See: Part 1, Part 2
The Therapeutic Gospel
by David Powlison
Good Goods, Bad Gods [Part 1]
The things offered by
the contemporary therapeutic gospel are a bit trickier to interpret. The odor
of self-interest and self-obsession clings closely to that wish list of “I
want—.” But even these, carefully reframed and reinterpreted, do gesture in the
direction of a good gift. The overall package of felt needs is systematically
misaligned, but the pieces can be properly understood. Any “different gospel”
(Gal. 1:6) makes itself plausible by offering Lego-pieces of reality assembled
into a structure that contradicts revealed truth. Satan’s temptation of Adam
and Eve was plausible only because it incorporated many elements of reality,
continually gesturing in the direction of truth, even while steadily guiding
away from the truth: “Look, a beautiful and desirable tree. And God has said
that the test will reveal both good and evil, with the possibility of life—not
death—rising from your choice. Just as God is wise, so you, the chooser, can
become like God in wisdom. Come now and eat.” So close, yet so far away. Almost
so, but the exact opposite.
Consider the five
elements we have identified with the therapeutic gospel.
Need
for love? It is surely a good thing to know that you are both known
and loved. God, who searches the thoughts and intentions of our hearts, also
sets His steadfast love upon us. However all this is radically different from
the instinctual craving to be accepted for
who I am. Christ’s love comes pointedly and personally despite who I am. You are accepted for who Christ is, because of
what He did, does, and will do. God truly accepts you, and if God is for you,
who can be against you? But in doing this, He does not affirm and endorse what
you are like. Rather, He sets about changing you into a fundamentally different
kind of person. In the real gospel you feel deeply known and loved, but your
relentless “need for love” has been overthrown.
Need
for significance? It is surely a good thing for the
works of your hands to be established forever: gold, silver, and precious
stones; not wood, hay, and straw. It is good when what you do with your life
truly counts, and when your works follow you into eternity. Vanity, futility,
and ultimate insignificance register the curse upon our work life—even
midcourse, not just when we retire, or when we die, or on the Day of Judgment.
But the real gospel inverts the order of things presupposed by the therapeutic
gospel. The craving for impact and significance—one of the typical “youthful
lusts” that boil up within us—is merely idolatrous when it acts as Director of
Operations in the human heart. God does not meet your need for significance; He
meets your need for mercy and deliverance from your obsession with personal
significance. When you turn from your enslavement and turn to God, then your
works do start to count for good. The gospel of Jesus and the fruit of faith
are not tailored to “meet your needs.” He frees from the tyranny of felt needs,
remakes you to fear God and keep His commandments (Eccl. 12:13). In the divine
irony of grace, that alone makes what you do with your life of lasting value.[1]
[1]
Powlison, D. (2007). The Therapeutic Gospel. In The Journal of Biblical Counseling: Volume 25, Number 3, Summer 2007
(4–5). Glenside, PA: The Christian Counseling and Educational Foundation.
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