Blind Guides: Part I

The fathers of modern psychology

During a conversation He had with His disciples one day, Jesus Christ told them this concerning the false teachings of Israel's religious leaders: "Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be pulled up by the roots. Leave them; they are blind guides. If the blind lead the blind, both will fall into a pit." (Matthew 15:13-14)

Indeed. While Christ was referring to the spiritually corrupt Pharisees and religious teachers who had deceived the Jews by perverting God's laws and commandments, He also referred to all those who deny and distort the word of God to lead folks astray into moral and spiritual ruin.

Some deny and distort the Bible for personal attention and financial gain while others do it because they are influenced by a dark spiritual realm inhabited by Satan and his demons.

But how do people come under demonic influence? Through rebellion against God's transcendent laws either intentionally or unintentionally. When it's intentional, it's done through involvement in the occult, eastern religions or powerful hallucinogenic drugs. 

When it's unintentional, the influence comes through cultural involvement with false religions. Though most western religions claim to worship God, they supersede the Bible with their own doctrines and dogmas. A good example of that is the Roman Catholic Church that denies the biblical gospel of salvation by faith (John 3:16, Romans 10:9-12, Ephesians 2:8-9) to offer its own gospel of works. 

However, the greatest perversion of faith and denial of the Bible today is found in secular, humanistic psychology that offers mankind its own path to salvation and spiritual enlightenment. 

How's that? Psychology, which offers a plethora of competing and confusing theories on human behavior, inverts the Bible by taking what the Bible condemns as destructive behavior and promotes it as positive behavior. 

One example of that is psychology's mantra of positive self-esteem. While high self-esteem sounds like a good thing, the Bible thoroughly condemns it. What is self-esteem? It's self-love. Psychology claims that mankind's biggest problem is low self-esteem. According to that logic, people do bad things to themselves and others because they have low self-esteem. And so, they must be taught to love themselves rather than hate themselves.

But stop and think about that: If someone truly hates himself or herself, then why do they become resentful when they're insulted by others? If you truly hated yourself then you'd rejoice when someone insulted you. The reason why insults upset you is because you have a lofty opinion of yourself that someone else doesn't share. Thus, when you're insulted, it hurts.

Christ understood that fallen human beings are self-lovers. But rather than encourage them to love themselves even more, He said this: "Love your neighbor as yourself". (Mark 12:31) And He also warned that those who love themselves too much will experience a great fall: "Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted." (Matthew 23:12)

The self-esteem movement has been responsible for the sharp increase in narcissism, nihilism, immorality and even adolescent and teenage bullying over the past 60 years. Bullies feed their own swollen egos by persecuting those they view as inferior. 

Psychology also teaches that people behave the way they do because of past experiences that are stored as repressed memories in the unconscious. Thus, if you were spanked or deprived of something as an infant, that memory was stored in your so-called subconscious and it motivates you to do bad things in the present. Many psychologists believe that these repressed memories must be retrieved through the occult technique of hypnosis before their patients can be emotionally healed.

But some--if not many--of these memories aren't legitimate and they can be influenced by the demonic while under hypnosis. This can lead to additional anger, emotional pain and even more destructive behavior. 

And again, the Bible thoroughly condemns traveling back into the past to retrieve old emotional traumas. The apostle Paul said this: "Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus." (Philippians 3:13-14)

And Paul wrote this: "Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity." (Colossians 3:12-14)

The Bible tells us the antidote for emotional pain and suffering is through a personal relationship with God by being born again by faith in His Son Jesus Christ who died for all sin on the cross. The apostle Peter said this: "Cast all your anxiety on him (Christ) because he cares for you." (1 Peter 5:7)

In Part II, how the roots of modern psychology can be found in an ancient lie.