Is Biblical Counselling Safe? An Honest Look at the Criticisms
- Jason Chang
- Jul 18
- 7 min read
If you're researching biblical counselling because someone you love is considering it --- or because you're considering it yourself and something is making you hesitate --- you'll find strong criticism of it online. I want to tell you honestly: some of it is unfair. Some of it is entirely fair, and worth taking seriously.
I trained as a secular counsellor before I ever moved into biblical counselling. I've heard these very objections from colleagues over the years, and honestly, I've raised some of them myself, at different points. Here they are, and I'll answer them as straight as I know how.
"It tells people their depression is a sin"
This criticism has real history behind it, and honestly, in some rooms it's still true today.
Parts of the early biblical counselling movement handled suffering very badly. The instinct to go looking for sin behind every struggle --- to treat a depressed person as primarily a disobedient one --- did genuine harm to real people, and many of them still carry that harm decades later. If that happened to you, or to someone you love, I'm not going to sit here and tell you that you misunderstood what was done to you.
Where I would gently push back is on the claim that this is biblical counselling, rather than a failure within it. Scripture's own category for suffering was never "what did you do wrong" --- it's lament. The Psalms are full of people at the very bottom, saying so honestly to God, without ever being corrected for it. Job's friends are the Bible's own cautionary tale here, and the book is explicit that they got it wrong.
The movement as a whole has done real work reckoning with this. Whether any individual counsellor has done that same work is a fair question, and you should feel free to ask them directly.
What to ask a counsellor: "Do you think my depression is caused by sin?" If the answer comes fast and overconfident in either direction, be careful.
"It discourages people from getting medical help"
Yes, sometimes it has --- and I won't soften that, because this one can genuinely cost a life.
If you or someone you love was ever told that seeing a doctor was some kind of failure of faith, I'm sorry that happened to you. That was wrong, plainly. Someone with a thyroid condition, a postpartum episode, or a medication reaction needs a physician, and no amount of Scripture substitutes for that kind of care.
Here's where I stand, and I hold this firmly: biblical counselling and medical care are not rivals to me. I refer to a physician whenever referral is warranted, and I consider that referral part of the work itself, never an admission of defeat. The doctrine of scriptural sufficiency is a claim about Scripture addressing the moral, spiritual, and relational dimensions of your life --- it has never once been a claim that the Bible sets broken bones.
What to ask a counsellor: "Under what circumstances would you refer me to a doctor?" A good counsellor will have a real, specific answer ready. Vagueness here is a genuine red flag, and you're right to notice it.
"It's unregulated --- anyone can call themselves a biblical counsellor"
This one is straightforwardly true, and honestly, it's the criticism I'd take most seriously if I were in your position.
There's no licensing body for biblical counselling anywhere. Certification through the ACBC does exist, and it requires real observation hours, substantial reading, written exams, and supervised practice --- but it's entirely voluntary. Nobody is actually stopped from using the title without any of it.
That's a real gap, and I won't pretend otherwise. It means the quality of care you might receive varies enormously, and right now, the burden of checking falls on you.
Here's the part of the criticism I think gets it half right: if a counsellor's only real qualification is enthusiasm for the Bible, that genuinely isn't enough. But I don't think the answer is less Scripture --- I think it's counsellors who have actually done the hard work of understanding it well. Good biblical counselling never treats the Bible as a source of encouraging quotations to sprinkle over a conversation like decoration. It starts there, reasons carefully from there, and stays there throughout. That takes real training in Scripture itself, not just goodwill toward it.
For what it's worth, let me tell you mine, on both sides of that question. Clinically: I hold a Master of Arts in Counselling Psychology, I'm a Registered Clinical Counsellor through the BCACC, and a Canadian Certified Counsellor through the CCPA --- both of which carry codes of ethics and real complaints processes. Theologically: I've completed graduate coursework in biblical counselling at the Christian Counseling & Educational Foundation (CCEF) and at Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary.
That combination doesn't make me right about everything, and I'd never claim it does. It means I've been trained to handle Scripture carefully rather than casually --- and it means that if I get something wrong, there is somewhere real for you to take it.
What to ask a counsellor: "What's your training in Scripture, what are your clinical credentials, and who can I complain to if something goes wrong?" If there's no honest answer to any of the three, please think hard before proceeding.
"The evidence base is thin"
True --- and I want to say so before I say anything else, because you deserve honesty here more than reassurance.
Large-scale randomised controlled trials on biblical counselling simply don't exist in the way they do for CBT. Anyone who tells you otherwise is overselling, and I won't do that to you.
But I think the comparison deserves a closer, more honest look than it usually gets, because there's a real problem in secular therapy research that the sheer volume of studies tends to quietly obscure.
There is no true placebo for psychotherapy --- none at all. A drug trial can hand a patient a pill that's identical in every way except the active compound, and neither the patient nor the doctor knows which one they received. Therapy simply cannot do this. Any control condition where a warm, attentive person sits with you for fifty minutes already contains much of what might be doing the work. You always know you're in therapy. So does the therapist sitting across from you.
Because no true psychological placebo exists, the placebo effect cannot be ruled out as an explanation for therapy's results. I don't say that as a rhetorical jab at anyone --- it's a genuine limit built into the method itself, and no number of additional trials will ever remove it. This is why the question of what CBT specifically contributes, as distinct from attention, expectancy, and simply being taken seriously by another person, has stayed open for decades now.
This isn't some fringe complaint, either. Pim Cuijpers and Ioana Cristea --- researchers who helped build much of the meta-analytic literature themselves --- have pressed exactly this point, observing that large numbers of depressed patients improve on placebo alone, and that people improve under interventions as improbable as tango dancing or horticulture.
I want to be careful here, because what follows is not that therapy is placebo. That would be equally unproven, and I won't claim it. What follows is narrower, and I think more honest: the field's confidence outruns its evidence, and the specific contribution of any given therapy is far less established than the sheer quantity of research might suggest to you.
And I'm not going to hide behind their difficulty, either. Their evidence being softer than advertised doesn't make mine stronger. I won't pretend the research settles anything in my favour, because honestly, it doesn't.
I moved to biblical counselling for an entirely different reason. I came to believe that Scripture is not one more human theory of the person, competing alongside the others for empirical support --- it is God's own account of what we are, and of what actually changes us. Psychological models are built by people working from the outside in, however carefully. Scripture is revelation from the One who made the very thing being examined.
That claim rests on the sufficiency of God's inspired Word. Not on a trial registry, and I'd never pretend otherwise. I'd honestly rather say so plainly than borrow authority from a literature I've just finished questioning in front of you.
"It's used to keep people in bad situations"
This is the criticism that matters most to me, and honestly, the one I would most want someone to ask about me directly.
Counselling that pressures someone to stay in an abusive marriage, to submit to harmful church leadership, or to "forgive" their way past something that genuinely needs safety or police involvement --- that isn't counselling at all. That's harm, simply wearing counselling's clothes. It has happened in Christian settings, including biblical counselling ones, and I won't pretend it hasn't.
Here is where I stand, without hedging: couples counselling is not appropriate where there's abuse present --- it can hand an abusive spouse new tools and a captive audience, and I won't be party to that. Safety comes first, always, and separately from any relational work. And a church is never above honest examination simply because a referral happened to come from it; if leadership is part of the problem, that stays on the table, not off it.
I want you to notice something important here: none of those failures come from taking the Bible too seriously. They come from using it as cover --- reaching for a verse about submission or forgiveness to shut down a conversation that Scripture itself would actually have opened up further. Counselling that is genuinely grounded in the Bible does not produce those outcomes. It's the counterfeit that does, every time.
What to ask a counsellor: "What would you do if I told you my spouse was frightening me?" The answer you get back will tell you almost everything you need to know.
What good biblical counselling looks like
It starts from Scripture and stays there --- not the Bible as decoration over a technique borrowed from somewhere else, but Scripture as the actual ground of the work
It's led by someone trained to handle that Scripture carefully, not just sincerely
It lets you grieve without hurrying you toward resolution
It refers you to a physician without treating that as failure
It has credentials you can check and a complaints process you can use
It tells you what it can't do
It puts your safety above the appearance of a marriage or a church's reputation
It's willing to be questioned --- including about this list
If you're checking this out for someone you love
Good --- I'm glad you're being this careful. Ask them the questions above. And ask me, too, if they're considering coming to see me --- I would truly rather field one sceptical phone call from you than have someone sit in my office because nobody in their life looked closely enough first.
The free fifteen-minute consultation is genuinely open to that kind of conversation, questions and all.
And if cost is part of your caution, my full rates are public --- along with where every fee goes, since I don't take a salary from this practice.
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