CrossTalk: Where Life and Scripture Meet
This book discusses how to read the Bible, how to read people, and how to apply one to another. He talks about how to read and understand the Bible. It is important to note all the literary components and historical and cultural context. However, the overall approach is to understand the passage in light of redemptive history. The goal is to understand the overarching story of the Bible. When we “read” people, we are looking to understand the person in three aspects, as saint, sinner, and sufferer. They are new creations if they have Christ yet are still sinners and suffer the consequences of sin. We need to understand these three aspects of a person. Then we tie the story of the Bible into these three aspects of their life. What does the Bible say to address this person as saint, sinner, and sufferer? We don’t want to give quick fixes, though they are useful and good to do but even better is to tie the person into the whole redemptive story. As we understand the passages from a redemptive history perspective, we are able to see not just where they came from and where they are now, but where they are going. That is a crucial aspect to counseling. It’s not just addressing the issues that happened in their past which shaped them to who they are now, though that is an important thing to do. It’s not just addressing the issues they are struggling with now, though that is also a necessary thing to do. We also want to address where they are going, who are they becoming. They are becoming like Christ and we need to convey that hope to them.
This book does an excellent job at unpacking and explaining all of this. It also gives some useful examples and case studies of how this is done. One interesting thing the author does is to take the same passage and apply it to two different people’s counseling situation. Though I feel the conversations are a little contrived and “easy”, it’s interesting to see how he highlights and uses different aspects of the same passage to people struggling with different things. However, the majority of the content in this book are things that I have heard before in my counseling class. I was hoping for more concrete substance rather than an approach to using the Bible. Maybe that’s the exact point I’m missing. I’m want “in this situation, use X and in this situation, use Y” where as this book gives you a toolkit to understand the Bible and know how to leverage it for counseling. You can use any passage for almost anything as long as you understand the overarching theme of the Bible. (Of course some passages are better and more pointed than others.) All this to show that I’m lazy and need to spend more time studying the Bible.
I recommend this book to people who want to know how to use the Bible to help counsel people. It will help inform the way you understand the Bible, people, and apply one to the other.