing it we are not only lightening
the burden for them; we are opening ourselves to having our spiritual
horizons widened.

Those who have had their agency curtailed by upbringing, circumstances,
social frameworks, or the actions of others need to have that agency
restored if they are to experience full liberation in Christ. It is the counsellor’s
task to respect the client’s autonomy and dignity and give them real choices,
not to force on them a point of view, a presupposition of sin, or a given Bible
interpretation.

Fourth, ‘biblical’ counselling is not really biblical at all. It is certainly not the
pattern I see in Jesus’ dealings with those who came to him for help or
healing. The most obvious feature of those encounters is that Jesus did not
have one technique which he applied to everyone: each person was an
individual who received individual treatment. Notably, he seldom spoke to
those in need about their sin – he saved that for the wealthy, the powerful,
and those who were confident of their own righteousness. When the
disciples asked about a blind man, ‘Who sinned, this man or his parents, that
he was born blind?,’ Jesus replied, ‘Neither this man nor his parents sinned;
he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him’ (Jn 9:2-3).
Jesus often healed people without mentioning sin or repentance at all;
sometimes he simply told people their sins were forgiven without either he or
they needing to voice what those sins were. Sometimes he asked people
what they wanted of him, or whether they wanted to be healed. Sometimes
he challenged people in order to bring out their faith. But he did not say, ‘You
must admit to your sins before I will heal you.’ He explicitly refused to
condemn the woman caught in adultery, though the gospels do not record
any expression of penitence on her part. I doubt if he would have been so
popular down at the tavern with tax collectors and sinners, if he had insisted
on pressing all those outcasts to admit to their sins.

When Jesus spoke of his purpose on earth he didn’t speak solely in terms of
forgiveness of sin. His mission statement in Lk 4:16-21 does not refer to sin
at all:
‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.’
Significantly, the Hebrew and Greek words translated ‘salvation’ denote
safety, deliverance from danger, and freedom from restriction. Sin is only one
of the things that restrict us. Fear, shame, despair, self-loathing, poor
decision-making, and the actions of others hamper us; these and
psychological limitations such as the inability to set boundaries or trust one’s
own perceptions are properly a part of the work of salvation. They are
therefore the proper work of all pastors – including those not ordained. It’s no
accident that Christian movements of spiritual renewal have so often resulted
in action to right wrongs and further the well-being of others. From ancient
Rome to early medieval Britain, Christians bought slaves in order to set them
free. In the 18th and 19th centuries Christians in Britain and the USA
campaigned against the slave trade; in the 20th and 21st centuries
Christians have worked for racial integration and ecumenical harmony.
Victorian Christians worked for better conditions in factories, the end of child
labour, and prison reform. The list is endless: as sadly is also the list of those
claiming to follow Christ who have worked against all these endeavours to
set people free.

Many of these people mean well, but they have oversimplified the gospel
message. They believe that the main – or even the only – thing that
Christianity has to offer is the forgiveness of sins, and (often) that forgiveness
can only be obtained after a suitable period in sackcloth and ashes. Jesus
did preach the need for repentance (in Greek metanoia). But metanoia means
a change of direction, not necessarily a guilt trip. For the vulnerable and
downtrodden; for those who believe they are unloveable, worthless, or bad,
metanoia involves an acknowledgment that they are made in the image of
God, and there is much in them that is good. For those who are comfortable,
metanoia means bettering the conditions of those in need, and sitting with
the pain of those in darkness. Repentance means curbing our urge to offer
quick and easy solutions, saying there is peace where there is no peace.