Doing the hard part after counseling

I have had to face the question of counseling. I make that statement conscious of the irony of it, because it is agreed that counseling is a good thing. The Bible says so:

“Without counsel plans fail, but with many advisers they succeed” (Proverbs 15:22).

It is also true, of course, that verses come in contexts and that their meanings are delimited by other Scriptures. And so it seems that this advice from Proverbs has a particular reference to making war or building an addition to your house but it might not be advisable to have “many advisers” when it comes to your marriage. Everybody in town should not necessarily know about that disaster. Maybe one wise person is enough. In fact, maybe the whole enterprise of counseling should be pondered very carefully.

The upside of counseling is the additional perspective you glean—one person alone cannot think of every angle of a subject. The downside of counseling is that it can be a vehicle for postponing obedience. I am certainly not saying that people go into counseling in order to postpone obedience, at least not consciously. But that is the danger nonetheless.

You arrive at the counseling office and sign up for 10 weeks of counseling with a first-rate Christian counselor. That’s 10 weeks you get to pour out your complaints and sit back and listen to someone who is paid to have interesting ideas. You may even decide that since you paid enough you should be guaranteed a satisfactory outcome. You sort of forget that at the end of the sessions you have to actually do something.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in The Cost of Discipleship, revisits the story of the man who tried “to land Jesus in the impasse of moral doubts and difficulties” with his bogus question, “Who is my neighbor?” after Jesus had already made it plain that he should love God and love his neighbor. Bonhoeffer makes the point that “Who is my neighbor?” is nothing more than a stalling tactic to avoid obedience to what is obvious. He says wryly:

“Keep on posing problems, and you will escape the necessity of obedience.”

I am increasingly convinced that the holdup in many so-called counseling cases is not lack of clarity about what needs to be done but an aversion to actually doing it. “Love thy neighbor” is straightforward. Honoring and respecting your husband is clear. With average intelligence you can pretty much figure out what that would look like in your case. And what it probably looks like is your dying to some idolatrous desire and picking up your cross and following Jesus. “Sharing” your complaints is much more fun, of course. But when everyone has gone home it’s just you and God and the command to finally do something hard.