He smacked that one right on the head. Christianity has become a therapeutic religion of the self, of perceived problems, and of solutions to bring about happiness. That is not who Christ is or what Christianity is. But pastors enjoy solving problems and people like the fact that pastors don't charge for their services so it is an easy pitfall to encounter. In the end it distorts the faith and consumes the pastor.
Christianity is a way of life -- it is liturgical by nature and not simply about what is moral but what rescues us from our immorality. It is a way of life -- prayed more than practiced and lived out under the cross and not to impress Him who died on that cross. How easy it is for us to forget this! So we turn a way of life into a means of getting what it is we want. We have learned nothing from Eden whatsoever. We still work at our playthings and play with the things of God -- falsely believing that what we play at will make us happy and what God offers us is hardly more than a stern "no" to all the desires of our hearts. How foolish we are! It is precisely the desires of our hearts that we dare not trust and the Word of the Lord that endures forever that we can trust.
Pastoral care has become a term for anything the pastor wants to do and anything the people want him to do. Pastors want to feel important and nothing makes you feel better than somebody telling you that you have helped them solve a vexing problem and nothing makes people appreciate the minister more than when he helps them out of a bad situation. Strangely enough, pastoral care has become a term completely divorced from the means of grace and from the work of catechesis.
Dr. Korby asks us a pointed question. How much of our pastoral care (counseling) is the result of a failure to catechize our people properly in the Word of God? When we fail to teach people to be men and women, husbands and wives, parents and children, then we will be left to problem solve them out of their unwillingness and refusal to be men or women or married or family. No wonder we have accepted as normal the situation in which people do not know if they are men or women, no longer need or want marriage, and find children an unwelcome drain and distraction on our self-centered lives. And that is but one area of life in which our failure to catechize has created the need for a counselor.
What we are given is the calling and the tools to diagnose the soul. What we would rather do as pastors and our people would rather have us to is to problem solve. The problem is that problem solving seldom requires the Word of God and the Word of God can impede our goal for efficient, effective, and effusively happy lives. Is this not the reason why sin has become an absent word in our preaching, teaching, and conversation? The point here, of course, is not to diminish good counselors or good counseling but when the pastor and the church become consumed by this, who is left to speak of God and for God?
The care of the soul which is the focus and responsibility of the pastoral office has everything to do with the means of grace and the Word of God. The goal is simply to keep the person in a state of grace, believing God's Word and promise and rejoicing to receive the gifts of God for the people of God. Instead of this, the goal of the ministry both from ministers and those they serve has become to make a better quality of life here. It is no wonder why our Lord asks if faith will be found when He comes again in His glory. God help us to restore the rightful focus of who we are and what we do on God's behalf to and for His people.
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