No Longer Quivering
by Doug Wilson from Blog and Mablog – When Truth is Your Friend
Editor’s note: So Doug is not in favor of ‘paid counseling’ because it involves only dealing with one person in conflict instead of everyone involved? Sorry pal, I am calling codswallop on that. He’s being quite disingenuous here. He dislikes counseling in the world because a) it does not respect his Biblical Patriarchy nonsense, b) does not allow him control over the victim and the victimizer, c) does not allow him to practice his ridiculous self-aggrandizement and might actually encourage the victim to leave the toxic bounds of his own church. This is from Doug’s series on counseling a faux sexual abuse victim.
And so I am certainly on your side—but there is an important distinction. It is not the same way an attorney would be on your side. Let me explain. One of the reasons why I am dubious about our common acceptance of “paid counseling” is that it tends to set up in people’s minds the idea of professional/client relationship, as you have when you engage an attorney. An attorney is hired to represent his client’s interests in a particular dispute, and one of the reasons this can work fairly well is that the other party usually has an attorney as well. We have institutionalized, via this system, the practice of hearing the best case both sides of a dispute can make (Prov. 18:17). We trust the system, and are okay with each attorney doing his part.
But this is not the case in counseling snarls. When I am counseling someone, as a minister it is my task to represent Christ in the situation, as best I can, and not represent one party or the other. If Mr. and Mrs. Murphy have a dispute and come in to see me (or the Smiths, or the Jones), I do not pick which one of them is my client. In the dispute, I might point out that she is in the right, but not because she hired me to make that case. I would say this because they laid out the problem with me, and I compared the situation to the teaching of Scripture (which is the authoritative voice of Christ), which then directed us all to the solution. I am doing this because it is my task to represent the truth of Scripture, and Christ is that truth.
QUOTING QUIVERFULL is a regular feature of NLQ – we present the actual words of noted Quiverfull leaders, cultural enforcers and those that seek to keep women submitted to men and ask our readers: What do you think? Agree? Disagree? This is the place to state your opinion. Please, let’s keep it respectful – but at the same time, we encourage readers to examine the ideas of Quiverfull and Spiritual Abuse honestly and thoughtfully.
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