Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 999 | The Enneagram Scam | Guest: Dr. Dale Johnson

Episode Date: May 8, 2024

On this Wellness Wednesday, we're joined by Dr. Dale Johnson, executive director of the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors and host of the "Truth & Love Podcast," to discuss biblical counseling vs. Christian counseling, differences between counseling men and women, and problems with current "therapy culture." How should people decide whether or not they need counseling? What should parents do about children who struggle with mental health issues? And what does it mean to be mentally and emotionally healthy? --- Timecodes: (02:02) Biblical counseling vs. Christian counseling (07:22) How to decide if you need counseling (11:17) Differences between counseling men and women (16:38) Problems with therapy culture (22:45) Enneagram & personality tests (28:33) Counseling about sin (33:44) What does it mean to be mentally healthy? (47:04) Social-emotional learning (56:45) Dr. Johnson's definition of the Gospel  --- Today's Sponsors: Good Ranchers — If you want to secure your best price on meat until 2026, go to GoodRanchers.com and use code ALLIE for 10% off your subscription, free express shipping and a price-lock guarantee until 2026!  Jase Medical — get up to a year’s worth of many of your prescription medications delivered in advance. Go to JaseMedical.com today and use promo code “ALLIE". A’del — try A'del's hand-crafted, artisan, small-batch cosmetics and use promo code ALLIE 25% off your first time purchase at AdelNaturalCosmetics.com Balance of Nature — Balance of Nature's proprietary blend of 31 fruits and vegetables come in easy to swallow capsules to give your body the nourishment it needs. Go to BalanceofNature.com and use code ALLIE for 35% off. --- Relevant Episodes: Ep 963 | The Dangers of Gentle Parenting, SEL, & Empathy | Guest: Abigail Shrier https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/relatable-with-allie-beth-stuckey/id1359249098?i=1000648254377 Ep 611 | How Woke Ideology Has Ruined Therapy | Guest: Dr. Sally Satel https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/relatable-with-allie-beth-stuckey/id1359249098?i=1000559621694 Ep 20 | The Myth of Self Love https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/relatable-with-allie-beth-stuckey/id1359249098?i=1000416015103 --- Buy Allie's book, You're Not Enough (& That's Okay): Escaping the Toxic Culture of Self-Love: https://alliebethstuckey.com/book Relatable merchandise – use promo code 'ALLIE10' for a discount: https://shop.blazemedia.com/collections/allie-stuckey

Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort.

We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch this D-Day show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us. Should Christians care about mental health? Should we be going to psychiatrists, psychologists? What is the difference between secular psychology and biblical counseling? What is the difference between secular mental health and the biblical perspective?

on our mind and our heart and our emotional state. This was a wonderful, insightful conversation from Dr. Dale Johnson. He is the executive director of the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors. He is the host of the podcast, The Truth in Love podcast. This was an amazing, very encouraging conversation as I heard the wisdom that he offered on what the Bible actually says about how Christ can guide and help and sanctify our mind and heart. Really, really good stuff that I know you guys are going to enjoy on today's episode of Wellness Wednesday on Relatable, which is brought to you by our friends at Good Ranchers. Go to Good Ranchers.com.

Use code Alley at checkout. That's good ranchers.com code Alley. Dr. Johnson, thanks so much for taking the time to join us. Before we get started, can you just tell us who you are and what you do? Yeah, my name is Dale Johnson, and I am a professor of biblical counseling at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. And I'm also the executive director at ACBC, which is the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors. And those are two roles that take up most of my time. But I'm a husband to my wife's summer. We've happily married for 23

years and have six children as well. So from college all the way down. So that's a little bit about who I am. Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Well, I want to talk to you about biblical counseling. You know, this conversation about counseling and therapy, what's needed, what's not, what type of therapy or counseling is good, has been in conversation for a long time among Christians with a lot of different perspectives. What I've realized is that a lot of people don't know that there is actually a difference between biblical counseling and what's called Christian counseling. And I just want to hear from you, like what is the difference?

And why do you care about counseling for the Christian? It's a really good question. Let me start even by the way that you framed it, because that's how most people ask the question. They will ask the question, well, pragmatically, what's the difference? Because what we're looking for is we're trying to decide, okay, what do we think will help most in certain situations? I would like to take that a step back and let us describe the distinctions of the types of counseling

so that we can understand that not only do they have different perspectives, they have different goals in life. And that matters to the Christians. So for me, you know, anybody who goes into counseling at any level, no matter how secular, you don't do that kind of work because you hate people. You go into that type of work because you have some concern about people who are broken and hurting. But there is a distinction and it's really important. I'll give it as brief as I can. So if we were to think about it on a spectrum, so you've got a secular viewpoint, which is rooted in humanistic thinking. Obviously, there is no God. We don't believe in a reality of his wisdom or anything about really the supernatural. That's

the perspective of most secularist, especially post-1859, which is a really important date we might get into a little bit later. But it's secular, meaning that it comes from human wisdom specifically. We can talk about the empirical nature of how to pursue that type of wisdom, but it's secular in its perspective, meaning that it's done within a closed system. And we're trying to achieve human wisdom, what we can observe and see with the natural eye. And that's really important. You've got a middle position in the spectrum that you articulated as Christian counseling or what we would say is integrated counseling. And essentially what's happening there is there's a perspective that we can take wisdom from the world, human wisdom. We can integrate that with theological

truths to make sense of life, to understand human nature or certain problems. We start to compartmentalize humanity into physiological or biological, psychological, psychological, and soulish type issues or spiritual issues. And so that framework is built in the middle section, this Christian counseling. And there's a spectrum within that. So not every person who does integration is exactly the same. There's a spectrum of how people articulate that. But essentially, what you're looking at is, you know, an overview is taking the wisdom of man and the wisdom of God and trying to put those two together. In biblical counseling, what we try and do is say, you know what, it's our perspective that God has given us everything we need for life and godliness. And if he's done that based on his character,

that we choose to understand his wisdom about life, about reality, the creation that he's made, and the creatures that he's made, and that he's given us insight on not just what reality is for us as creatures, but what's broken about man and how man should be repaired. And that's a biblical perspective. Right. And I think a lot of people, you know, as I mentioned and as you mentioned, don't really know the difference between those two. But there's also specific track that you can take in your education to become a biblical counselor that you don't have to if you are calling yourself a Christian counselor. What does that entail?

Yeah. And as far as educationally, a couple of different routes. If we were to contrast that from a secular perspective, obviously most people are trying to pursue licensure or even from a Christian counseling perspective, they're trying to pursue licensure. So there's a federal regulation called KCrip, which is basically your educational standards. And every school and every state has to meet those standards. And then a person is trying to pursue certain education requirements that are laid out by the federal government and then specific in each state. that's different than biblical counseling because what we believe in biblical counseling is the best training that you can receive to do biblical counseling is not psychological in nature, but it's

biblical and theological in nature. Because the point that I try to make that I think is so relevant, which we've understood in church history very well, we seem to have lost understanding of this in the modern, is in order to understand man, man is a dependent being. And so we can't understand man without understanding the independent being who is God. And in order to understand the nature of man, what man's purpose is, what we're for, how man was designed to work, how we actually operate, we have to understand theology first. So a theological training, biblical training, how to understand the scriptures really best helps us to understand man because man can't be understood unless we understand him in relation to his creator.

Right. And how would you tell someone who is considering counseling, but they just don't know, do they really need it? Are they overthinking it? Is their problem severe enough to go see a professional? How do you help someone decide whether it's time or whether it's right for them to go see a biblical counselor? Yeah, that's really good. I think the way I describe it is the church is intended to do normal processes of care. If you look at the function, that's described in the scriptures about what the church is to do, every function of the local church is intended for the purpose of soul care, from evangelism to preaching to the one another's, to church discipline, all these things are about how do we grow people to walk faithfully in Christ? How do we comfort them when they're down? How do we minister to them when they're suffering, when they're faint-hearted and so on? So every ministry of the word of the church is intended to bring light to darkness of the soul. And I think that's critical. The second piece is when do we know we should

take some intensive, what we would call intensive discipleship? Well, if there's an acute problem that is hindering your normal process of growth or your normal function, then maybe it's time to sit down with somebody and let's deal with this particular problem, help you get over that hump, scripturally speaking. And then let's move you forward back and assimilate you back into the normal processes of care. So, um, I, um, When I think about professionalism, I can go into a whole diatribe, of course, about how I think about professionalism in terms of counseling. I think what we've made it is we've used that language of professionalism in counseling or professionalized counseling to such a degree that we've diminished the biblical viewpoint of what discipleship is intended to accomplish, which is for the purpose of stabilizing the soul. if you take somewhere like Ephesians 4, to grow up into the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ

is to stabilize us so that we're not tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine. So there's a critical piece that we see, Psalm 197, for example, the law of the Lord is perfect, and it accomplishes something. It restores the soul. So the Bible is staking claim that it does that type of soul work, that that's the domain of God and the domain of his church and the truth that he's given us to accomplish that work. Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality

itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort. We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed,

you can watch this D-Day Show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us. Do you find that men have a more difficult time than women coming to a biblical counselor or any counselor and properly assessing when they need kind of outside help in working through whatever it is that is, inhibiting them from their normal processes, their spiritual life? Unequivocally, yes. Men, I think, and I'll give two basic reasons. I think men are prideful.

And so it's hard for us to hear instruction from another person. But the Proverbs calls us fools if we're not willing to receive instruction. I think the second piece of that is men have a tendency to compartmentalize issues in their life. And so when there might be a major issue in one aspect of their life, life, they're not allowing it to filter in and affect some of the other areas of their life, like their job or whatever. And so, you know, there are many ways in which a man might feel like, you know, at home it's going terribly, but in my job, things seem to be going well. And I don't feel the pressure that I need, you know, some sort of outside help where sometimes

ladies, you know, their life is is all intertwined and they have a hard time seeing one aspect of their life, divorce from another aspect of their life. So there's much more of a willingness to be humble and to seek help more often before a man is willing to do that. Yeah, I feel that women are typically more likely to be kind of external processors. Like we like to talk it out. I mean, that's what we did throughout our adolescence. That was, you know, every like sleepover, every friend date, like every time you hang out, you're externally processing your feelings.

You're talking about your relationship, how you feel about your parents, whereas I know I'm generalizing here, but guys are typically doing activities. They're doing things together. They're going on adventures. They're playing games. They're not necessarily sitting down and talking out how they feel and what's going on in their lives. And as you said, they can compartmentalize those things. So now as an adult learning, oh, actually these feelings have to be processed and talked about and not just repressed. That is, I think, a difficult thing to come to terms. with, especially as an adult, and especially if you feel, which you do as a Christian man, you need to be like the rock for your family.

I think sometimes when we, or maybe when men here have to be a rock for my family, that means I can't have any emotions or I can't have any problems or I can't have any needs or any anxiety. And counseling is almost like an admission that you are needy in some way. that you're insufficient or, I don't want to say unstable, like in the mental way, but you know, like you need some help with stability. That's a hard thing to admit, yes, from pride, but also in just wanting to be the, you know, source of strength for your family. Yeah, well said. And I think, I think that plays into even second Corinthians 12, 9, where Paul describes his own weakness and the

crisis made perfect in that weakness is that's a part of a spiritual battle for a man as, as the head of the household, as you mentioned, where he's supposed to be strong. But part of the paradox of the Christian life is that it's okay to embrace our weaknesses because of where we find strength. That strength is not, like this therapeutic culture says, building the self from within. In fact, that's antithetical to what the gospel actually calls us to. It's to embrace those weaknesses and be unafraid with humility to embrace those weaknesses, knowing that it's through those that Christ is actually demonstrated strong.

So that's a part of the paradox and struggle that I think is quite, spiritual for men in their role as head of the house. And, you know, I see that among women, too, this kind of self-help, self-love culture that has been popular for a very long time. I mean, it goes back decades, but certainly in the past, I don't know, 10 to 20 years with popular psychologists and maybe even like pseudoc psychologist, so people who offer psychological advice on Instagram but maybe aren't actually psychologist, this emphasis on self-love as the solution to all of your problems and self-sufficiency

as the answer to everything, that you are enough. You're enough for yourself. And if you just discover yourself, fulfill yourself, make yourself happy, do what you want, follow your dreams, then you will finally and fully be fulfilled, that you have everything inside you that you need. to be healed and to be whole and to be happy. I mean, that is the path that so many female liberating books are taking us down today. I would say even sometimes with a Christian veneer over it, that, oh, Jesus told you to love your neighbor as you love yourself. That means you got to love yourself first, and you've got to think of yourself first. You've got to prioritize all of your wants all the time.

But I love what you said, that that idea that the self is the source of strength and satisfaction is contradictory to what the gospel tells us. So can you explain that a little bit more? Yeah. I think you're identifying exactly one of the key issues of our of our therapeutic culture. Many call it the therapeutic gospel because we've described that as being something that's healthy. We've described that as being something that's good. But we've got to reckon these things according to the way God describes them. God describes that perspective as being something that's not good, but in the category of evil. In fact, in Luke 923, for example, when Jesus calls his disciples, he says, if anyone wishes to be my disciple, he must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. That's the first call that he makes to a disciple is not to build the self, to grow the self, to think better of yourself.

He says we have to deny ourselves. Why? Because we weren't made to live by us, for us, or through us. we were made to live by, for and through Christ. So this is absolutely antithetical. If you think of Philippians 3.3, when Paul says, we are to put no confidence in the flesh.

Well, this whole modern movement is really about building the self to such a degree that we're putting confidence in our flesh and the strength of our flesh, thinking that the answer is. And that's actually a bait and switch from the evil one, because us finding strength in ourself is futile thinking, according to Ecclesiastes,

us finding strength in the things of the earth, the Bible says, is futile in thinking. It's like a vapor. And I think that's what's increasing our levels of anxiety, our levels of depression, is we start to try those things. We see the emptiness of those. And it only exacerbates the problem. It actually doesn't bring wholeness. It doesn't bring stability. It doesn't bring peace like what we're searching after because it's the wrong means to get there.

Yes. I like to say that the self can't be both the purpose. problem and the solution. And that's what Satan, you know, wants you to think, or not even the, I wouldn't even say that Satan wants you to think that you are the problem. He wants you to think that society is the problem, that everyone else is the problem, that everyone's expectations and demands and the responsibilities that you have. The problems are on the outside. The solution is in the inside. When really the opposite is true, the problems are in the inside and the solution. And the solution is outside of us in our creator because the self can't be both the problem and the solution.

If inside of ourselves we're finding the depression, that anxiety, the insufficiency, the inadequacy, the insecurity that is weighing us down, we're not going to find the solution to those things in the same place that we're finding our problems. And of course, as you have articulated so well, and as scripture teaches repeatedly, God made us that way. He actually made us to be needy and made us to be insufficient so that his power can be perfected through us. but that's a very countercultural message today. Do you find in your profession and in your practice that reminding people that we are not called to like self-fulfillment and self-glory and self-help, that that is a difficult message for people to receive or not? It's a very difficult message. And that's a part of the difficulty I think that we face in the church is we have a,

as you mentioned, Christianized these secular ideas. And I think because we've done this for so long, I mean, we're talking about really since the 1920s. We've been doing this fairly regular. And you can, there are marks before that, but there's a stark contrast starting in the 20s, 30s, 40s. And so that's infiltrated our churches and not just liberal churches. It's infiltrated very conservative churches as sort of part and parcel of how we think about

ourselves and how we think about life. We've compartmentalized ourselves to a psychological being. a spiritual being, believing fully that, yes, the Bible is sufficient for all things spiritual. But that's a compartmentalization. It's a deducing of the beauty of the sufficiency of scripture in what it's claiming that it actually does. And so, yeah, I think this is a constant uphill battle that we're fighting. I think often of Colossians 2-8, where Paul tells us that we are to guard against empty philosophies and vain deceptions. And I think this is one of those empty philosophies and vain deceptions that we are intrigued by and lured to ward because we think

it does empower us in some way to pursue, you know, peace and healing and hope and help and all these different things that we so long for and desire. But we have to return back to what does the scripture actually tell us? What does the scripture describe is the means, not just the goal, because lots of people have the right goal. We want to glorify the Lord. We want to live it peace in life. And that's a great goal. The problem is the means by which we get there. And that's often where people get confused. God is concerned not just about the goal. He's also concerned about the means that we get there. And he's provided the way that we are to do that in his word. Can I ask you what you think about the enneagram and maybe different personality

tasks in general and how churches have brought in the eneogram kind of as a tool to understanding the self and even understanding the self in relation to your spouse or others or God. I'm just curious on your take on that. Yeah, so I'll give you the short is I'm not a fan at all of the Enneagram. I think it's very deceptive. I think it's driven by the New Age movement. I had a doctoral student, Ren Cherry, wrote on this, and he's asking the question, is this Christian?

And the answer to that question is, no, it's not Christian. And I think we get enamored with what I call explanatory power. And from our finite minds, what we try and do is we see that people have different personalities or maybe we would call it different dispositions. Historically, people call those different constitutions. And so we see those things and we're trying to give explanation as to why is this happening or how is this happening. And I think what we start to grasp at are people who have tried to give explanation to it.

The problem is we often are fooled by. And we have a tendency to grasp at explanations that are disconnected from reality where they give partial truths where we can identify. Yeah, I've had that experience. Yes, I feel like that sometimes. And then we run to it. And I think that's a part of what's happening with the Enneagram. And listen, we can go through a whole history of personality testing and their rise and fall and the multiplicity of those things because they don't grasp the depth of humanity and our human nature. in full. And because they miss those points, they rise and fall in popularity. And I think the

Enneagram is certainly in process of that. I think this one is a little bit more dangerous in the sense that it promotes definite new age perspective. It's trying to explain from a, you know, those who use it Christianly. It's trying to explain, you know, the detriments that we have or the brokenness, the effects of sin on our lives in personality traits. And that in and of itself, I think divorces us from the biblical explanation of what ails us. And so what will happen, ultimately, when we redefine the problems that we have in our humanity, we start to grasp at different solutions that are earthly and unbiblical, thinking that we're empowered to overcome these personality traits or, you know, being able to cultivate relationship with somebody who's a

different number than you are or compatibility with a different person. And we think about that in terms of, of, well, this is what's good and right. When scripturally, we are called to die to those self-made preferences, those self, that understanding of even strengths and weaknesses, so that we get over ourselves and we learn to love other people who are quite different than us. And this is the beauty of the church, is that you should see a group of diverse people from different backgrounds and socioeconomic statuses. And those people shouldn't be worshiping together. But the beauty of that is that the Lord brings peace to us all to where we're going to be. we have one common goal, and we see unity even in diversity.

And I think the Enneagram is something that unintentionally builds division, even from a Christian perspective, not to mention, as I did before, the New Age perspective that created it historically. Yeah, you know, you're right. I hadn't thought about the division piece of it. the demonic and kind of occultish origins of it definitely have concerned me. That was something I didn't know. I liked the Enneagram in college. That was kind of when it was coming to fame, I would say.

Gosh, probably back in like 2011 or so, that's at least when I first heard of it and I thought that it was great. And it was marketed to me as Christian that Jesus actually represents like the perfect combination of all nine numbers. And it is presented to us as a way to actually build our relationships and help our relationships. But I can see what you say being true in that, oh, that person's a five. That's why I don't like them. That person's a three. That's why we're not getting along. My husband, he's a whatever. He's a seven and I'm a two wing, whatever it is. That's why we're having a hard time right now. And it actually, it seems like it could set up.

yet another obstacle in reconciliation, in unity, because we're thinking about things through the perspective of our personality traits rather than through the lens of scripture. I also think it can tempt people into seeing their sin as personality quirks. Well, I just don't want to evangelize because I'm a five. Well, I just hold everyone to this impossible standard of perfection because I'm a one. Okay, but these are sins that we have to repent of, right? No matter if they're a part of our enneagram number. And that, yeah, I think that can inhibit not just relationships,

but also sanctification, which may be true of many personality tests. I just see it with the anagram a lot. Yeah, I would say it's pretty consistent. And I think you're spot on in how you describe that. It becomes a hindrance and a detractor to how we see ourselves. and we think it gives us insight. It's really Gnostic, right? We think it gives us insight into who we really are as a person.

And I think that's a part of the danger of it. Because as you said, these could be issues of sin, but we're not pursuing Christ's answer of sanctification, crucifying, mortifying those particular sins that keep division between us as individuals. We start seeking other types of solutions. And that's the danger of it. So, yeah, well said. Yeah.

Yeah. Do you also see a stigma when it comes to counseling individuals about talking about sin? Maybe you don't see this because the people who are using biblical counseling are hoping to actually get a biblical response. But nowadays, talking about the reality of sin, sexual sin, God's parameters and design for gender, marriage, sexuality, all of these things, talking about holiness and repentance and sanctification. that is certainly unpopular even from many pulpits today. And it's described certainly by the secular world as unhealthy or even abusive or affirming God's design is harmful conversion therapy. There are all of these, you know, very vitriolic words used to describe basic Christian teachings about repentance and right and wrong.

Is that a challenge that biblical counselors face today as far as how they are serving their clients? Yeah, for sure. I think it's, you know, it's always a challenge. I think biblical counseling really has that caricature that, you know, all we deal with are issues of sin. And, you know, to a degree, we could, if you think from a biblical perspective, every problem that we face is humanity is because of sin. Now people will say, well, what do you mean by that? Let me qualify. if we look at the narrative of scripture and the Christian unveiling of progressive revelation, Genesis chapter three is really critical because the curse of the world matters,

the impact of sin on us, whether that's natural disasters or other people sinning against us. It doesn't mean that I'm personally responsible for what somebody else does to me or a natural disaster happening, but I still have to deal with this idea of sin and how it impacts me. And this is really key, Allie Beth, that I think a lot of people miss. is that we have a tendency to think, well, if we don't categorize it as sin, then I'm not a moral agent that's responsible to deal with this. I can have an excuse as to why I shouldn't deal with this. I think that's one of the biggest hurdles that people have to get over. No matter the suffering that we experience in life, whether it's from consequences of our own personal sin or from, you know,

the effects of the curse of sin on the world and other people sinning against us, we still have a moral obligation before God to respond appropriately to him, to honor him with what he's entrusted to us. So I think discussion about sin has sort of, you know, went out of vogue or out of popularity. And I think people don't realize the danger of it. When we set aside this language of sin that the scripture describes, not only are we misunderstanding the genuine problems that humanity faces, but we then, therefore, miss the solutions that God offers. And that's the subtlety that I think that's happening, because every counseling system has several things, no matter who you look at, what theorist.

Every counseling system has a worldview. They have a perspective of what they think is normal. They have a perspective of what they think is broken in humanity. And they have a perspective of what they think the solutions are. And those are not scientific pursuits. Those are fundamentally philosophical pursuits. Most people don't realize that that counseling based on any type of psychology is a philosophical pursuit long before it's a scientific pursuit. And that's a categorical mistake that most people make. And so therefore, you know, we often get, we're disillusioned with some of the therapy that's offered because we think, well, this is something that could be helpful when it's offering a different way of wisdom than what

the scripture offers. So sin really is under the microscope because if, as Freud thought, if we could remove Augustine's view of original sin, now we've opened up the door where his psychotherapeutic and the modern therapeutic gospel can thrive. And that's exactly what you see happening today. Yeah. Gosh, that is so true. The only sin today is saying that there is sin, ironically enough. So what does it mean from a biblical perspective? to be mentally and emotionally healthy. In general, what does that look like? Yeah, it's a really good question.

So let me start. I'll start just sort of broad so people can understand. So the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders, right? That's what most people describe as the Bible of psychology and the Bible of psychiatry. It's this massive book, 1,000 pages, that has nearly 500 diagnoses in it. And it's the labels that everyone hears about in terms of mental disorders or, quote, unquote, mental illnesses. It's a book about abnormalities, okay? And if it's a book about abnormalities, what's really interesting is they never give a perception of what's normal.

So the question really that people should have is, is how do we know what's abnormal if we don't have some sort of plum line or a baseline of what's normal? And so we're grasping after what we think is mentally and emotionally healthy disposition when we don't even really have an understanding of what is normal. And what you see is this is culturally appraised. This is why the DSM thrives in a place like the West and particularly in America. But you can't just superimpose those same ideas in a place like Africa or in the far east because they have very different world views. So this is something that's culturally appraised. that should tell us a couple of things, okay? If they can't define what's normal, how can they ever describe what is abnormal functioning?

It's just a simply expression of things that are unwanted or we think are awkward socially. I'm not saying those things, you know, people don't experience some of those feelings or, you know, different dispositions. That's not the argument. But it does bring us to the question of what does it mean to be normal? What does it mean to be truly healthy? If we're made the image of God, then what it means to be healthy and what it means to be normal is that we reflect the character and the nature and the glory of God. And based on the testimony of Scripture, the only way that happened is by the redemption that's found in the Lord Jesus Christ. So the only way in which we can walk stable in life, the only way that we can have peace, Romans 5-1, is that we are right with God first.

And that then allows us sociologically to have good relationship with other people. We can deal with adversity and difficulties that happen in life in a much more stable way. Not perfect for sure, but in a much more stable way. So when we think about mental health, mental health in and of itself is somewhat of a misnomer in the secular world. It was trying to borrow from in the first decade of the 20th century. It was attempting to borrow from the medical model in advancement of hygiene. and the things we were learning about hygiene in the medical model. And a guy named Clifford Beers, sort of in reaction to the psychiatric barbarism that was discovered in the first part of the 20th century, he proposes this idea of mental hygiene.

He says, well, I think we should live in a way that we have certain environmental ways that help us to stay clean in our mind. And that's really the secular perspective as we move mental health forward. in the modern sense. And so notice what happens. If you're depressed, for example, and we call that a disease, and that is what makes you mentally unhealthy, then what we're attacking is the symptom, right? The feeling of depression. And we say, anything that makes you feel that way is the problem. And what we've done is we've taken symptoms and made symptoms the problem. And so we're trying to fix those as symptoms. And what happens is then we say anybody who experiences any level of sadness or fear, that that's abnormal.

And what we've done is we've just removed ourselves from what genuine human experience really looks like in a world post-Genesis 3 of loss in death and grief and difficulty and brokenness. And so we're losing reality from God's perspective. So what they're proposing, it sounds good, but it's a completely different. pursuit. So the way I categorize this is to say, in the Christian worldview, we have a view of what's normal, and his name is Jesus, in how we are to live life as a human being in relation to the father. And so it's important that we understand that Jesus did everything that Adam could not do, everything that you can't do, everything I couldn't do, in how normal humanity should live in

relation to God for the good of others and for the glory of the father. And so for us, we have that plum line. And I think then we can see, okay, what does it look like to live healthy, both emotionally, mentally in our mind, how we renew our mind, how we think in our mind, how we forego the corruption in our mind. You know, all those things are critical when we think about what it means to walk healthy, to live healthy. Notice what that doesn't mean. It doesn't mean that we are abstaining from suffering because Jesus tells us, in this world you will have trouble. The whole mental health pursuit, it really is a fool's errand, in part because what they're chasing after, they will never be able to get rid of, ever. They can never assuage everything that

can corrupt our mental health. From God's perspective, though, he acknowledges that troubles in the world, but yet he says, we're not hopeless, even when the trouble is there. We can still walk stable, James I. We can still walk faithful with the Lord, even through difficulty and trouble. That's genuine hope, and that's something that the secular world can't really offer. That's so true that being mentally healthy or mental health is usually described, whether deliberately or not, as absence of bad feelings. And certainly the absence of persistent bad feelings, but even if you just read the Psalms, we see that David persistently had bad feelings.

He persistently had sad feelings. And I've even heard some people analyze that as he suffered. from some kind of depression and anxiety disorder, but that is doing, you know, what we do today, which is pathologizing and diagnosing the spectrum of human emotion. And I especially worry about this for adolescents and for teens who are inundated with this kind of content, particularly on social media,

and who live in a world where antidepressant medication is glorified. It is downright. glorified, not just normalized or disstigmatized, where I would say there's even an issue with that, but glorified. There's a whole segment of TikTok where these young people are talking about all the different anti-anxiety and anti-depression medications that they're taking. Parents think they're doing the right thing because of this like therapeutic gospel and just the pervasiveness of trust the experts, trust the experts. If your kid is having a hard time, if they're sad, if they're insecure, if they're acting out, you got to go to the experts. You got to

go to the therapist. I mean, we don't even have time to talk about like all the consequences and the road that that can often, not always, but can often lead down for kids. But have you seen that in this rise of this phenomenon of, I don't know how to describe it without using like the term mental health, but mentally unwell or children feeling that they're mentally unwell. And if you have seen that, like how do parents deal with it? Yeah, so I'm glad you brought parents up because let me just say at the outset, I think what we're seeing unfold is that mental health practitioners really become the experts. And they're the ones who are then given status of, you know, the professional, the expert who makes declarations about particular things. And the

losers in all of this become the parents because what you start to see happen is, you know, parents who live with their kids every day really don't know their kids as well as what a therapist can with certain insight and which I think is, is Gnosticism played out in full spectrum. So I think that's initially a danger. Now, let me speak specifically to the question about adolescence and how we see that growing. I don't think we should we should think that that's strange. I didn't say I don't think it's good or that I think it's good. I think we shouldn't think it's strange.

if you understand the history of psychology, and I think Carl Truman did a really good job in his cultural appraisal, as he describes the effects of Freudian thought really on our modern therapeutic culture and how we take feelings and we take them as primary identity. And that's a part of what's happening. Let me explain something before I get into this because I think this part will be helpful. Let's take depression from the DSM, for example. Okay. So in the criteria of the DSM, there are nine categories of criteria for depression. They describe normal functional problems when somebody's feet has depressive feelings. It's things like, you know, loss of appetite. They can't function in a normal day.

They're overwhelmed grief. Maybe they have suicidal ideation, those types of things. I'll often ask my students, when a person is depressed, what are the things that they believe to be true about themselves? And they'll say, well, you know, they think maybe they're better off dead. They think other people think that that's true. They, you know, some event happened in their life. And so they feel like they're worthless. And I say, okay, if that's what they believe to be true, what's broken? The way we describe what's broken in our cultures, we say, well, they shouldn't be feeling depressed.

So their emotions must be broken. But the question that I want to ask is, if that's true, okay, if I believe that I should die, that I'm better off dead, that I'm worthless, what's a proper emotional? response to that belief, if that's really true. Actually, it's not your emotions that are broken. Your emotions are responding quite properly to what you believe to be true. And so we're attacking the symptom of emotions or feelings saying that that's what's broken instead of the issue of what's true and right, which is that I'm believing things that are false according to, you know, us being made into God's image and have intrinsic value and all the rest of it related to the image of God. So we can see even that narrative starts to build what we have, what we see in our

teenagers. So what they're doing is they're describing themselves based on the way that they feel. And it's become in vogue now to expect that, you know, we're all born with some form of inherited taints and expresses itself in different ways. And then it becomes glorified, almost a competition of, you know, who has the most therapist or who has, you know, the different types of medication and that sort of thing. But. That happens when we build feelings and emotions as that which sets or creates our identity as human beings. And this is a secular culture trying to grasp at explaining who man is and what gives us meaning and value and purpose. And as we see in the scriptures, when we pursue that from, you know, as Solomon would say below the sun or from an earthly perspective, it shouldn't surprise us that where we land now is.

vanity, futility. And that's what we see being promoted on places like TikTok. That's what we see unfolding in our culture sociologically is futility and vanity. And the Bible told that story already that when we pursue these things, this is the end of it. But in our human disposition, we have a hard time seeing it because it took, you know, nearly a century for it to unfold. But these ideas have consequences and we're picking the fruit now of these ideological views that have that have been growing from seed form for over 100 years. Yep. Yep. I think you're absolutely right. What is your thought about social emotional learning curriculum that's in schools to supposedly try to deal with this problem of kids being mentally unhoused?

healthy. It's the idea that kids really need to learn to have empathy for themselves and others. And once they do that, then they will be able to process their emotions better and will all live in a much more peaceful and a more just society. Do you think there's anything good to that? I don't think it's a healthy pursuit for sure. And I like social emotional learning, basically, if you were to take, um, several ideas and sort of create a recipe, if you will. Somebody like Dewey in his sociological learning theory, if you take somebody like Carl Rogers in his non-authoritarian approach to education, which we see flourish in the 60s and 70s, we see all that sort of mixed in a blender, and along with Freud's psychotherapeutic approach to human problems,

that these things come from early experiences in childhood that create then a very, sensitive human being that anything in the environment can trigger who we are and what we do. So you take that as a recipe, you blend it up and outcomes something like social learning theory. Now, people will hear something like that and say, oh, man, this is really helpful because it's really focusing on the kids and trying to catch triggers of trauma early on in child's life. Well, I appreciate that people are trying to deal with children in how they describe their brokenness. But what we can't miss is that these things are not idea-free. They're not philosophically free.

They come with a price. And the price that they bring is that futility that I described. So what's happening is effectively we're placing a lot of pressure on teachers to do the diagnosing. I've had several moms come to me and say, my child was diagnosed with ADHD and they've told me that if I don't go see a psychiatrist that they can't be. that back in the classroom. This is a small little example, but I'm like, okay, tell me about that process. How did that happen? Because you said, you need to see a psychiatrist? You mean a psychiatrist didn't diagnose you? No, no, the teacher said, if I don't go see a psychiatrist that I can't, I can't come back to the classroom. My child can't come back to the classroom. So what you're seeing

on the front end is that, you know, teachers are being trained and they're saying that this is the best thing to keep all the other kids really healthy. But what we're doing, okay, if I to boil this down in a nutshell. What we're doing is we're saying that children get meaning, value, and purpose in their sociological environment. Now, I want you to pay attention to what's happening here. What's happening here is we are measuring ourselves by the environment that we find ourselves in, and that if an environment itself is not pleasing, then we can't flourish. What that does is it describes that we as human beings are at the mercy of the environment that we find ourselves in. Nothing could be more antithetical to the truth of the gospel of Christ. The Bible

doesn't put us at the mercy of our environmental circumstances. The Bible puts us at the mercy of Christ and that no matter what, we can flourish, no matter how difficult a situation. So this is building really in positive language, a setting to where we as people and our value and the way we measure our purpose is based on the environment that we find ourselves around. And what the key to happiness or hope is in life is finding ourselves insulated in a proper environment. We don't have the power as human beings to do that. I mean, we don't have the power to insulate ourselves enough from the destruction of a cursed world. And so that's a futile pursuit that we're setting our children up for failure, thinking that if they can get in touch with self-awareness and their own feelings,

then they'll understand themselves better and they'll be able to thrive and flourish in life. and it's setting our children up for failure because now you add in to the recipe social media and we're even seeing at Congress the bickering back and forth about the influence of social media on the mental health of our young people. And now this is something that's starting in social learning, you know, very early on in our elementary schools moving all the way up. We're taught that that's how we get in tune with who we are. And really it's a form of nocissism.

Yeah, yep, it is that there is some kind of higher special knowing that you have access to if you take this journey deep into your heart. You can, this key of SEL can like open up your heart and all this wisdom will come out and finally it'll be this full complete person. You're exactly right, which by the way is what the author of many of these kind of personality tests like Carl Jung, like they all believed that too. And so it really is all connected. While we don't have that much more time, and this is kind of a big question. But I'm curious, what is your thought about empathy? Because it is the virtue, so we are told that we must pursue first. It is the primary virtue.

If you are empathetic, then you will draw this XYZ conclusion. If you are empathetic, then you will finally be virtuous. You will finally be kind. You'll finally be moral. What is your thought about this heavy emphasis? on empathy that seems to be more prevalent than ever, at least in my estimation. Yeah, that's really good question. And some of this is a question regarding semantics and how we think about this term, empathy.

Empathy historically was not a terrible term. It wasn't a bad term. It was trying to identify with the suffering of someone else, even the idea of coming alongside someone and helping them through their difficulty in suffering. The form that it's taken today and the way it's used is in terms of, I'll add a qualifier, unconditional empathy, which means that then I have to give my unconditional regard for someone else. And this gets back to that environmental perspective I was describing that if I can't be empathetic and identify with someone, well, first of all, because I haven't had that experience, I can't speak into their life or really bear a burden genuinely with them because I don't know them or I don't understand them.

The second problem with that idea of unconditional empathy is it really creates an environment where if a person is not affirmed at everything that they do, then it becomes an unhealthy vitriolic state. Biblically, we can't live like that, right? The Bible tells us to be sympathetic toward those who are broken, those who are downtrodden, those who are hurting. We see Jesus doing this in the in the Gospels in the New Testament. We see his followers are taught to care for those. James 1, 27 orphans and widows, those who are downtrod and that sort of thing. But it's never to leave them in that place. It's never to help them remain into the mess that they find themselves in.

How do we help to get them out according to God's ways, give them genuine, legitimate hope? And so for us as Christians, we can't be empathetic. endlessly or unconditionally. There's a time where, you know, if someone's sitting across of me and I'm saying that they're making decisions that are sinful decisions that's leading to their self-destruction, it's actually unloving for me to leave them on that path of self-destruction and not give them what the scripture says. So there comes a point in time where we have to offer sympathetic disagreement. And we, as Ephesians 415 would describe it, speak the truth in love to someone.

But this is, you know, the culture that we're in right now, we're creating where free speeches is going to be questioned and it's going to be described as being hate speech, especially if we were to warn someone against their own folly. You take the transgender movement that's happening right now, right? If you're not empathetic and identify with their gender fluidity and transition, then you become the one that's actually contributing to the detriment of their mental health. That's what empathy in the modern sense is creating. It's creating sort of a bubble around people that you become the bad guy or you become the evil one or you become the hateful person.

If you genuinely speak truth to people in love and in grace, because we can speak truth wrongly. We shouldn't speak truth wrongly. But speaking the truth and love to people. And so it really disregards this idea of there's a time where we warn people. we speak the truth in a healthy way. And so I think empathy in its current sense and its unconditional regard that we see now is something that is harmful, even very dangerous. And I hope people don't hear me say we ought not to be sympathetic or empathetic with people. That's not what I'm saying.

What I'm saying is the way it's used now in terms of an unconditional approach where we're just intended to be accepting and that acceptance is the means. to help. And I think that's unchristian and very dangerous culture. Well, you've given us a lot to chew on and a lot of great wisdom. Your scripture recall is incredible and just it's a gift. It's a gift to my audience. I'm sure it's a gift to everyone you speak to on a daily basis. So I'm thankful for that. From time to time, I ask the right guest to end the conversation by sharing the gospel. So if someone were to ask you, Dr. Johnson, what is the gospel? What would you tell them? I think the gospel is that God created us as human beings.

He created us with meaning, purpose, and value. But the Bible describes very clearly that we have missed the mark. We are born into sin. And we see that evidentially by the way in which we live, that we choose to live for ourselves more than we choose to live for anything else. and especially for the glory of God. And in missing that mark, the Bible says that we owe God a great debt, that we will endure the wrath of God if we remain in our sin.

That sin, we have a payment that is due to God for our sin. And if we can't make that payment, there's nothing within us that says we can pay an eternal debt that we owe to an eternal God. And so we are helpless and hopeless in and of ourselves. But the Bible tells us that there's good news. And everybody knows that what I just described is true experientially, right? When we live in life, we know that when we try to muddle about with our own strength, we find ourselves failing over and over again.

There's never peace around the next corner. We know that to be true. And that's the testimony of Scripture about ourselves and our pursuit. The beauty is that God was telling a story from the very beginning. When man fell, God was, he was enacting a redemptive story. And the centerpiece of that story is his son, the Lord Jesus Christ. And we see Jesus who comes in the form of a baby, the most humble. He's identifying with us as being born in the flesh, living among us.

And he lived, the Bible says, a perfect life, which means he was obedient fully. This is important because he was born of a virgin, so he didn't inherit our own sin. in humanity. So he was a perfect sacrifice. He lived perfectly in obedience to God. Yet he willingly, the Bible says, he gave himself up for us to ransom us to himself. And he calls us to repent and believe. And the Bible describes that he lived for a righteous life. He died for our sins. He was buried three days based on the acceptance of God of Jesus's sacrifice. He rose again. And now we have the opportunity to respond in repentance and faith. And that's the call for us when we see our emptiness and our brokenness and the Lord brings us back to life. And we see that we call upon

Jesus as the only one who can pay the debt of our sin. And then we can walk faithfully with the Lord forever. And that word is really important of what happens, that he forgives our sin. He counts us as righteous before God, no longer holding that sin against us. So that way no longer do we have the wrath of God placed on us, but we can walk at peace. One of the most important passages, and I'll read it because it's that clear. Romans chapter 5 verse 1, sorry for the sound of pages turning, but it's good for people to hear what the word says here. And this is the summation of it, Romans 5 1, therefore, since we have been justified by faith that we have faith in the work that Christ has done for us, us, nothing we can do to earn salvation. We have faith. We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

That's the gospel. We have faith in the work and the person, the life, death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus and that he forgives our sin. He's paid that debt to God. He offered himself as a sacrifice to the Lord, and he washes our sin clean, and we can now be at peace with God. We're no longer enmity with God. And I'm just telling you, as some of the Lord, and he washes us. someone who's walked at since I was 11, seeing the beauty of what God has done for me in the Lord Jesus, there's nothing that's more satisfying, there's nothing that's more peacegiving, there's nothing that satisfies my soul more through the turmoil and difficulties of life than being at peace with God. And that's made possible through Jesus. So thanks for the opportunity. Yes, and amen. Well, thank you so much, Dr. Johnson. And thanks for taking the time to come on.

I really appreciate it. And where can people? connect with you or find you. Yeah. So I'm a faculty member at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. You can see me on the faculty page there. And then at ACBC, the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors. And that website is biblical counseling.com. I also lead a podcast called the Truth and Love podcast. We'd love to hear from you guys. The Truth and Love Podcast. Perfect. Well, thank you so much. I really appreciate you taking the time to come on. Great. Thank you. Thank you.

Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort. We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch this T-Day Show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts.

I hope you'll join us.