It is bad enough when a group of scholars determine themselves to be experts on the human psyche, while leaving behind God’s Word. Sometime in the late nineteenth century psychology as a field of study was birthed at the University of Leipzig. It would not take long before something even worse was born, pop psychology.
Pop psychology is a phenomenon wherein everyone determines themselves to be experts on the human psyche. You read a paperback, attend a seminar, browse a website, and suddenly you know who is a psychopath, who is a narcissist, who is bi-polar. If we actually understood the human psyche, we would not be surprised that those we tend to diagnose with such were already our enemies.
There are two reasons for this. Sometimes our enemies become our enemies by doing unkind things to us. Perhaps their conscience is seared. Maybe they wrong us out of their own selfishness. Maybe they are in a foul mood. In any case, we at one and the same time want to hate on this wrongdoer, while pretending to be patient and loving toward people. So we have to paint the wrongdoer as pathological.
The second reason we diagnose people with these utterly unbiblical categories is because we have a seared conscience, are given to selfishness, often wake up on the wrong side of the bed. We label someone a narcissist because we think said person must always have his or her own way, must hold everyone’s attention. This annoys us because we want to have our own way, and want everyone’s attention. They are narcissists because they get in the way of our narcissism.
The Bible, God’s Holy Word which is true in all that it teaches, has its own categories. It calls all of us sinners. It affirms that all our hearts are desperately wicked, and that we deceive ourselves. We are prone to seared consciences. We are all about ourselves. And we have ups and downs. What we don’t have is some special insight apart from God’s Word, that can turn our sin into illness, or our propensities into an excuse for our propensities.
Every mother’s son of us fails to judge with equal measures. We excuse our own behavior, while we accuse the same behavior in others. Do we not believe we are victimized more than we are victimizers? We label ourselves in order to excuse ourselves. Then we label others in order to demonize them. We look at the world through me colored glasses.
Sin is our problem. Sin is their problem. Sin is the problem.
Psychology, either professional or pop, isn’t the solution. Even repentance isn’t the solution. It is the pathway to the solution, Jesus. Praise God for our Savior.
