Hypnosis and the Bible on this edition of Truth and Love.

I'm Heath Lambert and you're listening to Truth and Love, a podcast of the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors,

where we seek to provide biblical solutions for the problems that people face.

Should Christians be hypnotized? That's the question we are answering on the podcast this week. We've

received questions about this from you, our listeners, and we want to talk about it this week.

It's an important issue because a lot of people engage in the practice of hypnotism,

usually for entertainment value, but often to address the kinds of problems we're concerned

about in counseling. And if hypnotism is a bad practice, then it is a competitor for the kind of change we're

concerned about in biblical counseling. If hypnotism is a good practice and we ignore it,

then we are leaving off a helpful intervention that people need when they're struggling with

difficulties. Before we can answer

whether Christians should be hypnotized, we have to understand what hypnotism is. And the American

Psychological Association gives a description of that. They say a hypnotic procedure is used to

encourage and evaluate responses to suggestions. When using hypnosis, the subject is guided by the hypnotist to respond to suggestions for changes

in subjective experiences, alterations and perception, sensation, emotion, thought, and behavior.

Now, there's a lot going on here, but when you boil all of that down, what it says

is that hypnosis is used to bring about change. The kind of change we're concerned about

in counseling, the kind of change we're concerned about when we're experiencing difficulty,

hypnosis is used to bring about change. People pursue hypnosis for a lot of different

reasons. They use it to leave off undesirable behaviors like habits, smoking, eating problems,

that kind of thing. They use it to address anxiety and sorrow and that kind of suffering.

And some use it to pursue the relief of pain. So there's a

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