Slave of Another Profession

In the counseling world there is pressure to “get ‘em in and get ‘em out” from the clients, insurance companies and even many state licensing boards. The idea that counselors should use a method called “cognitive behavioral therapy” is preached by many in the profession. CBT boiled down is finding your faulty thinking and changing it to right thinking. However this never deals with the underlying heart issues present in all of us. The mind is wholly separate from the created heart inside of each of us. We can’t simply think differently and have that lead to heart transformation. I was told by a counselor once that when I felt my anger rising up I should leave the room, go to the kitchen, grab a container of ice, go to the shower, pull the curtain and throw ice cubes at the wall until I didn’t feel angry any more. Just writing that sentence took effort much less actually doing this while angry. What in this set of instructions was going to transform my heart?

In counseling there is a pull in the therapist to give an answer, to make something okay or to give tools to help ease the suffering of others. But tools are nothing more than giving a slave another profession. In the OT, the Jewish workers of Pharaoh would normally have one job to complete all day. Picking up straw to make bricks, creating bricks, moving bricks, stacking bricks, distributing water, food, organizing tools, everyone had a particular job, much like at a modern construction site. Giving someone a tool to control their anger, or a filter to stop pornography use, or accountability so that they never drink again is okay temporarily, but long term this is trading in a wheat sickle for a brick makers form. This is only a slave of one trade being told to be a slave of another. This might be more functional, it might alleviate acute issues or pain, but internally this person will always be angry, struggle with porn, or with addiction.

Christ did not call us to be slaves but to be free. I believe the only way to be free is to allow pain to be true in our lives, because there is a purpose for it. Pain is not there so we can manage it but so He can use it to transform us to free people, free from our woundedness. I can’t imagine Jesus stating to the Pharisees, quit being so strict with your rules and become like the Sadducees. It would be a change in thinking for the Pharisee, to become liberal like the Sadducees, but were the Sadducees free? No. They were just slaves of another profession. Jesus called each person to deeper places, to hard truths that were given from Love, where shame had no place but Hope did. When Christ interacted with others there was always a movement towards brokenness. Look at Peter after he denied Christ three times...that was a truly broken man, transformed from the angry man he was.