Determinative Anthropology
Ed. With a title like this, only those who really care about what I have to say in general will read this. Fear not faithful readers! I will reward you with more free counseling insight. Why take a course when you can just learn from all my notes?
I started working on the final exam for my course. It is a case study containing the background of a woman and a specific incident in her life. She comes in for counseling and the question is: What do you do? How do you process her situation and give her good counsel?
I noticed in my train of thinking there were instances that said: Oh she’s acting like this now because of this instance in her background. Because of this social reason, she’s like this now. Because of this genetic reason, she’s acting like this. This is exactly how the world counsels. These days, it is biological factors that are determinative of who we are. You’re homosexual because you have this specific gene. People become psychopaths because they have faulty brain connectors. The reason they have these problems is because something is wrong with their body. The cure to their problem is to take drugs or some other physical treatment. Previously, the determinative factors were social. She’s scared of commitment because she was abandoned as a child. She has a fear of men because she was abused by her father. The world does not recognize God so it assigns causality to these other social biological factors. The solution is not the latest designer drug or school of psychotherapy. The problem is sin and the solution is Jesus.
Biological factors and social pressures play a part but they do not cause our problems. They are the events that bring our sins out. I am not irritable because I didn’t get get enough sleep. I am irritable because I lack patience and lack of sleep exacerbates the situation. When counseling we ought not assign causality to these external pressures. They are merely the situations which expose indwelling sin. The solution to ultimately solving the problem then is not to remove the external situations but deal with the internal sin.
As I learn to counsel, I must continually train my eyes to see people as God does not as the world does. Our bodies, families, and socioeconomical factors do not determine who we are nor do they cause who we become. They are not the causes of our problems but are the light which exposes our problem that we might be refined into Christ-likeness.