My goal in this article is to briefly consider a specific pastoral question: What is a wise approach to those in your church who see a secular therapist? Since this question is part of a long and winding road, we will make a couple of stops before we arrive at an answer.

The modern therapeutic era made its first obvious appearance with Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) and his associates in the early 1900s. The Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung (1875–1961) was among those associates. Both men had religion in view as they developed their therapeutic approaches.

Freud’s theory created a doctrine of the person that attempted to explain both the conscience and belief in God as mechanisms within the person rather than as evidence of humanity-before-God. Jung was even more deliberately anti-Christian as he reacted against his Swiss Reformed upbringing.1 He replaced God with the Self and sought to rectify what he thought were imbalances in Christianity. His teaching is less frequently cited today (perhaps with the exception of Jordan Peterson). You will, however, find that Jung’s Self and the centrality of our internal experience quietly remain the center of modern psychotherapy. Together, Freud and Jung announced the emergence of what we might call secular priests.

Christians would expect the rise of a secular priesthood. Secular people want help, but they don’t have pastors or a church community. Instead, they go to their friends and therapists. But I see, especially in Jung, something more than secular therapists filling a secular void. At times throughout history, perhaps particularly in the 1900s, the church tended to focus on combatting the rise of liberalism, while careful work on soul care languished. By the 1950s, many churches emphasized the end times, neglecting to create fresh applications of Scripture for present-day pastoral care.

How did the world of secular therapies grow so quickly? A secular community wanted help, and many churches were not listening carefully to their people or bringing the direction and comfort of Christ in meaningful ways. Instead, church cultures commonly suggested that Christians should feel happier than the rest of the world and have fewer problems. When that becomes the normal Christian life, churches lose their voice and can no longer speak into daily trouble. We are recovering from that era, but slowly, and sometimes in ways that mimic the secular therapies.

Appeal of Secular Psychotherapy

American psychotherapy accelerated during the decades after World War II but with a different feel from its European lineage. Given the profound differences between war-torn Europe and the relatively unspoiled and victorious United States, American therapies were more optimistic, favored autonomy and the freedom to live with fewer constraints, and believed in the agency of individuals to help themselves.

We might suspect as much, for these therapeutic foundations were forged in an unleashed economy that was ready to accommodate new desires. The birth-control pill was on standby to push those personal freedoms into sexual realms. The self, as a result, officially had a makeover and was reframed in various ways. One such reframing is “the empty self” — hollow, consuming, and hoping to be full. A better-known version is called “expressive individualism,” in which feelings become the new morality — they should be expressed to others, and they should guide us.2

There are other perspectives on our humanity. The study of the brain is in the news, and our self-understanding tends to follow media interests. Who are we, according to this perspective? We are bodies and brains. The feelings that are so important to us are embedded in our brains, as are our sexual preferences (or sexual confusion). Since our brains can be changed profoundly by our experiences, hardships and trauma seem to etch into our brains, and only rewiring the brain can undo it.

This perspective is best known from Bessel van der Kolk’s book The Body Keeps the Score. It is also represented in a catalog of recent Christian books about the physical body in life and worship. My point in highlighting this perspective is not so much that an interest in the body is misguided, but that it is triggered by technological developments and cultural trends.

Should secular psychotherapy receive the credit (or blame) for these changes? Not exactly. Modern psychotherapies are not so much leading the culture as they are taking notes. Therapists are known for their listening skills. These skills are at the heart of their broad appeal. Their clients feel known, which is a prized and rare human experience. As they listen, therapists have found so much wanting and so much pain, and they have designed their therapeutic models around that neediness and hurt.

If we want to look for the more powerful influences on our changing views of ourselves, we look to the world broadly more than just its smaller slice of secular therapies. The world is the sub-biblical culture that is in the air around us, and it cannot be reduced to one particular participant — like secular therapists — in that culture.

How Do We Respond?

Now to the question about people in your church seeing secular therapists. What might we do when Christians confide in secular priests? This question becomes even more significant when we learn that clients tend to drift toward the worldview of their therapists.3

All secular theories receive at least two biblical critiques. First, they do not see their patients as persons before God, but prize independence and self-care as the goal rather than the problem. Second, they are reductionistic in that they point to certain influences in our lives as fundamental, such as past victimization or early-childhood attachments, while neglecting (or not seeing) other influences, such as our own hearts and moral agency.

Those who embrace secular care, therefore, will be more prone to managing their own world rather than learning dependence on Christ in weakness, and they may miss how the heart is the real center of human life. They certainly will not be encouraged to see the connections between life and the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Given these critiques, our preference would be for pastors to vet potential counselors just as they would vet elders, church staff, and others who do the work of ministry. That is the ideal. We would direct church members to Christian counselors skilled in both understanding people and applying God’s word to the whole person.

Vetting Counselors, Processing Care

Vetting, however, has its challenges. Christian counselors share a number of characteristics with their secular counterparts. Some are experienced; some are less so. Some are skillful and know people well; some are blunt objects that offer an inflexible script. “Christian” does not mean competent. We can inquire into theological orthodoxy, but orthodox beliefs do not equal orthodox practice, and orthodox beliefs do not reveal one’s character and experience.

And what if congregants are already seeing a secular therapist? Or perhaps they cannot find a local Christian counselor with the needed skills for a particular problem. We are unlikely to prohibit those in our churches from seeing secular therapists, a move that would come close to transgressing the bounds of pastoral authority. Among secular counselors, some are foolish in how they steer everyone away from “toxic relationships,” fail to distinguish severe offenses from minor ones, or neglect skills in self-control and humility. Others work out of the wisdom tradition that existed among the ancient Near Eastern nations and persists today. They do not know the true God, but they have keen instincts on how to live well, and they offer concrete advice that is easily reframed in a larger scriptural context.

These are some of the complexities of pastoral care in an environment where there are more pastoral needs than there are those who can care well for those in need.

A worthy goal would be to become familiar with the Christian counselors around us who have been helpful to people we know, and offer to subsidize that care. Also, if we know people who receive formal secular care, we can give them opportunities to reframe their care with Scripture. This offer could be as simple as asking someone how we can pray for them and their counseling. Prayer is a natural way that we connect troubles in daily life to Christ, and it takes us to those deep matters of the soul that can be reached only in Christ.

The Care All Christians Need

It’s important to remember that all of us receive “secular care” for our souls from neighbors, the Internet, advertising, movies, music — the list goes on. In a sense, we’re all listening to secular priests, and our corporate mission is to bring everything back into God’s house, where we can see its wisdom or folly clearly. Even more, we listen to Scripture and search together to see how God’s words in Christ go deeper and are more liberating and life-giving than even the best of what we hear in the world around us.

And so, prodded perhaps by secular therapists who listen well, we carefully listen to the troubles of people’s lives so that they feel known, and we also carefully listen to Scripture until God’s words sound as good, true, and beautiful as they are. Consider the counsel of J.I. Packer:

As a Puritan once put it, the pastor must study two books, not just one. Certainly, he must know the book of Scripture. . . . He must also be a master in reading the book of the human heart. He must know men no less well than he knows his Bible.4

The task is not easy, but it can be accomplished in small steps: mature laypeople take initiative in “the work of ministry” (Ephesians 4:12), sermons make connections to trauma and other common struggles, Christian counselors have a person’s soul and life-before-God always in view, and we all insist that Christ reach into every dark or uncharted recess of the human heart with words that speak life in a way unlike any other.

We know marriage is hard. We all learn that by the second week. But there are different kinds of hard. There is hard and hopeful, and there is hard and hopeless. The most difficult marriage, of course, is the one that is hard, distant, and with little reason to think it will change. In some of those cases, there might not be overt betrayal or cruel behavior or blatant sins that children would see. Instead, the marriage is . . . disappointing, lifeless, lonely.

To make it more difficult, you witness marriages that seem happy, or at least better than your own. You see spouses who enjoy each other. At those times, jealousy might sneak in for a moment, but you rarely land on coveting. Instead, the reminders just leave you a bit more disconnected from other people.

And to make it more difficult still, your marriage doesn’t receive much attention. Broken ones do. Struggling but growing ones do. But disappointing ones don’t. Consider this as a reminder that you are remembered in some small way.

What Can I Do?

You might feel as though you have tried everything and nothing helps. Yet this remains true: one person can make a difference in a relationship.

Jesus says, “Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water’” (John 7:38). In other words, you are a walking tabernacle, and the Spirit who lives within you will be living water in a desolate place. Very influential indeed. The apostle Paul wrote about wives of unbelievers who were willing to live with them. He said that the wives were holy, and that holiness spreads (1 Corinthians 7:14). God can use your holiness in Christ to promote the work of Christ in others.

“When we have confidence that the Spirit will use us, we become more resilient, creative, and engaged.”

Notice how this resists a drift toward hopelessness. One reason we are hopeless in marriage is because there is nothing else we can do, so we resign ourselves and try to build a more independent life. But when we have confidence that the Spirit will use us, we become more resilient, creative, and engaged.

Avoiding Silence and Frustration

Now reflect on the tendencies that have emerged within you. Do you lean toward silence, words spoken in frustration, or both? Silence is not a biblical strategy. Though there are certainly times when we decide not to speak, that is not a long-term solution in any relationship. Life with God is filled with words, and we imitate God’s ways in our everyday relationships.

Words spoken in frustration are also guaranteed to fail. They are natural but are rarely spiritual or helpful. They separate rather than invite. They look down upon rather than come alongside.

The goal, of course, is wise words, which will make you a learner for life. We never quite arrive at the place where we have finally mastered how to speak them. Instead, wisdom is a search for a treasure that always contains more. The more we search, the more we discover.

Wisdom is founded on the fear of the Lord (Proverbs 9:10), which means that we are astounded by his love for us and we mature to be humble listeners before him (for example, Psalm 5:7). As we listen, we notice his characteristic style with us. He is gentle, patient, and careful in his words. When we read through the book of Proverbs, we also notice that his words are typically adorned as a way to make them meaningful and attractive. His words, in short, are good.

Even his rebukes are good. All his words invite us to come closer as he comes closer to us, and he anticipates our response. He speaks to us, and he wants us to speak to him. The way of wisdom is to enjoy his words to you and delight in listening to him. Then you bring that culture to your relationships. We treat others as we have been treated.

Seeking Wisdom and Creativity

This mission of speaking wise words is decidedly spiritual. You may have many natural abilities that you bring to your relationships, but wisdom is something different. It is a gift of the Spirit. So the work in front of you has two parts. First, you want to hear God’s wise, good, loving words to you and enjoy them. Then you ask him for something you desperately need and only he can give. You ask for skillful, beautified words — “apples of gold in a setting of silver” (Proverbs 25:11).

Then you get creative.

“I have recently been struck by the goodness of God’s words to us and have been praying that I would grow in the way I speak to others . . .”

[Your spouse wants to talk about something “later.”] “Yes, I find these things hard to talk about too. But they seem important. Could we set aside some time on Saturday morning?”

“Both of us probably bring a lot of our parents into our conversations. How have you seen me do that?”

“Today I really struggled with [the kids, complaining, my health . . .]. Could you pray over me?”

“I was thinking about things I would like to know about you. I would love to know one thing that you enjoyed about your day, and one thing that was hard. Could we trade stories on our day?”

When you live in a disappointing relationship, you are not always sure how to talk about it to friends or ask for prayer. Here is a way to ask for prayer: you can ask others to pray that you would be skilled at hearing God’s good words to you so you can pass them on to others.

Learn from Your Differences

Disappointments tend to arise out of differences between you and your spouse. Perhaps you once saw your similarities — or how your differences were complementary. Now you just see differences. For example, you want to talk; he wants to avoid conflict. You want to partner in an activity; he prefers solitary tasks and interests. You hope to know and be known; he seems uninterested in either knowing you or being known by you. As a general rule, differences lead to frustration unless you understand those differences. The more you understand your husband, the more patient you will be.

A discussion about the kind of culture we experience in our early years at home is always a worthwhile way to understand differences. It might be easier than talking about the marital relationship. The primary risk is when we critique the other person’s family.

“Chronic disappointment has a hard time seeing small steps in the right direction.”

A second category to understand would be the ways your two minds are uniquely structured. The purpose here is not to talk about sins but personality styles or mental abilities. You probably already have a preliminary sketch you could offer him. For example, “I have been thinking about us and how, like any couple, we think in our own unique ways. You seem to think like a builder or engineer, who sees a problem and then figures out a way to solve it. That makes me imagine that, when I want to talk, you could easily think that it is always about a problem, and a problem with no apparent solution. Does that seem possible?” The basic idea of this approach is that your spouse has his reasons for his responses that are more than him simply being sinful.

Small Steps

Chronic disappointment has a hard time seeing small steps in the right direction. If those steps ever existed, you quickly backtracked, so you have stopped looking for them. But remember that Christ is at work in you, and his work will affect those around you. Remember, too, that the Spirit’s work is powerful yet oftentimes subtle. We will miss his work when we are not looking for it. With this in mind, keep your eyes open. Look for one way the Spirit is working in you and one way the Spirit is working in your relationship. When you see something, it is worth mentioning.

These thoughts are not new. But they might put a light on truths you know but have faded. In that sense, they are part of that small step of seeing the Spirit at work in the way he gently reminds us of things that are true and good.

During my first year in seminary, I stumbled across a sentence that would deeply shape my relationships with God, those closest to me, and the people I would counsel. It was a year when Scripture appeared to me as a series of fragments. They were all good fragments, but the pieces seemed to lack coherence — and that lack of coherence could sometimes feel painful. So I was always alert to books and ideas that could help me see one story in Scripture rather than an anthology of short stories.

I was reading J. Gresham Machen’s book The Christian View of Man with that in mind, and a comment caught my attention. It was something like this: as God is personal, so man is personal. Ah, here was a grand unifying principle for Machen; perhaps it would become one for me. Then I searched the book for how he defined personal, but I never quite found it. I did, however, file the observation away.

Around the same time, I read Biblical Theology by Geerhardus Vos. He wrote so well about Christ as the center of Scripture, which set me off in a direction that I am still on. As a result of that book, I would keep track of literature from Vos (and Catherine Vos’s children’s books), and that’s how I stumbled across the sentence. Vos gave me a perspective on God-as-personal that was both cognitively and spiritually satisfying.

To be a Christian is to live one’s life not merely in obedience to God, nor merely in dependence on God, nor even merely for the sake of God; it is to stand in conscious, reciprocal fellowship with God, to be identified with him in thought and purpose and work, to receive from him and give back to him in the ceaseless interplay of spiritual forces. (Redemptive History and Biblical Interpretation, 186)

Back and Forth

All these years later, I still remember what it was like to read those lines.

“Our relationship with God depends on words in which the conversation is passed from one to the other.”

“To be a Christian is . . .” Vos is giving me his understanding of the heart of the Christian life. I’m all ears. “Not merely obedience . . . nor merely in dependence . . .” Where is he going? Had Vos drifted into heterodoxy, and I am the last to know? “To stand in conscious, reciprocal fellowship . . . to receive from him and give back to him in the ceaseless interplay of spiritual forces.” That is what Machen meant by personal. Something was unlocked.

Today, the sentence might appear in shorthand whenever I say or write the phrase “back and forth.” Our relationship with God depends on words in which the conversation is passed from one to the other.

God says, “Let’s talk” (Isaiah 1:18). The conversation can then begin with him or me.

God says, “What is on your heart? Tell me” (Psalm 62:8). Then I tell him, and he hears what I say. He responds with compassion, or he simply enjoys that his child talks about what is important to him, and he acts.

Then he continues to speak, through his word, by his Spirit, and I get to be affected and changed by what he says.

Back and forth. Reciprocal fellowship. The ceaseless interplay of spiritual beings.

Brought Near in Christ

Moses comes to mind. After the exodus from Egypt and the people’s immediate descent into idolatry, God speaks to Moses about the people “you brought up out of the land of Egypt” (Exodus 32:7). When Moses doesn’t protest, God speaks to Moses about how his consuming wrath may, indeed, be up ahead for the people. Then Moses understands that God is giving him room to respond, and he accepts the invitation. He appeals to God’s past promises to the people, his reputation before the nations, and the fact that they are “your servants . . . your offspring.” In response, the Lord “relented” (Exodus 32:14).

And the back-and-forth continues. The Lord says, “My angel shall go before you” (Exodus 32:34). In case Moses missed another invitation to speak, the Lord clarifies, “I will not go up among you” (Exodus 33:3). Moses, perhaps emboldened by the previous conversation, responds, “If your presence will not go with me, do not bring us up from here” (Exodus 33:15). God’s response is again a simple one: “This very thing that you have spoken I will do” (Exodus 33:17). Back and forth. This series of conversations between God and Moses reaches its zenith when the Lord reveals that his steadfast love and faithfulness will now be expressed in forgiveness of sins (Exodus 34:6–7), which means that Moses might not be the only one who can engage God with confidence.

And then the Gospels come to mind. “The Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world” (John 1:29), descends the ladder that separates heaven and earth, and his face is turned toward all of his people in the most intimate of ways. Jesus speaks, we listen and are reshaped by what he says, and then he invites us to speak, and he, God himself, is affected by our words to him. This is what God has accomplished in the gospel. In Christ, we have been brought near to God (1 Peter 3:18). Like Abraham, we now have been called friends (John 15:15), and we speak with each other.

Personal Overflow

God has now placed me among his people. This means that he brought me close to himself, and he invites me to speak — the more words the better — in a personal back-and-forth of knowing and being known. And he actually desires this personal closeness. Who would have thought it? When I look for how this has taken root in my heart, I notice that I am more eager to pray. I speak to God about the good and about the hard, often without any requests attached. I tell him more often that I love him. This, I think, has actually enhanced the fear of the Lord in my life rather than reframed prayer as though it were merely casual talk among friends.

“God has brought me close to himself and invites me to be personal with him, knowing and being known.”

This overflow has certainly affected my relationship with my wife. Until the ways of the personal God became part of me, I would invite my wife to share her heart, but I shared my own heart less — not because I was ashamed or she was reluctant to hear, but because I was more interested in hearing about her than I was in talking about myself. Now, each day, I prepare. What is on my heart today that I want to speak to Sheri? Then, of course, I aim to speak it to the Lord, who cares for me (1 Peter 5:7).

Each week this finds its way into my counseling. For example, after someone shares his or her heart with me, at some point I will say, “Let’s speak those things to the Lord.” With anxious people, God’s invitation to speak with him is the central message. Philippians 4:5–6 captures it: God is near, so don’t just be anxious and try to manage your world — talk with him. Collect your thoughts. Find words for your anxiety. And what are your worries saying? There is usually a message in them.

In my teaching, the Psalms appear more frequently. They are, after all, lessons in how to speak with God. I usually suggest that each psalm is a response to a question. “Tell me,” asks the Lord, “what is on your heart?” In my writing too, a recent book was titled Created to Draw Near. Vos was used to set me on this course decades ago.

Unending Exchange

As I observe the world around me, I find that this back-and-forth is so fundamental to the ways of God and his kingdom that it overflows throughout the world. For example, good friends share their hearts with each other. Spouses share their hearts with each other. That’s what you do with people close to you. Hold back and it feels like a betrayal.

All this is to say, here is a long sentence from a Dutch theologian that has touched my heart, and I pass it on to you. “To be a Christian is . . .” To obey? To depend on? To glorify? Yes, all these, but let your answer be reshaped by the personal God who created us in his image so that we can participate as no other creature can in the pleasure of an unending back-and-forth of words spoken in love.