Monday, June 3, 2013

Life Changing Books #3


Why Christians Can't Trust Psychology   -     
        By: Ed Bulkley

I don't recall what my reasoning was for reading this, whether it was for class or for my own study. I know it's a textbook at the seminary where I've studied but I do not recall as to whether or not I took the class it's required for or if my wife was taking the course and I read it as a result of that. Either way, it was a book that presented topics that I had never thought of in the way Ed Bulkley, P.h.D. was presenting them. I had taken Psychology at a secular institution and was taught to analyze and interpret my dreams, and was presented videos of psychologists counseling schizophrenics and other 'mental' patients. The course was taught with a humanist worldview. Now, being a Christian at the time of this course who was not dug down deep into God's Word, I could have easily been fooled by it's inaccuracies. But throughout the course I felt as though something was off and not right. I'm confident that I would not have been able to present a solid biblical argument against it yet I was able to see that it did not line up with the Scripture I was reading. I don't want to speak out of place but I believe I was told by my pastor at that time that we needed both Scripture and psychology. And we probably do...at some small level. But Bulkley does a wonderful job of presenting both sides of the argument "do we need Scripture and Psychology or is Scripture alone sufficient?" For 15 years or so my mother was an early childhood teacher at a school that worked with mentally challenged children. She started this work shortly after my brother and I were in high school and I remember wondering why dinners weren't as good and detailed anymore, and why mom wasn't always home when I arrived home from school and why she seem to just want to sit on the couch when she arrived home...then I spent a day with her visiting her classroom. It was exhausting. Working with early childhood children is exhausting enough but then you thrown in children with autism, or asperger's syndrome or other various mental struggles and it makes for a long day. During the reading of this book my mother and I discussed several times her experiences with these mental illnesses and their validity. I'm not going to give an answer as to where my belief lies in this area other than that I do believe this generation as a society is very quick to give an authoritative diagnosis on children and adults. All in all I came away from this book with a much greater appreciation of the Scriptures and a desire to understand even more how it penetrates to the heart of man. I use the word appreciation because I don't believe I loved the Scriptures yet. That came later.

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