Few topics in psychology are as controversial among Christians as abnormal psychology.

For many people, abnormal or clinical psychology is what psychology is about. Learning about the abnormal is often what attracts students to the study of psychology, but few topics in psychology are as controversial among Christians as abnormal psychology.

Some topics that psychologists study are more worldview-dependent than others. Topics like the nervous system and sensory processes are far from the “core” of our humanity and are not the focus of the Bible’s message. Others, like personality, development, and consciousness define us. Few topics in psychology come closer to the “core” aspects of the human condition – our sin nature, salvation, restoration, and sanctification, than “abnormal” psychology. One’s perspective on sin, personal responsibility, and moral absolutes has huge implications on one’s view of the causes of abnormal thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. As you might predict, the gravity of the subject matter contributes to disagreements among Christians about the nature and causes of abnormal thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. For the Christian studying psychology, the nature and importance of these issues require great caution. For the Christian who plans to serve God in a career in mental health care, an in-depth and Holy Spirit-informed Christian worldview is crucial.

Some of the key worldview questions with which Christians who are psychologists, pastoral counselors, and theologians wrestle are:

• Is the experience of abnormal thoughts, feelings, and behaviors a mental illness?
• Is mental pain and suffering best understood as the result of disunity with God, chemical imbalances, brain illness, trauma and life experiences, or some combination?
• Is mental pain and suffering best treated from a spiritual or a medical perspective?
•  Can the techniques developed by modern psychology contribute to a Christian approach to counseling?
• Can Christians safely borrow techniques from modern psychology to help those experiencing mental pain and suffering?
• Can modern therapeutic techniques be detached from their underlying worldview assumptions?
• Has the Church lost confidence in the power of the Gospel and God’s ability to heal?
• How do we explain that medication and secular therapeutic techniques help Christians and non-Christians alike?

What is Abnormal? What does the word “abnormal” mean to you? We all have a personal sense of what is normal and what is abnormal, but defining it is more difficult. Normal and abnormal can be described from different perspectives and in varying degrees. Are people who are a “little odd” abnormal? Is reading the Bible, praying daily, and remaining sexually abstinent until marriage abnormal? Is believing in God and communicating with God abnormal? These questions are meaningless outside of the context of worldviews.

Are pain, difficulty, hardship, and suffering normal? A Christian worldview believes that God uses trials and difficulties as tools to strengthen and refine us. Modern psychology’s worldview is that pain, difficulty, and hardship are abnormal, absurd, and to be avoided at all costs. Statistically, something is abnormal if it varies sufficiently from the average, the usual, or the customary. Many people define abnormal in terms of variance from culturally accepted standards (i.e., political correctness). Some define abnormal subjectively (i.e., “If I believe that my feelings are abnormal, they are abnormal”). Some people believe that normal and abnormal are no more than value judgments, and that to label another’s thoughts and behaviors as abnormal is to exercise power inappropriately. Some people define abnormal in terms of dysfunctions in biological processes, some in terms of sin and disunity with God, and others describe abnormality as a failure to live according to moral rules.