Paul's Passing Thoughts

“Powlison’s pseudo legacy will undoubtedly include the assumption that he was on the right side of the gospel while allowing the default assumption that Powlison propagated for years: Jay Adams’ biblical counseling construct is predicated on a false gospel. I am writing this article to set the record straight.” 

David Powlison, the longtime biblical counseling icon and faculty member of the Christian Counseling and Educational Foundation at Westminster Seminary has died. He was 69 years old. While I feel no animosity towards Powlison, and as a caregiver do not wish pancreatic cancer on anyone, I am not going to stand by idle while The Gospel Coalition partakes in its usual rewriting of contemporary church history. Not only that, Powlison changed what the church could have become though still found wanting. After all, something is better than nothing. Powlison was a classic mystic despot dressed in scholarly garb, while teaching counterintuitive truths of old without a state to enforce orthodoxy. Nevertheless, he improvised while having the demeanor of Mr. Rogers and the cunning of the Lion King’s wicked uncle “Scar.” That seems harsh, but my rational will be explained further along in this article.

Central to the conversation here is the gospel. Indeed, Powlison said it himself: the biblical counseling controversy between him and Jay Adams involved two different gospels. Yes, I know, everything in the church is destined to become an argument, that’s just church, but that’s what he said….period. So, two different gospels cannot be true; one of them is false, or both are false. Powlison’s pseudo legacy will undoubtedly include the assumption that he was on the right side of the gospel while allowing the default assumption that Powlison propagated for years: Jay Adams’ biblical counseling construct is predicated on a false gospel. I am writing this article to set the record straight.

We all know what I think of Calvinism, and not because of the predestination issue, but because Calvin clearly taught progressive justification. However, the counseling philosophy of a sanctified Calvinist saved my life. The term, “sanctified Calvinist” is reserved exclusively for Jay Adams out of respect. In reality, he is a confused Calvinist for the better but I would never call him that. Adams is a Calvinist who had sanctification half right, which led to an actual revival, a revival that I witnessed firsthand and experienced for myself. Does the gospel have enough power to change lives and spark a revival when it is partially right? Certainly. Part of the gospel message is the issue of people living by their consciences. Do many unbelievers have a healthy conscience? Yes. Will they be happier if they live by it? Certainly. Does the same principle apply to Christians? Definitely. Will living by conscience save you? No. However, this is an example of a practical principle that Adams implemented in his counseling construct because, as we know, if you jump of a cliff, injury is determined by the height of the fall, and God would agree with that assessment.

With Powlison, not so much. Powlison would have said that such a question must be answered in its, “gospel context.” With Powlison, one thing was always certain: any no-brainer question would be answered with a cacophony of nuance in order to further Powlison’s view of spiritual hierarchy. Powlison was the epitome of someone who was all about spiritual caste. Adams was not of the same college. Before I clearly specify the difference, in a manner of speaking, between the Powlison gospel and the Adams gospel, the difference of mentality between the two is an important distinction. The Christian Counseling and Educational Foundation (CCEF) is the counseling wing of Westminster Seminary. NANC, (National Association of Nouthetic Counselors) was a certification organization that many said Adams founded but he didn’t. Adams wanted his counseling movement begun by the controversial book written by him, “Competent to Counsel,” to be a layman’s movement. He believed the average Christian was competent to counsel other Christians. It was Powlison et al (the others will be mentioned further along) who wanted the movement to be an elitist professional movement. This was Powlison’s first act of hijacking the Adams revival. I call it that for convenient nomenclature while noting that Jay would object to me referring to it as such. Adams went along with the NANC thing while seeing little harm in it, but always emphasized the ability of the average Christian to take the word of God and help others with it.

Before we get into the two gospels that drive the two different counseling constructs, we want to take a look at the very important contemporary history of, yes, the crux of this issue, the New Calvinist movement. Adams’ controversial book, “Competent to Counsel,” was published in 1970, and that is an extremely important date. Interestingly, while reading the accoladent articles concerning Powlison’s departure, NANC, which is now ACBC (Association of Certified Biblical Counselors), is scrubbed from the history just like the real history of the New Calvinist movement. Adams, after a traumatic experience with a parishioner, set out to solve the problem of pastoral inability to help people with life’s deeper problems. His findings were published in the aforementioned book, but something else very important was going on in 1970. Following is the dirty little secret the church is presently trying to scrub from contemporary church history: the church, had in fact, lost sight of the authentic Protestant gospel. The authentic Protestant gospel did not see sanctification as separate from justification, but rather the progression of justification. Authentic Protestantism’s gospel was predicated on a strict dichotomy between good and humanity. So, sanctification as a Christian life that is infused with God’s nature and life with humanity was rejected with prejudice by the reformers, viz, Calvin and Luther in particular. According to Protestant orthodoxy, ALL goodness or the ability to do good remains outside of the believer. And “faith” was defined as an illumination that only enables the “believer” to perceive this fact. Hence, faith is all about a deeper and deeper knowledge of how far one is from God’s holiness leading to an increased gratitude for God’s grace and salvation. Sanctification isn’t about being more like our Father, which supposedly leads to the diminishing of the cross’s significance, but rather a deeper and deeper realization of how far we are from God’s holiness, again, leading to a deeper gratitude for salvation.

Well then, obviously, the focus would not be learning God’s truth for purposes of applying it to Christian living, but rather using the Bible to obtain the exact opposite: to learn how far we are from God leading to a greater emphasis on the cross. So, of course Christians lacked an ability to use the Bible to help each other live a more wise and godly life; that was NEVER the Protestant purpose of the Bible. NEVER. However, the advent of Americanism confused that truth. The authentic Protestant gospel that the Puritans had brought to America became integrated with Enlightenment Era ideas. Hence, Christians started reading their Bibles grammatically from an individualistic perspective rather than a redemptive perspective collectively. The result? American churches functioned according to the authentic Protestant gospel while denying its orthodoxy intellectually. This led to the application of biblical generalities leading to a weak sanctification. Nevertheless, this weak sanctification had a profound effect on American culture. Even limited practical application of the Bible made America one of the more moral societies on the face of the earth. Yet, because the church still functioned according to authentic Protestant orthodoxy while denying much of its orthodoxy intellectually, it was primed for a return to the authentic article; in other words, from a weak sanctification back to no sanctification at all. From the beginning, Protestantism was about justification being a mere “legal declaration” and NOT a state of being. In contrast, the church had adopted an Enlightenment idea that Christians are not merely declared righteous, we ARE righteous.

This is where the New Calvinist movement started. An Adventist theologian by the name of Robert Brinsmead discovered the error of the church’s ways and began a movement to bring Protestantism back to its former roots. This was the “Awakening” movement also known as the “Progressive Adventist” movement. Brinsmead was joined by two Anglican ministers and a Reformed Baptist who formed the core four of the “Australian Forum,” which was a Theological think tank that sought to bring the church back to its original gospel roots. By the way, Al Mohler invited one of these members of the Forum to Southern Seminary in 2009 to lecture on what the Reformation was really about. Yes, the problem with the church was the following according to the Australian Forum: it wasn’t vertical enough, and too horizontal. In the same year that the forum started getting traction in the church, Adams was taking the church in the opposite direction; ie., the church was too vertical and not horizontal enough. Adams was, and maybe still is, a Calvinist that had some sanctification; he believed that goodness is inside of believers and enables them to do good things that please God. However, that idea is totally antithetical to authentic Protestant orthodoxy. Also involved in the foundations of the biblical counseling movement was David Powlison who was of the opposite school, that is, the “Vertical Church” view. More on that at this time.

Jay Adams, David Powlison, and a fellow named Dr. John “Jack” Miller were teachers at Westminster Seminary in the 70s. The Australian Forum was actually invited to Westminster to set the Protestant brain trust straight on what the true Protestant gospel is, and they listened. So much for so-called “historical precedent,” for 200 years after the American Revolution, the church in general, and those in the hallowed halls of Westminster didn’t even have a right understanding of what the authentic Protestant gospel is. Nevertheless, this is where the New Calvinist movement started. The “scandalous gospel” indeed, the rediscovery of the true Protestant gospel is owed to a Seventh-Day Adventist.  Dr. Miller took hold of the new revelations delivered by the Forum and put his own spin on it; a program called, “The Sonship Discipleship Course” or simply “Sonship Theology.” David Powlison was mentored by Miller. Powlison and Miller worked together to form their own counseling construct based on the newfound Protestant gospel in opposition to what Adams was doing, and the war was on. Except, Adams had no idea what was going on. He barked about Westminster inviting the Forum to visit, and sarcastically suggested that pork be served for lunch (along with some insults hurled towards Ellen White), and indeed, pork was served during the visit, but he had no idea that the visit would have a future profound effect upon his life and career.

At any rate, my thesis here concerning the lost gospel of Protestantism is confirmed by the all-out civil war that ensued amongst Protestant Calvinists during the 90s. Sonship Theology was nothing less than spot-on Reformation soteriology. And by the way, a Presbyterian minister who was in the middle of the fray defending Sonship was a guy named “Tim Keller,” Is that name familiar? Adams published a book in 1999 against Sonship Theology that was instrumental in defeating the movement, or so everyone thought. The movement went underground and changed its name to “Gospel Transformation” and “Gospel Centrality.” And, to object to the teaching of this movement was to be against what it was named, right? And the ploy worked; if you were against this movement, you were against “the gospel.” Meanwhile, Adams never connected the two movements as being the same thing. Do I attribute this cunning primarily to David Powlison? Yes I do.

By the 90s, Adams had developed a practical application of the Bible to sanctification that was yielding an all-out revival in churches worldwide. I ended up being counseled by a pastor influenced by him. The counseling saved my life, although I could have been healed much faster if the counseling was a thoroughbred biblical sanctification. Not withstanding, the truth of his counseling saved me from a significant time of darkness. I will say this unequivocally; I owe Jay Adams my life, but that does not obligate me to agree with him on everything. I joined the particular church where I received the counseling, and witnessed the Jay Adams revival firsthand. Unbelievers coming to counseling at that church were astounded to find the Bible’s explanations and answers to life’s deepest problems and the hope therein. Consequently, they received Christ and led lives that yielded good fruit. In one year, through the counseling, there were 12 solid conversions, or one per month, and trust me, in a church of 250 members, that is utterly unprecedented. But meanwhile, as the biblical counseling movement skyrocketed, Adams began to experience more and more persecution from within the ranks of CCEF and NANC. This was perplexing to him. The civil war going on within the movement was the elephant in the room that nobody was addressing.

Enter in the second generation of those mentored by Jack Miller and overseen by David Powlison. Primarily, Paul David Tripp. As mentioned earlier, I do not disdain Powlison (besides, he just died), but I am not so sure I can say the same about Tripp. I do, God help me, consider Tripp to be an evil false teacher. But in both cases, the following is not commendable: instead of teaching their own convictions separately and letting God’s people decide for themselves, they deemed it necessary to infiltrate NANC and destroy it, not that it was ever Adams’ organization, but merely because it was strongly associated with him. Powlison won that battle, but I don’t think he won the war…a war against God whether witting or unwitting.

The Gospel Transformation movement was deliberately covert and marked by hostile takeovers of evangelical churches. Even churches founded by the likes of D. James Kennedy stature fell victim. No one knew what was hitting the evangelical church, or why it was happening. The church I mentioned earlier that I joined fell pray to the movement and I was one of the casualties. The leadership that took over was overtly anti-Adams which was perplexing to me. Yes, apparently, all Jay Adams ever did was, “make people better Pharisees.” When I shared with one elder that NANC counseling had saved my life, he openly mocked me. Eventually, I was brought up on bogus church discipline and my family was ripped apart for asking too many questions.

But upon departing from there, I was determined to understand what happened if it took the rest of my life. Funny, earlier in my life, I prayed to God to show me why the church has such a problem getting its act together; he was in the process of answering that prayer. During the Adams revival I thought my prayer had been answered, but that notion was dashed when I witnessed the perplexing pushback against what could only be deemed a blessing. I often think about those like Dr. John Street who now go along with the narrative that those days were a lie. I left and formed TANC Ministries, a research organization. In circa 2007, Adams contacted our ministry, and through mutual correspondence between us, the nameless movement was dubbed “Gospel Sanctification.” A little more than a year later, the movement was known as the “New Calvinist” movement.

The authentic Protestant gospel propagated by Powlison has a particular serious problem: good works cannot be dichotomized from love. Grace cannot be dichotomized from love. If “infused grace” is a false gospel, if only Christ works, then there is no love in any person whether they profess to be a Christian or not, nor can they perform any act of love pleasing to God. This was David Powlison’s gospel. And though Adams professes the Protestant gospel, his sanctification construct calls for the ability of the believer to please God by loving others with a love that is within, so…

…thank God he is confused, or rather, a sanctified Calvinist. I might have to speak better of him after he dies, that is, if he dies. But, the rapture isn’t a Reformed thing either.

paul

Nursing school settles one issue in the mind of any reasonable person: there is a God. Now, only one question remains, “Who is He and what is He really like?” The best source for answering such things is the Bible. Though the gospel is simplistic on its face, the Bible confirms itself through a complex continuity of covenants and eschatology. Furthermore, wisdom can be found in the Bible about things most religions don’t care about. That’s because God cares about every detail of His creation. And God is love.

Jesus instructed people this way: “Seek and you will find.” Note, “YOU.” God appeals to the individual. God appeals to the individual. God appeals to the induvial. That can’t be said enough. Mark it well: any religion that insists on the seeking out of authoritative experts to stay on a road to salvation is a lie. And that is all of them. When the day comes to stand before God, you stand there alone. However, you alone will be responsible for your actions that resulted from listening to others. Fact is, you alone, or if you will, the individual, is the lone discerner of truth. There is no gospel of authority. Who you obey will not get you into heaven. In fact, obeying God will not even get you into heaven. There is a huge problem regarding those who claim God granted them authority over salvation on earth, which, again, is all religion: Jesus never showed up at any church counsel and stated such. This is why they can all make the same claim. And by the way, commonsense is not a sin. Choosing from a smorgasbord of religious “authorities” will not get you into heaven. Please note, it is your choice alone to pick an authority who does the best job of threatening an eternal hell, and then you get to heaven by submitting to that authority’s orthodoxy. Freewill gets you on the right road, but then you abandon freewill to stay on the “right” road to heaven. How much sense does that make? Not much. And, by the way, they all claim you chose them because the Holy Spirit compelled you to. Religion, in and of itself, has no objective conclusions other than authority; ie., it’s true because they say its true. They all claim a substitution for individual responsibility. That is obviously untrue. We should all, at least, know that about God. Is substitution for individual responsibility the reason for church being a hot mess? Absolutely. “Not our church!” Oh please, shut the hell up, you financially support an institution that has a history of atrocities in the name of authority.

Mourning is a part of life. Sadness is a part of life. Tragedy is a part of life. Pain is a part of life. However, when these come into our lives, we do well to pay attention to it. We do well to ponder it. We all have a purpose for being here, and pain cannot stop us from finishing our mission. The best nurses are experienced nurses who learn from their experiences; the same is true for those who are good at living life. And by the way, seeking advice about life from those who want to control you is generally a bad idea. I will also point out that likable people can have control issues. The Bible states that sin is not just about law-breaking, but the essence of sin is a desire to control others. According to the Bible, sin, presented as a personification in the Bible, just uses the law as a means to control people. It goes like this: the demands of a law make a case for your failures, which lead to self-condemnation, which makes you easy to control. “You are a loser, obviously, because of all of these laws that reveal your shortcomings. Hence, you need an expert to control your life to save yourself from your self.” And in many cases regarding those who want to control you, the laws you break are mere opinions. So, you might think, “It’s not like the one’s who say this do not break the law, even their own laws.” Exactly, and that is the authority class distinction the Bible condemns. According to the Bible, the world is dominated by an “under-law” mentality. Be wary of criticism in general. Is it mostly grounded in a desire for control? Yes. Almost ALL criticism has a control agenda behind it.

Love is different. It is a contrary worldview altogether. Love in not merely an emotion or kind act, it is a philosophy of life. It sees people for what they bring to the table. Biblically, it is the antithesis of condemnation. Much can be said about love, but it primarily focuses on what builds others up. Condemnation never made anyone better, and always makes the perpetrators of it worse.

As a former agency aide, I took an assignment at a large AL facility. I was doing wellness checks on the hall I was assigned to. Consequently, I met an elderly man that I hit it off with. We talked about football and other guy things, and I envisioned a wonderful friendship. Sometime later in the day, maybe a couple of hours later, I enthusiastically decided that I would stop by and check on him. When I entered the room, it immediately became apparent that he didn’t remember me. My heart sank. The friendship I envisioned went down in flames. That is, as I said, the friendship I envisioned. Learning to be his new friend several times a day would be an adjustment, but one I had seen before. In other facilities, in instances where a resident didn’t remember family members, the family members filled the role of friend. That’s a difficult adjustment, but really the only option that is left; to enter into their world as it is and meet them where they are. That’s what God does, and in many instances commonsense applied for God’s sake is a truer religion than church because commonsense and control-lust are never found enjoying a beer together.

Seeing life accurately is important to maneuvering through this life we have been called to. Mourning, disappointments, and pain, will be part of it, but this is where the Bible uses another word to describe love in general and God’s love in particular: hope. Love and hope are closely related. Sinners who want to control people also want to strip them of hope. Hopeless people are easy to control. This dynamic applies to everything happening on the schoolyard playground to international statecraft; condemnation is the waters that we swim in. Condemnation robs hope. The Bible warns us to not “mourn as those who have no hope.” Something that possesses no element of hope is likely untrue. Hope is an acid test for truth.

In 2007 I began a journey that has resulted in learning some real truth about life in general and the Bible in particular, but of course, I still have much to learn. My list of former presuppositions to be challenged is long. One of those is the issue of hell. As a biblical grammarian, I assert that hell is in the Bible, but I am suspicious of the generally accepted concept of it. Obviously, in a world inclined towards using condemnation to control people, the whole, “If you don’t obey us God is going to send you to hell” thing is extremely suspect. Furthermore, religions propaganda and the traditions of men has buried the rudimentary foundations of truth needed to have a semblance of metaphysical understanding. Truth is power, and empowering the individual is not something sin is vested in. Propaganda is always the ply of sin. Here is my point: many in our culture are in heaven because of some intuitive change that came about in seeking God. To think that people are in heaven because of correct theological understanding is not only a classic example of under-law thinking, but utterly absurd. To begin with, which theological assessment? What is your argument? Your celebrity pastor is more righter than mine? Not to condemn you, but you are probably a well-meaning idiot. The sinful world has done its job well, few really understand justification by new birth. But most understand a sole hope in God like the thief on the cross. We have hope that many we loved are in heaven with God and made eternally whole. Only under-law thinking condemns people to eternal suffering for being theologically confused when anyone in their right mind would be confused about American religion. Besides, being interpreted, you are threatened with eternal hell for disagreeing with their theological opinions based on what someone else told them. Pardon my skepticism laced with numerous suspicions.

By now, you must be wondering what all of this has to do with a Beagle. Much. Recently, we lost our beloved “Fletcher,” our family Beagle that we adopted when my brother died of ALS six years ago. Fletcher was a very docile hound that loved everyone. Fletcher had many humorous idiosyncrasies, one being his uncanny ability to get loose despite being uber docile. He was probably old when we took him in. Looking back now, along with recent research, I would say he had dementia when we took him in. If we would have ever stopped to think about it long enough, he showed signs of not knowing people in the short-term and long-term. Fletcher was my brother’s close friend, but thinking back, when I took him in to say final goodbyes to my brother, I don’t think Fletcher acted in a way that indicated he knew my brother. It was one of those things that seemed strange in the back of my mind, but I never put two and two together. Fletcher was a huge blessing to everyone, and was endeared to everyone who met him, but these endearments were moment by moment.

Recently, Fletcher stopped eating dog food and would only eat cat food, and then stopped eating cat food as well (cat food has a much stronger smell than dog food). Then, he stopped drinking water. He would also freeze in a position, indicating that he was forgetting things that were formally instinct and involuntary CNS activities. Other CNS failures soon followed. Unfortunately, the veterinarians were unable to give us any definitive answers and dementia was never brought up. I put this all together after we made the decision to put him down as he was having convulsions etc. They thought it might have been a brain tumor that surgery could correct, but I am pretty sure dementia was taking him. This is what dementia and Parkinson’s disease does in humans as well; the brain stops telling the body what to do and the parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous system becomes imbalanced. Fletcher’s brain stopped telling him he was hungry, thirsty, and how to walk. But, he remembered his walks on the bike path that he loved so much. I took him for his last one, but had to carry him back to the house.

If I had only figured this out earlier, medications could have kept Fletcher with us longer. There are medications like carbidopa/levodopa and Namenda available for dogs. There are also recommended diet supplements as well. Is all of that worth it for a dog? Yes, as we will soon understand.

Fletcher’s passing, as well as another pet I lost about the time Fletcher came into our lives, begs the question: why do we take the passing of our pets so hard? This goes back to what we have previously discussed in this article: pets are not under condemnation, right? They are not under law. In other words, harsh judgments do not temper our love for them. Their ill behavior is written off as, “well, it’s a dog, and dogs will be dogs.” One friend put it this way, “They are so innocent.” And in fact, God doesn’t have any laws for pets or animals in the Bible. Well, not exactly. Under the auspices of “law,” in the Bible, we do have “covenants.” What we fail to recognize follows: major covenants God made with humanity in the Bible also include animals. Consider: “Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten by God.” “Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth.” “In that day I will make a covenant for them with the beasts of the field, the birds in the sky, and the creatures that move along the ground. Bow and sword and battle will abolish from the land, so that all may lie down in safety. ” “In his hand is the life of every creature.”

Christ said that we humans are “much more valuable than sparrows,” but yet, some denominations like Protestantism teach that God preselects some people for eternal hell. Meanwhile, we know that ALL animals go to heaven because they are not under law, viz, condemnation. This kind of logic is indicative of how church rolls. One does better to learn about salvation from our pets. But at any rate, I don’t want to diminish the paramount priority of life for every person to seek after God and put all of their hope in Him. And, you don’t need church or a religious expert to do that. In fact, that will do more to derail your efforts than not. Christ came to make a way for you to be part of God’s literal family. A way to die with Christ, and thereby, die to the law and its condemnation. A dead person cannot be indicted under the law. Those resurrected with Christ are only obligated to love. That’s the focus. It’s not a goal to not sin or to be abscessed with sin-sniffing, but a forward look dominated by love. You can’t sin when you are loving anyway. You live for a reward in edifying yourself and others, not an endeavor to stay out of hell by appeasing control-lust. You must be born again.

I believe the following. My younger brother, like most Americans, didn’t have a prayer of wading through all of the theology created by celebrity pastors who own five different vacation properties. I know, that in the end of his life he put all of his hope in Christ to the best of his ability. Yes, the motives of the person do matter. In addition, the Bible states that every individual is born with the “works of the law” written on our hearts with the conscience accusing or excusing actions resulting in humanity being “without excuse.” This is saying that a lot of our knowledge about God is intuitive to the individual. Hence, all are without excuse. Submitting to a smorgasbord of religious authorities will not save you. You are without excuse. You are responsible as an individual to find God, “seek, and you will find.” That’s the promise.

In all of this we should have hope and embrace the goodness of God’s life and creation. In the case of a Beagle and my brother, I know they are together again, and Fletcher will remember him forever. We well embrace all of the goodness of life because we would never give up having the memories to prevent the pain; the pain will all pass soon enough while life is forever.

I will remember this every time I see a rainbow. And you should too.

paul

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