The Christian Counselor's Manual

Jay E. Adams

• Publisher: Zondervan
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9780310871736
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Ministry

The Christian Counselor's Manual is a companion and sequel to Dr. Jay Adams' influential Competent to Counsel, which first laid out a vision of "nouthetic" counseling—a strictly biblical approach to behavioral counseling and therapy.

This practical guide takes the approach of nouthetic counseling introduced in the earlier volume and applies it to a wide range of issues, topics, and techniques in counseling, including:

• Who is qualified to be a counselor?
• How can counselees change?
• How does the Holy Spirit work?
• What role does hope play in therapy?
• What is the function of language in a counseling session?
• How do we ask the right questions?
• What often lies behind depression?
• How do we deal with anger?
• What is schizophrenia?

These and hundreds more questions are answered and explained from a biblical perspective in this comprehensive resource for the Christian counselor.

A full set of indexes, a detailed table of contents, and a full complement of diagrams and forms make this an outstanding reference book for and Christian counselor.

PART ONE
THE PERSONS

Chapter One
THE PERSONS INVOLVED IN COUNSELING

Always More Than Two

It is by no means self-evident that the persons involved in pastoral counseling are, as Seward Hiltner has written, “the parishioner and pastor” or, as nearly every book on counseling assumes, the counselor and the counselee.¹ In raising this issue there is no attempt to drag in a dozen or more significant others who might “sit in” on the session as a part of the superego of the counselee.² Indeed, anyone who has read Competent to Counsel will recognize immediately my complete antipathy to any such idea. And, while the matter is on the floor for discussion, let us at once dismiss concepts of transference that might consciously be brought into the picture by projecting upon the counselor the image or figure of some person from the counselee’s past or present life context.³ Certainly, too, we must avoid any notions of genetic determinism that may make parents (whether immediate or Jungian past) responsible for the behavior or feeling of the counselee. No, all of these attempts to enlarge the counseling context fail since, as the Scriptures plainly teach, God holds each one of us personally responsible for his thoughts, words, and actions regardless of external pressures and influences:

For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one [italics mine] may be recompensed for his deeds in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad.⁴

All blame-shifting and excuses will evaporate in that day before the searching gaze of the One whose eyes are “as a flame of fire.”⁵ The sophisticated Freudian or behavioristic theories that now seem so conveniently plausible and that are used to justify and excuse men of their responsibility to God will be shown to be futile and false. In His presence, men in anguish will wonder at the naivete that they once called sophistication.

At Least Three

Well then, of whom is the counseling context composed? How many persons are involved and who are they? The Christian answer is that the biblical counseling context, like the disciplinary context (and counseling and discipline must be seen as integrally related),⁶ always involves a minimum of three: “Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there I am in their midst.”⁷ In truly biblical counseling, therefore, where a counselor and counselee meet in the name of Jesus Christ, they may expect the very presence of Christ as Counselor-in-charge.

Chapter Two
THE HOLY SPIRIT IS THE PRINCIPAL PERSON

Jesus Christ now dwells invisibly in His church in the person of the Holy Spirit. Before leaving His disciples, Jesus assured them that the Father would send them “another Counselor…the Spirit of truth.”¹ The Greek word that is translated “another” is a specific term meaning literally “another of the same kind.” For three and one-half years, in fulfillment of Isaiah’s prediction that He would be called a “Counselor,” Jesus guided, instructed, rebuked, encouraged, and taught His disciples.² He was truly their Counselor. During His ministry, of course, Jesus counseled many other individuals as well.³

Now, as Jesus was about to leave His disciples, He graciously calmed their fears by informing them that He would send “another” Counselor like Himself to be with them to teach and guide as He had previously.⁴ The rendering “comforter” goes back to Wycliffe. But there is good reason, however, to translate parakletos in its occurrences in John by “advocate” or a synonym, such as “counselor,” or “helper,” or “intercessor.”⁵ He identified this Counselor as the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of truth (i.e., who is the Source of truth and who leads into truth).

His Work Is Holiness

The Holy Spirit is called holy not only because He is to be distinguished from all other spirits, and in particular from unclean spirits, but also because He is the Source of all holiness.⁶ This point is specifically emphasized in Romans 1:4 where, in an unusual construction, He is called “the Spirit of holiness.” The holiness of God’s people that results from their sanctification by the Holy Spirit must be attributed entirely to Him as He works through His Word.⁷ The “fruit” of the Spirit is just that: it is the result of His work. If the counseling is in essence one aspect of the work of sanctification (as I have argued elsewhere⁸), then the Holy Spirit, whose principal work in the regenerated man is to sanctify him (cf. also Ezekiel 36:25-27), must be considered the most important Person in the counseling context. Indeed, He must be viewed as the Counselor. Ignoring the Holy Spirit or avoiding the use of the Scriptures in counseling is tantamount to an act of autonomous rebellion. Christians may not counsel apart from the Holy Spirit and His Word without grievously sinning against Him and the counselee. Any counseling context that disassociates itself from these elements is decidedly a non-Christian context, even though it may be called Christian or may be structured by a counselor who is himself a Christian but who has (wrongly) attempted to divorce his Christian faith from his counseling principles and techniques.

At the time that he announced the coming of the Spirit, Jesus also told His disciples that they would be sent to do a “greater work” than He had done.⁹ This work could be accomplished, He said, only if He left them and sent the Holy Spirit to take His place. The Spirit would be a counselor to them in performing these tasks in a way in which He could not be. His continued visible bodily presence with them would have meant that the work, if it were to be guided by His counsel, would be confined to a few in but one area. But in going to the Father and in sending the invisible Spirit to be with them wherever they went throughout the world, they and all other Christians could benefit from the same counsel at once wherever they were. By the Spirit, He promised to continue to be with them until the end of the age (Matthew 28:20). In this work they were going to be in great need of counsel (cf. Luke 12:11, 12; 21:14, 15). Thus, Christ’s leaving and the Spirit’s coming were for their benefit (John 16:7).¹⁰

All Christians Benefit from His Counsel

It is true that the Holy Spirit counseled the apostles uniquely, enabling them infallibly to remember the words and works of Jesus and helping them to reproduce the same in the form of an inerrant revelation. This unique sort of counsel ceased with the close of the New Testament canon, once its purpose had been achieved. Yet the more general counseling work of the Holy Spirit continued after the death of the apostles. Indeed, through His use of this written revelation preached, read, explained, and applied among the members of the Church of Christ, the Holy Spirit today carries on His work of counseling. It is He who regenerates and gives faith to the elect (I Corinthians 12:3), and it is He who enables the believer to understand (I Corinthians 2:9-16) and live according to God’s will revealed in the Scriptures. These two purposes (salvation and sanctification) are declared to be the ends or “uses” of the Scriptures (II Timothy 3:15, 16), just as the two conjoint purposes of the worldwide mission comprise the works of evangelism and edification (Matthew 28:19, 20). All true believers receive the baptism (or “anointing”) of the Holy Spirit at regeneration and, therefore, receive the benefit of His counsel (I John 2:20, 27). But that counsel has been deposited in the writings of the apostles, and it is by enabling His church to “hear” them in these writings (I John 4:6) that the Spirit has chosen to counsel His church today.

Chapter Three
THE HUMAN COUNSELOR

Who Should Counsel?

While every Christian must become a counselor to his fellow Christians, the work of counseling as a special calling is assigned particularly to the pastor.¹

Biblically, there is no warrant for acknowledging the existence of a separate and distinct discipline called psychiatry. There are, in the Scriptures, only three specified sources of personal problems in living: demonic activity (principally possession), personal sin, and organic illness. These three are interrelated. All options are covered under these heads, leaving no room for a fourth: non-organic mental illness.² There is, therefore, no place in a biblical scheme for the psychiatrist as a separate practitioner. This self-appointed caste came into existence with the broadening of the medical umbrella to include inorganic illness (whatever that means). A new practitioner, part physician (a very small part) and part secular priest³ (a very large part), came into being to serve the host of persons who previously were counseled by ministers⁴ but now had been snatched away from them and placed beneath the broad umbrella of “mental illness.”⁵

I do not wish to argue the point that modern ideas of mental illness are invalid. Many others have made this point with impact.⁶ Moreover, I have cited some of this material at length elsewhere.⁷ I am concerned here to make but two observations only: (1) the psychiatrist should return to the practice of medicine, which is his only legitimate sphere of activity; (2) the minister should return to the God-given work from which he was ousted (and which, in many instances, too willingly abandoned).

That there is much for the psychiatrist to do medically to help persons suffering from problems in living whose etiology is organic cannot be questioned. The field is growing. Certainly an understanding of the influence of bodily chemistry upon behavior and emotions is only beginning. For instance, recent study indicates that those pathological problems that result from toxic chemical impact upon perception and, consequently, upon personality are probably greater in number than presently is known. The Christian pastor would rejoice to see psychiatry leave the area of the non-organic to become what (in America though not in Europe) it falsely has claimed to be, a medical specialty.⁸ In other words, psychiatry’s legitimate function is to serve those who suffer from organic difficulties. The psychiatrist has reason for existence only when he specializes as a physician to treat medically those persons whose problems have an organic etiology. Even then, most likely there will be need for twofold help. While the physician treats the physical problem, the Christian counselor should pedal in tandem. As he works with a physician who treats an ulcer by dealing with life patterns that led to the ulcer, so he may need to work together with a physician using megavitamin therapy. The pastor’s task will be to help him to alter sinful life patterns that may have developed in response to the chemical disorder. These may include bad human relationships resulting from suspicion, withdrawal from others, etc.

Counseling Is Ministerial

The Christian minister must be willing (and able) to assume the full task to which God has called him: that of ministering to men and women who suffer from the pains and miseries that stem from personal sins.⁹ The subject matter of the Scriptures is the redemptive love of God in Christ for His Church and the Church’s response must be love toward God and one’s neighbor (the summary of the law). The minister is called to the special task of proclaiming the good news and ministering God’s Word to those whom the Spirit regenerates. He is vitally concerned with the love response of the Christian to the love of God. As a calling he must be a pastor/teacher who faithfully leads God’s flock in the paths of righteousness and feeds them upon “every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.” Par excellence, it is his task to minister the Word in preaching and counseling in such a way that weary, torn, hungry, wandering sheep are safely sequestered within the sheepfold. The two functions, counseling and preaching, correspond to the designations pastor and teacher.¹⁰ To say that the Christian minister is counselor and preacher, par excellence, means that he is called to these works as his function or office in the church. It does not exclude much teaching, exhortation, and counseling on the part of every Christian, incidental to his particular gifts and calling.”¹¹

All of which raises the important matter of whether Christians may legitimately assume the position of counselors as a life task and calling apart from ordination to the Christian ministry. Just as all Christians may give witness to their faith, which involves an informal proclamation of the Word (cf. Acts 8:1-4; the whole church “announced the message of good news”), so all Christians may (indeed, must) do counseling. Yet, not all Christians have been solemnly set aside to the work of “nouthetically confronting every man and teaching every man,”¹² as the Christian minister is. He, in a special way, has been appointed and set aside by God and the church to these two works of ministry by the call of God and the church and the laying on of hands. There is no indication in the Scriptures that anyone but those who have been so recognized should undertake the work of counseling or proclamation of the Word officially (i.e., as an office, work, or life calling). This means that persons with a life-calling to do counseling ought to prepare for the work of the ministry and seek ordination, since God describes a life-calling to counseling as the life-calling of a minister.

Many young Christian men have written or visited me in the last two years who want to go into counseling as a life-calling but who have no thought of doing this work as ministers under the aegis of the Church of Jesus Christ. I have tried to show them from the Scriptures what God says about this matter. I have pointed out that the more Christian a counselor becomes in his counseling activities, the more he looks like a minister; i.e., his activities are precisely those to which a minister is called as a counseling pastor.

The best training for Christian counseling is a good seminary education to provide a solid biblical and theological background. The resources upon which a truly Christian counselor relies are the Word, the Spirit, and the Church. T...