Teaching about Divorce and Remarriage by Aaron Budjen https://www.livinggodministries.net/living_god_ministries/radio_archive/divorce.htm I have never been a fan of pastoral counseling......if i need Christian counseling i will come here or to other believers. If i need counseling i will go to a counselor. Licensed by the state....with insurance and covered by law, statute, and regulations. There is a time and a place for both and neither should swerve into the other 's lane. To me, counseling this woman as they may have done is counseling malpractice. Or maybe i am not seeing the full story which often happens with the media. Blessings! Whit John McArthur's church uses Nouthetic Counseling, which basically tries to equally blame the abuser and the victim. About a dozen years ago, my family went through a very hard time that involved a case of depression and we went searching for answers everywhere. That is when I got introduced to nouthetic counseling. Nouthetic counseling in a nutshell is a conservative Christian style of counseling where modern psychology is rejected and answers for all psychological problems (including mental illness) are supposedly found in the Bible. Some of the greatest damage my family ever experienced has come from nouthetic teaching. I remember buying a particular popular DVD series (in conservative circles) and then watching as that family member struggled with being told by the teacher that her depression was a result of sin and unbelief. I bought into that rubbish too and only when I was able to personally change did that family member get the help she needed. I will not deny that some depression cases could be a result of sin but her problem was not sin. It was a medical issue and when we approached it that way, she was quickly on the way to getting healed. Looking back, I can see that period of my life changed my perspective on certain things and my eyes were opened. I began to see how conservatism can be a dangerous thing if the wrong things are being conserved. I started to see that the church (at large) has a tendency to conserve horrific, extra-Biblical traditions in some cases, eschewing modern advancements in areas such as psychology and medicine and essentially enslaving people to bondage for no reason. Remember this: conservatism is only good when it is conserving things that deserve to be conserved. To be fair, some modern psychology IS garbage. Also, not all nouthetic counselors are so extreme as to discard everything modern psychologists say. For example, some of them recognize that some mental issues can be medical in nature rather than sin. Some of them don’t throw guilt on victims and cast the blame on them for all the problems in their lives. However, nouthetic counseling in general leans too much toward blaming the oppressed for me to recommend it a lot of the time. The way this plays out in abuse is this: when a victim goes to a nouthetic counselor for help, especially if she is a woman, she is likely to be told that the abuser needs to fix the sin in his life but the problems in the marriage are her fault too. She is not nice enough, not respectful enough, not obedient enough, not submissive enough. The woman goes back into the fray determined to try harder. No one tries harder to fix a broken marriage than an abuse victim. https://greghowlett.com/blog/thoughts/the-dangers-of-counselors-abuse-series-part-8.aspx The doctrines of men and demons have long been around! The Bible warning us they would flourish in the last days! Common sense and spiritual wisdom are invaluable tools! Again, always directing people to be “led by the Spirit”! Knowing the Spirits voice and leading He will teach us all things! Sadly, the pastor shepherding movement can and has been miss-applied! Attempting to substitute God’s Holy Spirit by men! TR Here is another article that explains the damage that this "Biblical" nouthetic counselling can do. https://heresthejoy.com/2017/09/heres-an-abuse-survivors-plea-about-nouthetic-biblical-counseling/
It clarifies misunderstanding of Divorce and Remarriage in many Christian Communities.
