Proto-Protestantism: Inbox: A Psychology Follow-up (II)

24 November 2022

Inbox: A Psychology Follow-up (II)

The psychology explosion took place (culturally speaking) in the 1970's and the Evangelical movement in its zeal to be culturally relevant trailed closely behind. We see this in Tim LaHaye's psychologically-rooted approach to spiritual gifts which gained popularity during the same decade. He revived and recast The Four Temperaments, a notion rooted in the long discounted physiology based on humors and the ideas of ancients and pagans like Galen. How this took root in ostensibly Bible-based circles is still a wonder.

Psychological testing and analysis became the means of Christ's people determining (falsely) what spiritual gifts they in fact possessed. Aside from sacrilegiously representing the work of the Holy Spirit as formulaic and casting it in minimalist terms – LaHaye's entire approach had nothing to do with Scripture and yet set many people on a deterministic course and opened the doors of the Church to further external influence in the realms of psychology and its approach to counseling. The man who later cashed in on a fictitious rendering of a false eschatology played no small role in inviting the actual bestial system into the confines of the Church and giving it a matrix with which to work. Once again, the truth is stranger than fiction.

It continually amazes me that men like LaHaye and James Dobson are held up as stalwarts in the Church and by the larger culture as ultra-conservatives. These men are/were neither. They are the sell-outs, the compromisers, the crypto-liberals who invited the world's ideology into the Church. We see this further exemplified in that they largely gave their lives to the pursuit of political power and mammon.

Further the Evangelical sphere has vigorously embraced the psychological view of the self in terms of identity, validating bad habits and thought patterns, along with narratives of authenticity, subjective fulfillment and the like. It's only a small leap to jump from this platform to the contemporary project concerning sexuality. And to no one's surprise the Evangelical movement has largely struggled with this issue as well, having already succumbed to narratives concerning identity. As such we are witnessing the present struggle over so-called Gay Christians as many Evangelicals believe the orientation to be valid in terms of genetic determination. The identity is retained while the person is enjoined to celibacy. Needless to say the results have been less than encouraging.

Rather than reject the identity altogether, the gay agenda (as it were) is still setting the terms of the debate – which are thoroughly rooted in the assumptions of psychology and the psychological self.

Conversion Therapy is also related to this as it seeks to deal with the problem in psychological terms – largely (it would seem) gleaning from the dictates of the Behaviouralist school of thought. It becomes a question of habit-forming in the realm of thought and action. While such exercises perhaps have their place in terms of character formation and discipline, the confused approach of this method does little in the way of helping the subject deal with their core spiritual problems and the dire need for profound repentance – an ongoing struggling repentance, not the cheapened and trite repentance of an Evangelical Altar Call/Billy Graham-style theology.

So while we decry state actions to quell this practice – the practice itself needs to be condemned, albeit on terms wholly different than the arguments put forth by the secular culture.

The influence and indeed dominance of psychology within the Evangelical sphere is also evidenced by just listening to Christian radio. The other day I caught one of those 'ministry minute' type fill-ins between the broadcasting segments. It talked about a grandmother who was upset because her grandchild had spoken to her in very disrespectful terms – way beyond any kind of acceptable norms. Consequently this lady was upset with her daughter (the grandchild's parent) and how she was parenting – a style that had produced such a disrespectful grandchild. The ministry then talked about how often child rearing goes astray and children grow up with a poor self-image and this affects how they deal with other people.

What a bizarre interpretation I thought! Aside from the embrace of what must be reckoned as psycho-babble, the analysis is completely inverted. The problem is not a lack of self-esteem or self-image (a recurrent mantra in the Focus on the Family world of Evangelical compromise). The problem is the brat child hasn't properly grasped that he or she isn't the center of the universe and life is filled with obligations and calls to respect. The heart of manners is to put other people first and to put yourself in their shoes. This leads to respect and consideration. The grandchild in question lives and thinks only in self-interested terms. The problem isn't a less than positive self-image or a lack of self-esteem. The problem is the kid has an inflated and idolatrous self-image and a sickening degree of self-esteem. They have it completely and hopelessly backwards.

Psychology (as is often the case) proves inept in terms of analysis, diagnosis, and prescription. It cannot properly deal with the categories of the Fall and all too often shifts blame when it comes to guilt, and thus in good humanistic fashion does all it can to reduce guilt and eliminate shame. And yet in the case of the aforementioned grandchild – that's exactly what the kid needs, to be shamed, driven to repentance, and then forgiven and restored.

Psychology also recently came to the fore in a rather cynical fashion when it came to the Christian Right's attacks on Covid mitigation. In some cases, these battles were fought in ignorance and in other cases they were driven by conspiratorial and politically motivated thinking – refusing to grasp or understand how children (while less often affected by Covid symptoms) are nevertheless potent carriers and disseminators of the virus. The Right rejected this reasoning which demanded that kids follow the protocols in order to avoid spreading the virus and taking it home to more vulnerable members of their families. As such the Christian Right played a vocal role in resisting any kind of call for school kids to wear masks. As the medical data surrounding the virus didn't support their position, what did they resort to? – they resorted to a psychological appeal which then drove their ethical response.

Repeatedly I heard (and still hear) Evangelicals decrying the psychological effects of mask wearing and lock-downs, arguing their kids suffered psychological trauma. The arguments were bunk from the beginning, an attempt to score political points, and more cynically a libertarian opposition to any kind of inconvenience and a resistance to a simple call to think of others and be willing to suffer the smallest of inconveniences for their sakes. The idolatrous selfish libertarian ethos won't have it and now it must be said that this anti-Christian ethic has more or less assumed a position of dominance within much of the Evangelical fold. It's a sad testimony to just how far removed that faction is from the New Testament.

Psychology dominates. There's really no debate any more. An open rejection of it on the basis of the Sufficiency of Scripture is met with scepticism and despisement. As mentioned previously it is one the elephants in the Evangelical room, a glaring reality that utterly belies their claims to Scriptural authority and one of the factors contributing to the movement's functional apostasy.