This article is was reprinted, with the authors permission, from https://chadragsdale.wordpress.com/
Disclaimer: While this article makes the valid point that many aspects of one's inner life would be better addressed through spiritual means and methods, professional therapeutic support is always recommended for treating diagnosed mental illness and mental health crises. Likewise, if you are having suicidal thoughts, please reach out for help. In the US, you can call 988 to access a free and confidential Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.
Before I dive in, a mundane confession of my own uselessness. I think it is good for the soul to regularly be in situations where you are reminded of your own inadequacy and the adequacy of others. I’m a college administrator and professor. I have a terminal degree. This makes me useful for certain tasks and absolutely useless in others. I’m always reminded of this when I gather with friends who are discussing repairs they’ve done to their vehicles or renovations they’ve done to their homes. You did that?! Like, by yourself?! How many YouTube videos did you have to watch?! It’s easy to be insecure about this, but it’s healthier to recognize that not everyone is good at everything and we need each other.
What is true of individuals is also true of entire fields. You wouldn’t ask a plumber to fly your plane. You wouldn’t ask a philosopher to overhaul your engine. It is a repeated mistake in thinking to assume that because a person is an expert at one thing, they are an expert at all things. A related mistake is assuming that a singular field of knowledge is sufficient to answer all of life’s conundrums. This would be like a preacher with no knowledge of mechanics looking at a sputtering engine and concluding that the machine must be haunted by demons. Or this would be like when the vaunted physicist Stephen Hawking boldly declared that science has rendered theology and philosophy obsolete because science, after all, is sufficient to answer all of our most pressing questions of existence.
It is with this in mind, that I want to question the sufficiency of therapy. It’s been my experience that questioning the sufficiency of therapy can be a risky thing. To many, therapy has become all but sacred. People talk of therapy the way that people used to talk of religion. Only the fool questions its effectiveness and necessity. In an age where we have become hyper-aware of all things “mental health,” the therapist is the new priest or priestess. It’s necessary to add an important clarification. I am most definitely not against therapy. Without going into any details, my family has benefited from the work of godly and wise therapists. I work at an institution where one of our most popular degrees is in pastoral care and counseling. I work with talented colleagues who have dedicated their professional lives to this field. But they would all readily identify the limits of therapy. Chesterton (my boy!) said that to love anything means identifying its boundaries. So it is with therapy. Loving therapy means reflecting on what it can and cannot do. Christians in particular should be wise enough to recognize the dangers of turning faith into a “therapeutic worldview.”
I’ve been thinking about this because I finally read that classic work by Viktor Frankl this week, Man’s Search for Meaning. I need to repent for not reading it a lot sooner. If you haven’t read it, the book contains Frankl’s reflections on surviving the Holocaust, but it is much more than that. It is really Frankl’s reflections on how to survive life and how to live in light of suffering and death. As an accomplished psychiatrist, Frankl’s observations are informed by both his experiences and his expertise. Towards the end of the book, he made an observation that felt extremely contemporary.
More and more, a psychiatrist is approached today by patients who confront him with human problems rather than neurotic symptoms. Some of the people who nowadays call on a psychiatrist would have seen a pastor, priest or rabbi in former days. Now they often refuse to be handed over to a clergyman and instead confront the doctor with questions such as, “What is the meaning of my life?”
Frankl observed that modern people live in an “existential vacuum.” The main problem of existence is that life has no meaning or purpose. It’s what he called a private and personal form of nihilism. Later in the book, he put it succinctly: “People have enough to live by but nothing to live for; they have the means but no meaning.” We have everything except for meaning, and it’s making us miserable. How much of what we have identified as problems of mental health are actually problems of meaninglessness? We are depressed because we can’t identify any reason for our lives. We are anxious because all of the distractions and pleasures that are built into modern life fail to satisfy the deeper need for our lives to matter. Because of our therapeutic (and pharmaceutical) worldview, we go to the doctor or the therapist expecting them to fix these problems. After all, where else would we go? There is one tool in our toolbox for fixing all of our mental health problems. Unfortunately, these existential problems often fall outside of the boundary of their expertise and effectiveness.
Frankl said, “There is nothing in the world, I venture to say, that would so effectively help one to survive even the worst conditions as the knowledge that there is a meaning in one’s life.” His unique approach to therapy (which he called logotherapy) was to help a person find meaning for their life. In this sense, he recognized that this was traditionally the work of a pastor or maybe a philosopher (if you ever happened to meet the rare philosopher who could successfully carry on a conversation with a normal person) not a psychoanalyst.
My point is that there are maladies plaguing our culture (especially our young people) that cannot be fixed by simply going to traditional therapy or taking medication. Therapy and medication may be an important part of wellness – they often are! – but they aren’t sufficient. Wellness, especially in the midst of trauma, suffering, and despair, can only be achieved when deep reservoirs of meaning are in place. Those reservoirs have all but dried up for so many. Wellness can never be achieved so long as the problem is misdiagnosed. This fundamental observation is too lacking in our therapeutic culture. If you want to be well, don’t neglect seeking out the counsel of those who will guide you to discover life’s meaning. Sometimes that is your therapist. But just as often it is your pastor, a godly and wise teacher, a loving grandparent, or a dusty book.
Chad Ragsdale
Chad is a preacher’s kid who grew up in northwest Indiana. After graduating from Lincoln Christian College and Seminary, Chad joined the faculty at Ozark Christian College in 2005. He has taught primarily in the areas of philosophy, Christian apologetics, and biblical interpretation. In 2021, he was appointed Executive Vice President of Academics at Ozark. You can see some of Chad’s sermons here.