The Difference Between the Comfort of the Gospel and Therapeutic Language

Thinking Fellows

1517 Podcasts

History, Society & Culture, Philosophy, Christianity, Religion & Spirituality, Apologetics, Theology

4.6 • 817 Ratings

🗓️ 15 July 2025

⏱️ 52 minutes

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Summary

In this episode of the Thinking Fellows podcast, Bruce Hillman, Scott Keith, and I take a look at the difference between the comfort that comes from the gospel and the kind of therapeutic language that's become common in our culture. We talk about how this language has crept into everyday life—including the church—and how it ends up reshaping the way people think about faith, identity, and community. Along the way, we highlight the importance of the gospel as an objective promise, the problems with journey-style language, and the real need for Christian community when people are struggling. At the heart of it, we’re calling for a return to the central message of Christianity: the forgiveness of sins and the church as a place of genuine comfort and consolation.

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to the Thinking Fellows podcast. My name is Caleb Keith, and the Thinking Fellows is brought to you by the 1517 podcast network of shows.
0:27.7	Go to 1517.org, find some more of the resources that we produce there. Those include basically daily blogs during the working week. We have also preaching helps. We have
0:41.2	video resources. We have conferences. And we have a bunch more podcasts for you to listen to over
0:48.8	there. That is 1517.org. Check out the homepage. There's a way to curate content there. Search for content on our large
0:56.4	library. There, there's over 15,000 pieces of content across all the different types of
1:02.7	resources that we've produced. So I'm sure you'll find something useful there. Today, I am joined
1:09.7	by Bruce Hillman and Scott Keith. We're missing Adam this week. He's in a
1:15.9	basement somewhere, which, you know, surprisingly enough, not unusual for Adam. But this week,
1:24.3	not his basement. So he's teaching probably apologetics somewhere.
1:30.7	That's the...
1:31.5	In a church basement.
1:32.6	In a church basement.
1:33.5	Yeah, that's pretty normal for him.
1:36.2	So we're going to miss him this week.
1:38.9	But we're going to do some topics.
1:42.1	You know, still coming off the heels of some of that identity question.
1:47.6	And the one this week that I want to talk about is the difference between the comfort of the gospel and therapeutic language, specifically in church and amongst Christians. I think this is one that a lot of people,
2:05.8	you know, you can experience it and you know when you hear it. You know when things get too,
2:11.9	I don't know, I want to say feely. And I also don't do the typical Lutheran thing here of
2:16.7	emotions bad. But that's the balance I want
2:23.4	to talk about this morning, which is the gospel brings comfort. We talk about it bringing comfort.
2:28.3	We talk about it bringing freedom, release from sin and its consequences, and even consolation, right?
	...

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