Probably one of the areas in which a biblical counsellor can confuse himself most at the stage of interpretation is to use a manual such as the DSM. There you find descriptions of the patterns of thought, attitude and behaviour you have been discovering, and then it names those patterns for you. You may end up with any long, complicated term, or even with a whole string of terms that will maroon you even further from a biblical solution.
For example, where do you turn in Scripture to find teaching on the following:
Paranoid personality, obsessive compulsive personality, hysterical personality, passive dependent personality, sociopathic personality, narcissistic personality, schizoid personality, cyclothymic personality, dysthymic personality? Before you wrack your brain too tightly, let me alleviate the pressure by pointing out the obvious; these things don't appear in Scripture. What these types of terms do is confuse and complicate biblical counsellors and lead them away from, rather than toward a biblical solution.
So what do you do if someone comes to you and claims he has been diagnosed as having a cyclothymic personality? Well, you follow the common sense approach we have been discussing here. Discover what is really going on in his life and then you are ready to take the next step. What is the next step?
You will find that God has not left us without tools in this arena. Rather than using vague, complicated terms that describe a pattern of behaviour, Scripture uses very exact, understandable terms to describe the patterns of thinking, attitudes and behaviour we have been labouring to uncover. The secret to joining the patterns you have been uncovering in the life of your counselee with the terms in Scripture is to begin now to apply yourself to a study of exactly what Scripture means when it speaks of certain issues. In this series, I would like to include some very graphic descriptive words in Scripture, which immediately leap forward when you are faced with the patterns of thought, attitude or behaviour that they describe. Scripture includes extensive lists of words that describe patterns as well as actual narrative examples of many common types of behaviour patterns among fallen man.
But before moving on to those terms, I think it is helpful to consider a few of the psychological terms that are being thrown around today, and see how these issues can be found clearly in Scripture. If these psychological labels are simply the name given to certain observed patterns of behaviour, then let us see what Scripture would call them after observing those same patterns. I should remind you again at this stage that most of what you are reading here is the work of Dr. Wayne Mack, so he is the one to be credited for his clear teaching.
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