Integrative approaches to psychology and Christianity Essay

This book tells almost the integrating Christianity and psychology. The author discusses integration a combining the devil books of perfection. According to Entwistle (2004), the book of gods member referred to the Bible, and the book of Gods grazes reflects His deeds compose throughout His creation. (p. 166). He includes five models of integration in the book which atomic number 18 enemies, spies, colonialists, neutral parties, and allies as subjects of wholeness Sovereign. The enemies model sees Christianity and psychology as enemies that fatality to be kept totally separate. The spies model has one study going into the other to take only what works for them.Psychology would inclose the Christian world just to take the religious concepts that will work well with psychology. The colonialist model has one discipline colonizing or taking underwrite and prominence over the other. Religion works with psychology as yen as religion is superior to psychology. The neutral par ties model has both disciplines coexistent and recognizing distributively other as long as they respect each others boundaries. Psychology recognizes that religion has good concepts to offer but it will non encroach on the religions domain. The allies as subjects of One Sovereign model have both disciplines working together to function people.It uses psychological and theological concepts together to gain a better appreciation of the truth. According to Entwistle (2004), God gave birth to the subject of psychology (military personnel behavior) when he created human beings. God granted us the foundations of theology when He gave us His Word (p. 175). The book tells us that there are devil books of God His phrase and His works (Entwistle, 2004). Psychology deals with Gods works and theology deals with His word. Our business organization as Christian counselors is to infer both books and fuse them together so that we usher out use both books to attention our clients.If we f ind something that does not puff sense between both books, there is a conflict that inevitably to be resolved before we can use it. At this point, we bespeak to go back and reread and study both books to see if we can find the discrepancy. Entwistle (2004) says that god gave us both books, but we have to experience them ourselves. The problem is not with Gods books, but it is the way we interpret them. Human consciousness of Gods books is based on our worldview (Entwistle, 2004). To decently integrate the two disciplines, we need to have a good understanding of both.We cannot just sack out theology or psychology and expect to integrate them well. We need to have a working knowledge of psychological theories and concepts as well as a working knowledge of Gods word. We need to mean, though, that our knowledge is only as good as our interpretation. Gods works have been affected by the fall into sin, and as a work of God our interpretations will be colored by the fall as well. I rally this book has a potful of good suppositions and concepts to it. I found it interesting to discuss the two books of God, because I had heard the term and knew what it meant, but had not really thought about what it included.I also liked the models of integration and their explanations. They were explained well enough that anyone could derive them easily. Some of the things that bothered me the most about the book and its ideas are the idea of interpretation, the exposition of integration, and where do we go from here. If we are the interpreters of Gods two books and we know that the fall and sin have colored our interpretations, how do we know if our interpretations of the books are correct? Can we interpret either book accurately? If our interpretations are wrong, can we do more harm than good to our clients?Is the definition of integration put down enough to help us know what we need to help others? When we use the current definitions of integration, do we get a comple te picture of what integration means to both disciplines? With all of the models of integration, where do we go next? How do we make progress in the integration influence? Can we ever integrate to a point where we can agree on most aspects of a model, or will there everlastingly be disagreement between the disciplines? These are all questions that I think are important to consider about integration.I think that integrating Christianity and psychology can benefit a Christian client by allowing us to address spiritual matters and use spiritual techniques for healing. It is important to remember that religion and psychology are both parts of Gods truth to us and can be used to help ourselves and others. When the two disciplines are integrated, we have many more options than when we use one or the other discipline separately. Finally use of both disciplines can help us reach people of faith as well as people who are not Christians, if we can use them both carefully and competently.