Is There Such A Thing As Creationist Counseling?

by John D. Morris, Ph.D.

Recent decades have seen a plethora of Christian counseling centers and ministries spring up around the country. Now, almost every Christian college or seminary, as well as most large churches, include a Christian counseling program.

Unfortunately, these well-intentioned programs frequently miss the mark. Most "credentialed" psychologists, capable of teaching at the university/college level, acquired their doctorates at secular universities—almost without exception based on humanism or New Age concepts. Christian students in such universities are seldom immune from this error, and all too often merely attach Bible verses or concepts to anti-Biblical philosophies. The result? A soft-peddling of sinful practices and passing of personal responsibility for wrong choices onto others.

Heightening this state of confusion is lack of belief in the early chapters of Genesis on the part of counselors trained at even the most prestigious evangelical schools, but almost all Christian doctrine is based on those concepts. What happens when a counselor substitutes any form of theistic evolution or "long day" semi-creation for true Biblical creation?

Consider the heartbroken husband who is watching his dear, Christian wife dying a long, painful death from cancer. Or the parents whose little girl was just destroyed by a drunk driver. Or the one whose once-vibrant parent is stricken with Alzheimer's Disease? What could an evolutionary-based counselor possibly have to say to address these problems?

You see, evolution holds that suffering and death are "good," and have been on earth for hundreds of millions of years, long before man. In fact, it was the death of the "unfit" which was paralleled by "survival of the fittest" and allowed man to evolve from the animals. In evolution, our ancestors possessed animal desires fueled by animal instincts; thus, evolution is specifically used to justify sinful behavior. How do Christian counselors who believe in any form of evolution or old-earth concepts deal with these issues?

The Bible explicitly says that in the beginning all things were "very good" (Genesis 1:31), with no death, no carnivorous activity. Sin entered, and now all is dying (Romans 8:20-22). From Genesis we learn who God is, who man is, where death, disease, and our sin nature come from, and God's standards for the way we should live.

Today we live in a cursed world, dominated by sin, sinful people, and sinful choices. Disease, pain, and death are not natural; they result from man's rejection of God's plan. God is not responsible. In fact, He even died to pay sin's penalty and remove the curse (Revelation 21:4; 22:3). Creation will one day be restored to the way God intended.

This is the message of hope and purity made possible for those who go "Back to Genesis" and build their counseling methods on God's truth, not evolution.

*Dr. John Morris is the President of ICR.

Cite this article: John D. Morris, Ph.D. 1996. Is There Such A Thing As Creationist Counseling?. Acts & Facts. 25 (1).