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Psychology as a Religion by Bible Discernment Ministries PSYCHOLOGY AS RELIGION Explanations of why people behave the way they do and how they change have concerned philosophers, theologians, cultists, and occultists throughout the centuries. These explanations form the basis of modern psychology. Yet psychology deals with the very same areas of concern already dealt with in Scripture. Since God's Word tells us how to live, all ideas about the why's of behavior and the how's of change must be viewed as religious in nature. Whereas the Bible claims divine revelation, psychotherapy claims scientific substantiation. Nevertheless, when it comes to behavior and attitudes, and morals and values, we are dealing with religion -- either the Christian faith or any one of a number of other religions, including secular humanism. Nobelist Richard Feynman, in considering the claimed scientific status of psychotherapy, says that "psychoanalysis is not a science" and that it is "perhaps even more like witch-doctoring." Carl Jung himself wrote: "Religions are systems of healing for psychic illness. ... That is why patients force the psychotherapist into the role of a priest, and expect and demand of him that he shall free them from their distress. That is why we psychotherapists must occupy ourselves with problems which, strictly speaking, belong to the theologian." Note that Jung used the word "religions" rather than Christianity. Jung had repudiated Christianity and explored other forms of religious experience, including the occult. Without throwing out the religious nature of man, Jung dispensed with the God of the Bible and assumed the role of priest himself. Jung viewed all religions, including Christianity, as collective mythologies. He did not believe they were real in essence, but that they could affect the human personality, and might serve as solutions to human problems. In contrast to Jung, Sigmund Freud reduced all religious beliefs to the status of illusion and called religion "the obsessional neurosis of humanity." He viewed religion as delusionary and, therefore, evil and the source of mental problems. Both Jung's and Freud's positions are true in respect to the world's religions, but they are also anti-Christian. One denies Christianity and the other mythologizes it. Repudiating the God of the Bible, both Freud and Jung led their followers in the quest for alternative understandings of mankind and alternative solutions to problems of living. They turned inward to their own limited imaginations and viewed their subjects from their own anti-Christian subjectivity. The faith once delivered to the saints was displaced by a substitute faith disguising itself as medicine or science, but based upon foundations which are in direct contradiction to the Bible. Psychiatrist Thomas Szasz, in his 1978 book The Myth of Psychotherapy, says, "The basic ingredients of psychotherapy does not always involve repression." He points out that while psychotherapy does not always involve repression, it does always involve religion and rhetoric (conversation). Szasz says very strongly that "the human relations we now call 'psychotherapy,' are, in fact, matters of religion -- and that we mislabel them as 'therapeutic' at great risk to our spiritual well-being." Elsewhere, in referring to psychotherapy as a religion, Szasz says: "It is not merely a religion that pretends to be a science, it is actually a fake religion that seeks to destroy true religion." Szasz also says that "psychotherapy is a modern, scientific-sounding name for what used to be called the 'cure of souls.'" One of his primary purposes for writing The Myth of Psychotherapy was: "... to show how, with the decline of religion and the growth of science in the eighteenth century, the cure of (sinful) souls, which had been an integral part of the Christian religions, was recast as the cure of (sick) minds, and became an integral part of medicine." The cure of souls, which once was a vital ministry of the Church, has now in this century been displaced by a cure of minds called "psychotherapy." True "Biblical" counseling has waned until presently it is almost nonexistent. |
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Psychology is meant to replace God Jody.
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