See: Part 1
The Therapeutic Gospel
by David Powlison
The Contemporary Therapeutic Gospel
The
most obvious, instinctual felt needs of twenty-first century, middle-class
Americans are different from the felt needs that Dostoevsky tapped into. We
take food supply and political stability for granted. We find our
miracle-substitute in the wonders of technology. Middle-class felt needs are
less primal. They express a more luxurious, more refined sense of
self-interest:
• I want to feel loved for who I am, to be pitied
for what I’ve gone through, to feel intimately understood, to be accepted
unconditionally.
• I want to experience a sense of personal
significance and meaningfulness, to be successful in my career, to know my life
matters, to have an impact.
• I want to gain self-esteem, to affirm that I am
okay, to be able to assert my opinions and desires.
• I want to be entertained, to feel pleasure in
the endless stream of performances that delight my eyes and tickle my ears.
• I want a sense of adventure, excitement,
action, and passion so that I experience life as thrilling and moving.
The modern,
middle-class version of therapeutic gospel takes its cues from this particular
family of desires. It appeals to psychological felt needs, not the physical
felt needs that typically arise in difficult social conditions. (The
contemporary health-and-wealth gospel and obsession with miracles express
something more like the Grand Inquisitor’s older version of therapeutic
gospel.)
In this new gospel,
the great evils to be redressed do not call for any fundamental change of direction
in the human heart. Instead, the problem lies in my sense of rejection from
others; in my corrosive experience of life’s vanity; in my nervous sense of
self-condemnation and diffidence; in the imminent threat of boredom if my music
is turned off; in my fussy complaints when a long, hard road lies ahead. These
are today’s significant felt needs that the gospel is bent to serve. Jesus and
the church exist to make you feel loved, significant, validated, entertained,
and charged up. This gospel ameliorates distressing symptoms. It makes you feel
better. The logic of this therapeutic gospel is a jesus-for-Me who meets individual desires and assuages psychic
aches.
The therapeutic
outlook is not a bad thing in its proper place. By definition, a medical-therapeutic
gaze holds in view problems of physical suffering and breakdown. In literal
medical intervention, a therapy treats an illness, trauma, or deficiency. You
don’t call someone to repentance for their colon cancer, broken leg, or
beriberi. You seek to heal. So far, so good.
But in today’s
therapeutic gospel the medical way of looking at the world is metaphorically
extended to these psychological desires. These are defined just like a medical
problem. You feel bad; the therapy makes you feel better. The definition of the
disease bypasses the sinful human heart. You are not the agent of your deepest
problems, but merely a sufferer and victim of unmet needs. The offer of a cure
skips over the sin-bearing Savior. Repentance from unbelief, willfulness, and wickedness
is not the issue. Sinners are not called to a U-turn and to the new life that
is life indeed. Such a gospel massages self-love. There is nothing in its inner
logic to make you love God and love any other person besides yourself. This
therapeutic gospel may often mention the word “Jesus,” but He has morphed into
the meeter-of-your-needs, not the
Savior from your sins. It corrects Jesus’ work. The therapeutic gospel unhinges
the gospel.[1]
[1]
Powlison, D. (2007). The Therapeutic Gospel. In The Journal of Biblical Counseling: Volume 25, Number 3, Summer 2007
(2–3). Glenside, PA: The Christian Counseling and Educational Foundation.
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