Page 4844 – Christianity Today (2024)

Why my kids are convinced they have a McDonald’s-shaped vacuum in their little souls.

When we take our children to the shrine of the Golden Arches, they always want the same thing. If they get it, the trip is a success; if not, it is sheer misery. The odd part is that what they are after is not the food. They want the prize. The prize itself is a pitiful thing, worth maybe 10 cents; but for the moment, getting it is all that matters. McDonald’s, in a fit of marketing genius, gave this package of food and prize a special name: the Happy Meal®. You’re not just buying fries, McNuggets, and a dinosaur stamp, you’re buying happiness. Their advertisem*nts have convinced my children that they have a McDonald’s-shaped vacuum in their little souls: “our hearts are restless till they find their rest in a Happy Meal.”

The creation of what might be called strategic discontent in children enables McDonald’s to inflate the price far beyond the value of the toy. I try to buy the kids off sometimes; I tell them just to get the food and I’ll give them a quarter to buy something on their own, and the cry goes up, “I want a Happy Meal!” All over the restaurant, people crane their necks to look at the tightfisted, penny-pinching cheapskate of a parent who would deny a child the meal of great joy.

So I buy each child his own, and they’re happy—at least, for a minute and 30 seconds. The problem with the Happy Meal is that the Happy wears off. It is an illusion. No child discovers lasting happiness in one. Years later, no child says, “Remember that Happy Meal? What great joy I found there. “You would think that after a while children would catch on, that a child would say, “You know, a Happy Meal never brings lasting happiness; I’m not going to get suckered into it this time.” But it doesn’t happen. When the excitement wears off, they need a new fix, another Happy Meal. They keep buying them, and they keep not working. In fact, the only one Happy Meals bring happiness to is McDonald’s. Do you ever wonder why Ronald McDonald wears that silly grin on his face? Billions of Happy Meals sold.

When you get older, you don’t get any smarter; your Happy Meals just get more expensive.

All day long we are bombarded with messages that seek to persuade us of two things: That we are (or ought to be) discontented, and that contentment is only one step away—“use me, buy me, eat me, wear me, try me, drive me, put me in your hair.” The things you can buy for contentment relating to your hair alone are staggering: You can wash it, condition it, mousse it, dye it, curl it, straighten it, wax it (if it’s growing where it shouldn’t), and Rogaine it (if it’s not growing where it should).

Aren’t people healthier, cleaner, richer, and smarter than ever? We live longer, eat better, dress warmer, work less, and play more than ever in the history of the human race. But are we happier? Or are we just cleaner, healthier, better-coifed—and sad—people?

The truth is that contentment is never achieved by satisfying our desires. Desires, once satisfied, do not stay satisfied.

This is not a new insight. Wise people from many spiritual traditions have always understood this. Almost 2,000 years ago the apostle Paul wrote, “I have learned the secret of being content …” Contentment is learned behavior, an acquired skill, like playing the piano or riding a bike. It does not just happen if I manage to fall into the right circ*mstances, or sate my appetites.

Our society—so advanced in many other respects—seems to have lost touch with this simple truth, and more than lost touch with it. We have made the quest to satisfy our desires the foundation on which we teach people to build their lives.

Social critic Christopher Lasch in The True and Only Heaven faults our society for running on the principle that insatiable desire will actually be our salvation, because it will drive people to work harder and make new discoveries. This leads to progress, and progress will usher in the end and consummation of all things:

Insatiable desire, formerly condemned as a source of frustration, unhappiness, and spiritual instability, came to be seen as a powerful stimulus to economic development. Instead of disparaging the tendency to want more than we need … [it was argued that] a continual redefinition of … standards of comfort and convenience led to improvements in production and a general increase of wealth. There was no foreseeable end to the transformation of luxuries into necessities. The more comforts people enjoyed, the more they would expect.

This preoccupation with seeking contentment through filling desires has led to a profound change in the way we think about human beings. We now think of ourselves as consumers. In the past, Lasch writes, human beings have generally identified themselves by what they produce, what they contribute. Millions of people still have last names that testify to this: Baker, Farmer, Smith. But now we label ourselves not by what we contribute but by the labels we acquire. Instead of callings we have careers—the primary purpose of which is no longer fruitfulness but the ability to support a lifestyle.

Consumerism itself has become a kind of addiction. The more toys we acquire the more frequent and expensive they need to be to produce the old high. The shift from finding identity in what we produce to what we possess, from a work ethic to a consumption ethic, at once exalts the pursuit of happiness and guarantees its ultimate futility.

Consumerism is doomed to futility, because to be made in the image of God does not mean primarily to be a consumer. The creation mandate, after all, was “be fruitful” not “shop till you drop.” Strategic discontent drives us to work harder and spend faster; it raises our sense of entitlement and lowers our sense of gratitude—the Happy Meal society. There is one thing it cannot do, of course. It cannot produce contented people.

Even the church can be co-opted into becoming just one more dispenser of Happy Meals. A friend of mine who is a denominational official told me of one man who proudly reported attending one church when it was growing, then switching to another when it was hot, and then to a third when it was hotter still; “I’ve just got to be where the action is,” he exulted.

Historically, there have been at least two main alternatives to the problem of the insatiability of desire. One is the way of stoicism. Discontentment rises from unfulfilled desires. If gratifying all desires is impossible, stoics argue, then the wise course is to learn to rein in your desires. The contented person is not the one who gets everything he or she wants (because getting always leads to the desire for more), it is the person who has stopped wanting. “Who is more contented, the man with a million dollars, or the man with ten children?” The correct answer, or course, is the man with ten children—because he does not want any more.

This approach is attractive because it offers protection from the pain of dashed dreams. Charles Schultz showed Snoopy grumbling one Thanksgiving because Charlie Brown was inside eating a huge feast while Snoopy was stuck with dog food. But a few moments of reflection on the roof of his dog house turned Snoopy around: “It could have been worse. I could have been born a turkey.”

Snoopy was a good stoic. Lower your expectations. Hedge your bets. Don’t get your hopes up, and you won’t be disappointed.

The way of Christ, however, is not stoicism. It points in another direction. It offers neither the promise of contentment through gratification nor contentment through renunciation.

The way of Christ is the way of hope. Christianity is hopeful—wildly, absurdly hopeful. This hope is not a shallow optimism that things will be better tomorrow than they are today. It is a settled conviction that there is another—and better—world than this one. The way of hope suggests that joy flows not to people who have fulfilled their desires or fallen into the right circ*mstances, but people who have developed a certain kind of character—the character of Christ. It clings to the belief that the triumph of God and his kingdom will one day be fully revealed, and even now gives us the power to endure all things, and still hope.

Søren Kierkegaard said it is this that allowed Abraham to offer his son Isaac, not out of stoic, resigned obedience, but in the absurd hope that God could still be trusted. It is this hope that allows Paul to see himself—precisely when he is in chains and in want—as an “overcomer” who “can do all things through him who gives me strength.”

From a Christian perspective, then, our problem is not that we want too much. Our problem is that we are willing to settle for too little. C. S. Lewis wrote in a celebrated essay, “The Weight of Glory”:

Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.

People have been “far too easily pleased” for a long time. A shrewd critic asked his own culture millennia ago, “Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy?” (Isa. 55:2). You would think that after a while people would catch on.

The Bible takes human discontentment very seriously. In fact, the Bible says it is not an accident we are discontented. To God, it is tragic when human beings throw away their lives by centering them in the mere gratification of appetite. So God gives us the gift of frustration—his own version of strategic discontent—in the hope that we will see the fruitlessness of such living and turn at last to him. “For the creation was subjected to futility, not by its own will but by the will of him who subjected it in hope” (Rom. 8:20).

God allows us to hunger and thirst—to be discontented—in the hope that at last we will be hungry enough and thirsty enough to search for that which can truly satisfy:

“Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you that have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.… Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food.… Seek the Lord while he may be found.” (Isa. 55:1–2, 6, NRSV).

“Here,” says Jesus, “Take my flesh for your bread, and my blood for your wine, and you will finally find food that can nourish your soul. Take my words, and you will find life. For the Meal of sacrifice and death, is the Meal of great joy, which the Father could not withhold from his children.”

Loren Wilkinson is the writer/editor of Earthkeeping in the ’90s (Eerdmans) and the coauthor, with his wife, Mary Ruth Wilkinson, of Caring for Creation in Your Own Backyard (Servant). He teaches at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

Every time I feel the Spirit, I think of that Shekinah night the Pentecostals brought their tents to our town.

Pentecost 1966 found me in Brussels in the Cathedral of Saint Michael. The holiday mass offered me an hour of reflection as the high worship flew at me in two languages: Latin, which I understood only intermittently, and Flemish, which I understood not at all. Thirty of us had gathered in the great cathedral, which stretched cavernous and dark behind us.

The Eucharist was most medieval and colorful, read by a red-robed cardinal attended by two brightly garbed guards. With all the plumage of the worship leader and the officious pageantry, the great church seemed to embarrass the little crowd, huddled at the altar end of the cathedral. The echoes of the holy words flew through the dank air.

I made out the unintelligible service to be about the Holy Spirit, so I thumbed my English Bible to Acts 2 and tried to keep faith with the cardinal, who was totally unaware that a Baptist from America was there, spying on his liturgy but very much in need of a word from the Lord.

No matter! It was Pentecost: a day for celebrating the time when power once fell upon the church; the wind blew then, the flame danced, too. Indeed, the miter of the bishop was in the shape of flame to recall the descent of the warm, indwelling God of Whitsunday.

The bishop swung the censer, and the odor of incense drifted from the altar, heady as new wine. I suddenly understood why the early churches were accused of a giddy inebriation. Drunk on God were those Spirit-washed disciples.

They were elated, out of touch with their business-dominated, commerce-controlled world. They must have danced the streets mad with joy, speaking in languages they had never learned, to foreigners from countries they had never visited.

My reverie on Acts 2 brought my mind back to a rustic Oklahoma tent revival, where I first met the Holy Spirit two decades earlier. I was nine years old in that important year when World War II ended. Hiroshima and Nagasaki each sounded a little like American Indian tribes, and each had the same number of syllables and sounds as Oklahoma. I couldn’t imagine exactly where they were, but the whole world had come to focus on their desperation. The adults in my world talked of little else. The pictures, under headline letters thick as my young fingers, covered the newspapers with black, smudgy ink. My four older brothers-in-law would come home, they said. We thanked God that the possibility of their dying had passed.

In that year of joy and cataclysm, the Pentecostals erected a tent. There was very little use in asking where Pentecostals got tents. It was like asking where Ringling Brothers got tents. Pentecostals had tents—that’s all! And they came to our town. Their big-top tabernacle rose above a swampy, snake-filled lake and was wind-billowed like the happy accordions that played under it. The tent swayed but never fell, for it was held upward by staked ropes, taut as the guitar strings that played along with the reedy accordions. The tent looked like a huge, orange jack-o’-lantern, lit by dangling light bulbs, around which swarmed the candleflies of August. Revivals always came with August, as medicine shows came with June. Both peddled their wares in these canvas cathedrals, floored with wood chips, domed with tarpaulins, and pewed with 2-by-12s resting on concrete blocks.

Here I, too, found myself, seated on the boards, shirtless—you could get by with that in 1945 if you were a child—and shoeless (“no shoes, no shirt, no service” was sloganized by restaurants, not Pentecostals). Worst of all, I was not “saved.” Oklahoma Pentecostals had divided all the world into two broad categories: saved and unsaved. By the age of nine or so, almost everyone secretly knew which category was theirs. Indeed, that’s why we had tent revivals—so people could change categories.

The person who helped with changing categories was the Holy Spirit. That was what the Spirit did. He helped the lost get saved, and the saved act more like it. Most of the characters in this rural drama now escape me. I do remember two huge men who played monstrous accordions. There was also an unforgettable reformed drunkard who, through streaming tears, told how he had once been set free of the Devil’s power. One of the athletic evangelists wore a leather buckskin coat, whose swishing, dangling cowhide fringe lured the eye hypnotically as he made the earth tremble with his glossolalia.

I listened, sincerely and with fear. Who wouldn’t? As Nagasaki yet smoldered, this red-eyed prophet told us of the great whor* in Rome who would fornicate with the Antichrist till blood flowed up to the horses’ bridles. I trembled as he warned us to make ready for apocalyptic hordes of frogs and locusts. The Euphrates would be dry as Oklahama’s sun-baked Salt Fork riverbed, he said, then Gog and Magog would rise up and the Tribulation would begin to tribulate. I quailed wide-eyed as the buckskin jacket rippled on the chest of this doomsdayer who spoke with authority, and not as the liberal Methodists and Presbyterians did.

This matter was serious. The hymns made me as nervous as the preaching, for they were rapturous and exultant about death and all the great things that would come once we all had the good fortune to die. “Some glad morning when this life is o’er, I’ll fly away,” went one hymn. Another rhapsodized, “‘Almost’ cannot avail; ‘almost’ is but to fail! / Sad, sad, that bitter wail—‘Almost—but lost.’” But the song that choked my voice to silence went, “I was sinking deep in sin, far from the peaceful shore, / very deeply stained within, sinking to rise no more.” Oh, the pain I felt as the accordions lamented my childhood fate. I saw only “the dark wave.” Oh, how I needed “the lifeline to be saved.”

“In nomine Patri, et Filii, et Spiritui Sancti”; the cardinal chanted the thread that tied the mass in Brussels to the recollections of my childhood years. While his Latin office rolled by, I wondered if the cardinal knew “Farther Along” and “I’ll Fly Away.” His red robe fascinated me. It swished as he pivoted and Latinized. Suddenly I realized how different his dress was from the buckskins of the evangelist who preached in the Pentecostal tent. “We all have our own denominational costumes,” I thought. Suddenly, he lifted the cup, genuflected, and spoke again of the Spiritus Sanctus. Somehow I knew we were brothers. He convinced me he was “saved.”

I’m not sure he would have convinced the evangelist or Sister Rose, our Pentecostal pastor. She, too, was at the revival that Shekinah night when Nagasaki burned in my heart. She, too, knew the Spirit, I could tell. Sister Rose did not play around at being religious. She clamped her eyes shut and lifted her head as though she could see through both her clenched eyelids and the canvas that domed our primitive glory. “Shandala,” she shouted. Tears streamed down her face. Sister Rose was truly “filled” (with the Holy Ghost). Even Sister Rodgers said so, and Sister Rodgers had the gift of discernment, which meant she, more than others, could tell who was truly filled and who wasn’t.

I wasn’t. Sister Rodgers would know that, too, of course. So when they began to sing “Oh, Why Not Tonight?” it seemed an honest question unblemished by the adenoidal alto harmony that always marked our singing of the invitation. “Step forward to the altar, so you’ll never have to step into hell,” shouted the buckskinned evangelist above the plaintive singing. Sister Rose was weeping. Sister Rodgers was discerning. The burden was immense. I broke into tears. Emotion burned like fire spreading through the sawdust chips.

Hell, dark as a gospel tent in a power outage, suddenly gaped lke a black hole before me. I stood weeping, naked, foolish, and undone. What would I do if God should bring Gog to Garfield County? I knew not when Christ would come! Lucky for me, they sang an invitation: “Oh, do not let the Word depart, and close thine eyes against the light, / poor sinner harden not your heart, be saved, oh, tonight.”

I had no choice. I must fly now to the arms of Jesus. I did. Wonder of wonders, he did all the hymn said. He snatched my feet from the fire and set me on the rock. I changed categories. I was saved.

The wood-chip aisle was a kind of yellow-brick road that ended in Oz. I was saved, said Sister Rose. Sister Rodgers said I was truly filled. They were both right, of course, said Brother Buckskin, and I felt a marvelous elation. I then knew what the Bible would later say to me in the Brussels cathedral. “And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting …” (Acts 2:1–2).

The cardinal did not seem nearly as moving as Sister Rose once did. Still, I felt the years condense: 1945 and 1966 were in some sense one. That is what the Spirit does. He integrates and unifies. As a matter of fact, Joel’s prophecy of the Spirit’s outpouring, quoted in Acts 2, binds the ages before Christ with Peter’s ecstatic sermon of A.D. 33, with Chrysostom, Augustine, Aquinas, and, yes, Sister Rose. To be sure, ages, cultures, and churches go about it all differently, but we are yet made one by the Spiritus Sanctus.

Pentecost is not merely a day on the church calendar; it is fire and wind able to blow and burn at any time. The elation is inebriating. It comes suddenly like the wind of which Jesus said, “The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit” (John 3:8). And like the Jerusalem disciples, our elation will make us appear as though we have gotten “drunk” on God (Acts 2:13).

Jesus, in this passage on the Spirit in John, speaks of being born again (John 3:3). The Acts passage on the Spirit ends with a mass conversion of pilgrims. Conversion is always the first, best work of the Spirit of God.

In my life it was true. I wondered about the priest. How did he come to know the Spirit? How diverse must be the ways of God to make an educated cardinal and a bashful child of nine one in Christ. Still, this may be his most glorious work—unifying us across our wide church differences.

I have a distant friend who helped liberate Belsen in 1945. He said that as he leaned against a wall of execution, he looked out at the now-silent concentration camp and saw the grim reminder of humanity’s inhumanity. The greatness of the moment overcame him, and the Spirit soared into his life. C. S. Lewis, on the other hand, came more gradually to know the Spirit’s reality. He wrestled atop an omnibus and in a motorcycle sidecar with the very existence of God. But, no matter, the Spirit’s coming is authentic however it occurs.

But what of the cardinal? What of me? The coming of the Spirit in my life certainly lacks the historical grandeur of the liberation of Belsen. As a child, I merely knelt between big Pentecostal women in the sawdust, and there he came. But the experience is as indelible as sons having visions, daughters prophesying, and old men dreaming dreams (Acts 2:17).

As I was lost in my devotion, the cardinal all too abruptly swished away. The mass was over. In a way, I felt cheated. The wafer and wine were not for me, a Protestant. Church doctrine can sometimes mar a beautiful experience, but while it might bar me from the table, the faith had been opened. I walked out of the dark church. The sun drenched the world with light. The costumes were gone, and neon blinked its glitzy enticement from bistro to bistro.

Never mind! There was a fire loose in the world that made Jerusalem, Oklahoma, and Belgium somehow one. It was not as obvious as I might have liked outside the cathedral. But the Spirit was there. Who knows where the wind may yet blow? Where the flame may yet surprise us? Such a fire is ever in us even when it hides, waiting to break out where the coldness of reason freezes.

Loren Wilkinson is the writer/editor of Earthkeeping in the ’90s (Eerdmans) and the coauthor, with his wife, Mary Ruth Wilkinson, of Caring for Creation in Your Own Backyard (Servant). He teaches at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

How Christian counseling is changing the church.

Last November, 2,300 Christian mental-health professionals gathered in Atlanta, the largest meeting yet of a vocation that barely existed 25 years ago. While psychotherapists tend to be a restrained and colorless lot, a touch of euphoria tinged the conference. Meeting rooms were jammed. Editors from evangelical publishers cruised the halls in search of the next Minirth and Meier. The lineup of speakers was dazzling: James Dobson, Chuck Swindoll, Charles Stanley, Larry Crabb, to name only the brightest luminaries. Atlanta ’92 gathered a movement that is transforming the church.

Without any central institution nor any single leader, and almost without anyone paying attention, Christian psychology has moved to the center of evangelicalism. Psychologists write best-selling Christian books. Psychologists are prominent on Christian television and radio shows; they are the ones we look to for guidance on family problems and personal growth. Today, if you want to become a successful conference speaker, the surest route is psychology graduate school, not seminary. A 1991 CHRISTIANITY TODAY reader survey suggests that evangelicals are far more likely to take problems to a counselor than to a pastor. (Thirty-three percent sought “professional” help, versus 10 percent who looked to a pastor.) Paul Meier of the Minirth-Meier clinics says, “When we started psychiatry 16 years ago, people came in the back door, because Christians weren’t supposed to need help. Now they come early so they can chat with all their friends.”

Pastors, too, have joined the surge, realizing that their congregations care more for homilies on “Healing the Hurts of the Inner Child” than on “The Missionary Mind of the Apostle Paul.” Words like addiction, self-esteem, and dysfunctional sprinkle many Sunday morning sermons. Evangelical seminaries find their counseling departments growing fast. Wheaton College, a bastion of evangelical orthodoxy, is launching its first doctoral program, not in theology or biblical studies, but in psychology.

Not everyone is happy about these developments. Even at Atlanta ’92, one heard expressions of concern. James Dobson said, “If I had to boil everything I have to say to you into one thing, it would be to be followers of Jesus Christ first, and mental-health professionals second. And keep it in that order.” Chuck Swindoll warned, “There’s a lot of schlocky stuff being passed off as Christian counseling by a lot of schlocky people.” Psychologist Gary Collins, Atlanta ’92’s national coordinator, warned of two dangers in his keynote speech: “Number one, that we will abandon the church. And the second danger is that our field will take over the church.”

Nobody suggested any danger that Christian psychology would simply wither away, a passing fad. That seems impossible for a movement with a wide range of training schools at institutions like Fuller, Biola, and Wheaton, and its own psychiatric hospital units run by entrepreneurial Christian companies like Minirth-Meier, Rapha, and New Life. Thousands of professionals have staked their careers on Christian counseling, and thousands more are pointed that direction. Already psychology has transformed the church, and it will continue to do so.

The question is whether the ultimate end will be good.

THREE WAVES

David powlison, professor of practical theology at Westminster Theological Seminary, and a critic of Christian psychotherapy, identifies three stages in its growth. The first stage, during the fifties and sixties, launched a modest evangelical interest. A small professional fellowship, the Christian Association for Psychological Studies (CAPS), was formed in 1952. Clyde Narramore, a Southern California school psychologist, hosted a radio program. Paul Tournier’s writings spurred interest. Fuller Theological Seminary started its graduate school of psychology in 1965. Some energetic young Christians—James Dobson, Larry Crabb, Frank Minirth, and Paul Meier among them—entered the field despite warnings that it would prove hostile to their faith.

The second stage began in 1970, Powlison thinks, with the publication of Jay Adams’s Competent to Counsel. Adams, a Westminster Theological Seminary professor, was sharply critical of psychotherapy, insisting that all counseling ought to be based on the Bible rather than godless psychological theories. Christian psychologists resisted Adams’s critique but took his point. Their rallying cry became integration. Psychological theories would be tested by Scripture; theology and psychotherapy would stimulate each other to new insights. Adams’s critique seems, ironically, to have spurred on the growth of Christian psychotherapy, making it more self-consciously evangelical. During this period, a number of training schools were founded, and prominent evangelical seminaries like Trinity (in Deerfield, Ill.) and Dallas added psychologists and psychiatrists to their faculty. Minirth and Meier (see “The Accidental Revolutionaries,” beginning on page 30) founded a Christian psychiatric clinic in Dallas and were swamped with patients.

Powlison’s third stage begins in the mideighties, when, he writes in an essay in Power Religion, “The psychological river … went to flood stage.” What had been a rising stream of influence broke out of its banks, “entering evangelical religion in almost every setting.” Comments Paul Meier, “We’ve been fighting a battle getting Christians to get help. It’s not a major battle any more.”

With that success has come a resurgence of concern. A set of adamant critics—Dave Hunt, John MacArthur, and Martin and Deidre Bobgan—has attacked psychotherapy wholesale. Subtler criticisms come from men like Powlison, Os Guinness, and Paul Vitz, a professor of psychology at New York University. They see some value in psychotherapy, but worry that, masquerading as “Christian,” it will seduce the church. The critics’ voices seem all but lost in the tide of psychotherapy engulfing the church.

Yet some of psychology’s most thoughtful Christian leaders express very similar concerns. “We agree with Christian critics of psychology such as Jay Adams,” write Wheaton College psychology professors Stanton Jones and Richard Butman, “who say that the counseling processes are of such a nature that they must be thoroughly reconceptualized from a biblical foundation to lay claim to the adjective ‘Christian.’” Fuller School of Psychology dean Archibald Hart adds, “A lot of Christian psychology is theologically bankrupt. We haven’t struggled with the great themes of the Christian gospel. We’ve been pragmatic. We try to help people with their emotions, but we don’t have a theology of emotion.”

SEVEN QUESTIONS FOR PSYCHOTHERAPY

1. Who are these guys (the authority question)?

Martin and Deidre Bobgan are relentless critics of psychotherapy. They have published a series of fearless and detailed broadsides—fearless because their attacks on such best-selling authors as James Dobson, Larry Crabb, Frank Minirth, and Paul Meier have led Christian publishers to stop publishing the Bobgans’ books. Yet they go on, self-publishing such titles as Psychoheresy and 12 Steps to Destruction.

Their attacks are indiscriminate—like a person set upon by a swarm of bees, they hit at anything—but underneath rages a very fair question. Who are these guys? they seem to ask. Why should we listen when they tell us how to raise our children, how to grow as persons, how to understand ourselves? Why invite them to the seats of honor at Bible conferences, on Christian radio stations, in evangelical bookstores? What’s their authority?

It is a question not often asked in this psychological age, but it deserves an answer. Some psychologists claim the authority of science. They think of psychology as offering neutral facts about the mind, and true scientific facts cannot contradict Scripture. That is a somewhat outdated view of science, however. Ever since the work of science historian T. S. Kuhn, science is not thought to be so objective—particularly in a field like psychology.

Beyond that, psychology as a whole is not at issue: psychotherapy is, and its theories run far beyond science. According to Wheaton professors Jones and Butman, writing in Modern Psychotherapies, “On the whole, scientific studies show that participation in psychotherapy is better than no psychotherapy at all for most individuals with a wide variety of problems, and that the general effect is ‘significant.’ The research to date has failed to show the superiority of one therapeutic approach over another.” Further, “The few studies on specifically Christian approaches to counseling tend to be poorly designed and executed from a methodological perspective, so optimistic statements about their effectiveness should be taken with a ‘grain of salt.’” By psychology’s own reckoning, therapy is effective, but not earth-shatteringly so. “When I train practitioners,” says Jones, “I try to concentrate in areas where there are specific, well-indicated results—that is, for autistic children. It seems to me that you’re reaching well beyond that when you set yourself up as an expert in human growth and welfare. There’s no evidence that psychologists or psychiatrists are that.”

“I think the critics need to ask, ‘Why are people so interested in psychology?’ The thought is that we ought to go back to the old way. But the old way wasn’t working.”

—Bruce Narramore

There is another kind of authority, however: that of what Jones calls “a reasonably wise person.” Psychologists, Christian or not, have spent a great deal of time attending carefully to real people. Remembering his early days as a therapist, psychologist Larry Crabb says that “psychology gave me a slice of what life is really like.” Sitting for thousands of hours with hurting individuals and families, therapists have observed a lot about how people think, what moves them, how they avoid facing their problems, how they relate as families, and so on. This is far from the absolute authority that would make you turn to psychologists and say, “Here, take over the church.” It does, however, make them worth listening to—especially if you sense that the church has not been doing well with hurting people. Bruce Narramore, a professor at Biola’s Rosemead Graduate School of Psychology, points out Proverbs’ emphasis on practical wisdom. “The Book says it’s not all in the book. You need wise counselors.”

2. Doesn’t Scripture tell us all we need to know for salvation?

John MacArthur has become the most visible critic of psychology since the publication of his book Our Sufficiency in Christ. In a radio debate with psychiatrist Paul Meier, he asked, “Are we saying today in effect, that, yeah, we believe all our sufficiency is in Christ, but that work can’t start until we go to psychology? We can’t really believe that.… If a person spiritually comes to the resources in Christ, walks in the Spirit, is filled with the Spirit and [is] obeying the Word of God, that’s going to take care of everything.”

To which Meier answered, “I don’t think you have a right to limit Christ’s sufficiency.” Christ can work through all kinds of means, Meier believes, including psychology.

“I believe,” MacArthur rejoined, “that the Bible is the only textbook of psychology.”

That is the heart of the issue: Does the Bible tell us all we need to know about how to help people?

Steve Arterburn, head of the New Life Treatment Centers and a well-known writer and speaker in the Christian recovery movement, answers that “the Bible is sufficient for what it does. Nowhere does it say in the Bible that if you vary your tone of voice, use illustrations, and use simple, vivid words, you’ll be a more effective pastor. There are communication skills, and they are just as true for preachers as for anyone else. Those techniques have helped thousands of people come to Christ.”

Yet psychology offers more than techniques. Most theories seek to explain why people do what they do, and how they can become whole. There is a broad overlap with Scripture.

Scripture does not describe every aspect of human behavior; it does not tell us about anorexia, for example, nor does it catalog strategies of denial, by which human beings avoid facing their problems. The question is whether psychology is truly helpful in what it adds to Scripture, and whether psychological explanations include the kind of information Scripture gives about human motives and behavior. Psychology doesn’t usually mention rebellion against God, for example, as a mainspring of human motivation. How then can it give a true picture of humanity?

“There are two dangers: Number one, that we will abandon the church. And the second danger is that our field will take over the church.”

—Gary Collins

3. If the unconscious is so important, why doesn’t the Bible tell us about it?

The Bobgans criticize Larry Crabb, among others, for accepting a Freudian view of the unconscious. “The idea of the unconscious as a hidden region of the mind with powerful needs and motivational energy is not supported by the Bible or science,” they write. “The focus of the Bible in relationship to sanctification is not on so-called psychological needs, but on knowing and obeying the will of God.… God does not promise to expose and reveal all of the tangled motives of anyone’s heart.”

This is a major dividing line between psychology and many of its hard-line Christian critics. Christian psychotherapists say that while the Bible does not describe the unconscious per se, particularly in a strictly Freudian sense, it has plenty to say about people who are deluded. It tells of a deceitful heart and of secret sins. People can be quite unaware, psychotherapists say, of what is driving their lives. You have to get under the surface, to the shadowy region of half-hidden motives and unhealed wounds.

Henry Cloud, a psychologist at Minirth-Meier West, says, “You’re talking about two different views of sanctification. [The critics] have a basic stance against the interior life, against looking inside. They say, don’t look at yourself, look at the Lord. Yet Scripture shows that everyone who meets the Lord falls on his face and sees himself.”

4. How can a Christian accept psychology’s emphasis on the self? Didn’t Jesus tell us to deny ourselves?

“I believe that the Bible is the only textbook of psychology.”

—john MacArthur

There are two problems here: one of terminology and one of theology. When Jesus spoke of self-denial, he was talking about sacrificing your own interests. Psychotherapists mean something different: they talk about self as the person each of us “sees” when we think of ourselves. You cannot “deny” that. As Archibald Hart writes, “To insist that a person must not have feelings toward the self … is to describe a person who doesn’t exist. For good or ill, humans possess a self and need help in dealing with that self.”

Don Matzat writes, “Many Christian parents have read to their children the story of The Little Engine that Could. When our children took their first steps or attempted to ride their first bicycle, did we not bolster their self-confidence? ‘C’mon, Johnny, you can do it!’ parents shout at Little League baseball games. It has never been considered inappropriate for Christians, any more than for non-Christians, to encourage their children or boost their self-esteem in this way.”

The deeper question is whether psychotherapy encourages an idolatry of the self. Henry Cloud warns of therapists who encourage people to wallow indefinitely in their “entitled narcissism.” Larry Crabb senses a tendency in Christian therapists to say, “God’s number one commitment is to help us get over our problems.” While trying to help hurting people, Christian counselors “can reinforce a fallen mindset which consists of ‘I’ve got to find some way to help me feel the way I want to feel.’”

It is hard to deny that people really do have needs. Still, the question remains: if you build your system on filling human needs, where does God fit? Is he the Lord of all, so that our first and only absolute need is to worship and obey him? Does psychology encourage us to think of him mainly as a source of inspiration and encouragement, a benign and accommodating figure who lives for our benefit?

“A lot of Christian psychology is theologically bankrupt. We haven’t struggled with the great themes of the Christian gospel.”

—Archibald Hart

5. The recovery movement treats sins as “addiction” and “disease.” Whatever happened to sin?

The “recovery movement” has history and beliefs quite distinct from the rest of psychology, and many psychotherapists are critical of it. It is a popular—some would say faddish—movement, which grew out of Alcoholics Anonymous. Recovery’s most basic component is regular, supportive groups of people talking honestly about their problems.

Lately this lay-led movement has been embraced by professionals. Recovery has been a powerful engine in the rise of Christian psychotherapy, for recovery’s free use of Christian concepts has provided a bridge between traditional psychotherapy and Christian people. The only trouble is, those concepts have been stretched to fit a variety of religious and irreligious contexts. Recovery means a lot of different things to different people.

AA’s disease model” of alcoholism is a primary point of criticism, along with the much wider use of “addiction” in the recovery movement. Stanton Peele writes, “Disease notions … legitimize, reinforce, and excuse the behavior in question—convincing people, contrary to all evidence, that their behavior is not their own.”

It does not necessarily work that way, however. AA, for example, does not normally make alcoholics irresponsible; rather, it helps them to act responsibly. That is because while the “disease model” is an inaccurate medical diagnosis, it is an accurate analogy for sin. As sinners, we are caught in a web of sin, from which we cannot escape by making moral resolutions. We need to call for help, both from God and from fellow sinners. We will do that only when we have realized our own helplessness. Just as a sick person must give up on his or her own self-cure and go to a doctor, so we sinners must abandon attempts to fix up ourselves. That is precisely what AA’s 12 Steps encourage us to do.

The recovery movement brings some powerful reforming forces to the church, chief among which is its down-to-earth insistence that everyone needs help. As Henry Cloud writes, “In the church, it is culturally unacceptable to have problems; that is called being sinful. In the AA group, it is culturally unacceptable to be perfect; that is called denial.” Which stance is more biblical? he asks.

On the other hand, “God as we understand him”—the 12 Steps’ designation of the Higher Power—is a profoundly ambivalent phrase. It can mean “God insofar as I, in my limitations, know him thus far.” It can also mean “God as I choose to define him.” That latter meaning creates a human-centered religion, which is just what some accuse psychotherapy of being.

6. If psychologists really base their therapy on the Bible, why charge? Shouldn’t God’s Word be delivered free?

Christian psychotherapy is vividly commercial. Atlanta ’92 included one standing-room-only seminar on “How to get referrals from the clergy.” A woman from Kansas raised her hand and said that, at pastors’ luncheons, she was inevitably asked about her fees. “The pastors look shocked when I tell them,” she said, asking how to handle the reaction. Other seminars offered “how to determine a fair price for selling or buying a psychotherapy practice,” business and marketing principles to help with “the bottom line,” and the “‘selling’ of Christian-oriented services to the insurance community.” A workshop on publishing attracted much interest from eager would-be authors.

Psychologists sell a product; they do not take offerings or live on grants. Energetic businesses like Minirth-Meier and Rapha market their wares synergistically using clinics, seminars, books, videos, radio shows, and 800 telephone numbers. That is not wrong, but it does raise questions about profit becoming more important than principle.

“The alternative [to charging fees],” psychologist Henry Cloud says, “would be the church collecting funds, opening a counseling center, and treating people for free. I think that in a majority of cases in suburban America, people can pay for it themselves. There’s no such thing as free treatment. Somebody has to pay for it. I came to think that it would be better for the individual who can pay to pay for his own care, because then he is responsible, and his treatment doesn’t take away from the whole church. The question then becomes, what do those who are gifted and trained do for those who can’t pay? I know how I’ve worked that out. I treat them. I treat them because I have an income.”

“There is a tendency among Christian therapists to say, ‘God’s number one commitment is to help us get over our problems.’”

—Larry Crabb

Not every therapist is so altruistic, however. The question of how to deal with people who cannot afford treatment bedevils the entire medical establishment, but it is particularly crucial for a movement that claims to be Christian.

In purely cynical terms, Christian psychotherapy can be seen as a marketing ploy, gilding psychology with just enough Christianity to make conservative clients feel comfortable. One hears persistent rumors that some clinics are doing just that: selling themselves as Christian when, from an evangelical point of view, they are not. It is a disturbing eddy—and probably an inevitable part of an operation that is so successful and attracts a lot of money.

7. Does psychotherapy’s fascination with the interior life sap commitment from mission?

In We’ve Had a Hundred Years of Psychotherapy and the World’s Getting Worse, journalist Michael Ventura assails psychotherapy’s tacit assumption that all life’s problems should be processed internally and individually. “A therapist told me that my grief at seeing a homeless man my age was really a feeling of sorrow for myself,” he writes. By implication, the therapist was telling him to reflect on himself rather than to work for the homeless.

“There’s a lot of schlocky stuff being passed off as Christian counseling by a lot of schlocky people.”

—Charles Swindoll

Turn that thought toward the church and you have to wonder whether a psychologized church will ever get on to mission. Psychotherapy’s promise is that psychologically healthy people will be more productive, but there is also a possibility that a church that is healthier according to psychological criteria could be simply a more introspective, self-satisfied church. How much of Christ’s work has been done by psychologically whole people?

PSYCHOLOGY’S GOOD WORKS

You can ask a lot of penetrating questions of psychotherapy. You should not, however, miss something equally important: the urgent questions psychotherapy brings to the church. “I think the critics need to ask, ‘Why are people so interested in psychology?’” says psychologist Bruce Narramore. “The thought is that we ought to go back to the old way. But the old way wasn’t working. The church wasn’t stemming the tide. What was missing in the church was a practical application of our biblical knowledge to life.”

David Powlison remembers reading through a massive theological classic on sin and realizing that the multivolume work contained not a single case study showing how sin works in ordinary life. The theological exposition was brilliant, but there was no detail. “Psychology is persuasive existentially because it is case-wise, empirically detailed, and practiced in talking about and facilitating change processes.” He argues that the church has been relegated to the “superficial and external” (calling people to moral uprightness and to assent to a few doctrinal essentials) and to the “mystical and intangible.” “Psychology has staked out everything in the middle … the intricacies of motivation, defensiveness, interpersonal conflict, communication, problem solving, anger, anxiety, depression, guilt, the grieving process, parenting, sexuality, addictions.”

The need for help with such issues is inescapable. We have larger, less personal churches; dislocated communities and families; and social problems at flood tide. The people with the worst problems are frequently those whose families and friends cannot help. Personal problems are not simple anymore (if they ever were); there is a confusing brew of family, societal, drug-related, and religious issues to sort through. Christian psychotherapists promise to offer help, and they have won at least tentative approval from church people. Now the people who have been helped—many of them pastors—are bringing psychology’s insights into the church.

The universality of problems. The psychologists’ most fundamental perspective is that people have problems—even good, Bible-believing, Spirit-filled people have problems. That insight has changed the culture of many churches. Where once problems were a badge of shame, they are now almost a badge of honor. In a LEADERSHIP journal interview, pastor Bill Hybels says, “If someone says, ‘Actually, my family was just about perfect. There were no problems …’ we know there’s cause for concern.”

Helplessness. “There is an implication in all of [our critics’] writings that people are able to choose what is right,” says Henry Cloud. “There is a total denial of the fact we are sold into slavery.” Psychotherapists consistently indict the evangelical church for failing to grasp people’s helplessness. They suggest evangelicals—especially those from a fundamentalist background—have deified willpower, as though a sinking person can pull himself up by his own bootstraps. The church has often offered condemnation and pep talks, when the desperate person needs acceptance and patient understanding if she’s ever going to improve.

Heart changes. Larry Crabb says that Christian psychotherapy is a “response to a shallow sort of spirituality that developed out of fundamentalism in its controversy with the modernists.” Fundamentalists properly emphasized moral and revelational absolutes, he says, but “sanctification came to be seen as no more than chosen obedience.” Christian psychotherapists emphasize change that works from the inside out. They note that Christ’s command is to love God and our neighbor from the heart. Somehow, love has to reach the deepest level of our emotions and desires; telling people to try harder or pray more doesn’t accomplish that. It was the Pharisees, therapists point out, who lived an outwardly flawless life but were rotten inside.

The body of Christ. Therapists emphasize intimate relationships with other believers. Historically, the evangelical church for the most part has told people to work out their problems with God alone, to pray and obey. Therapists believe that that often merely sanctifies denial; God becomes a supreme way to avoid facing your problems. Therapists say people need encounters with other Christians who will “speak the truth in love”; the entire church can be therapeutic, particularly through small groups that are completely accepting and encourage honest relationships. “The quality of my relationships is a real measure of the quality of sanctification going on in my life,” says Larry Crabb.

DANGERS AND POSSIBILITIES

Right now evangelicals are swimming in psychology like a bird dog in a lake; they hardly seem to realize how much has changed. They certainly do not feel in danger. But there is danger, and some leaders in Christian psychology recognize it. James Dobson, whose Focus on the Family organization refers troubled people to therapists all over the country, says nothing makes him more nervous than those referrals. “I can’t guarantee it,” he says. “I have to take their word for it [that they’re Christian in their practice]. My hands sweat.”

Many therapists do not see the problem. They entered the field to help hurting people, not because they were fascinated by theories of the mind or theology. Paul Meier says that integrating his studies in psychiatry with his faith was easy; he knew the Bible well, and he did not find many conflicts. But when you read Meier’s books you find numerous secular concepts with only a window dressing of biblical authority.

Much of what has been done in integrating Scripture and psychology follows what Powlison calls the “bag of marbles” method. You take psychology’s marbles, and you go through them discarding the ones that contradict Scripture. Then you add the remaining marbles to your bag of scriptural marbles. The result is supposed to be integrated, but it is really a mixed bag of marbles.

A psychology that has not found biblical roots could be a secularizing force, smuggling non-Christian ideas into the church. It might produce an amoral, unchallenged people, for whom religion is a form of self-congratulation. It might be the guise under which theological liberalism finally conquers orthodoxy: humanity and its “needs” becoming the measure of all things, God being reduced to a source of comfort and inspiration.

There is reason for distress in the lack of scriptural reflection, but there is reason for hope, too. The movement is being driven more and more to think scripturally. Most of the drive comes, not from critics’ complaints, but from something internal—the psychologists’ deeply evangelical faith. “We’re dealing with sanctification,” exclaims Larry Crabb. “We’re dealing with half of the mission of the church! We can’t just treat psychotherapists as professionals down on the corner, so that when we have people with problems we can’t handle, we ship them down there.”

“If the Christian psychology movement is going to make a lasting contribution to the church,” Bruce Narramore says, “we have to write theologically sound books.” Some are beginning that task. Crabb has been trying to rethink counseling from a biblical point of view for almost two decades. Henry Cloud, John Townsend, and Archibald Hart have joined in more recently with thoughtful, biblical books. From the critics’ side, David Powlison has developed a biblical understanding of counseling that accords with many of psychology’s insights.

There is danger, but also possibilities. There is the possibility that, thanks to Christian psychology, evangelicals might become a healthier people, freed from moralism, enabled to love and to serve. We might find a more biblical understanding of how God wants to work in our hearts. We might end up understanding people better and helping them more. We might even find that we engage our neighbors in a new way.

Dave Stoop speaks for many therapists when he says, “Most pastors see recovery groups as works of compassion, and they are, but they fail to see them as incredible works of evangelism.” Once churches founded hospitals: places to be cared for in your sickness, places to get well. Could be it is happening again.

The Accidental Revolutionaries

With surprising ease, Frank Minirth and Paul Meier have forged a link between psychology and Bible-belt faith.

Frank Minirth and Paul Meier met over a cadaver. At the University of Arkansas medical school in 1969, students were paired alphabetically and then assigned to bodies. Minirth, a farm boy from rural Arkansas, and Meier, a carpenter’s son from small-town Michigan, met and proceeded to Minirth witness to each other. “We had zeal,” Minirth remembers. “We’d witness to a fence post.”

Three years later, they both chose to specialize in psychiatry. Many Christians advised them to stay away from a field renowned for its anti-Christian bias, but they tackled it anyway.

Meier is large, gentle, and disarming, a man frequently compared to a teddy bear. Minirth is short and dark, with small, glittering eyes and an intense, rapid-fire delivery. It is hard for anyone to dislike Paul Meier. It is hard for anyone to outwork Frank Minirth. Their first book together, Happiness Is a Choice, published in 1978, is a perfect example of their partnership. Minirth wrote the book; his title was Symptoms, Causes and Cures of Depression. Meier read the manuscript and pronounced it supremely dull. In six weeks he rewrote it in lay language, and the book became a bestseller.

Similarly, Minirth prepares for their syndicated radio program by reading every medical article available on that show’s subject. He develops careful notes, which Meier scans before going on the air. In the jargon of sports broadcasting, Minirth does the play-by-play; Meier, the color commentary.

Different as they are, the two possess a similar vision of faith. Both come from fundamentalist childhoods, having grown up with a powerful sense of God’s calling on their lives. That missionary mentality forged their partnership and drew them into psychiatry.

Their story illustrates the surprisingly easy way in which two seemingly alien worlds-evangelicalism and psychology—have merged.

Paul Meier was born in Saginaw, Michigan, where the local newspaper printed a daily slogan: “Only one life, ‘twill soon be past; only what’s done for Christ will last.” The third of four children, he was the “good kid” in a family with the classic German work ethic. His father, a home builder and carpenter, often worked two jobs in addition to almost endless service at church.

Meier attended ultra-fundamentalist Bob Jones University, a fact he is not eager to advertise today. By the end of his years at BJU, fundamentalism had begun to lose its grip on him. He wanted to write a book, to be called Practical Christianity, that would introduce a faith cleansed of unnecessary rules and guilt, a faith that helped people rather than burdened them, while retaining a grand missionary spirit. Inspired to pursue medicine by a visiting missionary doctor, he dreamed of becoming a world-famous medical researcher, finding a cure for cancer, and using that platform to proclaim his faith in Christ.

Frank Minirth comes from a farm near Leachville, Arkansas, where he grew up in a Southern Baptist church. He remembers few of the sermons but all of the hymns. Along with books by Lewis Sperry Chafer and Watchman Nee, he names as the volume that influenced him most the Broadman Hymnal. “If you sing ‘I Am Resolved’ for 18 years, you get pretty resolved,” he says. To this day he considers it a whopping good time to ride with friends in his four-wheel-drive vehicle, singing hymn after hymn while the miles roll away.

Of the several-dozen books that bear Minirth’s name, his favorite is Beating the Odds, a folksy chronicle of how he and other family members overcame tough times. His own struggles came through severe diabetes, diagnosed when he was 12. As he tells it, survival has required a lifelong struggle of discipline and determination.

Somehow in high school he made up his mind to become a psychiatrist. Why is a mystery. Nobody the Minirths knew had ever seen a therapist, professionally or in passing. Minirth attended nearby Arkansas State and joined the Navigators, an interdenominational Christian group that added disciplined Bible memorization to his Southern Baptist zeal. He also launched lifetime friendships with two men—Irwin Tinker and States Skipper—who seemed happier in their friendship with God than anyone he had ever met. Rather typically, he later talked Skipper into studying psychology and hired him as the first therapist at the Minirth-Meier clinic when it opened in Dallas. Minirth and Meier have 315 doctors and therapists on staff now, and throughout the system you find old friends, relatives, and students who have been singled out by one of the two men and encouraged to enter the counseling field.

Meier and Minirth chose psychiatry because they thought it would be a prestigious platform for their faith. “My parents never raised an eyebrow about psychology,” Meier’s sister Nancy Brown says. “I don’t remember anyone in church or home being negative about it. Both sets of families [the Minirths and the Meiers] were so proud of their sons. They were proud that their sons went on in school and wanted to serve God through medicine.”

“Paul was so naïve,” Brown says; “he thought that when he shared Christ, his patients’ problems would be gone. When he found that his first three clients were already Christians, he was overwhelmed.” While still witnessing to and praying with non-Christian patients—and sometimes being reprimanded for it—both men began to focus on the enormous needs of Christians, which they saw every day among their patients at the teaching hospital. “I really wanted people to know Christ,” Minirth remembers, “but I saw more and more hurting Christians.”

They decided that the key need was a trained pastorate. As Meier remembers it, “Both of us had job offers for $100,000 a year, but we felt we could do more good at Dallas Theological Seminary. We flew down to meet with Dr. Walvoord [then president] and Don Campbell [then academic dean, now president]. We said, ‘God is calling us to teach psychology at Dallas.’ They said, ‘God is calling you to do what?’”

Dallas had never heard of them. It had been hearing from its alumni, though, that they wished they had received more preparation for the counseling needs in their churches. The school offered Minirth and Meier temporary positions, a kind of let’s-try-it-and-see-if-we-like-it approach. Minirth, always optimistic, accepted. Meier was offended and went off to teach at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois. After a year, Minirth talked him into joining him at Dallas. Meier arrived in 1976 with a starting salary, as he remembers it, of $12,600.

Eventually their relationship with Dallas dwindled. The seminary wouldn’t agree to the two men’s dream of a counseling department. Minirth and Meier’s attention shifted to something launched almost as an afterthought: their clinic.

They had opened an office soon after coming to Dallas, hoping to supplement their income. Within two years they had five professional staff. In four years they had 13. In seven years there were 24. Most of their patients came from the surrounding area, but some came from out of state. No one had realized the pent-up demand for Christian psychiatry. As psychiatrist Walter Byrd puts it, “There was never a master plan. They’d be lucky to have a master plan for next month.”

In 1985, Chicago-based Moody Bible Institute asked Minirth and Meier to do a call-in show on their national radio network. Byrd remembers the early shows as casual, with therapists asked at the last minute to sit in. They did not realize the impact until the following year, when they opened a branch clinic in Wheaton, Illinois. People who knew their names from the radio flooded in. The Wheaton clinic grew immediately and opened the door to expansion by multiplication: in six years the number of treatment centers grew from one to 25, the staff from 38 to 315.

Minirth and Meier embody much of the short history of evangelical psychotherapy. Both came from fundamentalist roots, retaining a powerful drive to influence the world for Christ. Looking for an influential position in psychiatry, they stumbled onto the vast population of Christians who were desperate for help. Out of this need, Minirth and Meier have built a far-flung empire of clinics, publishing ventures, radio and video shows, and seminars.

For those who fear that evangelical Christianity is getting swallowed by psychology, Frank Minirth and Paul Meier ought to provide some limited comfort. In them, simple evangelical faith has seemed to swallow psychological theory and practice without even a gulp. They are still happily memorizing Scripture verses. Meier, no longer doing therapy, has returned to a long-term love of his: biblical prophecy. His next book is a novel speculating on the last days.

They also embody the weaknesses of evangelical psychology. Colleagues complain that their books and radio comments have an embarrassingly slapdash quality. Aiming for the masses, they make complicated concepts sound simple, and can be just plain unreliable. Minirth and Meier both say that integrating Scripture and psychiatry was easy for them, but in their books it seems too easy.

If they are not much help with theory, they have created something that may be just as significant: an environment for Christian psychiatric care. For clients, their folksy, Bible-quoting manner made psychiatry seem safe. For therapists, they created a clinical setting where Christian professionals could be themselves—not defending themselves, not feeling isolated, but able to treat patients while taking the patients’ faith, and their own, with full seriousness. In doing that, Minirth and Meier made a very important contribution toward the integration of Scripture and psychology. As Walter Byrd says, “The only way to do that is to work with real patients. You can’t do it with textbooks.”

National Institute of Mental Health researcher David Larson was Meier’s fellow resident at Duke medical school, years ago. “I liked his courage,” he remembers. “He really wanted to bring Christ into his practice. That was an unknown back then. The best part is that they had the courage to try it, and the Christians said, ‘Here we come.’”

By Tim Stafford.

Loren Wilkinson is the writer/editor of Earthkeeping in the ’90s (Eerdmans) and the coauthor, with his wife, Mary Ruth Wilkinson, of Caring for Creation in Your Own Backyard (Servant). He teaches at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

The Two-Parent Heresy

The Atlantic’s cover story exposes what academia and the media have tried to suppress: Children need their parents.

The April cover of the Atlantic provocatively shouted, “Dan Quayle Was Right.” The issue quickly disappeared off the racks. And well it should. Barbara Dafoe Whitehead’s synthesis of contemporary research on the decline of the American family should be required reading for all Americans. Despite academia’s and the media’s view that “the changes in family structure are, on balance, positive,” Whitehead reports that the tide of scientific evidence shows otherwise: the decline of the two biological-parent family is extracting a horrific toll on our nation’s children.

Christians have good reason for being suspicious of social-science research. In the field of sexuality, for example, the work of Alfred Kinsey now stands as a powerful example of ideological biases leading to poor research methods, which, in turn, generate fallacious results. Studies on the effectiveness of sex-education and family-planning programs have declared their success in fostering effective “birth control,” leading many to think such programs decrease unwanted pregnancies and premarital sex. In reality, these programs manage to control births by increasing the use of abortion to “terminate pregnancies.” Social-science research is particularly vulnerable to distortion in pursuit of ideological agendas, and the landmark Atlantic cover story is a case study of how that happens.

Whitehead ties the steady decline of marriage in America to three assumptions, which took hold in the sixties: that women could afford financially to be mothers without the support of a husband, that divorce caused no significant permanent harm to children, and that all diversity in family structure is good. The result? Today half of all marriages end in divorce. People who cohabit are more likely to divorce, not less. Most divorcees will remarry. More second marriages than firsts end in divorce, more thirds than seconds, and so forth. More and more children are living in single-parent, stepparent, and cohabiting homes.

While there are many notable exceptions, children of marriages that end in divorce, and children of single mothers, are more likely to be poor and stay poor, to be dependent upon welfare, essentially to be deserted by their fathers both financially and relationally, to have emotional and behavioral problems, to fail to achieve academically, to get pregnant, abuse drugs and alcohol, to get in trouble with the law, and to be sexually or physically abused.

Children in stepfamilies are generally worse off than kids in single-parent homes. They are more likely to be sexually or physically abused. They are less likely to feel a part of a family. Stepparents invest less rather than more time in their kids.

And the evidence suggests that many of these kids do not “bounce back” as was previously assumed. For many, the scars last into adulthood, interfering with their vocational stability, capacity to nurture children, and to have a stable sense of well-being. In perhaps the most tragic irony, many have difficulty forming lasting love relationships and are more likely to get divorced themselves.

According to Whitehead, the core truth that emerges from the research is this: “The adult quest for freedom, independence and choice of family relationships conflicts with a child’s developmental needs for stability, constancy, harmony, and permanence in family life. In short, family disruption creates a deep division between parents’ interests and the interests of children.”

Why has it taken so long for social scientists to admit these realities? In part, they have quailed before iconoclasts who rail against any attempt to speak of how it ought to be. The power of social strictures that once helped keep marriages together and unmarried people out of reach of others’ beds is now directed effectively at muzzling those who might point out the damage the erosion of the family is causing. In our culture, says Whitehead, “the worst thing you can do is make people feel guilty or bad about themselves.” And these findings often go against the personal values and personal life choices of social science researchers.

Whitehead suggests that the media, in an amazing inversion of reality, often depict “the two-parent family as a source of pathology.” She suggests this may be due to society’s attempt to come to grips with ever widening diversities of lifestyles. When we have trouble coping with our perceptions that our world is in trouble, we respond by normalizing the pathological and pathologizing the normal. Two-parent families are made to look like stifling prisons, while Murphy Brown looks courageous and admirable.

So Dan Quayle was right about the two-parent family. That should not surprise anyone who accepts God’s design for marriage as a lifelong bonding between man and woman. The larger question for Christians is how to respond wisely to this new awareness.

First, we should redouble our commitment to living out Christian marriage and Christian singleness. Both are vocations; neither is a natural state of affairs to sinful people. But by our acts of fidelity we may be able to help counteract the damage done by the effects of sinful life choices across the generations.

At the same time, we must not let our excitement over this scientific endorsem*nt of God’s view of the family degenerate into pride or self-righteousness. We cannot ignore the evil perpetrated within intact families—such as the physical, emotional, and sexual abuse of children. We must also avoid using this new information simply to blame the victims of family tragedies, thereby compounding their pain.

A correct diagnosis is a step toward health, but it is not a cure. Our culture is beginning to realize it is ill. Christians can help to administer the treatment.

By Stanton L. Jones, chair of the psychology department of Wheaton College.

Are Christians Fanatics?

The rush is on to link the religious lunatics of our time—namely, David Koresh, who believed he was the Messiah, and Michael Griffin, who believed it was God’s will to stop abortion with a .38 caliber revolver—with mainstream Christianity in America.

Shortly after Griffin gunned down Dr. David Gunn, Anthony Lewis wrote in the New York Times that the murder “tells us the essential truth about most abortion activists. They are religious fanatics who impose their version of God’s word on the rest of us.” Others in the media joined in collapsing the space between faith and fanaticism. Columnist Ellen Goodman likened antiabortion activists to domestic terrorists, on a par with those who blew up the World Trade Center. Time’s Lance Morrow saw these recent tragedies as born of the “death force” of faith.

Not all media commentators, fortunately, have religious and historical blinders. Columnist Charles Krauthammer points out in Time magazine, “For the past half-century more than a quarter of the earth’s people were controlled by political movements whose pursuit of the millennium was as fanatical as that of their religious counterparts—and far more destructive.… Has any religious vision occasioned more human sacrifice than ‘total communism’?” Think about our century: Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot. Nonreligious fanatics have destroyed millions of lives.

So why do some see the violent acts of Koresh and Griffin as indictments of faith itself? Ignorance and insecurity play a part. But believer and unbeliever should keep in mind one thing: If this kind of behavior were typical for people of faith, it would not be front-page news.

By Kenneth M. Meyer, president of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois.

After I Graduate

This month thousands will graduate from the nation’s colleges. CT asked Michael D. Groat, student body president at Gordon College in Wenham, Massachusetts, for a perspective from the new generation of leaders.

From my view in the graduation line, things look disheartening. Gangs carve out city blocks for themselves. Lakes and rivers spit up gobs of trash and toxins. The holy priest is no longer wholly trusted, and society is fragmented by moral and cultural relativity.

All of us in the Class of ’93 are disheartened by the prospect of trying to clean up a culture that someone else messed up. We have to live with the results, and that scares us. It is easy to want to give up, to blame our elders, to buy into the spirit of nihilism that hangs over our generation like a rain cloud.

Critiques of today’s college students portray us as self-centered hedonists, and there is a lot of truth in that. But why shouldn’t we grab all the gusto we can? Practically every message we have received, from childhood on, has been delivered in splashy, sexy, sensuous overtones. In psychological terms, the generation at the helm of the economy provided the stimulus; we are just providing the response.

But not all of us are ready to throw in the towel. Some of us have been fortunate enough to hear from Christian professors and fellow students that if there is any hope for the world, it will come from people who fully integrate their Christian faith with all of life. In a world with few positive role models, some of us have found meaning at colleges where commitment to Christ is upheld as worth dying for.

Our generation looks at a bleak landscape. But some of us have been filled with the zeal to reclaim the world for Christ. We sense our faith has everything to do with the so-called secular world. We are determined to apply that faith in wise, compassionate, and energetic ways.

In a powerful passage, the prophet Isaiah used the image of a highway to proclaim the coming of a Savior: “In the desert prepare a way for the Lord; make straight in the wilderness a highway for our God” (Isa. 40:3). Centuries later each of the four Gospels applied these words to the ministry of John the Baptist. He was a voice in the wilderness, crying out, “the crooked roads shall become straight.… And all mankind will see God’s salvation” (Luke 3:5–6).

Those of us who live in the Midwest have an advantage in understanding these passages, for, when it comes to highways, we know straight.

Good ice cream in Big Rock

U.S. Highway 30, for instance, is the road you want if you are headed west from the Chicago suburbs to Cedar Rapids, Iowa. For most of my adult life, I have been making that trip several times a year, and so I know this straight road close up. To be sure, from Rock Falls on the Illinois side of the Mississippi to just past DeWitt on the Iowa side, Highway 30 does roll along with the countryside as it dips and turns down to the river. Otherwise, for most of the 200-mile journey it is pretty straight.

I have heard well-meaning folk from both coasts call such a road flat and uninteresting. For me, it is open, high, subdued, and—notwithstanding overzealous truckers and an occasional vehicle piloted with geriatric patience—tranquil.

Part of Highway 30’s charm is the unobtrusive way that modern civilization encroaches on the vast expanse of fertile prairie. Reasonably clean bathrooms in Clarence, Calamus, Clinton, and Morrison. Still pretty good ice cream in Big Rock, though nothing like you once could buy at a much-missed Elmwood’s Dairy Bar on the outskirts of Clinton. More recently, a series of well-run Casey’s quick-shop emporiums on the Iowa side, and a nicely maintained Hardee’s in Morrison.

God’s country

Most of the beauty of Highway 30, though, is found in a terrain lying between the 17 towns and one small city (Clinton) that divide the trip into roughly equal segments of about ten miles each. For the most part, this is not nature red in tooth and claw. Granted, the open countryside must be respected. Driving along at 20 miles per hour in a snowstorm is no picnic—in fact, it can become abjectly terrifying when a semi zooms by in a whirling swarm of white.

But usually the land looks like it was meant to look when God put humans on the earth to till it. We have seen the fields of corn and beans in all stages of growth—and all beautiful, both for how they look and for what they say about the hard work, persistence, and courage of those who “keep” the land. We have seen the cattle huddled against a biting November wind; hogs rooting with pointless abandon in the spring mud; horses ambling contentedly through the heavy heat of summer. Late fall might be best, with harvests in, corn piled high to dry, trees like sentinels on the north and west of the farm houses, the earth at rest. These are delights to savor when the road is straight.

The western terminus

Our family will not be making this trip as often as we once did. Francis Noll, the father and grandfather who was our western terminus, died of cardiac arrest on January 6.

The man who waited for us in Cedar Rapids possessed many of the virtues of the land through which we traveled to visit him. Raised on a farm, my father did not lose the farmer’s directness, the farmer’s facility for getting things done, and the farmer’s capacity for toil when, more than 50 years ago, he left the farm.

Straight as he was by nature, this pure-bred Iowan was also straight because of grace. At the stage in life when many Iowans worry (and with good reason) about where to spend their winters, he got excited about Evangelism Explosion. He died in the western part of the state at the house where, 74 years and two months before, he had been born. He was there to help his older sister come home from the hospital and, characteristically, he would not let her pay for the groceries they picked up on the way. He died as he had lived: a straight man at the end of a straight road who knew the straight highway of his God.

MARK A. NOLL

At a recent gathering of friends, the conversation turned to hom*osexuality. Within minutes it was clear we were not all of one mind.

We could all be described as evangelical Christians who have a high view of Scripture. But we do not see eye to eye on whether a person can be engaged in a monogamous, noncelibate hom*osexual relationship and still be living within God’s standards of sexual behavior. When I expressed my view that such behavior is sinful, I was surprised at the response from one of my friends:

“You’re just hom*ophobic.”

That hurt. Deeply. My best friend is gay. So is a very close family member. These are two people I love very much. I care deeply about their physical and spiritual well-being. In fact, it is because I love them that I want them to know the facts about their lifestyle. Knowing them has changed my views about hom*osexuals as persons. It has forced me to struggle with the issue far more than I would have otherwise. But it has not changed my position on hom*osexuality as a lifestyle.

Having listened to my gay friends recount horror stories of mean-spirited treatment by Christians, I have had to take inventory of my own attitudes. Yes, I have used pejoratives like queer and fa*ggot. Yes, I have bought into unkind stereotypes. Repentance has not come easily. But in wrestling with a genuine desire to treat hom*osexuals compassionately, I honestly wonder how far I must go on behalf of those I know will disagree with me.

I have been running into a similar dilemma a lot lately with my teenage son. He thinks if I loved him I would let him do things that might be harmful to him. He would prefer I said, “Because I love you, I will no longer point out harmful things you do because I don’t want you to feel bad.” Instead, I refuse to let him go to a particular dance club notorious for drugs and violence, even if my hard-nosed refusal erects barriers to our communication. Eventually, I trust, he will see that I cared for his well-being. It’s not a perfect analogy, but close.

Telling the truth

God loved us enough to give us behavioral standards that, when followed, produce happier, healthier lives. Is it hom*ophobic to want my hom*osexual friend and family member to enjoy good health and a lifestyle free of guilt? Is it wrong to report the medical truth that anal intercourse and other more intrusive practices used by male hom*osexuals are unhealthy, perhaps deadly? Wouldn’t it be better for them to find out now rather than later, from a proctologist faced with the task of repairing a damaged rectum, or from another doctor faced with perhaps an even more daunting task?

I honestly wish I could look my gay friend in the eye and say, “What you are doing with your lover is not wrong in God’s eyes.” But I believe we do a disservice to those within the hom*osexual community when we cease being the only truthful, biblical voice on this subject. Virtually every other segment of society is telling the hom*osexual it is okay to engage in hom*osexual behavior. Is it really our role to focus solely on acceptance of the person without recognizing the sinfulness of the behavior?

That was the church’s mistake on divorce; now we have twice-and thrice-divorced leaders of churches, laypersons confused on the biblical grounds for or against divorce, and a record on marriage and family not significantly different from that of nonbelievers.

I think many of us who were pushing for greater acceptance of the divorced now wonder, in retrospect, if we went too far. We suspect we should have been more biblically directed about restoring divorced persons to spiritual leadership roles, and less eager to find them loopholes to remarry with the church’s full blessing. I can see us having the same regrets regarding hom*osexuality in about 20 years.

Evangelicals have a long way to go in knowing how to respond to this highly charged issue. A good place to start is with one’s own heart. If God can love the most militant, blatant, promiscuous hom*osexual, then so can we. Accepting this biblical truth, however, should not stifle honest dialogue about hom*osexual behavior.

Isn’t it time we realized that one of the most compassionate things we can do for hom*osexuals, and the kingdom, is to tell them the truth?

The writer asked to remain anonymous to protect individuals mentioned in this column. Speaking Out does not necessarily reflect the views of CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

Speaking Out does not necessarily reflect the views of Christianity Today.

Meeting Medved

Two articles in your March 8 issue were tremendous. The interview “Hollywood vs. America” introduced me to a hitherto unknown Michael Medved. And then the book excerpt “The Last Temptation of Hollywood” had me banging my desk in raucous laughter. What a talented journalist! What an insightful man! What an honest critic!

Rev. Bill Solomon

Murfreesboro, Tenn.

As a writer/director, who was recently in L.A., I was excited to discover that there are over 1,000 Christian professionals in the film and television industries working to change Hollywood’s moral climate. Many see themselves as missionaries in a fertile field that holds firmly in its grasp the world’s notions about morality and the church.

Aside from the obvious patronizing of good programs and films, Christians should be praying for their brothers and sisters in Hollywood careers. Christians should also be praying for the effectiveness of parachurch organizations in Hollywood such as Master Media, Inter-Mission, Actors Co-op, Los Angeles Film Studies Center, Women in Secular Entertainment, Premise, L.A. Arts Group, Actors Fellowship, and Associates in Music.

Stan Williams

Northville, Mich.

I resent the article by Michael Medved wherein R. L. Hymers is portrayed as an anti-Semite. I have been a member of B’nai B’rith for 35 years and have been working all that time to improve relations between Christians and Jews. I know Dr. Hymers well. He has helped me on numerous occasions to improve Jewish/Christian relations.

Granted that on one occasion Dr. Hymers used poor judgment regarding a movie that seemed anti-Christian to him and millions of others. But one incident in a person’s life does not make him an anti-Semite, and I write to verify that in the last four years I have known him he has consistently and repeatedly been of help to me towards fighting anti-Semitism.

Ben Friedman

Burbank, Calif.

What you printed from the book by Medved fails to establish “the real story behind why Universal Pictures promoted a blasphemous movie.”

Should not every devoted follower of our Lord resent the film, and were not Mr. Hymers and his people right in protesting it? What is the “long history of legal problems stemming from past violent outbursts” to which Medved refers? Does not the Scripture, which every Christian preacher is called upon to proclaim, speak of impending apocalypse? Does Hymers’s physical appearance have anything to do with the position he takes?

Does the fact that Hymers’s church is not made up of the wealthy and socially elite make their cause less just or make their protest less effective? It would appear from Medved’s article that the only protest that did carry any special weight or attention was that of Hymers and his church.

Bob Jones, Chancellor

Bob Jones University

Greenville, S.C.

I am bemused at the lurid illustrations on the cover and accompanying the article, and the sensationalism in the cover title, “Hollywood’s Towering Inferno.”

It’s hard not to think CT has lost credibility in Los Angeles by its hostile caricature of the film industry. Just try extending a hand to support the good after calling Hollywood a towering inferno. Try making friends with a director after depicting directors as neanderthal gangsters. The evangelical community is not going to be salt and light in a sometimes decaying and dark industry by such a wildly irresponsible visual denunciation of Hollywood. There are fine writers and directors in the industry—some of them evangelicals—who are passionate about making good, life-affirming films.

It doesn’t help the rest of us, either, who may want to take Medved’s advice and be supportive of good films, to have to overcome the impression CT’s cover and illustrations reinforced that evangelicals are anti-Hollywood fanatics. I hope people will read Medved’s book. His concerns and indignation are articulated in a balanced, helpful, and non-sensationalized way.

Myrna R. Grant

Wheaton College

Wheaton, Ill.

Real High Tech Worship

Ever since we added on to our sanctuary, our old sound system hasn’t measured up. So the trustees voted to hire a team of “sound engineers” to put in a new system. You can’t believe the difference it makes.

For one thing, our pastor can walk all across the front of the church while he’s preaching now that he uses this “wireless” microphone clipped to his necktie. You’d be surprised how we all listen more closely, especially since that time he left the switch in the on position while he whispered to the youth pastor during a hymn.

We’ve also discovered our new system has turned some of our, um, mediocre musicians into real stars. Case in point: Sister Blather’s old standard, “His Eye Is on the Sparrow,” really hops with a full orchestral taped background and some pretty dynamic moves she’s developed, thanks to our new Tele-PrompTer and a voice-enhancing mixer board.

For really special effects, the sound guys throw in a little echo at just the right moment. You can’t imagine how words like brimstone and judgment—and then Democrat—came off when they added a touch of reverb. Of course, after the service, there was a long line of Democrats waiting to talk to the pastor about that.

But technology can solve just about anything. Pastor told the congregation the music director would send everyone a computer letter explaining how all the new equipment cannot possibly be responsible for political outbursts during the music. “Human failure,” he called it. And, considering original sin, “theologically appropriate.”

Discerning fantasy from faith

Ron Habermas [“Does Peter Pan Corrupt Our Children?” March 8] obscures an important difference between fantasy figures (Peter Pan, Santa Claus) and faith figures (God, Jesus Christ, Allah) for children. Those of fantasy are eventually falsified while those of faith are supported as real by the social world, family, church, and associates in which the child lives. Those committed to a particular faith will shield their children from any indication that the basis of the faith is not real and will counter any tendency to question that “reality.”

Habermas is correct in saying, “Faith must be grown just right.” Its “reality” requires continual nurturing, to which the prolific output of apologetics and fantasies found in Christian bookstores attests.

Kenneth H. Bonnell

Los Angeles, Calif.

The author understands neither the mechanism of faith nor the development of a child’s mind. There are two spheres or domains by which human beings process information: (1) the visual domain that historically was almost exclusively our natural environment and (2) the language domain of the spoken and written word. The visual domain inputs verifiable reality. The domain of language is able to go beyond what is verifiable to include ultimate truth.

The very existence of God and the trust in the inerrant Word are always from the language domain. It’s not just Peter Pan that corrupts our children. It’s the video medium itself in its presentation of substitute, artificial reality in the visual domain that retards and impedes their language development, abstract thinking, and ultimately their ability to deal with ultimate truth.

Now videos, even moral Christian ones, have greatly multiplied the negative effects of this substitute reality in the visual domain.

Virginia Schaeffer

Indianapolis, Ind.

Our right to free speech

Have we come to the place in the U.S. where every person and organization has the right to free speech except Christian believers and Christian movements and organizations? Steve Rabey’s article “Focus Under Fire” [News, March 8] seems to imply just that.

It has almost come to the place where any time a believer or organization opens its mouth it is labeled as “political.” What’s wrong with a Christian believer becoming involved in politics?

Reading through 1 Kings I came across what King Asa did to the sodomites in Judah (1 Kings 15:11–12). Whoever made the statement that “Evangelicals in Colorado need to decide if we’re about antigay legislation or proclaiming the gospel, and the two are not necessarily the same thing,” needs to open his Bible to that passage.

Carroll M. Swenson

Oklahoma City, Okla.

I, too, am the director of a national, evangelical Christian organization here who would like to say something about Focus’s focus on issues other than their ministry, and, like others, I wish to remain unnamed. I don’t want to deal with the stress of tangling with Focus’s strident and adversarial responses.

Most of the 50 or so Christian organizations in the Springs stick to their ministry—if Navigators, to discipling; if International Bibles, to distributing Bibles; if Young Life, to reaching teens.

But it “seems” that Focus is focusing on hom*osexuality, Amendment 2, abortion, p*rnography, and other issues in a negative way rather than “focusing on the family” or “on Christ” in a positive way. This may be why they are the target of accusations, whereas other Christian organizations in town simply carry on their respective ministries and are not targeted by such accusations.

A brother in Him

Colorado Springs, Colo.

Your article illustrates the temporal, seductive allurement of political power. Twenty years ago “psychologist and best-selling author” James Dobson concentrated on helping parents with mundane childhood problems—toilet training, reading, and social skills. Today Dobson sternly lectures Americans about his idiosyncratic views of the family; pesters George Bush and Dan Quayle about “antifamily” personnel in the previous Republican administration—while basking in the limelight of interviewing them; and heads a $78 million “ministry” seeking a “campus” in Colorado Springs.

With sadness, I’ve watched Dr. Dobson become the evangelical “Dr. Spock.”

William H. Cook

Niagara Falls, N.Y.

The article implies (incorrectly, I believe) the activity of Focus on the Family was political in nature insofar as influencing votes on the Amendment 2 legislation passed by the voters in November. The “lightning rod” at which opposition was directed was not Focus on the Family but the cross of Jesus Christ and the gospel message.

This article could have been in any secular publication in the world. It is sad that the central truth of Jesus Christ and the high standards called for in the use of the name “Christian” are not adhered to by all organizations and individuals who use it. The integrity of Focus is intact; their actions are “Christian,” not political.

Maureen G. Buck

Flint, Mich.

Forgiven by God and church

Inasmuch as I am a Christian on death row awaiting execution, thanks for Luis Palau’s editorial on the need of inmates to be forgiven by God and the church [“Notorious Conversions,” March 8]. Our flock is small, while the challenges are great. Daily I pray that instead of debating what our punishment should be, or dwelling on past sins that Christ has already forgiven, my brothers and sisters would pray for our souls, be a witness to those here yet unsaved, and support us. Both victim and offender need healing and God’s grace, and the witness of his people.

George Del Vecchio

Menard, Ill.

Mistaking means for end?

The contrast between the perspective of Richard John Neuhaus and that of his reviewer, Doug Bandow, is revealing. [“Making Money for God,” Books, March 8]. Neuhaus argues that a prosperous, free-market economy may be necessary for achieving a minimum level of economic justice. Bandow argues that a prosperous, free-market economy is sufficient for justice.

I suppose Bandow can be commended for consistently clinging to his libertarian economic ideology in the face of so many compelling biblical and historical arguments against it. If such faith were placed in God, rather than in economic theory, it would move mountains. Unfortunately, like too many Christians who are captive to secular ideologies, Bandow’s obsession with a particular economic technique has caused him to lose sight of the purpose of economics. He mistakes the means for the end.

Fred Clark

Ardmore, Pa.

The killer tobacco

Thanks for your editorial “A Tax We Can Live With” [March 8]. Someone needs to wave this flag all the time. I’ve spent my professional life, about 50 years, fighting the effects of tobacco. It is undoubtedly a killer.

Bernard V. Bowen

Madison, Tenn.

I do not smoke but I have Christian friends who do, and I do not feel the message of the gospel can be served by using this country’s tax laws to change their behavior. If, in fact, your concern is really for the health of the populace, why don’t you stop using your automobile or plastic and paper products that so positively pollute the environment through their manufacture and use.

Kathryne A. McCullar

Swannanoe, N.C.

Evaluating sex-ed programs

When evaluating sex-education programs, it’s important to scrutinize the evidence [“Abstinence: The Radical Alternative to Sex Education,” Feb. 8]. Much stronger evidence exists in favor of abstinence education. A 1989–90 study involving 26 schools and 3,577 students revealed that students who took the Sex Respect program were barely half as likely to get pregnant as those who did not receive abstinence-based education. Only 5 percent of the Sex Respect girls became pregnant, compared to 9 percent in the control group. This is ostensibly the largest controlled study ever conducted of a sex-education program.

A more recent study of three abstinence-based programs by Stan Weed found that students in the low-medium values group who were taught abstinence were 40 percent less likely to surrender their virginity within one year. These are the very students who are most “at risk.” Advocates of “comprehensive” sex education or condom distribution should be challenged to produce similar evidence; to my knowledge, it simply does not exist.

Edward F. Gehringer

Raleigh, N.C.

Election Redux

Did a majority of CT ‘s readers vote for former President Bush, and do they fail to understand how any Christian could have done otherwise? Seems so. After we published Bob Vroon ‘s letter (March 8) in which he stated that he had voted for President Clinton on biblical principles—the “dominant biblical theme of God’s special concern for the poor”—we received a barrage of letters.

One thing is certain: Christians disagree on politics, and many cannot understand their brothers and sisters in opposition.

The issue is “fairness”

I cannot keep silent after reading the editorial “hom*osexuals in Uniform” [Feb. 8]. I am since my earliest teen years gay by orientation, not by choice. I am currently in therapy with Metanoia Ministries, a Christian organization whose aim is to transform gay people into functioning Christians and whole human beings. I have no illusions about the temptations or orientation ever fully going away, but I do know that with faith God will transform my life into a being fully honoring him and reflecting his blessings.

Nevertheless, I was angered by this editorial. President Clinton has stated clearly that in opening the services to gays, he is not giving them (or anyone else) a license for immorality. The issue is fairness. Thousands of gay men and women have served in the armed forces over the years with honor and without harming the morale of their fellow soldiers. If America is so afraid to have gays in the military and insists on continuing the ban, every man or woman denied the chance to serve simply because of orientation should then be granted an automatic three-year exemption from federal income taxes.

George Shewbart

Seattle, Wash.

I encourage you in your biblical stand on the issue of hom*osexuality. It is important that you stay the course on this matter and let it be known that refusal to acquiesce to the gay agenda is both a legitimate and loving response.

I expressed my differences on the hom*osexuality issue at a local clergy meeting with a liberal colleague. We agreed to study the issue and speak again. I read five books and the Scriptures in preparation, but I found that my colleague had not prepared similarly. Indeed, he had “no need” to because his mind was made up! My scriptural studies led me to conclude that without doing violence to the text it is impossible to escape the conclusion that hom*osexual [practice] is sin.

Pastor Sam Richards

E. Winthrop, Maine

Christian vs. public schools

I just read William Willimon’s article “I Was Wrong About Christian Schools” [Feb. 8]. To some degree, I agree with him but also feel his analysis of the situation is faulty.

Both my husband and I are in our fifties and have had experience attending, teaching, and administering in public as well as Christian (Lutheran) schools. Contrary to Willimon’s assessment, we have not found Christian teachers any more committed, morally upright, or loving toward their students than public-school teachers.

Whether or not students learned was, and is, greatly dependent upon the family situation and the parents’ attitude toward teachers and education. When parents prepare children for a learning situation, have expectations that they will work and achieve, show interest in their schooling, give help when needed, and actively support the school and its teachers, children will learn. However, when parents openly criticize their children’s school and teachers, defy authority, do not teach children to be responsible individuals, take no interest in what goes on in school, are abusive or neglectful, or are substance abusers, their children will not learn. Christian schools are able to be more successful in large measure because the majority of their students come from the first type of home situation.

We need schools that teach morals and values that will build good citizens. This will be possible in public as well as Christian schools only when parents realize and carry out their responsibility in the education process.

Lois Opel

Mt. Clemens, Mich.

I have taught high school English in the government (“public”) schools for 15 years. I have taken the Ten Commandments down from my classroom wall as per the principal’s orders. I hear teens use God’s name as an ordinary expletive. I see them pass out condoms.

I tutor a pregnant, home-bound eighth-grader evenings and weekends. I have witnessed academic and moral decline on a grand scale. The minority of teachers who are Christians are increasingly muzzled as to the public witness they can bear. I plan to teach in the government (“public”) schools until I retire—but they’re no place for kids.

Wanda Gehret Shirk

Ulysses, Pa.

Virginia Mollenkott responds

Twice recently [News, Dec. 14; Letters, Feb. 8] you have printed the misinformation that I believe God is female. What nonsense!

I believe that God is exactly what the Bible says: spirit. Because the term God is an androcentric term (as witness the parallel gynocentric term Goddess), for the health of human relationships I balance the androcentrism of the traditional term by using feminine (gynocentric) pronouns concerning God. But I have explained repeatedly both orally and in print that all of our God-language is metaphoric, that none of it is the ultimate truth, and that spirit is neither male nor female or perhaps both male and female (Gen. 1:27). I fear for the future of evangelicalism if neither conservative theology students nor their professors can hear and report more accurately than they have done concerning me.

As for monism, I learned it from the author of Paradise Lost, John Milton. More so, I learned it from the same source where he learned it: the Bible. How else do you explain such passages as Ephesians 4:6, which tells of “one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all”? There are many such passages.

Prof. Virginia Ramey Mollenkott

William Paterson College of New Jersey

Hewitt, N.J.

Brief letters are welcome; all are subject to condensation. Write to Eutychus, CHRISTIANITY TODAY, 465 Gundersen Drive, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188.

Christian psychology is not without its Christian critics. This is partly because psychology (in general) grew from (at best) religiously syncretistic and (at worst) atheistic understandings; partly because it tends to reduce religion to wish fulfillment and projection; and partly because its dominant vision of emotional well-being sounds self-serving and sinful.

So why is CT senior writer Tim Stafford basically optimistic about the growth of the Christian psychology movement? Because the leadership in this movement seems fundamentally in sync with Bible-belt belief and culture. For Tim, hearing Minirth-Meier Clinic cofounder Paul Meier’s enthusiastic talk about an end-times novel or his expedition to find Noah’s ark reveals how the leaders of this movement are far more at home in Walvoord’s Dallas than in Freud’s Vienna. “These are not guys with little goatees,” says Tim. “They are people the average Bible-church attender can relate to. And that helps explain the way the movement has taken off in the past ten years.”

Henry Cloud is a bit more sun belt and a little less Bible belt. He eschews socks, slipping naked feet into his penny loafers. He and colleague John Townsend at Minirth-Meier West met over the discovery of their mutual love of Jimi Hendrix.

But even this younger, hipper generation of Christian psychologists is firmly anchored in the evangelical world. Although they keep up with psychological theories, says Tim, “their real fascination is with Scripture and its integration with psychology.” They would be at home with the people who made churches like Willow Creek and Calvary Chapel flourish.

To generalize, says Tim, there is, among the leaders of the Christian psychology movment, “a pretty tight overall identification with evangelical culture and practice. It doesn’t feel like an alien world at all.” For Tim’s more detailed report, see “The Therapeutic Revolution,” page 24.

DAVID NEFF, Managing Editor

When President Clinton unveiled his tax increase two months ago, he called Americans to sacrifice. But when “morning-after” polls showed a drastic drop in approval ratings, sacrifice quickly became contribution. Apparently sacrifice, which is in the vocabulary of faith, does not exist in the language of politics.

We seem to have a hard time with sacrifice unless we sense a direct benefit for ourselves. But expecting something in return is not sacrifice, it is investment. The two concepts are radically different.

Our upscale American existence has been sanitized of sacrifice. The notion of giving without thought of return has grown passé. The church, however, would do well to remember that selfless sacrifice is the foundation of our Christian experience. In fact, the story of the church is the ongoing history of sacrifice.

I am reminded of an event witnessed by Bob Pierce, founder of World Vision, in Korea in 1950: The Red Chinese army has routed American and United Nations troops. Refugees flood south, their tales of atrocity sparking terror. Churches bulge with all-night prayer vigils conducted in an atmosphere of siege. It is winter, and the city has lost power.

It is four o’clock in the morning, dark and unbelievably cold inside. Many in the church are refugees. Most are dressed in nothing but thin, padded cotton. Women who watched their homes burn and husbands tortured to death gather their children close.

The singing is punctuated by tears, declaring both the worshipers’ need and their joy in finding the One in whom every need is met. The pastor prepares to take an offering for those still streaming into the city. “Something must be done to help our friends and brethren,” he explains.

What does this congregation have to give? Homes, businesses, and savings are gone. The people shiver in desperate need. The pastor continues, “And so we will give an offering of clothes.”

An old, emaciated man removes his vest and solemnly lays it on the Communion table. A young mother takes the sweater off her baby and tucks the infant inside her own clothes. A tiny sweater joins a tattered vest. Soon, the table is piled high. They give the clothes off their backs because of what is in their hearts.

That, fellow American Christians, is sacrifice. For that tiny refugee church, sacrifice was not a foreign concept, but a faith experience. Not something to be feared, but to be embraced. Asking for nothing in return, faith gave freely what it could not afford.

That suffering assembly in Korea did not make an “investment of faith.” It sacrificed that another’s child might be warm; that a stranger might cover himself; that someone they might never meet, and never be thanked by, might benefit from their gift. Sacrifice gives not out of abundance. It gives from the heart.

If our nation is to understand the biblical concept of sacrifice, the church must lead the way, as it has many times in the past. Now, as never before, we face opportunities to show a skeptical world what it means to give without thought for ourselves.

Like the members of that Korean church, we have our own needs. But we know there are those whose needs are far greater, whether they come from the streets of Buffalo or the urban battlefields of Bosnia; a Cincinnati slum or a Somalian village. We know they are our neighbors. And we are touched by their suffering.

Sacrifice may have become a foreign word to our American culture. It is too personal, too painful. But for the Christian, it is the first step to resurrection.

Robert Seiple is president of World Vision.

Earlier this year Time magazine delivered to our mailboxes a cover story linking violence to religious fanaticism: The well-armed leader of the Branch Davidians was still holed up in his Texas fortress and the FBI was rounding up Muslims suspected of a religiously motivated bombing of the World Trade Center.

Just two days after that issue of Time arrived, evangelicals were horrified by religious violence much closer to home: a prolife activist shot an abortionist in the back and killed him. Most of the Rescue movement leadership were quick to point out that the doctor deserved what happened to him and slow to condemn the doctor’s assailant as a cold-blooded murderer.

Christians working for justice, including the saving of preborn lives, must not only condemn such a murder, but they must firmly eschew violence. Without such a commitment, the message of the prolife movement is undermined: Life itself is no longer sacred.

Two key chapters in Scripture, Romans 12 and 13, teach us several important lessons that make a commitment to nonviolent action mandatory:

First, Christians are called to overcome evil with good. Violence begets violence, hate begets hate. Such acts and emotions remake us in the image of our enemy. But inaction can simply harden us to evil. Thus Paul warns, “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”

Second, Christians are commanded never to take vengeance. This is part of the New Testament understanding that we are called not to be effective, but to be faithful. When patient protest does not bring results, it is easy to reason that a clinic bombing or even an assassination is better than the loss of thousands of preborn lives. But building on Moses’ proscription of vengeance, Paul instructs us to do good things for our enemy and thus “heap burning coals upon his head.”

Third, we are called to live under constituted authority. For Paul, being “subject to the governing authorities” meant obeying (as far God’s law would allow) Nero, one of the bloodiest and most unjust Roman emperors. To save the lives of fellow believers, Paul could have advocated tyrannicide, but he did not.

Violence against abortionists violates our duly constituted democratic order. But it also violates God’s kingdom law, for Paul tells us that all the commandments (including “You shall not kill”) are summed up in “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” And love, he points out “does no wrong to a neighbor.”