The typical modern individual is haunted by two conflicting notions: there’s something deeply wrong with me, and it must be the fault of everyone and everything other than me. This being the case, we have ordained a priesthood of therapists who offer us soothing words of insanity: speak your truth, triggered by your trauma, validate your feelings, be true to yourself, follow your heart.
The hope is that by vocalizing our feelings of hurt and trauma to a therapist, and hearing them validate our feelings, we might enjoy robust life, soundness of mind, and tranquility of emotions. But the Word of God comes to us as rock, as foundation, as immovable glory. It doesn’t budge, no matter how frenzied our feelings might be. Our therapeutic age denies the sufficiency of Scripture. It insists on viewing self in a psychologized light, instead of letting the light of God’s Word reveal the truth about the inner man.
The therapized soul will soon be deluded with a notion that self is sovereign. But here is where the Gospel’s call resounds. When we submit to God’s Word we learn two things about ourselves. First, we aren’t God for He made us and not we ourselves. Second, we aren’t holy, for we are sons of Adam and daughters of Eve.
You are not the sum of your traumas, feelings, and perceptions of reality. You are who God says you are. This means you are either a rebel against God & reality, or you are owned as a beloved child of a loving Father, who through Christ has adopted you into the warmth of His Heavenly Household. This therapeutic age has left mankind swimming in the instability of his own feelings. What godly counselors do is point the way to the immovable foundation of truth in God’s Word.
Our culture has been coddled into thinking that our feelings need perpetual validation, whereas the Word reveals to us that our feelings are tainted by sin, immature, and in need of the discipline of repentance. We need to go to God for forgiveness for being swept up in the cultural immorality of exalting our feelings above God’s Word. May God grant us humility to bend before the mandates of Scripture, and receive it all by faith, that we might be restored and renewed by the living and abiding Word. May God root up any notions that we’ve adopted from the worldliness around us, that we may think God’s thoughts after Him. God’s Word is sufficient for every trial and temptation you might face. In confessing your sins, you are confessing the supremacy of Christ and His Word, and putting the word of man in its proper place.
Ben Zornes – January 21, 2024
