The Website of Miah and Michelle Collins

I have been really deeply praying about and considering studying psychology lately. This would mean that I would want to get at least a Master’s in psychology and this opens up a lot of questions like where would I study? What would I want to do with my degree? And of course, would I want to study from a Christian school or go back to a secular school?

Well, I think that I have made a decision for at least one of those questions.  I have decided that if I study psychology, I will apply to study psychology from a Christian perspective. This decision was not easy and I definitely prayed and thought through it meticulously. But I am excited about my decision and I do believe that it is what God is wanting for me in terms of graduate studies. Some of the thoughts of a man named David Prowlinson have helped me in this area. Here are some of my thoughts on the dilemma of studying psychology from a Christian perspective versus studying at a secular school:

God himself is man’s environment. It is not simply professing Christian people who live in relationship to God, every human being is living in relationship to God (whether conscious of this or not).

The whole movement of the human psyche is through God. Every expression of human anger is with respect to God because it is a demonstration of their worship or non-worship of God, or of their own pride and demands of the universe. The human heart is either facing God or turning towards idols, the human heart is active and not passive.

Therefore, we don’t just simply let the diagnosis of the human dilemma be defined autonomously and then bring in God later, but the human condition exists with respect to God, so we define the human dilemma in light of Him.

And if I believe that everyone living on this earth is radically dependent on and accountable to that God, I want to, and I have to counsel people in light of this.

I can integrate my studies in light of my faith myself, and I have done this and I enjoy this challenge. However, in counseling and psychology, I don’t want to reinvent the wheel when people I respect and look up to have already taken the integration of psychology and theology and formed their own ideas. It seems to me to only waste time to try and do this myself from scratch at a secular school. 

We also have something that the secular world would kill for, and that is the community element of the Church. This is something we cannot overlook when we counsel. I believe in the potential and the power of the community we can have (and were designed to have) in church. This is where real and transformational counseling should happen.

Our model is the only model that has joy at the end. We were created to worship God and to live in relationship with Him. We alone offer a life that has joy at the end of it. And there is no other model that can truly offer hope in the real sense of the word, a hope that is eternal and not temporarily serving a purpose.

Basically, my decision is summed up with the statement in bold above. I don’t want to learn something and then add God into it if I believe that followers of Christ have a viewpoint that people who do not know Jesus will constantly be trying to get at, but will only see from the outside. We who know our Creator and our purpose have a different springboard for the whole discussion of psychology. Others have common grace of being made in God’s likeness and discovering some of His truth as laws of science, but Christians have a deeper and I believe more accurate perspective. I will always want to study what secular psychologists are coming up with, but my focus will be in light of who Christ is. The Word is my measuring stick for the goodness and validity of other systems and models of counseling. We can and must use the laws of science (because everything is spiritual), but we do not stop there. For me, there will be many more steps and much more responsibility as a counselor.  I am not simply dealing with the mind, but also with the healing of the human soul.