Jerusalem Blade;
Quote:
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There are counselors who take a victim-centered approach -- as opposed to Christ-centered -- and one can see that there is a tendency to "comfort" the person sinning, rather than telling them repentance is necessary in order to have a clean conscience toward God and others. Some counseling approaches wreak serious damage in individuals, families, and even marriages.
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I had to laugh when I read this...not that it's funny, but a friend of mine is going to counseling now and when he e-mails me he constantly has the same typo "I went to consoling today" but the reality is, that is how many counselors are...they are consolers and not counselors.
The counselor he is seeing calls him on his sin, and refers to scripture to point it out, and calls him to repentance.
His wife is also in counseling, but her counselor is more of a consolor than a true Biblical counselor. She appears to be feeding into the lies of continued sin and not addressing the sin in order to truly help her.
Reformingstudent,
If you look at the description of many so-called mental illnesses today, the descriptions are addressed as sin in the Bible.
Depression is not a sin per se' but it certainly can be the consequences of sin, if we look at the Psalms many of them are about the depressed soul, and how sin oppresses the soul which in turn leads to depression if not addressed.
And yes, there are some chemical imbalances which can cause this, there have even been studies that have shown how childhood trauma can effect the brains development towards the fight/flight reflexes. Where the natural body chemicals are not going where they were created by God to go, there was a disconnect at some point brought on by the trauma. Medications and good biblical counseling really can HELP with these things.
Medications and the chemical compounds used in them can open the right paths for the natural chemicals to flow, and sound counseling can help a person address the issues so that the natural chemicals will begin to flow where they need to go. It does take time, but it can be done.
I actually did a research paper on this a few years ago for a college class I was taking.