Why secular psychology has taken this route is interesting, since historically psychologists did not generally believe this way.  From the foundation of Freud, psychologists believed man was inherently evil, just as the Bible says.  Darwin actually supplied the teeth to this supposition, since the individual was seen to be the product of selfish genes, looking after only themselves and their survival in a hostile world.  Neither Darwin nor Freud believed in a benevolent Creator, or absolute morality, so the early psychological picture of man was of a beast locked in a cage where he was told to be good but could not be.  His constant falling short caused trouble in his mind, or neurosis, and he tried all his days to live up to something that he couldn’t.  The answer, said Freud, was liberation from this paradigm, or freedom.  Freedom from rules, freedom from societal restraints.  Not advocating will to power as Nietzsche did, Freud still believed in the essence of that reasoning, and aimed in his therapy to set people free from the condemnation they felt, especially about sexuality.  So early psychology, or at least counseling, was in stark opposition to humanism.

Freud’s disciples, however, did not take to this so well.  Adler,  and the Neo-Freudians proposed that Freud was right about a lot of things, but not innate depravity.  The new humanistic psychologists proposed, instead, that man was essentially good but was being corrupted by an evil society, evil influences.  If left alone, he would self-actualize to the highest potential, but plebian influences were foolishly getting in the way and had to be cast down.  Thus the Superman of Nietzsche’s desire was sublimated into a new benevolent form: the Superman of Maslow, who had risen to the top of the hierarchy of needs.  By this time, psychology was becoming more scientific and empirical.  They had no need for the theology and metaphysics of Freud (who was essentially religious and theological, not scientific).  They were seeing the importance of environment and circumstances, and were doubting anything innate such as genes, personality, or “nature,” as having deterministic influence on an individual.  Man could master his environment, become anything he wanted to be.  So went the humanistic psychologists in a new age of progressivism.

Generally, this sentiment caught on.  Distancing itself from Judeo-Christian belief was a goal worthy in itself, thought the secularists, and scientific psychology felt no need to justify the existence of God, sin, evil, choice, accountability, afterlife, or anything of the like.  They could do away with it all simply by announcing that man was built good.  Interestingly, they started using evolution to support this thesis.  Whereas evolution once perfectly justified deviance and immorality, because of the selfish gene and survival of the fittest, now humanistic psychologists found evolutionary support for empathy, altruism, and sacrificial love.  They studied “good” behavior in animals and decided that “bad” behavior was just a glitch in a calculus of what was best for the tribe.  They studied “good” instances of child behavior and decided that distrust and socialization from parents was really what corrupted children.  “Crime” became something abnormal, something to probe, as though foreign to normal human nature.  Everything was turned on its head, and just-so stories were invented to explain trickier situations of how evolution could dictate both altruistic and selfish behavior.

It should be clear to the Christian at this point how humanism, as just one assumption of secular psychology, is able to twist a field around so much.  Everything about authority, morality, and self-direction is polluted if one believes man is essentially good.  Counseling, teaching, and parenting change.  Politics, social programming, and media change.  Everything changes because man is now wise, powerful, and good enough to direct himself.  He still needs freedom, as Freud insisted, and he still needs freedom from rules and constraints.  But he is now able to self-actualize, to become anything he wants to be, to be powerful and healthy and good, just by looking within himself and being unguided.  This is why authority is so evil, and why religion and rules set a society back.  This is why everything traditional needs to change and why scientific elites hold the key to progress.

A Christian in this field is going to have to hold strong against these sentiments and others.  He or she is going to need to have a strong faith that the Fall really did occur, and that sin exists.  Nothing could be more prideful than to say that man is self-sufficient and godlike within.  Nothing could be more devastating to tell to clients bound up in addiction and dysfunction.  A Christian in psychology who can hold fast to the truth of human depravity, and the deceitfulness of our own hearts, is going to have a key to unlocking the interpretation that real psychological experiments reveal all the time.  Just one look at social psychology, with its bystander effect, Milgram experiments, and groupthink—among others—will be enough to convince an undergraduate that human nature is essentially selfish and deceived.  The quest will be to not bury our heads in the sand and let the evidence which so clearly suggests the Truth be overlooked.

In practice, this sounds good.  Nobody wants the study of human beings, individuals, our behavior, to be fraught with superstition and pseudoscience.  Nobody wants Gary Zukav to qualify as a scientific professional.  However, methodological naturalism does more than just keep phonies out.  It is a cage which locks scientists in.

Scientific psychologists, by embracing naturalism, get into hot water quickly because their conclusions will only be true IF naturalism is truly the case.  If naturalism is not truly the case—human beings have a soul, for instance—then methodological naturalism is unable to lead them to the right conclusions.   Instead, it will nullify true hypotheses and explain away (badly) any suspicious evidence.  This is precisely what we see in various areas of psychological study.  While not ALL psychology is flawed—there is some really great stuff to be learned out there—the methodology is not able to lead us to the answers to big-picture questions.  And psychology naturally gravitates to the big questions: Do we have free will?  Do we have a soul?  Does consciousness exist?  Do innate ideas?  Why do people commit evil acts?  These types of questions are gemstones for psychologists but clearly overlap with religion, or metaphysics.  But metaphysical questions cannot be answered correctly by the scientific establishment.  Not because scientific answers would necessarily be wrong—they would be, if naturalism were correct—but because naturalism is not actually the case.

Most secular psychologists understand this today.  I mean, they understand that their questions are religious and are essentially trying to answer them without appeal to religion, the supernatural, or metaphysics.  Some psychologists even dismiss the possibility of metaphysics altogether—no consciousness, no mental realm, no world of ideas, no morality, no principles which tie existence together.  While these psychologists would probably be the minority, if specifically interviewed, in reality they are only being consistent methodological naturalists. They think they are getting rid of God, sin, evil, souls, afterlives, destiny, tarot cards… and they are.  But they are also, by definition, getting rid of the mind, the will, the emotions, conscience, morality, history, consciousness, and shared existence.  They have to eliminate all these things because they all point to a metanarrative or metaphysical realm–an “upper story” existence where there is no rational way to explain, test, or verify.

Of course most secular psychologists will tell you they believe in at least some of these things, such as the mind and emotions.  But when they get down to it, their philosophy will not allow them to.  “Clearly people have thoughts and emotions,” they will say, but the real value in these thoughts and emotions is whether they will lead to some observable, predictable behavior.  If they don’t, they can be discarded.  Or maybe they don’t even exist!  So went the behaviorist philosophy of Watson and Skinner.  Cognitive psychologists today defend thoughts and emotions, but when it gets down to philosophical questions about whether computers could have consciousness or emotions, the line between human and machine gets blurry.  If thoughts, emotions, and values are reducible to digits in a line of computer code, then they are not innate or “real” in any objective sense.  They are just vestigial or practical, at best.  Biological psychologists get in trouble, similarly, when you probe the mind-body connection.  In their view, thoughts and emotions are just afterthoughts of neurological processing… basically controlled by biology.  If that is the case, then they are determined and not free, so we cannot be accountable for our actions or wise in building our lives upon what we think.  When it gets down to it, every field within psychology ends up philosophizing away the humanity of humanity.  Usually it is only a radical fringe who are seen as extreme within each specialty—the Dennet’s, Chomsky’s, and Skinner’s—but even an undergraduate can see that the extremes are the logical outcomes of the position.  If what they are saying is true, there is no human being, group dynamics, or personality.  Nor is there morality, free will, or soul.  We think there is, or we feel there must be, but we are told that those things are deceptions.  Everyday experience or emotion is not telling us the truth.  This is a very dangerous position for a scientist, who is supposed to be operating on evidence, to take.

Christians who therefore want to be psychologists need to recognize this battle.  They know that science should be the pursuit of truth, and if experiments point to metaphysics or something beyond what can be tested through the senses, then it should be worthwhile to consider it.  But methodological naturalism ensures that we are not free to explore where the evidence leads.  We are only free to explore it as the means and ends bend to “the rules.”   If the rules keep us in the cage, we must stay in the cage.  They assure us that outside the cage is only lies anyway.  This leads to a schizophrenic Truman-show condition where we are told to be happy playing in our room but are always wondering what is outside that room.  If there is nothing really outside, why are we always wondering, feeling that there must be so?

That is the dilemma of being a psychologist, which is why many Christians become counselors instead—where there is more freedom to explore those questions, give metaphysical answers, and affect people’s lives for real (who are normally suffering because of metaphysical questions anyway).  This of course leaves the scientific psychologist establishment and the APA to grow darker and darker, but it is very difficult to live in a world where experiments are designed and data are manipulated, again and again, to work against core beliefs and moral convictions that are so dear to people of faith.

Psychology obviously dovetails with a number of other professions, such as business, law, medicine, journalism, and education. Psychologists are desired and received in most job sectors.

The study of psychology, from a Christian perspective, is interesting because it is the study of the human being without the light of special revelation. That is, without theology or scriptural insight. It studies the essential nature of individuality and is very helpful in capturing the inner workings of the mind and human behavior. Its limits, however, are defined by the often liberal posturing of the secular psychology researchers–for example, the androgyny or de-genderizing agenda ignores easily observable differences between male and female development, especially in children. And often the “fleshly” side of human nature is captured at the expense of the moral or “spirit-filled” side. Studies on altruism, for example, are riddled with unhelpful and conflicting theories of evolutionary development of conscience instead of the common sense nod to religion or reason, which is normally the basis for moral development. Studies about empathy are likewise ad hoc.

More importantly, the whole field of psychology is led astray by its supposed claim to be a science. Since Freudianism died out in the 1930s and 40s, psychology turned scientific and purports to be neutral and objective in its discoveries. But professional psychologists and the APA are far from objective… they are committed to methodological naturalism (i.e. agnosticism/atheism), humanism (man is essentially good), moral relativism (i.e. what’s “good” changes with time and culture), and evolution. Many psychologists are mini-philosophers, creating semi-religions of their own as they delve into matters of free will, the nature of things, and morality. The result of these commitments and philosophizing is hardly a comprehensive or objective snapshot of the human being, but rather an assortment of politically correct notions. Some of these notions are indeed testable and helpful. Others are a stumbling block, at best. Behavioral and cognitive therapy, as well as some forms of counseling, have yielded some of the best results the psychological world has to offer. But much of the psychological world has gone astray, yet chases after itself within the closed world of the Academy. Any honest researcher will tell you that they can make their data say anything they want; choose the wrong interpretation, however, and you are out of the Ivory Tower. This is hardly objective “science.” It is protected politics.

Some of the most controversial or “charged” areas of psychology today, for the Christian, are:

• Gender/sexuality
• Education
• Ethics

These fields would be very difficult to be in because of the sheer weight of the Academy, pushing contemporary trends that are anti-biblical. Psychologists are often called in to “enlighten” these fields, but their prescriptions only push people farther away from Scriptural tenets and guidelines. In the field of gender/sexuality, psychology has dismantled notions of gender identity, gender roles, heterosexuality, abstinence, purity, pregnancy, and child-training in favor of theories which promote androgyny, feminism, LGBT, promiscuity, experimentation, abortion, and rebelliousness. Pushing against any one of these sacred cows is grounds for censure. In the field of education, psychology has lost faith in traditional methods such as core curriculum, drill, phonics and arithmetic, teacher authority, parents, and code of conduct. Instead, they have embraced a liberal commitment to child-centeredness, values clarification, teacher facilitation, federal intervention, financial solvency, and multiculturalism. They are not willing to abandon these values despite the failure of public schools and American education, and despite the brave naysayers in their own field. Obviously the field of ethics is a dangerous foray too, because appeals must be made without religious support or invoking absolute morality. Ethical psychologists are called on in perhaps every professional field in existence including courts, hospitals, laboratories, correction facilities, Boards of Trustees, and industry. But political correctness and deconstruction constrict the range of argument so much that it is almost impossible for a Christian to converse. Secular psychologists, in denying the soul, dignity, and uniqueness of human beings (i.e. the image of God), have essentially destroyed the very object of their study. They cannot sufficiently guard us anymore.

This is not to say that a Christian should not major or enjoy psychology. There is much to learn and discover, especially when it comes to observable behavior. But when it comes to what is inside the heart/mind of man—the unobservable things—secular psychology gets it wrong almost every time. Thus, Christian psychologists should know that a major revising of what is learned is necessary at all times—comparing results to what the Bible says about man, and comparing prescriptions to what the Creator commands, is necessary to filter everyday lectures and readings throughout college. If a Christian then enters the professional field of psychology, ethics which come from God rather than from the field must narrow the experiments he performs, the counsel he gives, the techniques he uses, or the interpretations he invents. The Holy Spirit is able to blow on the work of a psychologist, but it takes dedication and commitment to His authority.

In posts to follow, we will examine the more “religious” commitments of secular psychology and how to sidestep them so that they do not infiltrate biblical belief. We will also propose better assumptions.