For the next several posts, I plan to share some of the largest and most colorful plastic jewels that I had picked up while in the world.  After becoming a born-again believer it took time for me to begin understanding that there were many things I had picked up and was still picking up from the world.  These jewels were easy to find, and get ahold of simply because they were and are so popular and pervasive.  The first in this series of blogs is the popular notion of right brain/left brain psychology which is still main stream in numerous educational resources and couples self-help articles and books. 

Right brain/left brain psychology entered the main stream somewhere in the early to mid 1980’s and can truly be labeled science falsely so-called. Many in the neuroscience fields know this concept has little data and much assumption surrounding it, yet many Christians have unfortunately clung to it as a precious jewel.  Every time the saints accept worldly philosophies in lieu of God’s Word, both our walk and our witness are affected.  One man put it like this, “The cause of Christ is not discredited by failure to keep up with modern science (which has nothing to do with spiritual reality), but by the substitution of “science falsely so-called” for God’s unchanging truth. This is a modern abomination.” Dave Hunt, TBC Newsletter- “Science Falsely So-Called”, Feb. 1, 1989.

There are few topics that are held with such passion as that of popular psychology.  It would be one thing to say that the world won’t let go of it, but unfortunately most of today’s Christianity is spell-bound by its teachings, raising many popular Christian psychologists up to a priest-like status that is almost untouchable even by the Word of God.   After all, you need a degree to become a psychologist so how could someone who only knows God’s Word ever be able to correct a psychologist?  Yet many go to psychologists for the very reason they should be going to our Lord and Savior- for counsel.  This article will not be an attempt to critique popular psychology and the love many Christians have for it, but since right brain/left brain thinking has its home in this general area let me say just a couple more things pertaining to psychology in light of God’s Word.

Did you know that psychology is the number two field of study both in Christian and secular universities alike?  It is interesting that no matter what bookstore you go to you will more than likely find more books on counseling and psychology than you will on biblical Christianity.  To say the least, psychology is very popular among both Christians and non-Christians alike.  Did you also know that the Lord never ascribes counseling as a spiritual gift in the Bible?  He does give some to be teachers, pastors, and some to be apostles and evangelists.  Some have the gift of helps, and others have the gift of tongues and prophecy.  And others have the gift of healing, yet nowhere does God reveal to us that He gives anyone a specific gift called “counseling”.  (Romans 12:7, 1 Corinthians 12:28, Ephesians 4:11) With such a big draw and such an apparent need, why are the Scriptures silent on a gift of counseling?  It seems the Lord has perhaps overlooked the needs of us living in the 20th and 21st Centuries. Perhaps this is why Godless men like Abraham Maslow and Carl Yung were raised up.  Perhaps they were raised up to assist us poor, needy Christians who didn’t know how to properly give or receive counsel for almost 2,000 years prior to their arrival.  Or perhaps there is another answer. 

Is not God Himself called the Counselor, and does not the Holy Spirit indwell all believers?  (Isaiah 9:6, John 14:16-17) Is not the entire body of Christ commanded to draw along side one another to bear each other’s burdens, helping the weaker for the strengthening of the whole body, which is fit together and supplied by the love of Christ?  (Romans 15:1-2, Galatians 6:2-3, Ephesians 4:11-16, 1 Corinthians 12:18-27)  Does not the Word of God claim to be sufficient in all things pertaining to life and godliness?  (2 Peter 1:1-3) Then why should we go to the muddied streams of human psychology that was invented by Godless men, to try to glean a few nuggets of truth that will minister to hearts and minds? 

“But you have not so learned Christ; If so be that you have heard Him, and have been taught by Him, as the truth is in Jesus: That you put off concerning the former conversation the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts; And be renewed in the spirit of your mind; And that you put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.”  Ephesians 4:20-24