Philosophical Underpinnings of Integrative Counseling – Lecture One

Audio: Philosophical Underpinnings of Integrative Counseling – Lecture One

Welcome to counseling. 56, I'm Dr. Chin, and I'm again joined by Dr. Hawkins here at Liberty University. And we are going to continue our conversation. And I enjoyed talking with you about the integration and those issues we discussed in week one. Today, What I would like to ask you to do is to share with me how you developed the counseling program here at Liberty University. How did you conceptualize this Christian counseling model? I came to Liberty in 1978, which was short shortly after the Noaa flood. The boat had landed on rat. When I came here, I came out of pastoral work. I had been a pastor in Massachusetts and in New York for about maybe 15 years or so. I had begun to do a Dr. of ministry at Westminster Seminary in Philadelphia, where I met Jay Adams and his staff. As a pastor, I kept running into people who were damaged. They were broken and they were wounded. They were struggling with issues related to anxiety, and fear, and sexual identity and all these kinds of things. I found myself wanting to respond to them at a deeper level. But I didn't feel prepared, and I actually had minored in counseling at seminary. But it was secular. We didn't have any biblical textbooks. It was very interesting. And it was mostly the art of pastoral conversation. Which was like, you reflect back to people, well, I sense that you're doing well and I see you're smiling and you must be happy today and that's wonderful. But it was just that, that reflective Rogerian thing. Yeah. And I found that that didn't help people at the level I wanted to help them. I went on and did some work at Westminster. Then through a variety of circumstances, I found myself at Liberty in 1978. I had started at Westminster in 76, I met Ed Hinson, who was on the faculty at Liberty. I'd never even heard of Liberty. I was a Massachusetts, New York kid, and I never had heard of liberty. But he started recruiting me long and short. I came, when I got here, had started a Christian counseling, minor concentration in the school of religion. We had great success. We had hundreds of students, many of them were psychology students, who they were psych majors. But they wanted to know a little bit more about what does the Bible have to say about anxiety, and what does the Bible have to say about anger? And how do you approach people from a biblical theological perspective and integrate that into the world of psychology? Where they were learning so much about what's wrong with people and how to help people. We started there and we had hundreds of kids that wanted that program. Then we thought, okay, well we need to do a Master's program. So we began thinking about it and launched a Master's program in the seminary. But all of the time, the impetus behind was this idea that had grown in my mind and heart. I'm a pastor. I've been trained to preach. I love the word of God, love preaching. But preaching is very much like this. Me on the platform, talking to my people when I meet them in the office. And they come to me motivated by the Holy Spirit. They come in there, I've got this real challenge pastor, and I'm sitting there now. I found tremendous help in the word of God once I started focusing on that and once I started looking at Jada's material. And once I started looking at Larry Crab and some other people, I found a lot of help. But also was maybe influenced somewhat by Larry Crabb at that point. Because Rabb wrote a book called Effective Biblical Counseling. And then there he describes various approaches to the world of psychology and theology and people helping. He talked about several different approaches, and you remember them as well as I do, but he talked about nothing but the Bible. And he talked about separate but equal. And then he talked about spoiling the Egyptians. And when he talked about spoiling the Egyptians, he was really talking about going into the field of psychology. Reading the material and then taking captive what was compliant with or in accord with the Biblical truth that you had in your mind and heart. Bringing that into the therapeutic encounter and seeing if that helped. And what I found was that, that led me to develop what I call maybe a more holistic view of persons. I began to realize that a lot of the problems that people had were not related to sin per se, although everything is related to sin if there had not been a fall in the garden, then There would never have been sin. There would have never been a problem. And we wouldn't be doing what we're doing, and we wouldn't be worried about helping people. But there was a fall. There is sin. But sin is not the reason why some of these people come to me. Some of them have been sinned against, some of them have sinned. But they come with their woundedness and they're struggling with their anxiety, they're struggling with all of this stuff. We began to look at, okay, what is the core? The eternal core. And we talked about the spiritual core and the image of God. And that people are image bearers, which I think differentiates a biblical theological perspective out and actually gives us a unique place in the world of therapy and a unique place in the world of counseling. We believe that at the core, humans are made in the image of God. They have dignity and value because they're made in the image of God. But they're also thinkers and feelers and deciders. They live inside of real bodies. They have a sin problem. They live within the context of systems. They live within the context of temporal and supernatural systems. Not just temporal systems like family and that, but also systems like demonic, angelic, and all of those kinds of things that we read about in the Bible. As we thought about the program and began to conceptualize the program, what I began to believe was that there really was a great dearth of programs at the graduate level, in seminary that were training pastors to actually go out and intervene in people's lives holistically. We were prepared to teach and preach, but we were not prepared for that holistic encounter. How to help people who have been damaged in systems. How to help people who have thinking problems, decisioning problems that gave impetus to we need a program and we began the program. Well, that's great for that background. Now we know that many students pursue licensure. Many of them will become licensed professional counselors or licensed marriage and family therapists. They come here to Liberty to get a degree from our Center for Counseling and Family Studies. How do you believe then this integration has been implemented in this program that you conceptualized and developed? Well, what I envision and what I still have great passion for is a group of people who are trained to intervene in the lives of believers, Christians and non believers with a holistic strategy, who really look at people holistically. They understand that people are defined by the existence of a spiritual self and a cognitive self, and evolutional self, and an emotional self, and a somatic self and self and systems. When they look at somebody, they see all of that. And they begin to look at a person and think, okay, now how do we source the strengths? Where do we source the weaknesses? What we needed then was to train up a generation of people who were professionals who would go in and go head to head with heart to heart with other professionals in the field of mental health who maybe don't have the world view, who may be our evolutionist or whatever, but who don't go in with a hammer to bang on them. But come in with a better answer, with a more comprehensive strategy, with a way that is empirically validated. Yeah. People who receive these kinds of interventions actually do get better faster. Or they get better at a level that is really meaningful and helpful to them. I wanted to do that and it was like salt and light. So that we would also begin to establish. I see a lot of us as bridge builders. I can't tell you the number of times that I'll go into a conference or something like that and somebody will say to me after it's all over, you've really changed my view of liberty. I never expected to hear somebody from liberty like you. Well, what are they really saying? They're saying that they think that maybe there's a real reason why they think this. The world has really tried to paint us this way. They think that if you're a Christian, you're just a bible banger, or you don't have a brain, or you don't have the ability to talk in an intelligent way. You speak gibberish or something like that. Well, I I wanted to go in and show that you can be a Christian, you can believe the Bible, you can honor God, you can not accept evolution as fact. You can have views that are different from those in the culture and different from those of many in our profession. But still be a person of integrity, still be a person who knows how to manage your values within a contextual situation. It's amazing to me that the secular world wants to paint the counseling world this way. If you're an evolutionist and a non believer and a pagan, you know how to be sensitive to the values of other people and not violate the personal relationship or boundaries In a counseling situation, if you're a Christian, you can't possibly do that. Well, I wanted to show that that was all baloney. Well, I appreciate how you described the approach as a comprehensive strategy with a solid biblical foundation. Thank you. Thank you.

Audio Worldview Questions and Answers

As we begin this second week of counseling 56, we're going to concentrate on building models for integration in counseling. Our beginning point in this is to understand more specifically how our worldview impacts the models that we are using in counseling. The way we interpret behavior has a lot to do with our worldview and also a lot to do with our expectations of our clients. One of the first steps in applying worldview questions to counseling is that we have to begin to think in terms of the bigger questions that are involved. Starting off with who am I? Those who approach the question of human nature from a theological perspective. Think of people has created in the image of God. The focus of those who were theologically trained and oriented is the belief in people being a free creation imbued with a free will, but also has fallen beans created for a purpose. This is true even when we see a person into counseling situation. And it is clear by the problems they are having or created for themselves, that they are far from achieving the purpose for which they were created. Now, it does not remove the fat. This is still a person with a purpose for which they were created. From a psychological standpoint, the question Who Emma raises the issue of rationality. The idea of humans has essentially a self, not a creation, but a rational self. Some theories of psychology stresses that when people begin their lives, they begin as blank slates. Where from the moment they're born, their experiences, their environment, and their relationships begin to feel the pages of their minds and laughs. So there's a sense in psychology that people are akin to a self creating social organism that interacts with people and systems around them. From the perspective of Christian spirituality. Identity questions are phrased in terms of spirit, in terms of GAAP wreath life. Recall the image in Genesis, where God forms atom from the ground and breathe life into him. That is an image specific to Christian spirituality. The notion of human beings as children of God and temples of the Holy Spirit. Next, let's look at the worldview question. Where am I referring to the world in which we live? From a theological perspective, the world was considered to be a good creation by God. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. And God saw that it was good. That phrase is repeated many times in the first chapter of the book of Genesis. When God created human beings, he saw that it was very good. So it is a good world created by God that while still under sovereignty, he's charged us to have dominion over the world. From the perspective of psychologists, The question is addressed in terms of two environments. One being the internal environment of the person. Their individual heredity. And the second being the external, the physical, social, and relational environment in which they live. For Spirituality, The world is described as a community. Offer us who are believers in Christ. Our fundamental identity in terms of our environment is as a member of the body of Christ. Spirituality emphasizes that the world in which we live and sees not one realm, but that we exist to real-world, the physical and the spiritual. Now rarely this Eating1 conduct counselling simply for the fun of it, or because they have nothing else to do. So anytime you see a client, it's usually because they're having a problem. Theologians looking from the, what's wrong with the world perspective, refer these problems in terms of sin and rebellion to God's law. J. Adams emphasizes this into thetic counseling, that any time a person comes to you with a problem. The problem is sin. This problem of sin shows up not only on the individual's rebellion to God's law, but also in terms of the larger work of Satan, the enemy, and the presence of evil in their life. Psychologists on the other hand, if a says that when a person is having a problem, the fundamental issue is pointing towards some type of disorder or their failure to cope inadequate ways, or they're living in a dysfunctional environment. In spirituality, Well, there's a problem in life. The problem is broken relationships and alienation from God or from self or from others. This problem can be phrased in cosmic terms that in fact, part of the problem in life is really the result of spiritual warfare or result of quenching God's guiding and comforting Holy Spirit. So where does this take us in seeking solutions to our problems? In terms of theology, the way to deal with problems or solutions that only come from God. The grace of God is freely given to us with a correct human response being repentance. Repentance leads to redemption in Christ. And theme, we can embark on the lifelong process of becoming sanctified or more like Christ. From a psychological perspective, the solution to problems is known as self actualization, or the notion that we're self-control persons. I need to unleash the self within us. Then we can understand and conquer are problems and recover through psychological interventions. Spirituality speaks of a solution to problems in terms of communion with Christ and reconciliation with others coming through, abiding in the spirit and through the power of prayer. Next, we need to look at a change that has taken place over time. From what is known as a modern worldview to a post-modern worldview. Here you see a simple typology comparing the two. This sort of typology is very important in counseling, especially concerning the various generations of our clients. Those who were born in the first part of the 20th century are much more likely to have a dominant modern view. Those born in the latter part of the 20th or just coming into adulthood now and the Twenty-First Century, typically leaning toward a post-modern viewpoint. For those who come from a modern worldview, they're focuses on the rational. If they can figure it out and think it through, then they have a direction to live. They seek to discover the truth. And from that truth, they then know how to live and make decisions. That priority is on the individual. Learning to be responsible for yourself and your own, not looking to others for help. Modern people believe that there is an objective truth and that we can be objective in our search for that truth. Modernist also tend to think that there is a correct way to live and that there's a possibility of living a moral life. On the other side, post-modernists feel that life is much more experiential. The real source in life is their experiences, not thoughts or reasonings. For example, my experiences are not the same as yours. So my experiences are the authoritative source for me. Because of their emphasis on experience. They seek to understand life from their experience and then to discern truth from those experiences. In other words, their experiences become the means for understanding truth. More and more, they place an emphasis on community rather than individuality, which can be seen as a positive shift in the sense that seeking counseling from another person is acceptable instead of embarrassing. Also, post-modern people see life and subjective terms and that there are many ways to live all of equal value. And that is arrogant to speak in terms of there being only one way to live. Now case, keep in mind that what was just presented to you is a simple topology, a way of conceptualizing the shifts and thinking. So if you see things a little differently, that's okay. This is just simply a quick way to help you process the shifting of worldviews that is occurring in our lifetime. As we finish up this lecture, be aware that there are five keys to a Christian integrated worldview that you will be hearing about throughout the course. To study a bit deeper on this. Refer back to in Brussels book. Now the first, as I mentioned, all truth is God's truth. This is a key to our Christian worldview. The second is the notion that human abilities are gifts from God. Meaning we're not completely independent beings, but all creations of God. So our abilities are gifts from our creator and given to us for a purpose. A third key is the belief that human life is unified, whole. We're clients aren't be approached holistically and as part of the family and community. The fourth key focuses on the reality of sin. Meeting human sin is a limiting factor in all of our pursuits. The fifth and final key is humans and our behavior can be understood to a great degree through rational needs, meaning through empirical observation, through scientific methods, and through the revelation we receive from God. Unfortunately, the way which we interpret these facts is going to be limited and flawed because of our fallen as this in the first lecture of week two, continue to do your reading and studying as we continue to explore the philosophy behind integrative counseling.

Audio Philosophical Underpinnings of Integrative Counseling – Lecture Two

In this second lecture of week two, let's focus for a few minutes on the philosophical underpinnings of integrated counseling. Your reading for the past several day should have given you a good survey of the world-view and philosophy regarding the practice of psychology from a Christian point of view. In this lecture, we're going to take some time to unpack some of that dense material. Will start with epistomology and its impact on how we approach counseling. Then we'll focus on metaphysics and cosmology, which has our understanding of our nature of the world. And finally, we'll spend some time focusing upon anthropology, which is the understanding of human nature that we bring to the counseling practice. Ok, let's start with epistomology. Here you can see the four important ways of knowing, detailed logic, rational discourse, empirical methods, and Revelation. These are simply ways of talking about how human beings interact with knowledge. Logic is an internal process with internal dialogue. Rational discourse refers to the ways we interact with other people and with data. The ways that we reason about things and turn them over in our minds. Empirical methods look in our ability to investigate facts through observation and analysis. Revelation, which also could be called special revelation, is how we interpret God's word, has written revelation to us. These are all important ways of knowing. Now part of the worldview presupposition that we bring to counseling is the way in which we give authority to these various ways of knowing. For a Christian, the most authoritative way to know is by God's word, his revelation. Now, depending upon the particulars of your worldview, you grant authority to these other ways of knowing by giving them differing degrees of importance. Now going a little further with this whole idea of epistemology. How do we know what we know? For example, a client comes to you for counseling and begins their comments by saying, I believe God is telling me. Now that statement means something important, but it can be interpreted in at least four different ways. First, a naive realist would see the statement God told me has being literally what the person has said. In other words, it would be the same as hearing a recording of God's voice. If this client said that God told them something, then God must have told them something. On the other hand, an anti-realist would immediately assume that the client must be hearing things because God does not speak in a physical voice. And if there's a God that speaks at all, he certainly doesn't speak in a physical voice. So this person must be delusional. The critical realist. Want to carefully explore this claim with a client, with openness and be open to the fact that God can do whatever God chooses to do. The critical realists believes that throughout the bible, god did speak to his people. And also throughout the century since the writing of the Bible, many faithful people have claimed to hear from God. So there would be an exploration that is open to the possibility of this being true. Finally, the faithful realist would be a person grounded in natural law accounts or that understands that there is a natural law which normally does not include hearing God's fiscal voice, but also believes in God sovereignty and power and his ability to reveal Himself in whatever way he chooses. It is a question of reality. What is real? What does imagination? Those kinds of questions are always involved. Since no one can know everything and no one knows anything perfectly. We also have to consider some of the limiting factors in epistemology. One of these is flawed thinking. Another is when a person is being emotionally overloaded. Another refers to our cultural biases because all of us can have this at some point in our lives. We also have to take into account our own presuppositions, which can make us open only to some truths and knowledge while rejecting others. And we can never forget the presence of sin in our lives personally and in the world. This also means that we must factor in self-deception because all of us are self deceived at some level. Finally, we can't forget, drugs and disease has a limiting factor. So as you can see, the simple fact is that no one knows everything perfectly. So all of this leads us to asking, how can anyone know anything? The tradition of the Hellenistic training that we received in our education. You see a great focus on intellectual virtues. One of these virtues is honesty. It is very important for us to be an honest person and to be able to honestly sort facts from fiction, facts from interpretation. It is also important to be self-aware, to really know where we might be self deceived and have a sense of what our gifts are and where our flaws might be. An extremely important virtue is diligence, which is the need to be persistent in seeking the truth and then to remain open to new truth. A few others is being teachable and having respectfulness, that is listening to others. In a later lecture, we will talk a great deal about this and about the ways in which the counselor is not only teaching and guiding the client, but that the client is teaching and guiding the counselor so that we can learn from every person with whom we interact. Next, responsibility refers to fully embracing our moral duty to use our knowledge to honor God. Then we must also practiced a realistic humility where we can admit our limits without shame or embarrassment. Speaks about these intellectual virtues in his letter to the church at Phillipa, riding in Philippians 48. Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable, if anything is excellent or praiseworthy. Think about such things. The key point being made here, force is that integrated counseling is driven by the devotion to intellectual virtue, both for the sake of the client and for the sake of our effectiveness as counselors. Metaphysics in cosmology is our understanding of the world. Let's return to the claim of our hypothetical client, who not only says that God told me, but now they claim that they've experienced a miracle. How does a counselor respond responsibly to such a claim? Those coming from a naturalistic point of view which limits their view to a created order and to what can be observed, would see this claim is really a statement of coincidence with the client experienced was a natural event that has a natural explanation, but that they are trying to interpret as an act of God. This really has to do with a philosophy best described by Andrew Little. When he says, the cornerstone of modern cosmology is the belief that the place in which we occupied in the universe is in no way special. This is known as the Cosmological Principle. And it is an idea which is both powerful and simple. It is intriguing than that for the bulk of history, it was believed that we occupy very special location, usually the center and the scheme of all things. So simply put, a naturalists cannot believe that miracles actually happen. A materialist is even more dismissive. A materialist would believe that the person making such a claim is ignorant and is engaging in superstition and magical thinking. The materialists would say that which is normal in life is science. Because what can be observed and measured, the natural environment would represent the limits of what we can know. For super naturalists. When they hear claims such as this from their client, they assume that an act of God can and does happen. That God is sovereign and that nature will certainly accomodate whatever God desires to do. They would also be able to say that we speak of acts of God day in and day out. For example, if a hurricane or tornado destroys a house, insurance is filed asking for compensation due to an act of God. So why is a miracle out of the question? Super naturalists would make the distinction that science is important in describing nature, but not as a normative principle. Meaning God sets the standard. And science only describes the way nature is. Finally, a person coming from an integrative viewpoint would be respectful of the client and their claim, and would want to explore in a very careful way what actually happened. They would be aware that the client, as well as the counselor, is making an interpretation of the facts as they are presented. But also would be open to God's free working in the world. Let's turn our focus now to the philosophical presuppositions of human nature, which is called anthropology. J. Adams, and dismissing any other viewpoint other than the Biblical one, has said, psychology is just sinful human beings. Simply thinking about sinful human beings. Now how do we respond to such statement? Our response in many ways is going to reveal what we think about human life, about human nature, about the ways in which humans change, and about the potential for change in people. Our response will also indicate our worldview. Perhaps the chart on the next slide will help you in thinking about your response to this question. For psychologists, theologians, and those who engage in spiritual formation, there are distinctions in the approach that each would bring to the subject of anthropology. The chart here, trust outline some of those assumptions. Look at the column labeled assumptions and exemplars for a moment. Notice from a psychological standpoint that the assumption is that people are bio, psycho social beings. Meaning we are biological organisms with minds and personalities, core, socially embedded, but limited to an observable and naturalistic point of view. A theologian would describe sources of information and the nature of people as being the way that God describes people. For instance, we know what a human being is because of what God's word says about us. God's word describes people as being created in the image of God. And that our sources of data or for understanding human nature or supernatural sources, God's revelation throughout the Bible. From a spiritual point of view, we think of human beings in terms of God's creative spirit and living word. Which is not only the Bible given to us more than 2 thousand years ago, but the word of God living and working in us today. Next, when we think of the methods for understanding human nature, psychology is going to rely on empiricism, which is scientific and naturalistic inquiry. While theology is going to use hermeneutics and theological reasoning, the standards of interpretation of Scripture. Spirituality focuses on prayer, practices of spiritual formation. And the faith community has a way of understanding human problems and human nature. Another area is our standard. So thinking, since it is very important to have some way of standardizing our thinking about problems. Psychology relies on theories, on psychological constructs. Theology relies on the systematic theology that has been developed over many centuries. Spirituality relies upon a formation of tradition and Upon careful examination of biblical patterns for life. And the last area is the ideals and goals for counseling practice. How do we think about those we see in counseling? And what are appropriate goals and ideals for what we do with them. In psychology, we think in terms of therapeutic effectiveness and how will we seek to understand people? And more importantly, helping them to understand themselves and understand their own problems and to work towards their own solutions. In theology, we think in terms of salvation or sanctification throughout life, and the power of faith in people's lives. In spirituality, we speak of unity and love and of helping people to love God with all their hearts and minds and soul and strength and to love their neighbor as themselves. We think in terms of abiding in Christ. Now this concludes the second lecture of week two. I pray the Lord's blessing upon you as you continue your studies. And the integration of psychology, theology, and spirituality.

Models for Interdisciplinary Integration

Welcome to part three of this week's lecture. This time, we're going to focus on five models of interdisciplinary integration. Now before we actually speak about the models themselves, I want to give you a brief overview of the theoretical construct of how all of these integrated models were built. In his book entitled Christ and culture, H. Richard neighbor presented five different views of the way in which Christ is at work and the cultures of the world. These views represent different beginning points. Understanding how the living spirit of Christ is at work, and how we can better understand the nature of the authority of Christ and his impact on culture. The first and this typology is priced against culture, which really isn't either or view. Meaning we either are of the world or not of the world. We're either with Christ or against Christ. This will represent the enemies view of integration. A second type is Christ of culture, where Christ is viewed as assimilated into the culture. Whatever cultural expression of the work of Christ is the reality of Christ to that culture. Next, we have the Christ above culture, that is, and above and approach in which you can have this private devotion to Christ. And at the same time, be very worldly person and another compartment of your life. Fourth, we have the Christ and culture paradox. Two kingdoms striving to be

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