Is counselling self-centred?

From time to time, I hear concerns about biblical counselling being too introspective.

After all, the argument goes, aren’t Christians supposed to have an outward gaze and a concern for the lost? Isn’t it all a bit self-centred to be focussing on me and my problems? The concern is worth addressing: here are three responses.

God and his glory

1. Rightly understood, the biblical counselling movement has at its heart not ‘me and my problems’ but God and his glory. According to the Bible the reason we are to grow in godliness is so that we might glorify God. Paul’s prayer for the Christians in Philippi is that they might discern what is best and be pure and blameless … filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ – to the glory and praise of God (Philippians 1.10-11). Growing into the likeness of Christ is one of the key ways we bring glory to God. God is glorified when a church, the whole body of Christ, becomes mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fulness of Christ (Ephesians 4.13).

Mature churches

2. The Bible also tells us that the maturity of a church is a means of evangelism. In John’s Gospel, Jesus tells his followers that people will know that they are his disciples if they love one another (John 13.35). Mature churches showing mutual Christ-like love is itself a witness. In his first letter, John even says that though ‘no one has ever seen God…if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us’ (1 John 4.12). The implication is that a mature church marked by mutual love actually reveals the invisible God. Which means that working at godliness and mutual love isn’t as inward looking as we might have thought.

Character of conversations

3. Or come at this another way. Think of the character of most of the serious conversations we have with our non-Christian friends. Rarely, in my experience, does anyone start a conversation by asking questions about their eternal destiny. Perhaps it’s just me, but I can’t remember anyone tapping me on the shoulder to enquire how they, as an ungodly sinner, can stand before a holy and righteous God! I guess that doesn’t happen to you either.

We do, however, talk with friends about their struggles with a difficult boss; or the way they seem to be getting more and more grumpy as the years go by; or the argument they had with one of their teenage children; or worries about their children’s use of the Internet. These things bother our non-Christian friends, just as they bother us. And if we know how the gospel connects to those sorts of issues in our own lives, we are much more likely to have something gospel-centred to say when our friends describe similar problems in theirs.

Riches of Scripture

Biblical counselling is about connecting the riches of Scripture to the realities of life. If our friends can see that Christ makes a difference in the nitty gritty of our day-to-day life, it is going to be an awful lot easier to persuade them that he is relevant to them too. Of course, we don’t want to stop there. Our bottom line is not that Jesus is a handy solution to the problems of the here and now. The good news is that Jesus provides a solution to our much greater problems in eternity. But the here and now can be a vital bridgehead.

Witness to the world

Throughout the Bible a key part of God’s witness to the world has been the distinctive lifestyle of his people. If biblical counselling helps us grow in godliness (and it should) then it will make us better witnesses to a lost world too.