Making Christian Counseling More Christ Centered

By Rick W. Marrs Ph.D.

Many Christian counselors and pastors want to bring Christ's Gospel and forgiveness into their soul care, but don't know how. Luther's very Christ-centered theology, based in his desire for care of souls, can provide us with that foundation. Various techniques flowing from that foundation are shared.

"Martin Luther formulated his proclamation of the message of Scripture for his contemporaries between the poles of God's voice in the pages of the Bible and the needs and afflictions of his hearers and readers. Marrs brings twenty-first century readers into that exchange and demonstrates how Luther's insights into the gospel of Jesus Christ help bring healing and comfort to those struggling with guilt, shame, fear, loneliness, and other spiritual afflictions in our day. This volume provides those who are engaged in conversation with the troubled and distressed rich resources for fostering peace and joy in the midst of such trouble and distress."

Robert Kolb, PhD, professor of systematic theology emeritus, Concordia Seminary, Saint Louis USA

"If all good theology is pastoral in its orientation, then this groundbreaking, practical, biblical study is well worth careful consideration by any pastor or Christian counsellor. In it Marrs engages in a conversation with the teaching of Luther as a Christ-centered pastoral theologian and the practical insights of psychologists on the personal care of their clients, with a special emphasis on Luther's insistence on the need to distinguish between law and gospel in the proper application of God's gracious word with the delivery of soul care to God's people."

John W. Kleinig, PhD Professor Emeritus, Australian Lutheran College University of Divinity, Adelaide, South Australia

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Sep 13, 2019
• ISBN: 9781973672364

Rick W. Marrs Ph.D.

Rick Marrs, Ph.D., has been a soul care provider for decades, first as a Christian counselor, licensed psychologist, and college professor, then as a pastor and a professor at Concordia Seminary in St.Louis, MO. He has taught Christ-centered soul care to thousands of counselors and pastors. He is married to Laura and they have two adult daughters, two sons-in-law and three grandchildren. He plays tennis, table tennis, and is nationally ranked in stair climb racing.

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Copyright © 2019 Rick W. Marrs, Ph.D.

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ISBN: 978-1-9736-7237-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-9736-7238-8 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-9736-7236-4 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019912216

WestBow Press rev. date:    09/12/2019

Scripture quotations marked (NIV) are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com The NIV and New International Version are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™

Scripture quotations marked (NASB) taken from the New American Standard Bible® (NASB),

Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973,

1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation

Used by permission. www.Lockman.org

Bible verses not marked are from the NASB

Unless otherwise noted, Luther quotes are taken from the American Edition of Luther’s Works (AE) edited by Jaroslov Pelikan and published by Concordia Publishing House of St. Louis, Missouri.

Scripture quotations marked HCSB are taken from the Holman Christian Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1999, 2000, 2002, 2003, 2009 by Holman Bible Publishers. Used by permission. Holman Christian Standard Bible®, Holman CSB®, and HCSB® are federally registered trademarks of Holman Bible Publishers.

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Section A   Introduction

Chapter 1   What Does Christ Centered Mean?

Chapter 2   The Role of Christian Counselors in the Body of Christ

Section B   Luther’s Genius

Chapter 3   We Are Creatures

Chapter 4   The Cross Is His Glory

Chapter 5   Understanding the Law/Gospel Distinction

Chapter 6   The New Adam / Old Adam struggle—Simul Justus Et Peccator

Chapter 7   In the Beginning Was the Word

Chapter 8   Luther as Soul Care Giver

Section C   So How Does This Work in a Counseling Session?

Chapter 9   Gospel Empty Chair technique

Chapter 10   Pointing to Explicit Gospel

Chapter 11   Guilt and Forgiveness

Chapter 12   Other Gospel Law Metaphors

Chapter 13   Gospel Law Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy

Chapter 14   The Theology of the Cross with Particular Disorders and Personalities

Chapter 15   Meditation for Christians

Chapter 16   Mutual Encouragement of the Saints

Appendix A

Appendix B

References

Martin Luther formulated his proclamation of the message of Scripture for his contemporaries between the poles of God’s voice in the pages of the Bible and the needs and afflictions of his hearers and readers. Marrs brings twenty-first century readers into that exchange and demonstrates how Luther’s insights into the gospel of Jesus Christ help bring healing and comfort to those struggling with guilt, shame, fear, loneliness, and other spiritual afflictions in our day. This volume provides those who are engaged in conversation with the troubled and distressed rich resources for fostering peace and joy in the midst of such trouble and distress.

Robert Kolb, PhD,

professor of systematic theology emeritus, Concordia Seminary, Saint Louis USA

If all good theology is pastoral in its orientation, then this groundbreaking, practical, biblical study is well worth careful consideration by any pastor or Christian counsellor. In it Marrs engages in a conversation with the teaching of Luther as a Christ-centered pastoral theologian and the practical insights of psychologists on the personal care of their clients, with a special emphasis on Luther’s insistence on the need to distinguish between law and gospel in the proper application of God’s gracious word with the delivery of soul care to God’s people.

John W. Kleinig, PhD,

Professor Emeritus, Australian Lutheran College, University of Divinity, Adelaide, South Australia

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

T here are so many people who have helped me understand and appreciate the core importance of being Christ-centered in the soul care work I have done and taught throughout my career. The professors who were so important early on were John Saleska, Wayne Lucht, and Martin Haendschke, as well as the students in their classes. William Hulme (who I did meet once) was important because of his writings. My evangelical counselor friends have led me into great conversations about Luther’s strategies of soul care, especially Reed Castele, Tim Hodges, and Eric Johnson. My colleagues at Concordia Seminary, especially Robert Kolb, and my own pastors have taught me so much about this theology, both when I was a student and then a faculty member. I can only imagine how many of these sentences were actually their words imprinted on my soul over and over again in sermons, classes, books, and faculty workshops. I also thank Concordia Seminary for the sabbatical in spring 2018 that allowed me to do so much of the research and writing for this project.

But the greatest thanks goes to my family, first to my parents Dick and Marilynn, who brought me to Christ in my baptism, and made sure I was brought up hearing this Christian faith regularly. My wife Laura has shown me this Christian love and support so deeply for decades, as have my daughters Brittany and Kaellyn. These last three have also given many wondrous insights (and edits) into the book itself.

SECTION A

Introduction

I am very encouraged about the state and direction of soul care work, especially over the past thirty years. When I first entered the field, I thought that the field of Christian counseling was trying to find itself and lacked a level of theological sophistication. Biblical counseling and Christian counseling were seen as two very different realms, and they did not trust each other’s presuppositions. The related field of pastoral counseling was overly focused on the latest psychological trends, rather than the centuries of soul care work its predecessors had accomplished. But I see much of that changing. There seems to be a renewed commitment to Christian theology and the history of pastoral care. There are new interactions between biblical counseling and Christian psychology of various stripes. The American Association of Christian Counseling (AACC) is a large and diverse professional organization. Other professional organizations like CAPS (the Christian Association for Psychological Studies), CCEF (Christian Counseling and Educational Foundation), and IBCD (Institute for Biblical Counseling and Discipleship) all seem to have developed important niches in the field of soul care work. Many seminaries and Christian colleges are offering graduate degrees in Christian counseling or some other soul care work. New concepts are being introduced from neuroscience, especially interpersonal neurobiology, while eternal theological truths are being reconnected to the strategies of modern soul care. This book hopes to add something important to those eternal biblical truths, especially from the Christ-centered insights of Martin Luther, and to suggest some soul care strategies that flow from those insights.

Why Should You Read This Book?

That depends on who you are. If you are a Christian counselor—or even a counselor who wishes to better understand how to counsel the Christian clients you may have—there are both spiritual and pragmatic reasons for you to read this book. First the pragmatic: if you have Lutheran pastors in your vicinity, you would probably like them to refer clients to you. If you tell one of them that you have read a book written by a Lutheran seminary professor and psychologist about doing counseling from a Law and Gospel perspective, he will likely react positively. If you ask him about a few of the theological concepts, he will likely discuss them with you gladly. The theology of the cross, the proper distinction of Law and Gospel and other related doctrines of justification are central to Luther’s thinking, and not finding soul care professionals who know of them keeps many Lutheran pastors from trusting that a local Christian counselor might be helpful to his people. He will become much more likely to refer his beloved parishioners to you when they are struggling with depression, anxiety, or some other counseling issue if he thinks you understand and value these teachings of Luther. And since there are well over ten thousand conservative Lutheran pastors in the United States, serving well over three million parishioners, pragmatically speaking, reading this book could be very helpful to your practice.

But the spiritual reasons are much more important than the pragmatic. All soul care givers want to share Christ in clear, thoughtful, yet ethical ways with our counselees, but knowing how to do this can be challenging. Much of what passes for Christian counseling often has very little to do with Christ and His grace and forgiveness. Years ago, I had a series of conversations with a Baptist pastor and counselor friend of mine about the importance of the Gospel in counseling. I gave him a short book (God’s No and God’s Yes) by a nineteenth-century Lutheran theologian, C.F.W. Walther. He read it in a few days, then brought it back to me, excitedly shaking it in my face and saying, You’re right; you Lutherans do take an extreme position on grace! Those conversations led to an earlier (2000) journal article that became a foundation for this book.¹ Other spiritual reasons for reading this book will, I pray, become more evident as you continue. The hundreds of Christian counselors with whom I have shared these ideas have been very appreciative. I pray that this book will allow me to share these ideas with thousands of soul care providers and that they and their counselees will be edified by them.

If you are a non-Lutheran pastor, the spiritual reasons noted above are even more prominent. Much of current pastoral counseling work also struggles to know how to bring Christ into the counseling office. I believe you will appreciate both the theology of the first part of the book and the practical counseling suggestions in the last part. Many of these ideas may even change how you preach and teach about Christ.

If you are a Lutheran pastor, you probably are looking to find solid, theologically minded Christian counselors about whom you can feel confident when you refer your parishioners for soul care (German: Seelsorge; Latin: cura animarum). One of the major obstacles many Lutheran pastors encounter is finding counselors who have any knowledge of, let alone skills in, properly using Luther’s theology, like Law and Gospel, in their counseling. We should not be surprised. We have done a poor job communicating our central theological framework outside of our Lutheran circles. Luther’s theological approach, with his emphasis on our need for daily Gospel, is not just important for Lutherans, but it is important for all of Christendom to know. We Lutherans have, in many ways, hoarded this wonderful biblical teaching to ourselves. This book is an attempt to give a succinct, readable explanation of Luther’s theology to professional counselors and other soul care providers, both non-Lutheran and Lutheran. Very little in the first part of this book will be new to a Lutheran pastor (but I do hope to get gracious, helpful feedback from you in order to improve later versions or other follow-ups to this book). I hope that you will find the last half of the book, the counseling strategies that can flow from an understanding of Law and Gospel, helpful to your own pastoral care and counseling. I hope that these strategies might stimulate discussion among Lutheran pastors and theologians about other improved strategies that help our parishioners trust in their Lord Jesus Christ and His wondrous Gospel in all aspects of their lives. I hope that you might even be willing to purchase one or more copies of this book to give to the Christian counselors you know, encouraging them to read it and discuss it with you. I also hope that in some small way this will invigorate discussion among counselors from many different faith persuasions about the importance of making Christ’s grace explicit in more counseling sessions.

You may be a counselee, receiving soul care from one of the types of soul care givers mentioned above. You’ve come to your soul care giver and appreciated the listening ear and biblical help you have received from them, but you have been a little surprised that they don’t talk about Jesus Christ and his Gospel or forgiveness very much. You sense that something is missing in your soul care, but you don’t quite know how to put it into words, to explain this with your soul care giver. Perhaps this book will be helpful to you, and if you think it might help your soul care time become more Christ centered, you can lend it to your soul care giver, asking them to read it and discuss it with you in a month or two.

The author has a unique vantage point to write a book like this. For fifteen years, I was a lay Christian counselor and psychology professor at two different Lutheran Christian colleges. My graduate training as a counselor and psychologist was largely by secular psychologists, but I did study theology as an undergraduate and considered becoming a pastor before becoming a counselor. I took two seminary-level counseling courses before embarking on my training as a counselor, and it was in these seminary courses that I first started to appreciate the importance of Luther’s theological insights in counseling. In these courses, I began to realize that much that was being written in Christian and biblical counseling did not understand these insights. I spoke with many Christian counselors who wanted to bring the Gospel of Christ more explicitly into their counseling but had never learned how. I completed a master’s degree in counseling at the University of Kansas and a PhD in counseling psychology at Loyola University in Chicago. I became a licensed psychologist in my midthirties and have more than seven thousand hours of clinical experience.

While in my late thirties, I reassessed my vocation, quit my job as a psychology professor and counselor, and returned to seminary to become a pastor in the theologically and biblically conservative Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod. After completing my studies, I served a parish for six years, thinking I would continue as a parish pastor for years to come. Without applying for it, I received a call to teach pastoral counseling at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis and accepted it. At Concordia Seminary, I get to serve with pastors and theologians who have studied systematic and biblical theology extensively, and know Luther expansively. More than a half dozen of the world’s leading Luther scholars are colleagues of mine at Concordia Seminary. I am greatly indebted to them and other colleagues for their insights about how theology can and should speak to our ability to do pastoral and Christian counseling.

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Throughout this book, I will occasionally insert a paragraph or two as a sidenote. These sidenotes will usually be related to the content before but will sometimes simply be a more pragmatic suggestion. Sometimes they will simply be a Bible verse or hymn stanza that I think is important to consider. Below is the first sidenote.

I want to emphasize that what we will be exploring in this book is not a set of easy, simplistic theological ways to change people. Everything we will explore assumes that the counselor or pastor will exhibit strong listening skills and empathy, and that when they exhibit those crucial qualities, they will hear the burdens their clients or parishioners are carrying (Galatians 6:2). This ability to listen with empathy (Greek: sympatheo) will allow the soul care giver (Luther would have said Seelsorger) to correctly diagnose the underlying Law issue so that a proper Gospel salve can be applied. In fact, the ability to listen carefully to see how people perceive they are being burdened by various permutations of the Law will allow a theologically astute counselor (professional or pastoral) to more readily speak a word of Gospel in a metaphor that will be edifying for the counselee.

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CHAPTER 1

What Does Christ Centered Mean?

Come to me all you who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will refresh you.

—Matthew 11:28 (author translation)

I shouldn’t be so depressed (or anxious, impulsive, etc.). I’m a born-again Christian. Christians shouldn’t be depressed. I must have weak faith. If only my faith were stronger, I wouldn’t be so depressed. My friends, even my pastor, tell me that if I just prayed more, read the Bible more, and trusted in God more then my depression would go away. But I’ve tried those things repeatedly, and I still feel depressed. I feel so guilty for being so depressed.

C hristian counselees often come to Christian counseling professionals with spiritual issues embedded within their psychological concerns. Their Christian friends and pastors often do, in my experience, tell them to pray more and trust in God more. But when that doesn’t work, they usually feel even more depressed or anxious. They often believe that struggling with depression is in itself somehow sinful.

Standard counseling strategies, rooted in theory and empirically tested, are often helpful in alleviating psychological symptoms and relationship issues. However, these strategies rarely address the concomitant spiritual and sin/guilt/shame issues that Christian counselees often raise. Those concerns can be embedded in spiritual and existential questions whose interventions need to have their foundations in clear theology. One specific theological framework that has been overlooked in evangelical circles is the Reformation discovery of the proper distinctions between Law and Gospel. This framework was extremely important to Luther, Calvin, and other reformers. Luther said, To know this doctrine of the difference between the Law and the Gospel is necessary because it contains the gist (summa) of all Christian doctrine … and This difference between the Law and the Gospel is the height of knowledge in Christendom. Every … Christian should know and be able to state this difference (cited in Plass 1959, p. 743, 732).

This Law/Gospel distinction, along with other related theological concepts, will be more fully explained in chapters 3–8. Some of the counseling strategies that flow from this framework will then be explored in chapters 9–16. Counselors who are not familiar with the theological framework should resist the temptation to skip over the first chapters and go straight to the strategies. The strategies will only make sense and, more importantly, be applied correctly if you understand the theology that underpins them.

Christ-Centered Counseling—Even in a Secular Agency

I don’t know what to do with these Christian clients I have now. They come all guilt ridden. When I suggest to them that what they are struggling with is fairly normal, they tell me that the Bible and their pastors call it sin—and they don’t know what to do with it. I don’t know what to do with them. Nothing seems to work.

A counselor made this comment in a staff meeting in a secular agency I worked at years ago. At the time, I was a lowly intern surrounded by mostly secular yet well-meaning counselors. Several of the senior staff members had at some time in the first months of my internship expressed reservations, even distrust, about my evangelical Christian faith. (I was not yet a pastor, but my vita showed that I had worked for several Christian colleges.) They feared I might mistreat clients who were, for example, homosexual or contemplating abortion. However, when this counselor expressed her frustration in working with guilt-ridden fundamentalist Christian clients, the rest of the staff admitted they too were at a loss at what to do. Nothing they had tried seemed to help relieve these Christian clients of their excessive guilt. All the eyes at the meeting turned toward me as one of the senior staff members said, Rick, you’re a Christian. How do you think we should help clients like these?

A bit shocked to have been elevated to the role of cultural group expert for Christian clients, I told them, "In my experience, many Christians are burdened by guilt because they and their pastors often forget that Christianity is not primarily a religion of rules and laws. It is about the Gospel of forgiveness we receive because Christ died and rose again for us. It is more about God’s love and grace, not ‘Do this and you’ll feel better about yourself.’"

I suggested to these secular counselors that they ask their clients leading questions, such as I thought the Christian faith was more about Jesus forgiving you, or I thought that Christians believed God loves them more than God expects them to be perfect. I even suggested that these counselors could cite well-known Bible verses like John 3:16 as evidence that they appreciated their clients’ faith and that God loves them. Nobody at the staff meeting spurned my suggestions. My cultural group expertise had, to my surprise, been appreciated.

At a later staff meeting, I was even more shocked. A senior staff member asked how it was going with some of the Christian clients the counselors had. To my amazement, several counselors had taken my suggestions to heart. They had asked those questions and shared those Gospel messages and verses. And they reported, to their amazement, that this counseling strategy seemed to be helping. Their clients were a bit surprised to hear these messages come from their counselors, but they agreed that their Christian faith was based in God’s love and that they had forgotten that along the way. They appreciated the reminder that their sins were forgiven and they should, therefore, not feel so guilt ridden. The counselors then felt like they could make better progress with these clients on other issues.

Through those events, I became even more convinced of the power of God’s Word, especially the life-giving Word of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Here I had suggested to well-intentioned nonbelievers that they speak some explicit Gospel to troubled believers, they had done so, and the Holy Spirit used those words to help them! I should not have been surprised, but I was. God’s Word does not return to Him void (Isaiah 55). I have continued to pray that it was helpful to my secular counselor friends as well, changing their own opinions about the role of the Christian faith. More than one of them had told me that they had been raised in legalistic Protestant or Catholic families and churches and were recovering from the Law orientations of their childhood.

We should not be surprised that secular counselors struggle to know how to treat guilt-ridden Christian clients. Basic listening-skills texts often have lists of emotion words in them to help increase the basic vocabulary of emotion among counselors in training. These texts have categories of emotions, such as happiness, sadness, fear, and anger. Years ago, I began noticing that most of these texts left out one important category: guilt/shame. This may be evidence that, unconsciously, the secular counseling field prefers to handle guilt and shame by ignoring them. This should not surprise us. From a theological perspective, the only way to truly treat objective guilt and shame is with the Gospel of Christ.

How Is This Approach Different from Biblical Counseling?

Therefore from now on we recognize no one according to the flesh; even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know Him in this way no longer. Therefore if anyone is in