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Category: Philosophy and Psychology
Date Submitted: 08/20/2012 05:27 PM
A Critique of Adams and Backus
A Critique of: How to help people change by Dr. Jay E. Adams and Telling yourself the truth by Dr. William Backus and Marie Chapian
Anita Meyers
Liberty University
Coun 507
February 3, 2011
Dr. Sandy
Breazeale
A Critique of Adams and Backus
A Critique of: How to help people change by Dr. Jay E. Adams and Telling yourself the truth by Dr. William Backus and Marie Chapian
In his book, Dr. Adams (1986) presents an interpretation of II Timothy-3:16 that he states is the exclusive method of counseling from a Christian and biblical perspective. I found two flaws in his suggestion. The first perspective being that only Christians’ that follow his guidelines can benefit from the results in what he terms acceptable change. The second is the idea that this change is only acceptable if it is “Toward God” (p. 6). This is certainly true when it pertains to salvation and the biblical guiding that God will give you a “new heart” and a “new spirit” (KJV, Ezekiel-36:26), the word of God acknowledged that the righteous and unrighteous live under a measure of God’s grace and mercy 9Hebrews-4:16). It is indefensible to say that damned and unsaved persons are not able to do God’s will when it comes to their lives and be able to give sound advice, even if they do not know what God’s word have to say about it.
Dr. Adam holds up scripture with high regard, but he does not allow ones intellectual credibility to come into play. Dr. Adam says that “It it is a truth that is necessary to counseling, it will be found already in a purer form in the bible” (p. 39). What is a person to do if they are having a struggle with an eating disorder? What would be Dr. Adams solution? It cannot be to tell them to go to the bible to see what the scriptures have to say about it. Once they have done that and this does not work, we cannot say that they did not...