The Church’s Need To Be Loved

 

A rampant idolatry is bringing the evangelical church undone all across the West,

“Today, even as many leading secular psychologists and pyschiatrists are debunking their own profession in books and articles with such titles as The Myth of Mental Illness; The Myth of Neurosis; Psychotherapy,The Dangerous Cure; The Death of Psychiatry; Psychoanalysis, The Impossible Profession, etc., Christian psychologists wax ever more eloquent in praise of the very system that is being exposed as a harmful fraud by secular practitioners! As a result, discredited psychological theories and practices that have deceived and damaged almost the whole of mankind are being embraced within the church.”

-        David Hunt, Psychology and the Church

One of the biggest flaws of the evangelical Church, actually it’s not just a flaw, it’s an idol, is the pernicious desire to be loved by the world, and seen as credible by the world. You see it in conservative apologetics ministries that love to tout how many PhD’s they have on staff. You see it in how many pastors refuse to confront pagan ideologies like evolution, or egalitarianism in the church, or animist practices like acknowledgement or welcome to country. You see it in how if experts say that the church must align with some worldly practice, like gender affirmation or self esteem promotion, the Church works hard to incorporate it into their practice.

And you especially see it in how the church defers to psychology for understanding how people can have better emotional well being. The irony is that the more society relies on the profession of psychology for mental health, the more depressed, anxious, and tormented people have become, because a lot of the issue is spiritual and moral, and this is meant to be the Church’s area of expertise. The shepherds have been taught to abandon the flock that Jesus said needed him (Matt. 11:28-30) to a secular profession that originated in literal antichrist philosophy. It’s incredible.

Because of this idolatry of needing to be loved by the world. The church is taking its cue from what the culture accepts, so it’s largely behind the eightball on this issue. It will be secular physicians and scientists that eventually unseat this profession, when it should have been the church all along. Many secular psychology experts are already tolling the bell, but denominations are currently seeking to encourage their pastors to be pastored by psychologists. It’s like a cruel joke, that demonstrates the bankruptcy of thought in the modern evangelical church. A complete inability to recognize that Jesus warned us against friendship of the world for this very reason, it blinds the church to this very sort of thing.