David Powlison - The Ambiguously Cured Soul, from Challies

Having had the chance to take a class from David Powlison last year at Westminster Seminary, and having been tremendously blessed by it, I was happy to read Tim Challies post on an article by Dr. Powlison called The Ambiguously Cured Soul.  I won't spoil it too much for you, I just encourage you to go read the article and then read Tim's thoughts. 

My two cents is this - the article gives an example of how much that passes for "Christian" counseling actually obscures the real issues behind the problems we face.  In describing the way a "Christian" counselor addressed a young lady struggling with lesbianism, Dr. Powlison said this:

"Psychodynamic myth has mingled a significant illusion with elements of Christian truth. To say that her lesbian struggles were caused by unhappy childhood circumstances fails to bow before the riddle, unfathomableness, and culpability of sin. Sin is its own final reason. Any theory that claims to explain sin actually falls prey to sin's intellectual effects, and wriggles away from both theological truth and psychological reality. Sin is the deepest explanation, not just one more problem begging for different and "deeper" reasons."

That statement "sin is it's own final reason" is a paradigm buster because I think most Christians don't believe that.  I know I don't believe it when I am nursing a pet sin.  But this is very true and it demonstrates that real soul cure comes through the repentance and faith and the use of the means of grace.

As a commercial aside, the article Tim has posted on his blog comes from the Journal of Biblical Counseling.  You can get 29 years of the journal from the Christian Counseling and Educational Foundation on CD and this has almost everything Dr. Powlison has ever written (I know he has written for other publications, but his major work is here) as well as the excellent writings of Paul Tripp, Ed Welch and others.

Related Tags: Christian, Christianity, Counseling, Christian Counseling, Psychology, Faith, Religion, Sin