This video is an internet classic — if anything on the internet can already be known as classic.
I’ve seen references to it numerous times, and showed it to my family for the first time last week. It makes a good point about the necessity of putting off sin. It’s a spoof by Bob Newhart about The Bob Newhart Show, but it makes a point:
Yet this video, for all the accurately implied condemnations of modern counseling, still fails to meet the needs of the individual. Mortifying sin in a believer’s life is more than just “stopping it!” I’ve thought several times about interacting with this, but David Powlison recently wrote a post about it that provide a helpful guide to understanding how Biblical counseling is more than just “stop it” therapy and three verses.
Here is his summary:
- The Bible gives a vision for lifelong transformation and mutual aid—as well as for the 5-minute moment of insight, or the 5-week and 5-month seasons of change, or the 5-year unfolding movement of progressive transformation and deepening.…
- Our Father never simply says “Stop it!” to the Katherine Bigmans or anyone else. He knows we can’t change on our own. We have a living Savior, who died to give us mercy and lives to give us grace in times of need.…
- Wisdom doesn’t speak in boilerplate. It’s never a one-size-fits-all formula. Or, contrary to the Christianese equivalent, it’s never 3-steps-to-Victory.…
- Human responsibility is never by oneself and to oneself. It is always relational.…
- To bluntly confront such a frightened struggler violates the ABCs of biblical wisdom: “comfort the faint-hearted, hold on to the weak, be patient with them all.”…
- To counsel biblically is to fundamentally identify with the people with whom you converse. “Let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall. No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man” (1 Cor. 10:12f). Katherine Bigman is a struggler, but she is not a nut.…
Read the entire post here.
Words of Grace 