we'll get started. They'll come in. Thank you Father for your blessings to us and even with some glitches in technology that we can actually have people join us remotely. You give us insight tonight as we get through the first few chapters of the book and the necessity of making sure we understand the source of truth and that it is your word in Jesus name. Amen. Okay. Okay, good. I got it fixed. Mike, who's usually here, may be missing for a while, his apartment burned down last weekend. So I sent an email out on that. He has friends and family, so they brought him clothes and from basic necessities, but he is asking us to pray that he can get an apartment, ASAP, anywhere between Fishkill and Hyde Park, one bedroom or even a studio. He's not picky. So has a good attitude about it, but obviously he's got other things on his mind right now than that. So otherwise he's usually up here in front. Okay, so we started in the book. So that's probably gonna be about the typical amount of work you're gonna do. It wasn't that much reading, at least I don't think that that much reading. Maybe you did, I hope not, but it won't take that long to actually get through this. This is not a very thick book. You have this copy. This is just the first edition cover. Pages are the same. All right. Um, so the introduction he begins with, so you all have notes and everybody that is coming on and zoom, you should have notes. Those were sent out by email this afternoon. Yes. Okay. So you all have them. Got it. Okay. Uh, so we're going to run through this and I, his style is to, um, ask questions or give possibilities, and then he'll come to a conclusion later on. I think you noticed that. Larry Crabb, I think, is a fairly humble man. And that fits with that style. But he's working you through with here's the things that people throw out. He's not advocating those things. He's just showing this is where people are. And then he's going to come as, well, this is where I am. And at the end, he's going to say, all he's trying to do is move the conversation forward. And let's think through what is real biblical counseling. And he puts the two things together. So his philosophy and his introduction starts off with something simple. God is creator, right? If the secularists, which most psychologists are, they don't have that. So they're left without a foundation. I think one of his quotes is, I can only be fulfilled in life if I live according to the design or his design for me. And we see that all through scriptures, right? If we're not going to follow God's design for our life, how are we going to even have a sense that our life counts for anything? Because what is it counting for? eternity is bound up in the hearts of man but yet he doesn't understand and so he's trying to fulfill his some sense of meaning in his life from something but what is and we have to go back to what God says and that's his foundational premise he has you know it's doing okay and now my clogging up again something's in bloom and I don't like it so In the preface, he talks about, starting on page seven, maybe I'll start there. What does it mean to claim that a particular approach to counseling is biblical? And he has a discussion going back and forth about many different claims about what that means. What makes one approach biblical or more biblical and another approach unbiblical or less biblical. And it's a good discussion there. then he gets into okay we even in the evangelical christian community a lot has been yielded to psychology well what's what's the connection between the two is there a connection between the two that's the discussion on page eight and so there's a lot of debate he brings up some of the examples of that um those you're old enough you remember this whole idea about self-worth self-love that started being really generated about the 1980s, which was a stupid thing from the beginning. But politicians got into it and it became law in California in the 1980s. You know, that was how we're going to direct our students. We've got to get their self-worth. And I do remember the, you went from, you know, the winning team gets a trophy and there's a second place and a third place to everybody gets a trophy, the same trophy. well you got a participation award so we're going to move away from anything that even has that you accomplished anything of significance because we have to elevate everybody's self-love. That's just made a mess of things but these are psychological things have been thrown into our society and off we go with them. And so he says what are we going to do about that? Unfortunately that came to the Christian community as well. In fact a perversion of the scriptures you shall love your neighbor as yourself got twisted to well until you love yourself you can't love your neighbor. Paul's pretty direct on that. Husbands are to love their wives because Everyone loves themselves. Love your wife as you love yourself. Care for her and convey this charity for her. Show that. That's a given. People love themselves. In fact, it says no one has ever hated himself. Years ago when I was in California as an associate pastor, there was a guy came in a couple of times a week and he would always, he'd be in pain. He said, I hate myself. I hate everything except Jesus. And I said, you're a liar. He didn't like that. But he just kept coming in and saying, you love yourself. Did you feed yourself? Yeah. Well, what did you eat? Well, it was always something good. I mean, you didn't go out and eat grubs this morning? No, no, no. He had something he liked. You love yourself. But there's a psychology thing that came in. So he's trying to say is we got to think through this stuff that is being put upon us. And if you go to a secular college, you're going to have this stuff shoved down your throat. and you're gonna have it shoved down your throat now with governmental programs and all the rest. Where's truth? What are you gonna do about all this stuff? When he gives some examples of that, really this whole self-love idea is reduced into something, self-love is arrogance. It's rebellion. It's the foolishness of thinking you can be sufficient yourself. And we can't. Okay. That's just the way it is. Then he also goes the other extreme. He starts talking about stiff exegetes. Now, did you understand what he was talking about that? What do you mean to stiff exegete? What did you get out of that? The concern, he was trying to be careful. But I know that may not come across necessarily understandable, a stiff exergy. OK. Compassion. Do they know the rules? And can they pass the test? And that's how you're helping them. You're like, they're not cooperating. They're not doing their tests. They're not doing their homework. That's how you end up. Yeah. Has anybody ever run into that? No, I have. I've seen other pastors. It's often a criticism of one's people. So he's trying to say it's good that they're very good with the technical stuff. Here's the passage. We can tell you what the passage means. And they can't apply it to anything. I've run into it with guys. It's like there's a coldness to them. and it comes out in their counseling, it's just like, bang, bang, bang, here's what scripture says, just go do this, and then it's just cold. And that's often what scripture says, because the scriptures tell us in Galatians 6, 1, you who are spiritual are to be involved, seek to restore such a one who's caught in sin, and bear their burden. That means you got to get involved with them. So that's what he's talking about. He's not making any, disparaging Marx about the importance of making sure you get the scriptures right, and being careful with your exegesis. What he's talking about is this coldness that comes when they, it's like the Pharisees. Here you have all this, and they supposedly understand it, and they have no compassion for people. Well, what is the purpose of the scriptures? To declare God, but to declare God to who? To us, the people, right? Otherwise, does he need to do it at all? God's glory is out there, right? The heavens declare the glory of God, but he wants us to be part of that. So he's declared himself to us in the scriptures. So it's said we can know God and walk with God. There's a application to it. And I know Jonathan on his podcast has been talking a bit lately about men who would fit this description. whatever happens it's well we're just going on the next passage that's what we're going to preach on like you need to minister to your people if something's happening in your community you and they're hurting you've got to address that uh you take opportunity with the topic comes out you can address that um it's not just here's my here's all the wisdom i have gained with all my seminary training here's the Greek and the Hebrew and all the nuances. No, that's for you to understand so we can apply it to people. That's what he means by these stiff exeges. And we have to be careful of that. We want to be good scholars. We want to know the scriptures. We want to dig into it. But the purpose of it is so that we will change ourselves. And then we are have the ability to help somebody else understand who God is. And of course, he's going to be getting a lot more than as it goes on. Okay. The purpose of the scriptures is so that we can live for God, to know Him, walk with Him, live for Him. That's application. It's not just an intellectual thing. It's a change our lives, our perspective, everything. Okay. I don't know. Didn't you kind of get that with some of the counseling you got without naming who it was? That's the way I, when you tell me about it, it just seemed like it's just, but what about the person? you know, coming alongside and finding out where you're at and how can I help you overcome? Yes, because we have emotions and all the rest of it, just raw data and that's not helpful. Otherwise we can go down what I said the first beginning of the class, right? Just identify the problem and just go, stop that, you know, and we're good, the counseling ends, okay? You've gotten all the information you need, just stop it. Well, if it was that simple, we wouldn't need any counseling, would we? We just put it on a tape, well, something that records and keeps playing it over, right? Stop it, stop it, stop it. So that's all you need. Well, that's not what he said. That's not biblical counsel. So he discusses that pages 10 and 11. He also points out there's endless questions. He talks about, Differences with what people will subscribe to. Some people will go to, well, whoever's the popular speaker, okay? Highly visible name, this is page 12. Highly visible name leaders, okay? Art and vocal disciples, special conferences. They will come, approved lists of authors and speakers, a jargon that marks the user as he's initiated, he's got the right words, he knows the slang, Well, that's not good. That's not going to help us. When it comes to theology, we need to stick to the fundamentals. And those have been defined out a long time ago. These are the things that are necessary to believe to be a Christian. If they actually are Christians, even if they have differences in secondary issues or tertiary issues, we should be able to work with them. That's the fundamentals. don't have to have everything exactly the same with everybody. It's those differences that keep prodding us toward getting deeper into the text and trying to figure out what God has actually revealed. If everybody is exactly the same, or I put it this way, if you have two people they agree totally on everything, one of them's not needed. It's the differences, right? You see that in your marriages too, right? It's the differences that allow you to both to grow. because you'll be mature in one area, the other one's not, and those things keep us growing. So our goal is to be agreed on all the fundamentals and the rest we're gonna be working on. Yeah, Ed? Yeah. You had a question? No, I'm good. Okay. Okay, he goes on to page 13. Why is some of the dialogue among Christians degenerating into divisions and tensions, even about how you deal with counseling people? And I think he makes a good point on page 13, first full paragraph. Simple and tragic, we are defensive, proud, and threatened people. Advocates of one position sometimes assume that their sole purpose in inter-camp contact is to inform and correct, never to listen. Well, Proverbs tells us, he who listens, who answers before he hears, it's falling to shame. We need to listen. And so he's an advocate of that. Listen to other people. You might learn something. You may disagree with them. You may see the flaws in it. And that might give you an opportunity to help them if you're both humble. But you might find that, OK, they actually had something that was helpful to them. So we're going to approach things that way. There's truth in error, the Bible is the truth. We have to use that to figure out where the error lies. So we take our stance when it's obvious error, when there's obvious dangerous trends, we stand firm. But that's gonna be the fundamentals, the things that are clear in scripture. Other places there's gonna be some graciousness, okay? So he ended up with, Make sure I got the right thing. Yeah. A couple of guidelines. One, articulate our positions carefully and non-defensively. This is page 14 and 15. Two, guideline two, maintain a willing openness to changing positions. And guideline three, self-consciously labor to walk the tightrope of open conviction. Now, one reason I went over all this is because there Biblical counseling is an area of great disagreement and a lot of fighting, and it doesn't need to be. We should be learning from one another. And that's what he's trying to say. If we can dialogue with each other, we might pick up some things that will help us in being more sensitive and thoughtful and helping people understand who God is to deal with the real issues of life. If all we do is name call, which Larry Kravitz has been called a lot of names over time, he even mentioned some of that in here, that's not gonna help. Okay. When we're going to go through this book, we're going to pay attention to what he's saying. At the end of it, we're going to critique it as well. That's a proper way to do it. And actually it's something he would like. We do that with everything. A proper critique. What are the strengths? What are the weaknesses? The model. So just understand that to begin with. I'm not advocating his book is that it's the end of all wisdom of counseling. It's not. Okay. But I think he has a good model here. for us to start interacting with, to start thinking through. That's why we're using this particular book. I am saying that somewhat to defend myself or people are gonna start attacking me because I'm using Larry Krabs' book. Okay, so that's the purpose of that. Okay, introduction. Reading through his introduction, I think you'll see, at least at this point in his life, and this was written in 1987, so that's a while ago now. I was actually young then. I read it when it came out. It was a great improvement on his first book and he's, because he's refining things. But you go through these next two chapters, you can see this is a man, he's committed to scripture. So you start with a philosophy introduction, page 17. First is creator. God is creator. I can only be fulfilled if I live according to his design for me. The major obstacle that gets in the way of doing it is our own stubbornness, not necessarily limited understanding. That's page 18. And he's referring there to something should be fairly simple. Why do married couples have problems? Is it a lack of understanding? Communication. Once in a while. What is it usually? Our own stubbornness, right? So he points out there, if the man would do what scripture says, and the woman would do what scripture says, they'd probably do pretty well. And the children would benefit from it. But it's our own stubbornness that gets in the way. And why do we have such stubbornness? We've got a sin problem. So we started with the God as creator. And if God is creator, it also means he's the designer of marriage. So who should we look for wisdom about how marriage works? And since we have a couple of single ladies, of what kind of guy to look for, right? Don't saddle yourself from some jerk, okay? Oh, excuse me, we don't use that word. Person in need of grace and mercy, but not from you in marrying the guy, okay? That make sense? Okay, all right. So we're gonna be careful what we're doing. So he goes on page 19 and discussing some issues with some psychologists and theologians and where the weaknesses are. But this philosophy starts off God's creator. The second one is the Bible's God's revelation of this design for man in a sufficient to give me every everything I need for life and godliness. It's principles and precepts, everything I need. And that's 2 Peter 1-2-11. I'm going to read. All right, starting at verse two, grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and Jesus our Lord, saying that His divine power has granted us everything pertaining to life and godliness through the true knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence. For by these He has granted us to us His precious and magnificent promises, and that by them you might become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world by lust. Now, for this very reason also, applying all diligence in your faith, supply moral excellence. Your moral excellence, knowledge, and your knowledge, self-control, and your self-control, perseverance. Your perseverance, godliness, and your godliness, brotherly kindness, and your brotherly kindness, love. If these qualities are yours and are increasing, they render you neither useless nor unfruitful in the true knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. He who lacks these qualities is blind or short-sighted, having forgotten his purification from his former sins. Therefore, brethren, be all the more diligent to make certain about his calling and choosing of you. For as long as you practice these things, you will never stumble. In this way, the entrance to the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ will be abundantly supplied to you." So it's been supplied to us, but now we have the problem of, do we understand it? So he has a long discussion in there of the fact that we have to recognize that we're limited. I may have the truth sitting in my hands, but do I recognize it? So there's debate that goes on with that. But we have to understand the Bible is revelation. It is sufficient, but I have to learn it, understand it, and apply it. See, my mind, heart, and flesh are simple. And we understand that. The heart is desperately wicked above all else. Who can understand it? From Jeremiah 17, 9. We seek to do our own thing. And so I need the help outside myself. I need the Holy Spirit. I need other Christians to help me walk the Christian life. Okay. The Holy Spirit, especially, but then he's put us within the body of Christ. So other people with their gifts, their abilities, their insights, their love for you to help you walk properly. Okay. We need that. That's all part of God's design in order to live according to God's design. purposes that he has for what he's striving to do through this book is to train leaders in the basics of how to help someone when problems arise. And so there's a combination of leadership development, you're going to take those for example and teach them, as well as instruction on how to give godly counsel. In fact, Proverbs, the first a few verses in the first chapter, tells us that the purpose of Proverbs, right? To be able to understand and gain wisdom, which begins with the fear of God, okay? That I will receive good instruction so that I can grow and mature. So those are his purposes there, and then to help each draw close to God as you see your own sinfulness. Now, one thing that should come up in any counseling situation is you also recognize your own frailties, even as you're counseling the other person. Okay, in Galatians 6.1, look to yourselves first, lest you too also be tempted. You start recognizing them. We never counsel from a point of superiority to inferiority. We counsel as two sinners, saved by grace and grateful for God's mercy, helping each other. Okay. One desperate man who's found his way to God, pointing out the way to God to somebody else. Okay, not with, there's no room really for arrogance. We're all striving to work together for the same goal. We want to see Christ glorified in our lives and help one another toward that end. And then C, I've talked about this in the last couple of weeks is promoting true fellowship. The involvement we need with one another is what's gonna provoke us toward spiritual growth, which is gonna be demonstrated. We just become more and more dependent upon God. Okay, that should be part of what our fellowship does. We help people understand who God is, who we are in relationship to him, that we will be more dependent upon him. My own thesis is a simple one. I believe every problem we have is ultimately related to a long understanding of God. And because we don't understand him correctly, we don't trust him. We don't trust him, therefore we try and figure out our own ways. the greater our understanding of God, who he is, what he is like, the greater I can trust him, the greater I can actually walk in his way, do what he says, and my life will be better because now I'm living according to his design. That's going to be the purpose of fellowship and that's one of the things he's trying to do here. I mentioned he has a book that came out later called Encouragement Key to Caring that is based on that premise. If the body of Christ was doing what it's supposed to be doing, practicing the one another's, then what does it mean for professional counselors? You don't need them because the body of Christ is doing what it should be doing. That's what we're striving for. Well, let me throw some questions out and we'll discuss some of these from the preface introduction. Why has it become a difficult question to determine what constitutes biblical counseling? And I went over that a little bit already. Let's go back to page seven. Any ideas? Some people take the Bible as being truly authoritative. Like it is the truth. It is what God is saying. Other people think it's just full of like something that's more just, well, these are good ideas, but it's not the final authority. Yeah. So that's definitely going to cause some, uh, question. What is biblical counseling? If some of those saying they had biblical counseling, I don't even believe it's true. I believe it's full of errors someplace. You have to pick and choose what's true. That's going to be a real difficulty. What else? Also, sometimes secular counselors call themselves Christians and they sprinkle a few verses, but they're still using psychological framework and not really biblical. That's very common. One of the reasons master seminaries formed is Talbot. Seminary became Talbot School of Theology, part of Biola University. With the university, they wanted to start getting pastors classes from Roseneed School of Psychology. And our quip on that one is it's a secular psychology. They just throw a prayer at the beginning and the end of what they're doing. And they want to call that biblical counseling. So exactly right, Ed. That's a problem. And they want to call it that, but is it? The answer is no. And there's that horrible, horrible reason, let's do what makes money. Yes, that's a big one. Most psychologists you'll find try to get the person dependent upon them. So they just have a patient just keeps calm and better. And the goal should be is get the patient independent as fast as possible. So they're out there living life. So yeah, money becomes a big part of it. So that's going to be a problem. So if we end up reducing the scripture anything less than what it actually is, then you're subject to anything. And just because someone, as Ed pointed out, uses a couple of scriptures here and there doesn't mean it's biblical counseling. I had to have a mindset and a framework of what the Bible is about to have a biblical counseling. Question two, what is the relationship between biblical study and psychology? to talk to this a little bit last week. What is psychology? From a proper definition of the word and also how it's used now. Scientific study of the mind. A behavior. Study of the soul. The study of the soul. Psyche, okay, is the soul. And the mind would be psychiatrists, would be the mind itself, the physical mind. Psychologists are dealing with behaviors, feelings, emotions, that kind of thing. Is there a connection between the two? Well, if the Bible is going to tell you about how to live a godly life, it's about life and godliness, then biblical study should lead to a changed life. And psychology just tries to do it from a secular perspective. Yeah. So if the psychology is not based completely in scripture, and I'm using psychology in this in a big, broad term, in scripture, then it's just the musings of man. which case we would define it as secular psychology. Okay it's just the musings of man. Is that going to really help us? Ultimately no because every avenue that man would try to approach is fatally flawed. They're like they are looking for a why that's useless whereas biblical counseling we're using a why that we really get a grip on. Well, there's even some. That's right. Your lack of understanding of God, your lack of trust in him. That's the real one. Their why is your mother, you know. Yeah. Child. Yeah. They're going to find something. They're going to find reasons why you're doing what you're doing or why you feel you do. But if you don't have a foundation in truth of the one who actually created you, how are you really getting an understanding of how you operate. What's the line between biblical counseling and therapy? Because a lot of people who think that they need therapy just have a misunderstanding of God and their need for him. That would be true because the therapy that usually is being given is going to rise out of musings of man, secular philosophies. And as he gets in the book, it's going to be in either intuition or rationalism. What was the other one you had? Empiricism. So it's going to be based on those instead of a revelation for the one who created us. It's just like trying to operate a jet plane without looking at the instruction manual from the designers of it. You're going to be in trouble. OK, you can probably figure a lot of things out. But if you don't know what the design is, then you're going to have some real problems in operating it. So we have to go back to the designer to know how we're supposed to function. So scriptures, what gives us the instructions from the designers, our creator. And so that becomes very important. So the relationship is, is any psychology must be in submission to biblical authority. That is the only proper relationship. Any psychology, okay? It is legitimate to observe how people tend to behave. That can be helpful to us, but any observations must always end up under, well, what does the scripture say about that? not ending up people behave this way and then coming up with your own musings of why. The why is going to come from scripture even if people tend to behave a certain way in certain conditions. If it's a psychology that is not founded in scripture and in submission to scripture then they're going to have to be separate because they're not the same. totally different foundations. Okay. Can I say something here? Sure. Savita. It seems to me that I know some people who are going to therapists and oftentimes they put the blame on your childhood, your parents, or it's always someone else's fault. And I think that a fundamental difference between biblical counseling and secular psychology is that biblical counseling holds you responsible for whatever it is that you're doing, whereas in secular, you don't get that. It's someone else's fault. Yeah, secular psychology has a foundation back in Genesis 3. Got to find somebody else to blame, right? Yeah, other people do terrible things to us and they're responsible for that, but my response is completely my own. How I respond to whatever it is that's happened. That's a big difference. I can't blame somebody else for my response, no matter how horribly they treated me. My response is my response. I'm responsible to God for how I respond. And psychology generally is looking for someone else to blame so that you get the guilt off of you. We get rid of the guilt very simply as Christians. We confess our sin. That's so much easier, isn't it? Rather than trying to, well, I can blame somebody else. It's always somebody else. Well, what about self-esteem? I did talk about that a little bit already. And I had mentioned it's Matthew 19, 19. love your neighbors yourself, and it's a perversion of them. This whole self-esteem movement is simply really a way to justify pride. What's the danger of pride? You don't get to the root of the problem. You're actually sinful and depraved, and if you're proud, you totally don't get that. Yeah, you'll never get it. Pride is the original sin, isn't it? I've even seen some people try to end up classifying everything as a root in pride. And there's probably some legitimacy to that idea. So you're now justifying your sin. How should we think of ourselves? Romans 12, verse three, do not think more highly of yourselves than you are. Okay. But to think with a sound mind. Okay. So you, there's no problem with being confident in your abilities, right? Lance, I hope you're confident in your abilities and teaching culinary arts. Okay. Well, there'd better be some confidence there. Otherwise you're not gonna be able to teach. Okay. Because you've been, you have enough experience with it, right? And we hope when you get on a plane, the pilot is pretty confident he can fly it. I don't want to pilot. I don't know if I can fly. You don't want that. Okay. But you're not going to think more highly than you ought that you're just going to wing it. You're going to look at what's the recipe. Am I going to think through this? And a pilot better have had his training, right? He needs to be checked out on that aircraft. Just because he flew a Cessna 150 doesn't mean he should be Jumping in a Boeing 757, they're a little different from each other. In case you don't know, a Cessna 150 is a one-engine prop plane that can carry a maximum of four people barely. And a 757 is a cross-country jumbo jet. They're different from each other. Sif exegetes, we talked about that a little bit. The emphasis on the technical truth, not, he calls it the vital truth, and it is a failure in scriptural application. We always need a proper hermeneutic and proper application. If you lack the proper application, then you failing there in all the commands of the one another verses. Question four, are people really mentally ill? I don't want it to be funny, but are any of us not? I mean, it's always something in our life that gets pointed out. You? You want to scream? That's actually one way to put it. I think, how did Crabb put it in seminars? I guess, if you really thought about how bad you were, you wouldn't even want to get out of bed. We are spiritually deficient. And so from that, mentally ill would be, as you're describing it is, our minds don't work the way they're supposed to. Okay. Is there a proper, are there proper things you could say actually are mental illness as opposed to spiritual problems? I mean, like we're getting fear. Okay. Is fear a mental illness? We know it's from the same nature as well. Okay. So is that a mental illness? Well, brain imbalances. Brain imbalances. Okay. So there are mental illnesses and by that we mean as in a medical diagnosis and that's what psychologists who are medical doctors, what are diseases of the brain? Okay. How does the brain react when it is exposed to chemicals and it's damaged? How does tumors affect the brain? That is the physical aspect of the brain and those would be mental illnesses. And that's different than psychological illnesses, which are really spiritual problems. They're gonna have a root somewhere in what you believe is true, how you're acting. Okay? Yes ma'am. Is the soul in the brain? When you figure that one out you can write a book and make a fortune because we have a problem. You can't see the soul. No you can't. So the brain's an organ. The brain's an organ. But the body does affect the soul and soul does affect the body. Are we trichotomous or dichotomous? There's a theological question, and theologians like to wax eloquent on that. I prefer to say we have a physical nature and a spiritual nature. The spiritual nature, apparently, according to scripture, has two parts to it. We have a soul and a spirit, but we can't discern which is which, because even the two terms for it are used interchangeably in scripture. And Hebrews 12 tells us that the word of God can divide a center between the two. So we know there's two separate things, but just like marrow and your bone, they're so intertwined with each other. I don't know how you'd separate them. How does that affect, how does your mental state affect your soul and spirit? Well, it certainly can affect the way you express yourself, but does that really affect who you really are? And I'll give you one. So if you have a tumor, in your brain and it's pressing on certain places. We know from a physical standpoint, it can start causing certain manifestations. It can cause emotional manifestations. It can cause mental instability. You can't think straight. Does that then reflect who the person really is? I'm a diabetic. If I don't do the right things, I'll get real foggy. Okay. And I can adjust it by knowing what steps to take. Okay. So it's going to affect your ability. Does that affect who you are? It is a challenge to not let it. Okay. Not using it. Who you really are. Even if you're expressing yourself and fuzzy and not acting like you normally would act, is that saying you're something different than who you really are? No. if you have a loved one and they have Alzheimer's, okay, and they're acting very differently because of the disease that affects the brain, does that mean they're somebody different than who they were before that? No, no. Who we are before God is what's our soul. The brain will affect how we will manifest ourselves in expressing ourselves, our ability to think, our ability to respond, to react, it'll affect our emotions. So that's the physical part. And that's why one of the things, remember early on, I said, when people come in counseling, they have emotional problems or anything else, one of the first things to do is send them to a doctor, get a physical, okay? Make sure there's not something physical going on that's affecting all those things, because there could be. Uh, we know that hormones affect us, right? Uh, chemicals that affect the hormones affect us and how we express ourselves and how we feel about things. But does that change who we really are? No, who we really are is who we are before God. I know what you're saying because I have a dear friend who died a year and a half ago and he memorized scripture all the time. He was always helping us memorize. It was just, he showed up, we all memorized. And, um, as his, what do you call it, dementia progressed, the only way we could draw him out was to start quoting scriptures. And all of a sudden we had him back. Yeah, it's just so ingrained in him that he can do that. You see that as people get older, there's certain things they can remember, other things they can't. So short-term versus long-term. But who we really are, since your question was dealing with the mind and the relationship with the soul, who we really are, is your soul before God. How you express yourself because something's affected your physical mind, that's just an expression. Okay, that's not who you really are. Okay, Michelle. So if you are really truly honest to goodness, least saved, and something happens, like you get in a car accident, you have really, really severe brain damage. And it's so bad that after that, you like don't want anything to do with God, you start cursing him and all that. Would you still be saved? Or do you just think that if you're truly saved, that would never happen? Well, this is where theology helps us a lot. If a person's truly saved, nothing can separate you from the love of God exhibited in Christ Jesus. You're secure in his hands. Jesus loses none that God has given to him. So you can't even jump out. He won't drop you. You can't jump out. So if you're truly saved, you're saved. Where the person is truly safe, that's between that person and God. And so you always want to be careful of saying one thing one way or the other. You are not going to accuse this person of no longer being a Christian. Nor are you necessarily going to say, oh they absolutely are. Because you don't know what they actually believe. It could be an insufficient understanding of who God is. Sometimes it is. Sometimes it's just that when it gets to playing with the brain, the physical brain, Yeah, you can do a lot of things physically that can cause you to react different ways. And sometimes they're not nice ways. The reason I use Alzheimer's is it's very common among Alzheimer's patients, they get mean. Okay, that's not, it's the most sweetest person and suddenly they get real mean as the Alzheimer's goes on. That's not every single Alzheimer's patients, but it's very common. One of our missionaries, his wife had Alzheimer's, and the last few years of her life, she was in a convalescent home, and he would be there every day. And wouldn't necessarily recognize him, could get very mean at times, but as far as he was concerned, it's the same woman that he married 50-something years earlier, and he loved her the same, and just counted it a privilege to care for her. And as he would be gentle with her, she could calm down. So he knew that would be administered. So, you know, this off topic, but it's centered on this idea of mental illness. So a mental illness properly defined is something that is going to be organic. It's something to do with the physical brain. Okay. That's, we're talking about mental health is a spiritual problem. Okay. That's going to be the different. So an illness is an organic problem, and that would be treated by psychiatrists, okay? They're medical doctors. Might end up with neurosurgeons, right? Remove the tumor. But mental health itself is a spiritual problem. Psychology is a spiritual problem. And that would include things like alcoholism, dependencies, addictions, things like that. That's a spiritual problem, okay? That's a distinction that needs to be made. All right, pages 11 through 15. What is Crabbe's desire? I already covered that. Page 12, he actually, an overall one is he wants to drive us back to the text of the scripture to seek answers to urgent questions. That's why I think CRAB fits very well within the model of what biblical counseling is. Biblical counseling should be driving you back to scriptures to find the answer to the spiritual problems that you've got, the urgent questions you've got, while providing a framework for thinking about counseling and discipleship. So the better I understand scripture, the better framework I have to deal with all the issues of life, including those that are not specifically addressed in scripture. And there's a host of those things. They're not specifically addressed in scripture. But if I have a framework built around what scripture says, I should be able to deal with those issues fairly well. Okay. I mentioned this one, page 18, the major obstacle to marriage relationships, stubbornness, sin blocking, obedience to God's commands. Seven, how do psychologists add to problems? we've already talked about that some. They end up redefining sin so people can excuse it, redefine it. It's somebody else's fault. Or another way is, because this has happened in my lifetime too, alcoholics now have a disease. Do they have a disease? They have a sin problem. They have a sin problem. Okay. Their disease is bending the elbow. Okay. There's a country song, put it, uh, uh, he put the bottle to his head and pulled the trigger. Okay. It's a sin problem, but by redefining it, well, now you can get money. or treatment programs and all the rest because you're treating disease. It's a sin problem. We need to deal with the sin that's behind it. So the outward sin is the drinking, but what's underlying it? Could be a lot of things, right? We know from Proverbs 31 that says, give strong drink to those who have no hope. They drink to try to avoid having to think about tough problems. And we have to help them work through those things, okay? So providing- Yeah. But can it be also called idolatry? Because the alcohol becomes everything in your life, you know? Yeah, psychologists definitely do that one. That's the whole self-love thing, right? You make an idol of yourself. It's all about me. It's how I want. It's what I would like to do. How I feel. That's idolatry, okay? So they redefined sin. They offer solutions to people's problems that do not require the atoning work of Christ. There's another quote from his book. Our problems are going to be solved in Christ as we align ourselves with him. Question eight, how do theologians add to the problems? We've kind of covered this already too. He talks about them increasing the points of debate without giving biblical principles to live by. Okay. Biblically documented truth has somehow been short of its relevance. Passionless orthodoxy spawned a generation of rigid Christian leaders who simply cannot relate to people. That's bad. Okay. This is a normal problem of the you know, a fresh graduate from seminary, well, praise the Lord for churches will put up with the guy until he learns how to deal with people. Because he's just spent three years or more digging into, you know, academics, and now he's got to learn how to deal with people. That's usually the tougher problem. And if he can't deal with people, he cannot be effective at the ministry. Because pastoral work, is not about how erudite you are. Ooh, that's a fancy word. How erudite you are and your homiletical prominence, how well you can speak and all the rest of it. It's about how you can help people walk with Christ. That's the purpose. It's shepherding. there's too many guys coming out and they've got to learn how to deal with people. So theologians can increase that problem when they don't bring it to the practical application of what they're talking about. Theology should have application. Okay, Krabs three assumptions then. Foundation, Jesus Christ, the way, the truth, the life without being shallow, and that psychological disorder is really the product of the sinful pursuit of a life apart from God. His assumptions, the Bible is sufficient, relationship with Christ provides the resources, and the community of God's people is the context. That's on page 21. All right, let's go to the next chapter. Now he titled this, How do we know what to believe? This is actually, if you had a philosophy, this is epistemology. How do you know what is true? How do you know anything? Okay. What is truth? Webster states, the state of being the case, fact. Two, the body of real things, events and facts, actuality. And three, a transcendent fundamental or spiritual reality. That's what truth is. Ultimately, truth is God's Word. It's in God and His Word. God is the God of truth. The Spirit is the Spirit of truth. And Jesus is the truth, the life, and the way. And the Word of God, Jesus says in John 17, 17, is truth. Thy Word is true. So we can go back to that and we have something that's solid. Why is it important to know the truth? It sets you free, right? The truth sets you free to be able to live according to God's design, right? To function apart from truth would be to live on what? A lie. What's most the world living on? A lie. Okay, we'll make it very practical. Why did Hamas attack Israel? They believe a lie. Okay, they've been trained to believe lies. So they're sacrificing their own lives and murdering lots of people because of lies. Okay, what does the media do with that? They lie. All right, one I was reading about today. So a hospital got blown up and the media immediately blamed Israel. Yeah, well, then they're retracting, but it's already too late. There are already riots going on about it. No, all the evidence now pointing is Hamas had a misfired missile at best and killed all these people. However many, who knows, can you really trust Hamas to give you a correct body count, but lies produce real problems. Okay. If I was going to live my life on a lie, I'm going to have problems. Okay. It doesn't have to be deadly to that point. But if I live my life on a lie, I will destroy the relationships around me. Period. And I'll end up in the end, as a liar, shut out from heaven. There are no liars in heaven. Means God completely redeems us and changes us, doesn't he? And that's a good thing, okay? And that ultimately then leads to futility. Ecclesiastes goes on and on about that. The futility of life lived apart from God. That's why chapter 12 is a summary. Sum it all up is live according to God's word. How do we know if something is true? Well, there's a lot of ways we try to discern that. One, when something can be demonstrated to be a fact, that is it's shown to be in accordance with reality. We have laws of physics. These are things that be repeated over and over. So we now can say it's been tested so much, we never found an exception. which is a fact okay it's in accordance with reality but man does man does not know absolute truth because man's abilities are subject to error that's always going to be a problem errors in assumptions and in testing okay this is a huge problem because of that we always need to be a little careful of what is claimed we can know only know relative truth. Absolute truth must come from a source outside of man himself. That's why we need to go back to the Word of God to have an absolute truth. Otherwise, it's going to be somewhat relative. Now, the more we test it, the more we have confidence that it's true. So that's going to be part of it. But there can be errors in the testing. There can be errors in the assumptions. So even the scientific method is not necessarily going to end up in truth. If you design there's design flaws in your testing, you will end up with wrong answers. Or you can design your experiment to get the answers you want and claim it's true and it's a lie. Okay, that's always a problem. So, but ultimately then we have to have a source of truth that comes outside of man. What are the strengths and weaknesses of each of the following? Okay, intuition. What would be a strength of intuition? Ladies, you should speak up because you have more than guys. When it gets too quiet in the house, you better go check on the kids. Well, that's definitely true. OK. It's an undefined internal subjective certainty. It's not necessarily rational in that you can explain why you're thinking what you're thinking. it's just something that you just kind of like yeah it's too quiet what's going on okay that actually is a little more rational when we know what kids are like right um but the strength is is that we recognize the mind is is amazing uh design and it works and processes data to come to conclusions. And sometimes without having to go through all the logical steps, we just know. And I'll give you an example of that. It's not intuition. It's just the way his mind works. It's my friend, Jimmy. You give him a math problem and he goes, the answer is this. Well, how'd you get there? Like, I don't know, but this is the answer. His mind works that way. If he has to show you the step to getting to that answer, he can't do it. There's no sequencing. Is that kind of like, you know, when you talk about savants, where they're looking at, you know, mathematical equations and they see colors and shapes instead of numbers. Whatever it is. Okay. It's just that the mind is much more complex and has more capabilities than we often recognize. We often want, well, what's the lot, gals, you recognize this, the guys want you, what's your logical step? And you said, but this is what it is. Because your mind, a female mind and a male mind do work differently from each other. If you haven't noticed, all right, it does work differently. You've noticed that, okay. When you say mind, you mean the soul. No, I'm not talking about your soul. I'm talking about the way your mind, even your physical mind is processing data information, the information you're taking in from all sorts of sources, Okay, and I will use the one that you have, okay? The kids are out playing. Who notices the kids are quiet? Mom. They must be outside. Sometimes they are. Yeah. And mom just has this, this, maybe a sixth sense or something, right. But it's a matter, it's a processing. of information and it comes from all over and you may not be able to say well ABC and this is my conclusion this is why it's like this is what it is so there is something to intuition and so he's not denying that that's a strength but the weakness it's limited right okay we can reason beyond intuition or we can reason beyond and find that the intuition you had well at a wrong conclusion okay we've all had that we had a sense of something and well, it was a wrong conclusion. We didn't have all the information. Okay. We process what data we had, but it was wrong. Okay. And there's no basis for demonstrating to be true. So there's a strength to it, but there's also weakness. So do you want to base truth on intuition? No. What about reason itself? This is discussed pages 31, 32. That would be rationalism. Okay. And rationalism is the belief that the unaided reason is capable of understanding all that is true. The age and reason, the enlightenment was founded on this basis. What's the strength of rationalism? It does have a strength, okay, just so you know. It helps you avoid bad logic. Yeah, so you're gonna use logic and you're gonna try and think through things in a reasonable manner in a logical manner to come conclusions based on that logic. And from that, you can develop systems for what is true or what is not true. So rationalism, there's some strength there, but when you're saying that it's unaided reason capable of understanding all that is true, now you hit that's weakness. Can all things be figured out rationally? No, because number one, our minds are of limited understanding. Can anybody explain infinity? Can you get a grip on infinity? Can you think of infinity of time backwards? Can you think of infinity in space? Just keep going. You remember the geometry lesson, right? You got your line. And so for infinity, they just put an arrow, right? That's supposed to be infinity. Yeah, right. It just goes on. How far does it go? Well, even when we have our universes, okay, what's the edge of the universe? Well, infinity goes beyond the edge, right? I'm sorry, I don't understand that. So we are limited, and that's something that has to be put in the process. Logic is subject to breakdown because of errors in assumptions, in processing information, and then drawing conclusions. In any logical formula, if you have an error in your initial assumption, your conclusion is going to be wrong. Well, we're talking about people. You can't be sure this person is going to think the way No, they're not. But rationalism used in trying to help people in psychology has a weakness right here because of that, okay? If you're making a wrong assumption and building a logical case based on a wrong assumption, you're going to end with a wrong conclusion, okay? And a lot of psychological theories based on a wrong assumption ends up with wrong conclusions on how you help people. Actually, you can make them a whole lot worse. So that's reason. What about experience? Empiricism. Our data is observable, measurable experience provides the need of the purity. I've been doing this for 45 years, 60 years. I have the experience. I know what I'm talking about. It can make you relatable. It can, okay. So there's a strength to it. Hopefully, as you've been doing something for a long time, you get better at it, right? I bet you're a whole lot better at homeschooling now than when you first started. Now you're the expert. Everybody's going to you. Carol, how do I deal with this? OK. Now strength is, as research can move toward pragmatic truth, what seems to work. So certainly there's some strength there. But at the same time, experience is founded on generalizations and often fails to take into account the exceptions. And there's always an exception, right? You could have incorrect data and you didn't take that into account because of your experience. You jumped to a conclusion before you should have. And experience can't really deal with issues of morality. That has to come from God. All right, I'll give you a really pragmatic one. So at Jonathan and David and Diana, I thought we were getting this parenting thing down pretty well. And we had Jimmy. That's not a slide against Jimmy. It's just, he was so different. He didn't think the same way. He didn't perceive the world the same way. It's like, and he had very few pain receptors. So what worked on the other two doesn't work on him. So suddenly experience it like, okay, Now that we're past all that, experience says we are much more careful and gracious as we're dealing with people and their kids and their parenting. Let's try this. Let's try something else because your kid may not be thinking the same way as your other kids. They are different from each other and we have to work with that. Experience is not something that's going to be a good foundation for truth. So we end up with revelation, God's special communication to man through this written word. It's strength. It comes from an infinite God. It's not limited by any human weakness. Now the weakness with it is this, humans do have to discern that its source is God and not Satan. Okay. and that they have understood the revelation given accurately. That's why hermeneutics is important when it comes to scripture. I need to make sure I understand it in its context of place and time. It's historical and grammatical, okay? Otherwise, I would end up with wrong conclusions. When you say the weakness could be we need to be sure that it's coming from God, in terms of misapplying scripture, No, I'm thinking of those who keep claiming that they have revelation from God and it's not from God. How many of these TV preachers do that? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, okay. Well, the Lord just said, well, who did that come from? Can I give you a hint? It wasn't from God. What a showman. Okay, so you have to be careful there. How often do I say go back to the scriptures, be a Berean, check out what I say, because you never want to give this just because no matter what position they have or how well-known and renowned the pastor may be, just because he said it doesn't mean it's true. You're going to go back to the scriptures. His job is to help you understand the scriptures, but it's the scriptures we're after. Too many it's, well, so-and-so said it, so it must be true because they said it. No. Would you also sort of factor in taking the scripture out of context? Yeah. Misapplying or misunderstanding the scripture because of context. Absolutely. Because if you haven't properly discerned what the scriptures actually say in their historical grammatical context, then you're misapplying it. believe what people have said for many years about that scripture. Yeah. I mentioned this. I may not mention it here. I didn't read through the whole Bible until I was 21. And when I finally read through it, I recognized that much of what I had been taught was more cultural than necessarily biblical. And I had good pastors. But a lot of stuff we did, it was cultural. It wasn't biblical. It's just, this is how we do things. This is our take on it. And that was eye-opening to me. And that's why I have this bent towards, I'm just like, go back to scripture, go back to scripture, go back to scripture. Because whatever our culture is, it needs to bend to scripture, not scripture to the culture, period. Okay. You know, there's a, Here for those who've grown up here, they think this is the way a worship service should be done because that's the way we do it here. Well, there's some pragmatic things of why we do the worship service the way we do here. I don't have a very large area out front that's enclosed in the winter that people can talk. So we have to start off with a song to get people to calm down enough to say we're starting worship. I don't have the option of having people in the foyer, depending where you are in New York, whatever it is, the narthex, the vestibule. I don't have a large one where people can talk out there and they enter into the worship area and it's quiet and they're thinking. I don't have that option. So what do they do if they go to a Presbyterian church? right? It's like, is this really worship? Or if the music, how many times we have people, they don't like the music because they're used to some rocky thing or the opposite, right? They only have had hymns. They go to some that's using CCM. It's like, well, this can't be worship. Well, why? It's because what they're used to. And then they equate that is what worship is. Well, I'm sorry. Worship is you giving of yourself to God. Okay. Whatever it is. All right, David was in Africa. He went, okay. Part of their worship is they dance. That's kind of out of most Americans comfort zone. Okay. Is that worship? Well, David did. David and the Psalms did. That was turned my morning into dancing Lord, you know? So suddenly I have like, just because it's not what I normally do, does that mean it's, I got to go back to scripture. What does it say? I'll give you one. Why in conservative churches do we not lift our hands in worship? Try not to show off or be what we're not. Well, maybe. It actually has a historical tie. Actually, I raised my arms, Kelly, and you went. That's another reason not to lift your arms. OK. So be careful. Make sure you take a shower first. But why do we actually not do that? Do you know that used to be done? No, this used to be done prior to 1964. It was commonly done in a lot of conservative churches. You'd lift your hands. So what happened? The charismatic movement. And that was, and it became as, I don't want to identify with them. They're doing that. I won't. I remember as a kid, John Rowe, He's always had his hand up. This is a Southern Baptist Church. After the charismatic movement started, which started actually in Van Nuys, the next town over from where I was, and it quickly spread around the San Fernando Valley. I don't know if I want to do that anymore. Identification. But what does scripture say? I lift my hands up to the Lord. Okay. So just a short caveat is you wanna lift your hands, lift your hands, just don't do this thing, okay? It makes it really hard for the person behind you to see the words. And then the person behind them is really like, I can't, I don't know, okay? So just, you can lift your hand up, but just be kind to the person behind you, all right? But so often this is part of, we have to be careful. We go back to scripture, because that's where truth lies, not in our cultural things, not in what, just because we always did it that way. That's always gonna be a problem. So we go back to God's word, what does it say? What does it allow? And then we have to say then, okay, great, praise the Lord. It doesn't have to be the way I'm used to it. I'm 65, I'm not real comfortable doing that, okay? I don't mind it, but I'm still like, yeah, it's too ingrained, but it's proper, okay? Or it can be proper. But why do you do it? What's the purpose of it? You should know those things too. If you're gonna lift your hands, know why you do it. What does scripture say? And that's what you're following. All right, what is the value of general revelation in counseling? General revelation is God's creation. You can observe what's around you and the regularities of how things work and discover things you can even In general revelation, you can see how people tend to behave. Part of just observations, right? We can observe on. Well, all our medical stuff is built on that, right? It's our observations of what God has created functions. I think every Wednesday in the morning for our homeschool group is. that God would give us a wisdom to understand the things that our teachers can tell us about God and his creation, because they have science classes going on, right? So that'd be part of it. There's a lot I can learn. I can learn about God's power and might, his intelligence, his design from that, okay? You can build better bridges if you're observant of the laws of, physics and stuff that God has put into creation. But what can general revelation not do for you? It's just the gospel. Yeah, you can't know the gospel in general revelation. This is one reason why rationality cannot work to give all truth. It's not there. I cannot know God, all his attributes. I know some of them, but I can't know all his attributes without his Special revelation. Yeah. Morals. Anything moral. Okay. If I was looking to general revelation to decide morality and I watched how animals treated each other, what would my moral convictions? We're just an animal. Well, that's how a lot of people are acting now, right? They think they're just animals. Do you not include the conscience in general revelation? The conscience is trained and adaptable. so we use that as part of what god says he has placed within the heart of man a general understanding of him but that conscience can be seared that does not work properly so it actually works against you instead of for you but so that's going to be a problem with that would you call what the hamas are doing an example of that i'm sorry the what would you call what the hamas are showing on their videos with the children among them their own children yeah they're searing their conscience yeah Children are born with innate understanding of certain things. But if you are trained, then that conscience is seared and actually is opposite of what it should be. So for them, murder becomes, no, this is right. There are cultures where lying is considered and deceit is considered a good thing. You know, you did really well. You deceived your enemy. and murdered him, okay? If you ever saw or read the book, Peace Child, it was all about that culture in Papua New Guinea that was, their consciences were seared and they couldn't understand the gospel till something came up and I won't get into all that. It's a good book. Yes, the conscience can be trained and we are going to train the conscience. It's one of the things we're trying to do with our kids, right? has trained their conscience to respond properly to what God has said, or we have a memorized scripture that's probably trained the conscience. Okay, so general revelation could be helpful to some things, but in counseling, it's not gonna be necessarily all that helpful. All you can get out of that is observations of how people tend to behave in given circumstances in a culture. That's about it. And if we're trying to bring him back to thinking about God himself, can we use it for like he's the designer? Yeah, that's going to be partner witnessing. The heavens declare the glory of God. You can point it out. There is a creator. You're not going to get around it. I think that's a good place for starting for Evangelist myself. Because we're now in a culture that doesn't believe that. So that becomes a problem. So you're running into it more and more, even when we're doing the tables and talking to people. You got to use, you got to just piece up a lot of, there's a lot more now than you did, you know, five, six years ago, even because, you know, morality doesn't do it anymore necessarily for some. No, because they don't believe in anything moral. They believe they're animals. So you have to bring them back to something more foundational. There's a creator. And you're responsible to them. And that's something that we're in said before, as you can point out, general creation or general revelation within it. And even within the heart, every person knows there is a creator, even the atheists. Okay, proves it by he's so mad at that being that he doesn't believe exists. right okay that's an absurdity why are you so mad at something you don't believe exists you know a lot of them really want to talk about what truth is though yeah they're they're actually more interested in that now rather than morality right so we can bring back the truth now we bring back to truth there is a creator your response creator what are you going to do before him let's talk about the creator standards now we're back to morality so yes general revelation is good for those things so In that case, that's going to be the beginning of a counseling appointment, right? I'm going to bring them back to these truths. What's the value of special revelation in counseling? By that, the word of God. The word of God. That's the Bible, all right? Because he has spoken from his mind to our minds using language, which is a medium of communication that is rationally apprehensible. You can figure it out. Even if it's another language you can figure it out. That's why it's so important the Word of God was written down for us. It means we can dig into it and figure it out. And so within the Bible he tells us how we were designed to function and it claims itself to be sufficient to help us according to that design. So special revelations is we're always going to be going back to that for Here is the God who created us and here's what he wants from us. Here's how he wants us to function. Okay, he had an extensive discussion there of, he called it the two book view of general and special revelation. And said that's really kind of a primary view even among quote unquote biblical counselors. What is its problem? Okay. Now, in the end, What's the foundational problem with this idea of two books? Okay, I have special and I have general revelation, and which one are they going to follow? We don't have the option. We have to go back to that, right? Because what he points out, and he has a fairly long discussion there, page 37-42, is they immediately end up with a two-book idea. Even if you say they're equal to each other. Well, the Bible doesn't address every issue, does it? So suddenly I want to go to this and say, well, this will address it. And I'll use intuition and rationalism. And suddenly I'm usurping this one. I may even say that I believe it's, um, it's truth and it has the authority, but I've just usurped it. because I'm always trying to find something else to add to it in order to help it along. And that's been very common through even a lot of seminaries. They don't hold to, I started Talbot and that was a big problem when we saw that they wanted Rose Mead School of Psychology to be trained pastors. It's like, no, this is not gonna be good because it's gonna start immediately compromising our beliefs in the scriptures themselves, which is what happens. That's why Master Seminary formed, or one of the many reasons it formed. We wanted confidence that, no, we go back to the scriptures. So pastoral counseling is going back to, what does scripture say? How do we help you? According to what God has said, not getting into all the other things of saying, well, general revelation is sufficient for helping you where the word of God doesn't have truth. You're gonna end up, this becomes dominant, this becomes subordinate, and pretty soon, not going to this. This is you know a bit here or there but you're just using the same psychology everybody else does for the same reasons. Okay so eventually just collapses back into rationalism or empiricism or intuition as a final arbitrator of truth usually under the guise of pragmatism that it works instead of what's right before God and he gave some examples in there. Okay I gave this therapy since that was asked earlier, right? I got them in this therapy and they were doing better with this therapy at work, so it must be okay, right? But what that therapy is contrary to what scriptures actually says is, you should be doing, all right? One of them he was talking about in the examples was a regressive therapy, go back to your childhood and relive all your traumas. sorry, even from my intuition, I said something's wrong with that. All right, but I can go back to scriptures as I lay aside what's behind me. Okay. Yeah, you don't, I don't want to do that. You want to go back to your teen years? Uh, no, no, no, thank you. Um, I wouldn't mind having the energy and the physique of my teen years, but Yeah, sometimes it's hard to get out of bed. But I want to go back to what does scripture say, not with this kind of stuff, because it's going to start usurping. So just because it works doesn't mean this regressive therapy. Well, what does Paul say? I lay aside what's behind me. I press on towards what's forward. So whatever it is, the only thing I really need to think about in the past is if I've sinned, I need to confess it. If I feel guilty about something, I should confess it. I don't need to go back and relive all my traumas. Okay. I need to be pressing forward. What has Christ done for me? That changes my life. I may need to give forgiveness to people, but you know, treated me wrong. But this regressive therapy is the idea. It has a foundation that's not within scripture. then they don't treat it whatever you did come up with because they'll do regressive to come up with who do you have to blame. Not with who do you have to forgive. Who do you have to go confess to. So you start squeezing all sorts of other stuff in there. So that was just one of those examples. Okay. We got to be careful of that. Yeah. I just like to one of the Something that you mentioned here that says both psychological study and theological study require the use of finite and fallen minds. But that was very important. It is important. We recognize our own weaknesses. But that's part of the reason for the body of Christ as well, is we help each other. Someone else will see where the weakness is when you didn't see it. Especially if it's something that kind of fit into how you were raised, so you think it's normal. Someone else points out like, I don't think that's right. Something's not right there. Okay. I need that. Otherwise I just fall into a cultural Christianity. You know, having my dad from Mississippi. So there's a lot of family down the South. You have to approach evangelism a little differently down there. You got to get them lost first because culturally they think they're saved. Okay. Well, I'm not going to bars. I'm not, well, at least not often, I'm not, it just becomes a culture thing. It's how well are you doing according to the culture standards? Yeah, so I must be a Christian. I go to church once in a while. I'll go during revival week. Your life's a mess. That's not right, but culturally it looks good. You need someone from outside that says, no, wait, wait, the scriptures say this, why are you doing that? Well, because that's what everybody does. Because tragically, how do most people grow in their understanding of living out Christianity? Do they get it from going to the scriptures themselves and learning the scriptures and seeing and contemplating how it affects? How do they do it? They just look at everybody else around them and all just conform, right? And that includes in how people dress. If you have a guy coming in, he's got real long hair and stuff, and he comes in and he starts getting to know the people in the church, how long do you think it's gonna be before he starts cutting his hair? He's gonna start cutting it, why? He wants to conform with everybody else, okay? What manner of dress do you come in? All right, if you went to a formal Presbyterian church and the guys are still wearing three-piece suits, guys, what are you gonna wear? Give it six months. I don't want to be around those folks. Well, you start conforming, right? Now, if you're the guy coming in with three-piece suit and you start going to Calvary Chapel, what's going to happen? You'll be in shorts in no time. Yeah, you'll be in shorts in no time, that Hawaiian shirt. Oh, wow, this is pretty cool. We like to conform. Our purpose is going to be is we need each other to help us make sure we're not being blinded by our own blinders, to make sure we're actually walking with God. And that's going to be part of your counseling, right? Helping people walk with God according to what scripture says, not the culture. The culture may help. It may be detrimental. We're going to go back to what scripture says. So we're going to help people with that. So that's the danger of this two book view. Krabs, four arguments for biblical authority. Number one, God's purpose in revealing himself in the Bible is different from revealing himself in nature. Nature is to make God known as someone with whom we must reckon. He's our creator. The Bible was given to man to be the textbook on life. It's the instruction manual. Two, the plainness of the Bible is reason to turn its pages with competence. The superior clarity of the propositional revelation over any other form is argument for depending more on the Bible than on science and developing a counseling model. Okay, I'm going to go back to that. It's clear. It's plain. The Bible was written to be understood. It can take some work, but it was written to be understood. Three, the purity of the Bible as uncorrupted revelation contrasts with the defectiveness of a groaning and cursed nature. The Bible is pure, Psalm 19. And for we have the explicit promise of the Holy Spirit's help when we come to the Bible in an attitude of teachable humility and personal honesty. We want the Holy Spirit to convict us, to teach us, to inform us, to illumine the truth to us that we might walk with him. And what does Psalm 1 teach us about counseling? How blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stand in the path of sinners, nor sit in the seat of scoffers. So you start listening to the ungodly, next thing you know, you're walking with them, you're hanging out with them, and then you're right along teaching the same thing that they're doing. So it's interesting that he uses a negative to say the blessedness. Why didn't he just say the positive side? How blessed is the man who walks in the counsel of the godly? And no, he uses the opposite because it's that dangerous. You're blessed if you're not being affected by that stuff. But what are most people listening to? Not the Bible. Yeah, you're listening to the counsel of the ungodly. How many different ways does ungodly counsel come into your life? A million. All sorts of ways, right? Okay, the most obvious would be friends. Okay. Friends who are going to give you ungodly counsel. What other ways are you going to get ungodly counsel? The internet. Okay. Movies, television, entertainment. At work, who's, yeah, your coworkers, what's being done there. Books you read, magazines. Your family can be part of that. Okay. Your own sin nature. Okay, the counsel ungodly. Yeah, your own sin nature. I'm listening to my feelings. Here's what I'd like to do. My own desires, the lust of flesh, lust of the eyes and boast of pride of life. So all those things, the counsel ungodly all around us. So how blessed is the man who does not walk in that counsel. It may be blaring all around you, but as soon as you start following it, you're walking in it. All right. So it is important. What music are you listening to? Do you even know the words of the songs that you're listening to? Yeah, sometimes you have to download it to find out, well, what are those lyrics? Like, ew, you know, that, yuck, you know, or that doesn't even make sense. Yeah, the internet is huge, social media, all those things, but we have to be careful. But his delight is in the law of the Lord and his law, he meditates day and night. So the focus instead is gonna be on scriptures. So instead of the ungodly, I'm gonna go with the scripture. And that means this is the focus of my life. I wanna know what God has said. The difference, he'll be like a tree firmly planted by rivers of water, yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither, and whatever he does, he prospers. This is the picture of a desert climate, which Israel is, and it's either by a wadi, so it's by a stream, or actually the streams it's irrigated. That actually be the best way I think to understand it. It's a tree planted where it is irrigated. And so even when it gets hot, there hasn't been any rain in months, it's irrigated from sources of water that have been saved. And so it continues to grow and its leaf is healthy and it will fruit and bear fruit. But the tree out there where there is no irrigation, it will wither. and no fruit. OK? But whatever he does will prosper. The wicked are not so. They are like the shaft which the wind drives away. Therefore, the wicked will not stand the judgment, nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous. For the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish. To me, that's enough to say stay away completely from secular psychology, because you're walking in the counsel of the ungodly. Stay away from the talk shows, where they're going to give you counsel. And those are popular. Here's how to deal with this problem. Yeah. And it can sound very interesting, right? But if there's a counseling godly, it's not gonna be healthy for you. We wanna go back to what scripture says. That's what we're after, okay? Godly counsel comes from God's special revelation and that leads to blessing. All right, so next week will be chapters three and four. And these books are dealing with biblical sufficiency. Does the Bible speak meaningfully to every human problem? And the Bible is a sufficient guide for relational living, okay? The Bible's sufficient for it. That'll be next week. Any questions or last comments for tonight? Mark. thing I used to do when I was a kid, or a Bible, basic instructions before leaving earth. And it is. So we're going to know it. Well, that means there is work that we need to do. Then we need to spend time reading in it, meditating on it, and all the rest of it. So if you want to be a good counselor, you need to know the scriptures. The better you know the scriptures, the better counselor you can be because it won't just be then your wisdom. It's going to be wisdom that is trained by God to reflect what he desires and what he wants. Okay. Kind of the framework of people are coming to you for advice. So they are not already knowing what's expected of you, of what you're going to give them. But like in the real world though, all people are going to consider it to be futile. And you're trying to talk to them about it, you know. Well, it would be, but how often it, well, it's a work, okay. You're an electrician. So guys are just, whatever's going on. And the guy starts expressing, yeah, I got a problem at home, this is going on. Well, if I'm thinking through what scripture says, I can actually give him the direction that will actually help him. What do most guys do if someone's complaining about their wife? Pile on. Yeah, they just pile on, right? Yeah, well, what about my wife? I'll tell you about my wife. I got real problems. It's bad. And you know what? That happens in churches. It actually was going on here when I first got here. It didn't take that long to recognize. It was like, why are you guys always making the wife the, you know, the... Look, Randy, you stayed, so it wasn't you. But the wife was the butt of the joke. It's like, this isn't good. It took a while to get that to change. and they would play off each other. It's like, this isn't good. So yeah, at work, all sorts of things pop up. But if I'm thinking through biblically, I actually can offer some advice to people that actually will help them. Instead of the other guys piling on, it's like, well, tell me more what's going on. How can I pray for you? Have you ever considered maybe getting some counseling from a pastor or Well, who do you know has a good marriage? They would probably be a good one to get to know and find out what they're doing right. So there's a whole lot of things that pop up, even if we don't get asked. There's opportunities for us to push them back to where we have truth and we don't need to be shy about it. We don't need to be arrogant, but we don't need to be shy about saying this. Look, here's something you might want to consider. Even to the point of, well, God created you and he created marriage. Have you ever considered what his design for marriage is? See, there's opportunities all over the place. Whether they're coming to you or not, but the more you walk with God, the more you're going to be attracting people who want your wisdom, right? If you have a marriage problem, who are you gonna seek for help? Not Phil Donahue, I hope, right? Go ahead, James. Not your divorced friends, okay? you should go for is you look for those who have good marriages. Well, what's going right? If you have a good marriage, then guess who's getting asked? You're going to get asked, how did you do that? How are you able to deal with these things? If you want help in child rearing, if your kids are doing well, you will have some who are humble enough to come and ask you. You have others that are just going to stay away from you because they don't want to acknowledge that their kids have got problems and that you're doing better. But if your kids are doing well, you're going to find that people want to find out from you. Well, how are you doing that? How are you, why are your kids behaving so well? What are you doing? That gives you opportunity, right? So whatever your situation is like, the more godly your practice, the more you're going to have more opportunity to talk to people they're going to be more open to it when you do speak because your life is going to be the evidence that it's true it's backed up okay yes ma'am practice is more godly because the fruits of the spirit are more evident and we're walking you're walking with spirit with them yeah and that's because having more input from Scripture all the time. We're letting Scripture guide us and make us think things. It goes back to what I've been talking about last week. I'm going to bring them to Scripture. They're going to either obey it or not obey it. The more I know Scripture, then the more my mind has been renewed to walk according to truth, rather than to whatever I was raised in, whatever I learned in school, whatever my friends are doing, whatever it's done for the media. And I said, my mind is trained and that's why we want to do it. We were renewed by the, we were transformed by the renewing of our minds. That is the work of the Holy Spirit using the scripture to change our whole view of life. Yeah, we look at it differently. Very differently. Okay. All right. It is eight 30, according to that clock. Thank you. We got started a little late, got past our technical difficulties and I will let you get home because some of you get up really early in the morning. Thank you father for the blessing of your word and that because it is true we have a foundation that is solid and I thank you for the work that Crabb did so long ago in articulating these things that we can interact with it and as we continue forward the weeks to come that we can gain a greater understanding of how we can actually help each other as we learn truth to help people who are struggling actually in the struggle, in Jesus name, amen.