This blog and recent postings are ultimately dealing with a very practical issue—how we can live life effectively. All of us seek to find out how we can be happy and successful, how we can be healthy, well-adjusted human beings, how we can have good relationships, how we can be productive. In contemporary secular and evangelical societies, many of the answers to those questions come from psychology. We adopt those psychological views because we believe they are based on good research. We have been asking, what if they are not based on good research?

We have also noted that there is good reason to ask that question. Since these psychological concepts have become dominant in our thinking—part of our secular and evangelical subcultures, we have experienced negative trends in precisely the areas of life to which these concepts have been applied, e.g. mental health, marriage, etc. Therefore, we have good reason to question their validity.

But that leads us to the question, what about the research that supports them. In light of the fact that they have a foundation in good research, should we not continue to use them? Maybe the failure in the various areas in question is not the psychological concepts we have adopted, but something else. Or maybe the failure is because we have not applied these concepts aggressively and consistently enough.

My point in recent posts is that the solid research foundation of the psychological personality theories that are shaping our secular and evangelical cultures is a myth. We believe that ideas such as self-esteem and unconditional acceptance are rooted in a psychological theory that is scientifically validated. That is not true. As an aside, we evangelicals also believe that they have been theologically researched and are biblically based. They are not.

For those who believe that these concepts are supported by research, I challenge you to find the research—not assertions that the research has been done, but the research itself. It does not exist. Not only does it not exist, but it cannot exist. That is because the human being is too complex to understand through research. He is also too profound. Behaviorism claims that we have no will, that we are merely biological machines programmed by society, that, like computers, we have no choice but to respond to that programming. Despite the best efforts of B.F. Skinner, it is impossible to prove that thesis through research. The area of the will is inaccessible to research from a practical standpoint. Researchers must try to discover from the outside what is on the inside, and the barrier is just too high. What is more, extensive evidence would argue to the contrary. At the core of Carl Rogers’ personality theory is the belief that the human being has a self-actualizing tendency that provides dependable guidance. That belief also is out of reach of research and bucks a mountain of evidence to the contrary.

This lack of a foundation in research and the evidence of failure of these concepts when applied to human beings leaves us with the question posed by Francis Schaeffer, “How then should we live?” The question should drive us back to Scripture. Psychology can provide help on peripheral issues, but not core issues. In fact, the core concepts of every field must be drawn from Scripture or they are consigned to failure. Education, psychology, philosophy, ethics, biology, and every other field must begin with the Bible. Scripture asserts that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge and the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Whatever the field, we must begin with Scripture. Peripherals can come from empirical learning—research, but the core cannot.