Idolatry as a Paradigm for Christian Counseling

Well, I've been piddling and dilly dallying around for the last few days and have gotten behind in this little tag team effort that Adrian Warnock and I are doing on Christian counseling. Since my last post he has done three more posts which you can find here, here and here.

In those posts there is really nothing I would disagree with so I'm going to jump off on a subject that is near and dear to my heart and that is the subject of idolatry. I suggest that the concept of idolatry can go a long way to explaining many of the "psychological" symptoms we deal with.

An idol is anything in our lives that takes the place of God. By its very nature an idol is something we worship. An idol is a funcional god in our life. So, though we may name the name of Christ and worship each week with other believers, we may also have functional gods that are very different from the one true God of the Bible.

The thing about the gods we worship is that they demand absolute obedience. We must obey them and furthermore, those in our lives must worship them. If they don't worship them, then they must at least show some sort of deference to them. We often don't recognize our idols as such when everything is going our way. It is when things aren't going our way that we can see what our idols really are.

There are two emotions, IMHO, that reveal what our idols are more than anything else. These are fear and anger. We all have degrees of fear and we all react in anger to different things at different times. On the other hand, fear and anger can become very controlling factors in our lives. It's at those times that we see what our functional gods, our idols really are.

Ken Sande has a good article on the progression of an idol. Idols begin as desires which may be good, bad or innocuous. But we often raise the bar on desire and call it a need. Once we elevate something to the status of "need" it becomes something on which our well being depends. This is especially crucial to understand in today's over-pop-psychologized climate. In I Tim. 6:8 Paul says:

But if we have food and clothing, with these we will be content.
The Holy Bible : English standard version. 2001 . Good News Publishers: Wheaton

Also, consider his words in Philippians 4:11-13:

11 Not that I am speaking of being in need, for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. 12 I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. 13 I can do all things through him who strengthens me.
The Holy Bible : English standard version. 2001 . Good News Publishers: Wheaton

With those passages in mind, it is apparent that, for Paul at least, there were very few things in life that could be classified as a "need." I realize that Paul was speaking mainly of physical needs, and today when we talk about "needs" we are usually referring to emotional or psychological needs. But can anyone really build an exegetical case for the "six needs of a wife," or the "seven needs of a husband"? I am inclined to think that these "needs" are "wants." Biblically speaking, with the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives, Christians are equipped to respond to the worst forms of abuse and rejection joyfully (Hebrews 10:32-34, I Peter 2:19-24). This includes confiscation of property, insults, and public ridicule. I am inclined to think that if God has equipped us to withstand that kind of stuff then we have the power, by the Holy Spirit, to withstand having some alleged "needs" going unmet. Thus, I am also inclined to think that what we call "needs" are often idols, which are really desires run amock.

Moving on, Sande says that once we redefine a "want" as a "need" we then demand it. Woe unto the ones in our lives who don't give in to our demands. After demanding that others meet our needs, we judge them and punish them for their failures to worship our idols.

All of this shows up mostly in the emotion of anger. This progression is often accompanied by a progression of anger. But something similar can happen with the emotion of fear. We may have a desire that we elevate to the status of need and then we fear that it will be taken from us, and so on and so on.

Martin Luther says this about idols:

"To whatever we look for any good thing and for refuge in every need, that is what is meant by 'god.' To have a god is nothing else than to trust and believe in him from the heart.... To whatever you give your heart and entrust your being, that, I say, is really your god."

Where I am going with this is that someone will often present with a problem they call "depression," and will often have physical symptoms or devolution of moods. If we treat the physical symptoms too quickly we may mask the idolatry.

For example, consider the example of Amnon and Tamar in II Samuel 13:1-2:

Now Absalom, David’s son, had a beautiful sister, whose name was Tamar. And after a time Amnon, David’s son, loved her. And Amnon was so tormented that he made himself ill because of his sister Tamar, for she was a virgin, and it seemed impossible to Amnon to do anything to her
The Holy Bible : English standard version. 2001 . Good News Publishers: Wheaton

In this case we have frustration (emotional symptom) and illness (physical symptom) caused by desire run amock (idolatry!). I believe that much of what passes for mental illness or psychological malady follows a similar pattern. We want something very badly, to the point of making an idol of it. When we can't get it, we lapse into some kind of emotional distress. Then, we have physical symptoms from it.

I don't know enough about biochemistry to say anything for sure, but why couldn't such a pattern produce changes in the body's biochemistry? We all know about psychosomatic illness. In his book, Healing Back Pain, Dr. John Sarno has shown that emotions of fear and anger can cause physiological changes in the body. So, why couldn't anger and fear and other things cause not only psychological maladies, but the physiological and biochemical maladies often associated with mental illness?

The punch line is - do we treat the symptom or the problem? Again, I am not disputing the fact that physiology and biochemistry can influence the mind, will and emotions. Adrian has a great quote here from C. S. Lewis to the effect that "most of a man's psychological make-up is probably due to his body." Still, as Christians, we believe that spiritual matters govern our lives more than anything else. Thus, it would behoove us to begin our counseling ministries with a search for idolatry. After that, we can move on to other tangential issues.

To that end, I'll close with some "X-ray Questions" that Ken Sande has published to help us uncover the idols in our hearts.

# What am I preoccupied with? What is the first thing on my mind in the morning and the last thing on my mind at night? # How would I complete this statement: "If only _____________, then I would be happy, fulfilled, and secure"?

# What do I want to preserve or avoid?

# Where do I put my trust?

# What do I fear?

# When a certain desire is not met, do I feel frustration, anxiety, resentment, bitterness, anger, or depression?

# Is there something I desire so much that I am willing to disappoint or hurt others in order to have it?