PsychoHeresy Around the World

For years we have been warning Christians throughout the world of the dangers of psychoheresy. We have warned that the psychologizers and their books and tapes would be promoting psychoheresy wherever possible. We regularly receive letters and phone calls from missionaries and other Christians around the world who are attempting to warn church leaders in other countries about the dangers of psychoheresy. However, they find great difficulty because psychology has burgeoned beyond the borders of America and is found mushrooming in practically every continent. A missionary to France describes it this way:

The sufficiency of Scripture is undermined by the "psychologizing" of the church, as Christians turn more and more to the supposedly established "truths" of common grace and natural revelation, instead of giving any meaningful consideration to the profound realities of particular grace and special revelation that we as God’s redeemed people have in Christ Jesus. In other words, Freud has more to say about the inner heart of man than has Jeremiah, Jung about the ultimate experience than Isaiah, Maslow about the real motivations in life than Paul, and Rogers can move us further along toward wholeness than can Jesus.

Another missionary (Taiwan) writes the following:

My wife and I are still praying for you regularly, and I know from personal experience how you need prayer. I have only recently begun to speak out against "Christian" psychology and have been called "arrogant" and have been accused of being full of hatred among other things even by members of my own family. I admit that I am guilty of spiritual pride, which still seems to be a contradiction in terms (the more spiritual one is the more he should be abased), but "who can understand his errors?" Isn’t it amazing, though, that somebody like Larry Crabb can develop a system of sanctification totally foreign to the Bible and taught by no one in the history of the church and the word "arrogant" will never be used to describe him!

Chogyam Trungpa, a leader in the Buddhist faith, says: "Buddhism will come to the West as psychology." Psychology writer Daniel Goleman points out how Eastern religions "seem to be making gradual headway as psychologies, not as religions." Jacob Needleman says of these spiritual teachers now in the West that they "are reformulating and adapting the traditional systems according to the language and atmosphere of modern psychology."

Just as Eastern religions are coming to the West disguised as psychology, psychology is being exported to the rest of the world through American Christianity by way of the psychologizers speaking abroad, through their books and tapes being promoted abroad, and by numerous missionaries now preaching a gospel diluted and polluted with psychology.

It is ironic that Eastern religions are coming to the West as psychologies while psychology is being promoted throughout the world through Christianity.

Here is one final excerpt from a letter from Australia:

Sadly we wish your newsletter did not exist. It is a terrible indictment on the condition of the church that they don’t plainly see it for themselves that this psychology is deadly. Even worse is the fact that they write your material off as of no account. They are going to believe what they want to believe despite the facts and despite the truth. Last year I happened to be somewhere and picked up a copy of one of America’s major Christian publications. The whole publication was devoted to Christian psychology. Your ministry was mentioned virtually of a no account value, just brushed aside and not addressed at all. Talk about apostasy. We have it now.

I have studied psychology and conclude all of society has had its thinking changed by this leaven, and it is not hard to see terrible end-time persecution "through the Ministry of Love." Psychology will be one of the main tools used to control people and to rob them of their freedom.

We appreciate you and what you are doing.

It is grievous to see the rapid spread of psychoheresy in America. It is even more disturbing to see it being exported throughout the world. Once psychological notions about who man is and how he changes become mixed with Christianity, it is extremely difficult to separate them, especially if believers are not well-grounded in the Word of God.

Those who respond to a psychologized gospel are not be responding to the true Gospel at all and may, therefore, not be saved. Instead, a psychologized gospel prepares individuals to embrace a false religion because it rests on the wisdom of men and distorts the Word of God.

(From PAL V2N5)