Our propensity as Christians is to separate our lives into spiritual and non-spiritual arenas. Our jobs, our hobbies, our daily interactions – sometimes we pretend these are earthly matters, not spiritual ones. Yet in reality, no part of our lives can claim exemption from the reign of Christ. Why then, when it comes to our minds, do we go to the world’s doctors – the psychologists and therapists – for treatment? In his book PsychoBabble, Richard Ganz pulls back the curtain on psychology and explains why he believes real change comes through Christ, not psychoanalysis.
Richard Ganz was once a successful clinical psychologist himself – and a secular Jew to boot. Yet while staying at L’Abri, Ganz encountered Christianity and his life changed course profoundly. His newfound faith stubbornly tripped up any hope of career advancement. After losing his job for sharing the gospel with a patient, Ganz sought to meld his training and newfound faith as a Christian psychologist, but eventually realized that the two cannot be integrated.
I realize that a sizeable percentage of Anabaptists endorse counseling methodologies rooted in secular psychology. And perhaps Ganz’s insistence on Biblical counseling will chafe a bit. Yet the strength of his argument lies in his own testimony: that he had tried the best dishes of secular psychology, but when he tasted the power of Christ, he found the world’s wisdom incompatible.
For those unfamiliar with Biblical counseling, Ganz lays it all out clearly and simply in the second half of the book. Essentially, it is the process of applying Scripture to our lives. Ganz writes, “Biblical counseling is broader than the alleviation of problems and the change of personality . . . every area of a new believer’s life needs to be touched by the transforming power of Christ.”
Thus a person struggling with addiction, or anger, or anxiety is not suffering from mental illness, but from sin. Ganz points out that “the Bible when it deals with sin doesn’t call us to be healed, but to repent.” I find this understanding painful (because it makes me responsible for my problems) but also profoundly liberating (because I have hope for real change, not just a fragile remission).
Biblical counseling, as Ganz explains it, is really just discipleship. This means all believers are called to counsel, not just trained professionals. Whether at church or in daily life, we carry the responsibility of stirring each other up to greater transformation.
One would be hard pressed to find a clearer case for Biblical counseling than Ganz gives us in the 167 pages of PsychoBabble. Those who read it discover that psychologists would have us to look inside ourselves for answers, but how much better to gaze on the perfect law of liberty, the source of true transformation!