Dec 12
21
Psychiatry is a threat to civilization
From ChristianGovernance eletter – December 14, 2012
Psychiatry is a threat to civilization
[I wrote this prior to today's school massacre in Connecticut. We won't have any comment on that incident in this piece, but there are applications to be made re. all the pontificating an navel-gazing that will take place by people wasting oxygen trying to analyze what happened.]
The psychiatric profession should be renamed the “blame-shifting affirmation of irresponsibility” cult. Psychiatry has the same level of intellectual credibility as palm readers. Labeling hoarding, binge-eating and a condition marked by frequent temper tantrums as disorders! Two-year-olds who don’t understand personal responsibility may like this idea, but an adult? Come on!! When you don’t take responsibility for your actions, you abandon hope because you can’t change anybody or anything but yourself. Psychiatry based on anything other than Scripture alone is a charlatan’s game, whether it’s intended to be or not. Psychiatry addresses the mind, the heart, the soul. That’s what the Bible, God’s truth, exists for. The Bible doesn’t exist to be a car manual, but it does exist to address the matters of the soul, and it is wholly sufficient for this task. It provides us all we need for life and godliness, according to its own testimony.
The doctors of the soul are pastors/elders, the undershepherds who govern/serve under Christ, who reveals His truth in the Scriptures. The Bible teaches that we should all be counselors to each other. Galatians 6:1-2 – “Brothers and sisters, if someone is caught in a sin, you who live by the Spirit should restore that person gently. But watch yourselves, or you also may be tempted. Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.” The notion of the exalted professional counselor is humanistic, another expression of Humanism’s desire to centralize, institutionalize, sanitize and bureaucratize all of life, including human relationships. This worldview cannot operate alongside Christianity. It is antithetical to the truth.
We are brainwashed by professionals into thinking that some dynamics like counseling each other, or having pastors counsel, is OK with easier cases, but the hard cases need professionals. NONSENSE! That is a statement of philosophy, of worldview. And it’s predicated on Humanism, not Christianity. Yet this is the mentality that has been drummed into us from childhood and it’s only the most contrarian people who resist it. We see it in every other area of life too. Oh, maybe parents can teach their children elementary school subjects, but home schooling in high school should be left to the professionals. And parents can’t be trusted to protect the health and safety of their children, so the politicians have to keep coming up with ideas of toys and foods and activities to ban and regulate. And they get away with it!!
People can maybe manage their own household budgets, but we need experts with 10 years of education to manage a country’s finances. Yeah sure! Look how good a job they are doing! When will we wake up? And not just in the particulars; at the fundamental level of our worldview assumptions? The cult of the expert is Humanism. Sure, specialization and expertise is valuable in many areas, but the presumptive attitude that the expert knows best, and that we should suspend our own thinking and responsibility and initiative and curiosity in deference to experts is ideological, and it’s anti-Christian. We do this in the realm of medicine too, and it leads to tragedies far too often. (British “experts” just recommended more homosexuality in children’s TV shows. The link to that story is in the column on the right.)
The topic before us today is psychiatry. How about this article about abusive psychiatrists? What was that about the credibility of palm readers and recycled toilet paper salesmen (a.k.a. environmentalists)? The “Shrink” cult needs to become a shrinking cult. We need to turn to explicitly biblical counseling when we need help for our hearts/minds/souls and relationships, and we need to base sustained overcoming in these areas in salvation, and becoming new creations in Christ, with the help of God, the Holy Spirit – “the Other Comforter” – through the Bible. How can we seriously think we can offer peace to people who haven’t first found peace with God? It doesn’t work. Band-aids have a role to play, but they are not a cure. The nouthetic model of Biblical counseling is excellent. If there are other models of counseling that are genuinely Biblical, and not just labeled Christian, then that is good. Counseling must be Biblical to be of real help, offering people genuine hope as they seek a way out of misery, brokenness, addictions, oppression and sin.
And for those who still think there is anything remotely redeeming about psychiatry, here are a few more items:
Man says psychiatrist fondled him weeks after suicide attempt
More on the evils of the psychiatry profession
Then there’s this recent murder case. Biblical Christianity would have executed him; humanist psychiatry sets him free in less than 4 years. Even the Conservative central government spoke out Thursday against this move: Psychiatry releases murderer only 46 months after stabbing children to death