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14 April 2019

LaHaye's Victory and the Next Phase: The Psychotropic Imperative


Evangelicalism has a long track record of compromise when it comes to psychology and psychotropic drugs. In these days of confusion even 'ministries' once oriented toward Biblical counseling have been compromised.
Recently I was listening to an Evangelical radio station and was struck by the interviewee's statement that not only can Christians take psychotropic medications, in some cases it would be sinful not to.


I'm used to hearing such mind-altering drugs endorsed and supported but this argument took it a step further. This counselor argued that when Paul says to 'Be anxious for nothing' the imperative suggests that not only should we not be consumed with worry but that in order to defeat such anxiety we may indeed be called to take medications... in order to attain that state of non-anxiety.
I realise that many if not most readers aren't going to agree with my stodgy old fashioned hostility to the pseudo-science of psychology, however I would hope that all would sit up and take an alarmed note with regard to what this man is saying.
He's saying that we are commanded to defeat anxiety.... by any means necessary it would seem. Divorcing the issue from faith and spirituality he turns to drugs and chemicals in the brain. It's startling to see Materialism entering the Church. In their zeal for social relevance and respectability it would seem that some Evangelicals are (in the name of 'science') abandoning forms of mind-body dualism, something essential to a Christian understanding of anthropology.
Of course the monistic tendencies of Dominionism (which now dominates the Evangelical movement) might also being playing a part in how this is playing out in some intellectual circles. It is at the very least something to contemplate.
And what purposes do these drugs serve? Well, they help to suppress certain proclivities and inclinations. They effectively sedate the person, albeit in a controlled sense and aid that person in shutting out certain patterns of thought.
In other words maybe six shots of whiskey is a problem but two or three is fine. And like whiskey, these drugs solve and fix nothing. They heal no one. They suppress but never solve. They are escapism, a pill form of drink and drugs that are being utilised for the same reasons people take illicit drugs, hit the local bar or sit home in the dark with a bottle.
The science is bunk. Taking even a basic psychology course at a university will reveal just how bogus and subjective the entire field is.
But this ship has sailed. I remember almost twenty years ago tearing a floor out while listening to an Evangelical radio station. I was stunned to hear the pastor on the radio say that if you go to a church that denies the role of psychology, that dismisses medication and its importance, then get out of that church. It's not a church but a cult. They went on to speak about schizophrenia and just how many pastors they knew who heard voices and in some cases saw things that aren't really there.
For me it was something of a watershed moment. I had been concerned about the issue but the fact that such statements were being made on a mainstream Christian radio station filled me with dread and alarm.
Tim LaHaye was victorious. Some will remember that long before his 'Left Behind' science fiction series he was known for being a proponent of psychology and for introducing psychological tests and categories within the Church. It was controversial back in the 1980's. I remember that too. But by the late 1990's the battle was over. LaHaye and the Evangelicals had won and the only people resisting them were a handful of Confessionalists and stodgy old Fundamentalists. I used to chuckle when some of the Fundamentalists would decry this sort of thing as modern day witchcraft. I thought that was taking it too far. However the more I consider what modern science is and what's happening in the realm of the mind, conscience and the possibilities of AI and virtual worlds... I'm not so sure.
Leaving aside general questions about Christians and science and technology, I think it safe to say we're on the cusp of a new era in terms of the Church and psychology.
Of course this counselor's very existence (as are all such 'ministries') is subversive to the Church. It's a blatant denial of Sola Scriptura and certainly the Sufficiency of Scripture. It denies that the New Testament gives us what we need in order to be whole and complete. It takes authority out of the hands of church Elders and the Scriptures and places it in the hands of so-called professionals who earn this status by means of worldly licensure and attainment. The world's standards become normative within the Church and Scripture is relegated to secondary status. It may be retained as helpful but wholly impotent in terms of addressing a person's problems.
What were once rightly viewed as spiritual issues are now entangled and trumped by false and heretical views of conscience and physiology. The monistic orthodoxy of our day decries the old view as gnostic and medieval.
This issue is one of the 'elephants in the room' when it comes to modern Evangelicalism. This is one of the big issues in which Evangelicalism represents not only a departure from historical understandings but has utterly turned its back on the Scriptures and their authority.
If you take a stand on this issue you will immediately be ostracised and suspect. I remember in the 1990's attending an OPC and raising this issue with the pastor. To my astonishment I learned that probably a third of the congregation was on some kind of psychotropic medication... for anxiety, depression or something else. This was a Confessional Presbyterian congregation. I was literally stunned.
The LaHaye model had already won but its victory wasn't open yet. That would take a few more years.
But now, this new way of thinking... that you might be in sin if you don't take medications... this is something new and bears watching.
Evangelicalism isn't just in trouble. The train leaped off the cliff decades ago and it may have already smashed into the bottom. It's just a case of some of the cars in back haven't yet realised what has happened... and what's about to happen.