Before I went for my counseling degree a few years ago, a well-meaning Christian woman asked me, “How can you be a Christian and a counselor? All these people need is JESUS!”. That stunned me, and I wasn’t quite sure what to tell her. The fact is, our brain is an extremely complex organ that is affected by chemistry, experiences, and our environment. The role of psychology is simply for a person to have some degree of control over those three components in order to function as normally as possible.
The Bible says that we are “fearfully and wonderfully made”. That includes our thoughts, feelings, and emotions. That science is able to exercise a degree of control over those three is not immoral in and of itself. Yes, there are some counselors and psychologists out there who suggest that a person do something that goes against the will of God. But a good therapist will also take into consideration a person’s religious and cultural belief system. And to this counselor, psychiatric interventions and therapies are not any more or less intrusive than a cancer patient receiving chemotherapy to heal their body.
