She was at the end of her therapy. The journey had been difficult. When Joyce began therapy, she was a hundred and thirty pounds overweight. Now, after lots of hard work, she had returned to a normal weight.
Her weight problem was, of course, only a symptom of deeper problems. In therapy, she had had to face some painful truths and realities about her life, and do some difficult work in her relationships.
The hard work had started when she realized how much her parents had controlled her as a child. She idealized them, constantly caved in to their wishes, was unable to stand up to them and be her own boss. In short, she had little control over her choices and opinions.
This pattern of control had spilled over into her adult relationships. Her sisters and friends generally ran her life, and she smiled every step of the way—the consummate servant, gladly doing whatever anyone wanted her to do. But she gradually began resenting deeply the very people she apparently loved and served so gladly.
In addition to recognizing her relationship problems, Joyce finally remembered her sexual abuse when she was eight. The depression and grief she experienced as an adult at first overwhelmed her. She endured a period of anxiety and even panic because she was afraid people could see the shameful truth.
But Joyce hung in there, faithfully working on whatever it seemed God was trying to show her next. She established better boundaries with her parents: She gave them a firm no when they wanted something from her she didn’t want to give, and she dealt with the conflict that followed such refusals. (This was the most difficult part of her therapy.) Her parents wondered what had happened to their dependable daughter. Why the sudden selfishness? They poured on the guilt, but Joyce stood firm.
She began opening up to people about the pain of her childhood sexual abuse, allowing others to be there for her and to comfort her. She slowly learned to depend on people in a way that she never imagined she could. As she developed a support system, the inner emptiness that had compelled her to eat (one of the symptoms of her woundedness) began to be replaced with love.
When she started to see me, Joyce had subscribed to all twelve false assumptions. Yet her healing had come in a different way than her assumptions had predicted. One day towards the end of her treatment, I asked Joyce how she explained her weight loss, a very visible symbol of her increasing healthiness.
“I used to think that if I knew the Bible, studied it, and depended on it to transform me, my problems would be solved,” she replied. “But it didn’t work.
“Here’s what did work: First, I had to come out of isolation and learn to connect with other people. In the beginning I did that with you, and then I was able to do it with others.
“Second, I had to set boundaries in order to control my life. As long as others had control over me—and I didn’t—I didn’t have the self-control I needed to say no to food.
“Third, I had to learn to deal with and express my pain and hurt, instead of covering it up with eating. When I learned that pain could be my friend instead of my enemy, I was not so afraid to face it, and it began to go away. Now when I’m hurt, instead of eating a large pizza, I call someone and talk it out.
“What I’ve really learned in all this, though, is that what I thought about the Bible is not true. Bible study didn’t cure me. I learned that I have to do what the Bible talks about. Studying the Bible told me what I needed to do, but only in actually getting out there and doing those things did I see what the Bible was actually talking about. Knowing the Bible did not change me, doing it did.”
I was struck by how her view of the Bible had changed. Joyce didn’t believe the Bible any less. To the contrary, she believed it more, because she had proved its power in her life. She had been taught that Bible study, that “knowing the truth,” would change her. Yet she discovered that doing the truth was what made her grow.
When we were young counselors, a strong movement was just beginning in the evangelical church to apply biblical truth to emotional problems. People were being taught that Scripture memory, exegetical teaching, doctrinal purity, and personal Bible study were the keys to spiritual and emotional growth.
This focus is still popular. If they simply know their Bibles, many Christians are taught, their emotional problems will be cured. They are taught that knowing God’s Word is the all-sufficient cure for everything that ails them. Bible study and prayer, this camp believes, are the answers to emotional problems.
Proponents of this view point to Jesus’ words: “The truth will set you free” (John 8:32), as well as some of the descriptive passages about the Scriptures, such as Psalm 19:7–14, or Psalm 119. From such passages they build an entire system that relies upon Bible study and truth as the cure for everything.
This approach sounds good. What could sound more Christian than to stand up for the integrity of the Word of God? How could anyone even question such teaching? It sounds like heresy to even ask, “Is the Bible enough?”
We believe that the Bible is God’s Word and that its revelation is sufficient. What we question is its application. Is the cure simply reading the Bible and learning truth? The false assumption here is, “If I know God’s truth, I will grow.” Yet we believe that Bible study alone was never God’s remedy for emotional and spiritual problems. Healing takes work.
This false assumption has been popular for centuries. One of Job’s friends offered him the same advice: “Submit to God and be at peace with him; in this way prosperity will come to you. Accept instruction from his mouth and lay up his words in your heart” (Job 22:21–22). Job’s suffering would end, his friend assured him, if only Job understood the truth and aligned himself with it. Yet God rebuked the friend for giving Job such erroneous advice.
“You diligently study the Scriptures,” Jesus said to those well-acquainted with the Scriptures, “because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me” (John 5:39). The Jewish leaders were so busy studying the minutia of Scripture that they didn’t recognize the One to whom the Scriptures were pointing, the One who could lead them into the spiritual life that truly heals.
We are not saying that the Word is dispensable for spiritual growth. It is not. But neither is Bible study the entire picture. The Scriptures themselves teach that Bible study is necessary yet insufficient in itself for leading one into a healthy Christian life.
Truth alone saves no one. The Pharisees had all the truth they needed. What they didn’t have were relationships with God and with each other.
The essential problem is that we are alienated from God and others. The essence of the spiritual life is to be reconciled to God and have a vibrant relationship with him (2 Cor. 5:18–19), and then to be reconciled to friends and neighbors in the same way: To love God with all your being and to love others as yourself.
“Don’t be afraid of the dark, honey,” said a mother, calming her frightened child. “God is with you.” To which the child replied, “But I need somebody with skin on.”
We talk continually about how relationship with God is essential for emotional growth—but so do those who teach the false assumptions. Yet though they teach that prayer and Bible study are healing agents, their emphasis on Bible study (and relationship to God through Bible study) falls short of what the Bible actually teaches—an incarnational gospel. This means that for us to realize the grace of God, God had to put skin on. He had to become a man. Even now, he comes to be with us in bodily form through his church, which we call the body of Christ. The church is Christ with skin on. We feel the grace of God not only by studying about it in the Bible, but by experiencing it incarnationally, just as it was first revealed.
In our hospital program, Phyllis was a patient who had been an active Christian worker her entire adult life. Yet at age forty-five, she had gotten so depressed she could no longer function.
When we put her into a group, a pattern emerged: Every time a group member started talking about a problem in order to get feedback and support from the group, Phyllis quoted a Bible verse to him. No one told his or her story without a Scripture quote from Phyllis.
Patients and staff quickly realized two things—Phyllis had an amazing grasp of the Bible, and she had virtually no ability to relate intimately with others.
Consequently, Phyllis was very alone inside. She knew a lot about God’s love, but experienced very little. Extremely cut off from other people emotionally, she became depressed. Phyllis was trying to have a relationship with God apart from his body (the church), and it wasn’t working.
The apostle John wrote about a relationship with God apart from his church: “For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen” (1 John 4:20). We need God “with skin on,” and that is the function of the body of Christ. “Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins. Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling. Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others, faithfully administering God’s grace in its various forms” (1 Peter 4:8–10). Humans are God’s agents for administering his grace.
God’s grace is not something that we learn only by reading the Bible. We also realize it in human relationships.
Truth without relationship sidesteps the healing God wants for us in his body. Christians are told to study the Bible for their growth and comfort, but the Bible they read instructs them to return to human relationships for healing: Go and abide with one another, comfort one another, weep with those who weep, confront one another, confess to one another, encourage one another, and build one another up. These relational elements are essential for growth and transformation in the soul.
We will in all things grow up into him who is the Head, that is, Christ. From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work. (Eph. 4:15–16, italics mine)
The teaching “If I just know the truth, I will grow” clearly contradicts the biblical mandate to go to the body of Christ for growth. You can’t read the Bible and think that it says that studying it is enough. It points to Jesus and a relationship with him and his people.
Another reason this false assumption is harmful is that it teaches against the very truth it says to study. God designed sanctification, which has several elements beyond Bible study and learning the truth. These elements involve practicing the truth: putting the Bible down and going and doing what it says to do:
Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror and after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. But the man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom and continues to do this, not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it—he will be blessed in what he does. (James 1:22–25)
In other words, James says, “Put your Bible down and go do it!” Jesus told his listeners the same thing:
Why do you call me “Lord,” and do not do what I say? I will show you what he is like who comes to me and hears my words and puts them into practice. He is like a man building a house who dug down deep and laid the foundation on rock. When a flood came, the torrent struck that house but could not shake it, because it was well built. But the one who hears my words and does not put them into practice is like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation. The moment the torrent struck that house, it collapsed and its destruction was complete. (Luke 6:46–49)
These passages compare hearers of the Word with those who practice it. Christ dismisses the value of merely hearing his Word.
People who are taught to get over their emotional problems by just reading their Bibles and praying are being taught to become hearers of the Word. There will be no genuine healing, however, until they become doers of the Word. Bible study alone has been lifted to a status the Bible never intended. God says the Bible is important because it points us to Jesus and tells us how to live out our relationship with God and others—in fact, it serves as a guide for living our whole life.
Though she had been in various types of Christian service for years, Terri became, inexplicably, suicidally depressed during a two-month missionary assignment. She soon learned the first steps of expressing her pain in therapy and letting others comfort her. She learned to be honest with God and cultivate a relationship with him. She worked on forgiving people against whom she had held deep grudges. She got reconnected to the body of Christ.
As Terri’s depression lifted and her relationship with God improved, she began to grow in her love for God instead of feeling duty-bound to serve him.
Then something happened. Terri appeared in my office one day, very scared, distant, and confused.
“I don’t know if I can trust you anymore,” she said tearfully. “I just met with my former spiritual teacher, and she said you were heretical.”
“What did she mean by that?” I asked her.
“She said that you were a secular humanist and that I shouldn’t see you anymore or listen to what you say.”
“What did she say that you should do instead?” I was concerned because I knew that, although she had made great gains, Terri wasn’t finished with therapy.
“She said that I needed to get back to the Bible and depend on it only, that the Bible was sufficient for all my troubles. She said that counseling was godless, and that if I read the Bible and memorized the truth, it would set me free.”
“I want you to think hard, Terri. How would you describe what you have been doing in therapy?”
“What do you mean?”
“What have you learned and done since you have been seeing me?”
“To get in touch with my grief. That I need to forgive. I’ve opened up to other people and let them support me. I’ve tried to separate from my mother so I could have a better relationship with my husband. Tried to be more honest about what I struggle with by confiding in others. Tried to be more honest with God.”
“Now let’s look more closely at the work you have been doing and compare it with what the Bible teaches,” I said. “Solomon and Paul talk about grief. Jesus and Paul talk about forgiveness. Jesus, Paul, Peter, David, and John urge their listeners to connect with other people for support. Genesis speaks of leaving and cleaving, and Jesus says that you may end up being enemies with your own family members when you begin to do what he says.
“Both Paul and James,” I continued, “write about being honest and confessing to others our shortcomings, feelings, and sins. And Job and Jesus stressed honest relationships with God. It sounds to me that you have been doing exactly what the Bible tells you to do, and that is why you are getting better.
“Therapy has been the place where you have been doing what God commands. Sounds to me like your former spiritual teacher wants you to just read the Bible without doing what it says.”
“I guess I really am doing what it says,” Terri said slowly. “But she seems so spiritual … and I get confused … “
“I have no intention of trying to control you, Terri. I want you to see some other people and tell them everything that we do here, then get their input. Then go home and read your Bible as I’ve suggested in the past. Finally, think about whether you want to continue with your therapy—or to follow her advice and teachings. I want it to be your decision. And I want you to make sure you talk to a couple of pastors in the process, telling them exactly what you’ve been doing.”
Terri soon got back on track, practicing those actions that had been helping her—but not without much fear of disobeying her spiritual mentor.
Real problems arise when people in counseling are doing the hard work of therapy and then one of their spiritual teachers condemns what they are working on, calling it “secular humanism.” They are then instructed to get back to “biblical” ways of healing—Bible study and prayer.
When they study their Bible, they find that it says to do the things they were doing in therapy—take responsibility for what is inside, uncover the darkness, grieve, forgive, reconcile, learn, confront, express feelings, confess, and support.
This is exactly what is so ridiculous about the false assumption “If I know the truth, I will grow.” It tells people to study their Bible, yet prevents them from doing what it says.
Character change—to be transformed into God’s likeness—is the key to real healing for all of us (2 Cor. 3:18).
But such transformation is hard work. It comes not by simply memorizing Scripture and trying to be inundated with truth. That is the Pharisees’ method. Real character change comes from practicing the truth, not just hearing it. People who are actively involved in recovery and character change are doing the hard work of denying themselves. They should not be told to stop doing the truth, and instead just to study it or listen to it in exegetical sermons.
Actually doing leads one to become humble and loving, responsible and forgiving, cleansed and transformed—and actively involved in bringing others into the same kind of healing (2 Cor. 1:3–4). Learn the truth, study your Bible diligently, but don’t stop there. Take what it says and put it into action by practicing the healing process it points to. Holding to his teaching, not just knowing it, sets you free (John 8:31–32).
Jesus always emphasized doing what he said: “But the seed on good soil stands for those with a noble and good heart, who hear the word, retain it, and by persevering produce a crop” (Luke 8:15). If we sincerely do this, we become like him who said, “I do know him and keep his word” (John 8:55). And in keeping his word, there is life and health indeed.
“How can a young man keep his way pure? By living according to your word. … I rejoice in following your statutes as one rejoices in great riches” (Ps. 119:9, 14).