challenges of the therapeutic relationship on this edition of Truth and Love.

I'm Dale Johnson 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. This week on the podcast, I'm joined once again by

Dr. Sam Stevens, who is our director of Training Center Certification. He also teaches at Midwestern

Baptist Theological Seminary as an instructional faculty in biblical counseling. And I love hanging out with

Sam. And today we're going to continue our discussions during the month of May, mental health

awareness month. And I want us to engage Sam off of some of the things we talked about last week.

I want us to dive a little bit deeper as we talk about the implications, if you will, of the therapeutic relationship.

And we're not trying to take a hammer and smash the idea that the relationship itself is

unimportant. No, absolutely. The relationship that you have is important, which is why we care

about this idea so much, right? Is the Bible does describe how we're to engage one another for the

purpose of mutual edification and growth in the things of God, in dealing with the brokenness

that we all experience. And that's why it's such an important topic for us to address. And what I

want us to do is to take some of the ideas that we talked about last week, the clinical distancing that we talked about in therapeutic relationship that is certainly biblically problematic.

The way we think about the role of the counselor himself or herself as the facilitator, the means of empowering, if you will, the client for the purpose of change and how the therapeutic relationship really is some

sort of like unlocking of a mysterious means to growth and healing and health and that sort of thing.

But for us as Christians, it presents sort of a distinct dilemma. And a part of that dilemma,

or some of the challenges that we would face, as Christians is those requirements in codes of ethics

sort of bump up against not just the way in which we engage in relationship, but even what we

think to be true from a from a perspective of a worldview that would be limited. If you are a licensed

counselor and you're under these types of codes of ethics, it would be a limiting factor. There

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