Just What Is Christian Counseling?

A Christian counselor is someone who comes alongside you to encourage, support, and guide you.  The word ‘counselor’ in the Greek is paraclyte, and it comes from two Greek words, para, meaning alongside (think parallel) and kaleo, which means ‘call’.  It is also the word applied to describe the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives – He is the paraclyte – the one who comes alongside us to encourage, support, guide, and even correct us.  Why is this important to know?

The longer historical perspective of ‘counseling’ was called, the ‘cure of souls’.  Without getting into a long philosophical discussion of the definition of ‘soul’, we will be referring here to the common definition of the soul as the essence of human personality.  To quote John T. McNeill’s classic,  A History of the Cure of Souls, 

The soul is the essence of human personality.  It is related to the body, but it is not a mere expression or function of the bodily life.  It is capable of vast ranges of experience and susceptible to disorder and anguish; but it is indestructible and endowed with possibilities of blessedness within and beyond the order of time.  The “cure of souls” is, then, the sustaining and curative treatment of persons in those matters that reach beyond the requirements of the animal life.

Man is a seeker after health, but not health of the body alone.  Health of body may be contributory to, but it does not guarantee, health of personality.  It may be possessed by a man who suffers painful disorders of mind and spirit.  On the other hand, it may be destroyed by mental or emotional disease.  The health that is ultimately sought is not something to be secured by material means alone; it is the well-being of the soul.  In our day the science that heals the body has advanced far beyond that which aims to restore the soul.  Yet the function of the healer of the soul is no less ancient than that of the physician of the body.  In primitive societies both functions are commonly assumed by the same person.  The shaman of American Indian or primitive Siberian tribes is at once healer, sorcerer, priest and teacher.

McNeill goes on to point out that the term ‘cure’ came from the Latin cura and included the idea of ‘care’ as well as ‘healing’.  Socrates wanted to be called, iatros tes psuches, a ‘healer of the soul’.  These Greek syllables have been recast to form the word “psychiatrist.”  But Socrates would hardly recognize the medical psychiatrist as a member of his fraternity.  A scientific psychiatry indifferent to religion and philosophy is a rather new and strange phenomenon.  It comes from the philosophy of existentialism – that existence precedes essence.  Following an atheistic evolutionary model, the idea was that inanimate matter, somehow became alive, and evolved into ‘higher’ forms of life, until finally, a sentient form of life evolved.  But following the ‘evolution’ of that ‘first self’, each person is born as a body,that somewhere along the developmental process, generates some kind of ‘essence’, or ‘soul’ and that essence is made up of the experiences and choices that we make – in other words, we are what we do and what happens to us.

This may sound esoteric, but it is not.  If we are, as some evolutionary scientists put it, just ‘organized food,’ then where do we get our souls from?  And if life happened merely by chance, and if, as the universe ages and finally ends in the motionless cold space produced by entropy when all of cosmic history ends, then what is the point?  The assumption that people are merely accidents, who came from nowhere and are headed for nothing, puts a strain on those personalities that we call ‘souls’ to a breaking point.  As Ecclesiastes says so well, if this is all there is, then, “Vanity, vanity, all is vanity, and a striving after wind”.  Not, a pretty picture, and one that runs contrary to the evidence we have that life is not meaningless!

Again, why is this so important?  Because if we are concerned with the health of our souls, then understanding correctly their origin and destination, are of paramount importance.  We must have a good idea of what ‘heath’ is if we are going to try to ‘cure’ what ails us!

What do the Scriptures tell us?  Human beings are creatures with physical bodies, who also have ‘souls’ (sometimes referred to as ‘spirits’) made in the image of God Himself!  And while, because of the Fall, our bodies will someday die, our souls will go on forever, in one place or another.  This means every human being is of eternal consequence, and far beyond all the galaxies we have seen (and all those we have not), our destiny is our dignity.  Human beings matter, and human souls (or spirits), have a significance that transcends everything else in this world!

So, our health, physically and spiritually, is tremendously important.  We are more than just biological beings, we are also ‘souls’ who have been made in the image of God and meant for a relationship with Him and one another.  God has made us for that relationship with Himself, that He had intended to last forever.  Until we get that right, all other ‘fixes’ will be temporary.  However, even those temporary fixes can have everlasting consequence when you are dealing with souls who will last forever!

But, at the end of the day, who we are is defined by whose we are.  We first belong to God, and then we also belong to each other.  Life is about relationships, not accomplishments or materialism.  And we are not merely organized food, but people who have been made in the image of God and given the unbelievable dignity of choice.  What will we choose, and why will we choose it?  This is not merely a matter of brain chemistry, but of an act of the will – a spiritual choice.  And Jesus has called us to trust him – to follow him.  What will we choose?  For, as Augustine observed so long ago, there is a God size hole in our hearts, and nothing will fill it except Him.

So, when our souls are sick, we need a cure – we need healing for our souls, and that is the business counselors are supposed to be in!  In more familiar terms, God did not intend for us to be ‘sick at heart’ and He calls us to ‘come along side’ and receive help and healing in this sin sick, and sorrow filled world. That’s what Christian counseling is all about.

Kevin