Paul's Passing Thoughts

The Association of Certified “Biblical” Counselors recently posted an article by the pastor of biblical counseling at Clearcreek Chapel in Springboro, Ohio. Though the article, and articles like it, always seem to do a good job of presenting ACBC as a place where hope can be found, per the usual, truth in advertising is missing. In ALL cases, regarding “counselees” who first approach ACBC, the counselors deliberately feed known assumptions.

What are those assumptions? Simply stated, the belief that biblical “experts” can teach counselees wisdom that will enable them to change personally with better circumstances following. Really, ALL people seek counseling for this reason, and ALL ACBC counselors know that.

We all have accomplishment in our lives, and we can all point to the ones we value most. For me, my work in documenting the true history and doctrine of the biblical counseling movement stands out. Some of my documentation can be read here, here, here, here, and here. Since I am writing this article before heading out to class, I won’t have time to get into how Tim Nixon became “pastor” of biblical counseling at Clearcreek Chapel, but suffice to say, it is a grain of sand on a beach of spiritual tyranny and evil not even spoken of among the unregenerate.

Let’s start with the arrogance of the so-called noble lie, a hallmark of elitist mystery religions since the beginning of time. The FACT that ACBC doesn’t believe people can change is a “truth” they believe people are not ready for. So, protocol is to play on known assumptions in the beginning, and then slowly indoctrinate people to the ACBC ideology. That is the primary goal of articles like the aforementioned by Tim Nixon. And of course, part of the endgame is church membership and “tithing” as part of the “ordinary means of grace.” Read, ordinary means of salvation because it is a progressive justification gospel.

It’s not complicated. If you are paying attention, proponents of this so-called gospel state it all of the time; supposedly, Christianity is a “confessional” religion. What does that mean? Much to the shock of our church-going grandparents, it pretty much means that our duty is to confess our faith, while believing any attempt to live it out in our lives is works salvation. This is because the ACBC gospel conflates justification and sanctification as the present-day horrible testimony of the church indicates.

So, what is the goal of this so-called biblical counseling other than widening the financial base of the local church? The goal is to help the counselees to perceive reality differently. What is that reality? Supposedly, God doesn’t change (ok, that’s true), but neither do people. God is as holy as he will ever be, and people are as evil as they will ever be. The whole goal of counseling is for counselees seeing the depth of their own evil more and more as “set against the holiness of God.” Seeing all of this through reality as a mere gospel story, or narrative, prewritten by God, is a deeper issue that will not be addressed in this post, but something I have written about extensively. So, the goal of the counseling is to see how far away you are from your heavenly Father, rather than any attempt to be more like Him. This ideology alone is what’s driving the progressive insanity unfolding in the contemporary church. Unfortunately, the few good pastors and laypeople left in the church refuse to come to grips with this reality.

A funny thing about Calvinists: they never open their evangelistic message this way; “Hi, I am here to present the gospel to you, and if you are preselected by God for salvation, you will believe what I am telling you and repent because the Holy Spirit will compel you to do so.” If an honest presentation of something you are selling is sure to result in open mockery, you might want to reexamine what you are selling.

Unfortunately, ACBC is lying about something very dear to God’s heart: hope. If true happiness is found in only perceiving realty and allowing God to actively substitute all of our actions, while in reality, we are only experiencing good done by God “subjectively,” ACBC should show some integrity by reveling that upfront.

At any rate, the deliberate manipulation through known assumptions is not equitable, and the history of ACBC bears that out. Fact is, their service would be rejected out of hand every time if they were honest about their ideology. It’s arrogant, deceptive, and robs people of hope.

paul