This book began with a dilemma.
Time and time again, we’d find that our patients—sincere, Bible-loving believers struggling with emotional issues—had a double burden to bear. Not only were they depressed, or eating compulsively, or having trouble dealing with authority figures, but they were also handicapped by certain teachings that sounded Christian, but weren’t.
The ideas appeared true because those who taught them used religious language and quoted Scriptures. These ideas, however, are emotional heresies. They are false assumptions about spiritual and emotional growth. They aren’t biblical, and they don’t work.
We identified twelve teachings that sound plausible because they each contain a nugget of truth. At some point, however, when Christians try to apply the truths, a breakdown occurs. And the person needlessly suffers.
A woman who suffered from a deep depression because she had been abandoned as a child, was told by a Bible teacher that she simply needed more time with God. She was putting too much trust in people, he told her. Faithfully she tried to follow the principle, “If I have God, I don’t need people.” She isolated herself more and more from those who loved and cared for her in order to spend time praying and studying the Bible. She spent hours alone, with no human contact.
Eventually, her depression deepened to the point that she was hospitalized. During her stay, after much effort, she learned what the Bible really teaches: that a great deal of God’s healing comes through the members of his church.
The most astounding finding of our informal study was that Christians who had been raised with minimal Bible training were less injured by these false assumptions—supposedly biblical teachings—than Christians with extensive Bible training. In other words, Christians who know their Bibles the best are often injured the most. When their allegiance to the Scriptures was combined with dangerous teaching, much pain often resulted.
Though sometimes they questioned their faith, more often they blamed themselves: They weren’t faithful to God, or they were secretly resisting what God wanted to tell them. Either way, their emotional symptoms tended to worsen and their pain increased.
The hurting person was then left with one of two options: Leave God and get well in secular psychology, or stay in a Christianity that apparently didn’t work and simply cope with being dysfunctional.
As we continued to run across this problem, we searched the Scriptures for answers to these beliefs that were literally driving people crazy. We found that there really is nothing new under the sun: These crazymaking principles have all been addressed in the Bible, from Jesus’ confrontation of the Pharisees, who believed that authoritative religiosity was actually the voice of God (Mark 7:5), to John’s exposure of the Gnostics, who believed that human connections should be avoided in preference to divine connections (1 John). The Scriptures present clear corrections of all these crazymakers.
Most of these false assumptions have one thing in common: They draw the believer away from God’s resources of growth and healing, and toward a system that sounds Christian, but doesn’t work.
Several years ago, the Rev. Scott Rae, at that time a singles pastor at Mariners Church in Newport Beach, California, asked us to speak to his singles group about spiritual growth. We put together a series of Sunday night lessons for an active, questioning group of serious Bible students—and who also wanted honest answers about emotional growth. From that format came the outline of this book.
We wanted to do more than simply react and refute these crazymaking assumptions. We wanted to tell the truth about God’s principles of spiritual growth. So in this book we explain the origin of these false principles, show where they go wrong, and present a biblical path for resolving emotional and spiritual problems.
You don’t need Bible training to profit from this book. It’s written for everyone. But it’s meant especially for people who are searching to find out if the Scriptures actually do apply to their sorrows, their conflicts, their emotional growth, and their struggles.
The dilemma can be solved. The Bible can help make you emotionally well, not sicker. God and his Word are part of the solution—not part of the problem.
We pray that you will be able to identify the pseudobiblical beliefs that can make you crazy. More than that, we hope that you will use the truth of God’s Word, of his Spirit, and of his people to grow in grace and in truth.