Apologetics

The Church, The World and Problems

by Jeff Drinnan
04/30/22
For Sale
Author requests article critique

  Message Writer
  Hire Writer

Tweet

In my last blog I wrote about how the world is pushing its way in to upstage the church in helping people with problems, in particular with the homeless population.

It's one thing for a secular mental health institution to tout it has the key to helping people and push its way into our lives, but it's quite another when churches compromise their principles and send people with problems off to secular psychology and psychiatry. They either refer people to a secular institution or incorporate worldly views at their church.

Founder of the Biblical Counseling movement Jay Adams wrote that even some sound Biblical churches that preach the gospel used secular principles when counseling. As a pastor, Dr. Adams looked through church materials on counseling. He found that it lacked fidelity to scripture. Consequently, the pastor started writing his own material, based on the Bible. That's how the Biblical Counseling movement started.

Today, in Bucks County, PA, some churches just let secular organizations like Alcoholics Anonymous use their buildings to host programs that lack fidelity to God's word. Other churches, like Oxford Valley Chapel in Levittown, hold their own programs, which are Bible studies, to help people with problems, such as addictions. The church and counseling should work in tandum.

Realizing that addiction is just another sin, OVC hosts other Bible studies on different topics during the same time slot at different times.

A few years back, when I volunteered and worshiped at the local Salvation Army, recruiters from Penndel Mental Health center came to the Salvation Army Community Center. At that time I was going through some problems and an army agent introduced me to the secular services Penndel Mental Health offered. One of the first questions a recruiter asked me is if I'm willing to take medication, legal drugs. I was desperate and went along with it and started using the center's services and started taking psychotropic drugs. It made me worse. Rather that expore other medications, I just stopped taking them altogether. Taking drugs was a requirement to see a therapist, so I bid them hasta la vista baby, and I was better off.

At a homeless meal a few years back, one of the hosts introduced a speaker from a county mental health agency, who gave advice on how to be happy being homeless. Basically she told the guests to have happy throughts, think positive. Although you don't want to be negative, there has to be a basis for your emotions. I don't remember her giving any. The host chimed in at one point and recommended the guests take advantage of the secular programs and added "you pay for it." Having the public pay for programs that is not driven by choice lacks accountability.

Christians should be free to provide programs that people support by people who choose what benefits them. This is why being a Christian precludes him or her from being a big government progressive. Evangelist Francis Schaeffer warned decades ago that there's a problem with people leaning on the government to solve all their problems.

"All scripture is God-breathed and is useful for instruction, for conviction, for correction, and for training in righteousness." -2 Timothy 3:16