Interview with Dr. Jay Adams

Bob,

Your post # 36 on the subject was good. We are not as far apart as you may think. If you were to reread your posts (both here and on the old SI) you will see that you do come across very evangelistically for psychiatry. Your views are on the other end of the Adams pendulum. You may not intend that, but that was how you are perceived.

You have misrepresented me as I have said on several occassions that I do believe mentally ill need to be treated with compassion and medication. Yet, you accuse me of saying the opposite. All I have tried to do was to get you to realize that many people (with insurance and on state aid) are assumed to be mentally ill without much investigation. That may not be your experince, but it is real. I have seen it time and time again. You ignore this out of ignorance i am sure.

Humility is needed. Please take this in all sincereity. I have read almost every post that you have posted. I value your opinion greatly even when I

disagree. But Bob, you almost alwasy come off as arrogant and condescending. Even when you are proven wrong or mistaken, you NEVER admit it. Bob, that is sinful and hurts your reputation.

I am just trying to tweak your style because you have so much to offer. And those offerings will be so much better without the arrogance and

condescension.

I hope you take this how it was intended. I mean this in the spirit of

Galatians 6:1.

In prayer,

Roger Carlson

It is interesting that Larry and Roger want to now avoid tje revealed errors of Nouthetic counseling by trying to make an issue of a passing reference to a seminary. Sorry if I offended you.

You didn’t offend me. I am so uninvested in this conversation, I don’t think you could offend me.

I don’t want to “avoid the revealed errors of Nouthetic counseling.” I have long said I am not a supporter of Nouthetic counseling completely.

However, you made a charge that you have not supported. Are you backing away from the charge that DBTS uses this book? I would seriously like to know what you base that on. I simply don’t know. I don’t recall it, but I have a bad memory in some cases. Dr. Doran doesn’t recall it and can’t find it. I don’t care. You may be correct about DBTS using this book. Most schools use books that they do not fully agree with. The use of a book by a school is not an endorsement of everything in it. You probably know that having gone to Central. So help us out, Bob. I am just curious where you got this information.

First, if anyone, including Dave Doran, wishes to communicate on the internet with someone thay should do it directly.

It is interesting that you want to avoid the revealed errors of your post by trying to make an issue of someone calling you on some accusations you made.

Dave Doran is not a member of SI. He cannot communicate directly with you here.

If the posted qoute by Larry is from Dave Doran, I would expect it to be of some reasonable explanation.

You have already shown that your expectations are not always legitimate, and your definition of “reasonable” is suspect. Now you accuse me of making stuff up. From yesterday, I have two emails from Dave Doran in my inbox. (I suspect I will have a third soon.) If you were here, I would gladly show them to you. They are not private and confidential. He sent them to me to pass on. He addressed them to me because he knows me and he knows I am a moderator here, and his seminary was brought up in a discussion.

How can he plead that he can’t remember if this book was used but then accuse me of making a false accusation?

What was the false accusation he is referring to? Do you even know?

If Dave Doran’s opinion is important to you Larry that is your concern

While I respect Dr. Doran, on this issue, his opinion is not particularly important to me. I honestly don’t even know what his view is. We haven’t talked about it, and I don’t assume we will. Usually when I see him or communicate with him, it is about other stuff. His question was about the charge you made against DBTS.

I am sure Dave Doran is a fine young man and good Pastor.

Really? While I am sure he appreciates you calling him “young,” just two sentences ago you insinuated he was a liar. How does that work? Is a liar a “fine young man and a good pastor”? Bob, I think you are venting, and not thinking about what you are saying.

However, he has little to contribute to this subject at this point and I am really not that interested in what he has to say.

Then why did you ask? You’re the one who wanted to know (post #39). How does the president of the seminary in question have little to contribute to charges made about the seminary?

Larry, you evidently are a graduate of this school and your views regarding mental illness, sin, and accountability appear fairly unenlightened.

My views are virtually identical to Laura’s, whom you praised. Bob, make up your mind. Already, in this post, you have contradicted yourself several times.

You appear to now say you accept “Brain disease” but not accept it as involving clear no fault physiological causes.

That’s not clear so I am not sure what you are saying. If you are saying that I deny that brain disease may have no clear sin issues involved, you are wrong. From my very first post, I said that mental illness may be caused by sin, or it may not be. That is a clear statement that I accept mental illness as possibly involving clear no fault physiological causes.

Seriously Bob, you do not appear to be reading very closely because you are not interacting with what I actually said.

You keep bringing up sin. Is that also the general outlook of the school?

To bring up sin? Yes, the school is pretty down on sin, and they talk about it a lot. Counseling, on the other hand, and mental illness, they don’t talk much about. As I said there are two classes, I think both are summer school classes, and neither is required to my knowledge (but my knowledge may be faulty about that). I don’t know what they say about this topic.

Your prior posts appear to want to hold mentally ill people to account for a sin problem when in fact you and I may have more of a sin problem than some of them.

I have no doubt that I have more of a sin problem than you or any mentally ill person. But the fact is that all are responsible for sin, no matter their mental state. The good news is that Jesus died and paid the penalty of sin for all who will trust in him, regardless of their mental or physical state. Even mentally ill people make choices, and we must work with them on those choices about what they are loving and doing.

What has made them unable to see reality, have hallucinations, and other problems, is not caused by their specific sins

How do you know this??

This is my point exactly. You don’t know for sure. It may not be caused by sin. But a person whose brain is diseased by drug use has a problem that is caused by sin. A person who has major depression (a mental illness according to the NAMI that you cited approvingly earlier) may be depressed because of sin in their life. We have to deal with that. Until we have at least explored it, we haven’t dealt with the patiently rightly.

This is the double speak and giving and then taking away that I mention in a prior post. You appear to be saying Brain disease is real but just maybe sin reached into the human body as a cause. You then hold Psychiatry to account for not dealing with it. When I had Cancer I forgot to hold the surgeon and then the Oncologist accountable for not dealing with the sin issue.

So if someone’s sickness is caused by behavior, should not the Doctor address that behavior? I know mine does. My doctor routinely tells me “no bending lifting or twisting” because it creates a serious medical condition in my back. And my back will never get better. The best I can do is take care of it. When I had my surgery two years ago, I asked the dr. “After the surgery will my back be normal?” He said, “Your back’s not normal now. It won’t be after the surgery.”

My dentist has warned me about my brushing techniques because of gum disease. Doctors always address behavior when it is a part of the cause of the problem.

But what you want to do here is try to change the subject. I am not saying that all mental illness or brain disease is sin caused. I haven’t said that from the beginning. I said we need to explore it. The problem is that you appear to say none of it is. And you, Bob, are not God, and you simply cannot know the cause of all mental illness.

A Pastor can handle any spiritual problems if he has a proper understanding and humility to understand his limitations. He should also be appreciative of the work of the health care providers even though not Christian.

Exactly. This is the most cogent point you have made in this post (and perhaps in this whole thread). But having given it, you then take it away with every thing else you have said.

To put it simply, we cannot, and should not, hold Psychiatry, a medical specialty, responsible for not dealing adequatly with sin.

But you have just removed one possible contributing factor. It’s like telling my physiatrist that she can’t deal with movement, even though certain kinds of movement are a major cause (though not the only cause) of my back problems when they spring up. It’s like telling a doctor he can’t deal with alcohol use by a patient with cirrhosis of the liver, even though alcohol use is a major cause of cirrhosis.

Why should not a doctor deal with every possible contributing factor? How long would you continue to go to a doctor who said, “Alcohol use isn’t contributing to your cirrhosis. Drink up”? If you went more than once, you are foolish because it is a doctor who is showing himself unqualified and uninformed.

Now, your cirrhosis may in fact not be caused by alcohol. But until you have explored that, you don’t know.

But why give certain kinds of doctors a free pass because you don’t want to acknowledge reality?

The reality is that certain mental illnesses may be caused by sinful behaviors, and we need to explore that. To do less is to not treat actual causes.

As all my posts have attempted to point out, Nouthetic counseling has, and cintinues to have, the wrong perspective.

I think you have attempted to point that out, and I think most agree that Nouthetic counseling is at least somewhat inadequate on this. You haven’t really made a solid case, however. You haven’t really dealt with the issues.

I am open to anyone referring me to books, literature, or persons who are openly anad clearly advocating a more balanced and enlightened position. Such sources would be promoted by me.

Then promote me, Bob. I have promoted a balanced and enlightened position that recognize that mental illness is real, it is sometimes physiological, it needs to be treated by medical doctors who are familiar with the issues, that people need to stay on their meds, and that pastors should never tell anyone to stop their meds, and that pastors should deal only with spiritual issues of the heart. I have said that mentally ill people need to be treated with the love and compassion of Jesus. They are as much the responsibility of the church as everyone else.

Promote Laura. It sounds like she says the same thing.

And you have already said that our position is helpful.

It is hoped that my posts on here may help some who read them and encourage some to gain a balanced view on this subject.

I hope so as well. You have certainly presented one side, and Adams has presented the other, and there are a few who have tried to balance it out. Hopefully, it causes us all to think more biblically about these issues rather than simply buying one side or the other uncritically.

The Mentally ill are all around us and ignored

Then change it where you are at. But recognize that not everyone does that. The mentally ill around here are not ignored.

Meanwhile we have schools teaching counseling and view point built upon someones theory.

As opposed to people who come in here and teach a view point built on someone’s theory? The fact is that this science is developing continually. There are a lot of theories that we work with, and if you have been in this study for ten years or more (as I think you said), then you know how quickly it changes. Some are clearly deficient. Some are probably deficient. Some are still being considered. Some are helpful.

BTW, Bob, you say that biblical counselors aren’t dealing with this. Ed Welch has a book called “Blame It On the Brain?” where he deals with this kind of stuff. So you can’t really say that no one is dealing with it. You may not like the treatment, but it has been and is being dealt with.

Bob,

I did not mean get the conversation side-tracked. I honestly thought you would recognize the overstatement you made and simply qualify it in some way. I’ll let others decide if how they should evaluate your posts, but, in my mind, you’ve seriously damaged your credibility in how: (1) you can’t recognize your own obvious mistakes; and (2) attempt to win the argument by changing the subject.

I asked you if you were serious in the charge that the seminaries you listed were discredited by the use of the book you cited. That’s a pretty simple question that doesn’t take a lot of debate to settle the answer. I should not have wasted people’s time trying to show the flaws in your thinking about this since I think most people can see them pretty plainly. My easy point of access to was through my friend Larry. I’ve now caused him enough abuse, so let me apologize for even raising the question and turning it away from the interview. Please feel free to resume your bashing of Dr. Adams. :)

DMD

Aaron,

That may be best.

Bob,

You did not represent my position correctly. I have made it clear several times that I believe real mental illnesses should be treated medically. I also made it clear that there are times psychiatrists don’t do their job well. Sometimes its from a lack of funding, but either way in cases such as terets in children the standard procedure is to put children on meds with out doing a thorough exam. That is fact. You say it is wrong and unimportant. Well you are wrong. I was truly just trying to bring a balanced aproach. The far wing of nouthetic is one extreme side. But you are clearly on the other side. You accuse some of double-speak, yet you appear to have done the same.

Your best post was post 36. Humility on all sides is needed. Bob, I say this as someone who always values your opinion, education, and expertise. But you do often come across as arrogant. You are often dismissive even when you have been proven wrong. This something you have continually done. It is sad, because you know more than I ever will. But there are some areas that I do have great experience than you do (though not many). But this isn’t about me. A good example is how you treated Dave Doran - a man with an MDiv, ThM (DBTS) and a DMin from TEDS. Not only that, he has over 20 years pastoral experience. He may be young to you, but your response was condescending and arrogant.

I haven’t read Dr. Adams for years, but I had what I thought was a basic understanding of nouthetic counseling… that is, until I read this thread. :)

So I went to the http://www.nanc.org/About_Us/Standards_of_Conduct.aspx] NANC website and read the Standards of Conduct, where I saw the following:

…

4. The biblical counselor recognizes the need in many instances for early medical evaluations to determine whether the counselee’s behavior may result from organic dysfunction.

5. The biblical counselor recognizes the total health needs of the counselee. He will cultivate a knowledge of professional internal medicine and general medical practitioners and health care specialists and centers.

11. The biblical counselor recognizes the need for internal medicine for physiological disorders but will seek to help a counselee refrain from taking drugs that lead to dependence or that substantially affect or alter the mind or behavior. The biblical counselor recognizes that there are occasional circumstances where medication that may alter behavior is required.

I don’t see a problem with this- the SoC may be brief and general, but it seems sensible to me in light of what the Scripture teaches about how the body, mind, and spirit interact and affect each other.

It is to be regretted that this thread quickly become dominated by one or two self-discrediting individuals who seem to have way more time on their hands than most of us. I would have enjoyed hearing reaction to the acutal interview.

For anyone interested, we have posted several articles on our website, by Dr. Adams, that address all this. They include:

The Physician, the Pastor, Psychotherapy, and Counseling

The Biblical Perspective on the Mind-Body Problem

The Christian Approach to Schizophrenia

They can be found at: http://www.nouthetic.org/resources/from-the-pen-of-dr-adams/grist-from-…

You may also be interested to know that Dr. Adams writes a daily blog, included on the SI blogroll, that can be found here: http://www.nouthetic.org/blog/

Donn,

Thanks for the links.

I would encourage you to participate in the discussion about the ideas. The reaction you have read is about the stuff in the interview. Drive-by posting such as you are doing doesn’t help us further understand your position or Dr. Adams position as expressed in the interview, nor the doubts about it, implications of it, etc. When the people whose ideas are being questioned don’t defend and explain it, those who misunderstand are not helped.

I don’t think it reasonable to expect the interview not to have any critics. Perhaps with your experience, you could help further our understanding and clarify or correct where you think people are misunderstanding.

I took the class at DBTS entitled “Pastoral Counseling” under Dr. Doran. We definitely did not use any text book in the class per se. We had to do some outside reading from a variety of sources including several that we strongly would disagree with. I think that is called education! I have about 100 pages of typed notes from Dr. Doran. In the first section Doran compares the integration approach with the non-integration approach. Doran argues for non-integration and particularly examines the weakness of Larry Crabb’s approach and the damage done at Grace Seminary. The second section of notes lays out the theological foundation for biblical counseling. This section is a virtual systematic theology on God, man, sin, sanctification. The final section consists of a series of well-done biblical approaches to worry, depression, marriage issues, the will of God, guilt, etc. I didn’t even notice a reference to Adam’s book in the notes, though there may be an occasional reference. The notes are a compilation of work from a variety of sources run through a strong systematic theology grid.

I wish to thank Donn R. Arms for his post with links to the Nouthetic website. I am getting old and forgot all about it. All one need do is go to the sight and read their article on Schizophrenia. Then compare what they say to what Dr. Laura posted earlier on this sight and then also go to the NAMI website and find links on the subject. They are still advocating the same view of Schizophrenia, the most severe of Brain disease, that they held in the 1970s.

My case evidence rests.

Now let me explain that within the general diagnosis of Schizophrenia there are several sub catagories that greater define an individuals problem. Within that there is a category of “short term Schizophrenia.” The person developes it during the last formation of the frontal lobe but it goes away after a completion time. One study indicates it may go away helped by medication which signals the body to alter chemical balance to the brain. The case they cite of a Paranoid Schizophrenic with certain symptoms appears to be such a case. Also, Schizophrenia will often become less in the thirties as the body changes and may subside completely in the forties or fifties. However, in many cases it is a life long struggle. Keep in mind that Donn and Jay Adams have no medical degrees. They are at the mercy of their own observations. Which of you would take your child to a person with no medical training for a problem that has a good chance to be medical. Their website makes the case for my not advocating Nouthetic counseling.

Now for my credentials: I have degrees in liberal studies, theology, and law. I have taught at New Testament and theology at Talbot school of Theology of Biola University and Law at Western State College of Law, Fullerton. I have practiced law and handled some cases and research involving mental illness. I have been a Pastor for over 25 years. In 1976 my wife and I were on the way to a church conference when we were involved in a head on auto collision. My wife was three months pregnant with our youngest son. He had some problems at birth but growth appeared normal. He appeared to start to exhibit some very mild symptoms of possible autism. Lack of eye contact etc. That went away. He started school and all went normally. In junior high he was tested and cinsidered a gifted child intellectually and the school system wanted him to attend a special school. He refused. After high school he started college. He started to exhibit some odd behavior. Later we found hundred s of hand written pages on various subjects. This is called “journeling.” The writing became smaller and smaller -almost unreadable. It also made less and less sense. He turned in a term paper at college that was totally without any logic or sense. When I saw it and asked hima about it he became indignent as it made perfect sense to him. About this time he began to use a lot of big words in speaking. He always had a good vocabulary. However, the words started to be used out of place in the sentence. Soon you could not understand much of what he said. This is called “word salad.” He began to look at us funny. He would want to talk to us but made little sense. Then one day as we were at church he left home. He took no clothes. He was just gone. About a week later we received a call from a male psychiatric nurse from a hospital in a city about 200 miles away. Our son had been taken into custody under CA. 51.50. This is a non arrest custody when a person is a danger to themselves or others. He was held 72 hrs. and released and then taken in a second time. They found my card in his wallet. We went up to get him. He was dirty and disoriented. Like a street person. He had abandoned his car on a street and forgot he had one. He had been wondering the steets of the city. At first he was pestering merchants asking for work. The second time he was take in he was at a Starbucks yelling at people that they were sinners and needed to repent.

We got our son home but had to have emergency intervention as he could not be controlled. He has spent time in hospital Psych words more than once. He has attacked me twice. Never deadly intent. He is now age 33 and has mellowed. He will now take his meds fairly regularly and things have been better the last three years. He went to a local Bible church regularly. However, he felt isolated and would no longer go. He knows he will never be able to marry or be accepted by many people. He experiences constant rejection if nayone knows he takes Psych meds. Never rude but just withdrawel from him. They call it the lonely disease. He tries to therefore keep it confidential. He now has a part time job delivering Pizza. A job he does well as he is by himself in a car and not just trapped in a work place. He has a somewhat good mind and now reads very technical books on economics and theory and wants to go back to school. However, he is not ready for that yet.

It has now been thirteen years since diagnosis. He is treated through the county mental health system. He gets reasonable care considering their overload and slim budget.

I have become a prolific reader and researcher on this subject. I have interacted with Psychiatrists when possible including one Christian one mentioned in a prior post. Some Psychiatrists will say that caretakers often become the real experts. This of course is an exaggeration ststed with tongue in cheek. We attend NAMI meetings and have constant contact with other mentally ill and their families. Psychologists (Those who have PHDs) do not treat the genuinly mentally ill. It is considered a medical problem requiring a Psychiatrist to be involved. So you can understand my great concern and passionate resistance when I see a bunch of guys with minimal hands on experience, and degrees in some sort of biblical counseling methodology from a seminary making dogmatic statements about mental illness and its causes and treatment. I do not believe in Chiropractic, Naturopathy, or other forms of non medical intervention in medical problems. I also do not believe a Noutheropathic practitioner is capable of speaking intellegently on these issue. I have fairly extensivly looked at this from several sides. I was an ardent embracer of all that was anti Psychology and anti psychiatry throughout my ministry. I was a Fundamentalist!! In the last thiteen years i have become enlightened. I became ashamed of my former dogmatism of something really I knew nothing about. I have read books. articles on the internet and pestered Mental health workers. I ahve attempted to read the pertinat medical journals avaible at the not too far UCLA library. I have interacted with three professors there.I have a need to know on this subject.

Psychiatry is far from perfect. it has many bad ideas and has had some real kooks in the field. As Dr. Laura indicated in her post, things have changed.

I am still a Biblical counselor. However, because of certain misinformation and dangerous opinions I do not advocate Nouthetic Counseling. I gave you my academic background so that you will understand I am a somewhat well trained researcher and able to separate the wheat from the chaff. I have some confidence in that. Some may think I have been arrogant on this thread. Possibly rightly so. I have a confidence in my present viewpoint on this subject that comes from having been wrong in the past and having practice in separating the wheat and Chaff.

My frustration on this thread is with the fact that, as in all internet discourse, people are too full of wanting to be right. We all do. But please stop explaining away or ignoring evidence. Now, it is my hope that all of you will go to the website offered by Don R. Arms and click on Schizophrenia and see the present position of Nouthetic Counselors on Schizophrenia. They do not attribute all to a physiological cause. They sow doubts that hurt the mentally ill. Medicine, even allowing for possible misdiagnosis, indicates all Schizophrenia is a Brain disease. One clinic of a “Dr. Amen” (thats his real name) in central California does Brian scans of all patients and does treatment on the basis of comparative scans on the patient. It is a whole new world in mental illness in the 21st century. Nouthetic counseling and their anecdotal evidence from unqualified interpreters are in the 1950s and 1960s (but stated by them first in the 1970s),

To Larry, sorry for any insults to you or your alma mater or Dave Doran. Doran first insulted me by accusing me of a false accusation even though he was not sure if the book has been used. I did not accuse you of lying. My contingencies attached to Doran’s posts to you were because I had no direct communication with him which is normal. His posts , passed on by you, were nothing but personal attacks. Not too classy, yet he was indefinite on the use of the book. If he thinks I over stated, fine. That an opinion not a rebuttal of fact. So forgive me if you feel I was indiscreet. I am ending my discourse on that here.

Bob,

Thank you for your openness and candidness. I have followed this thread and read each post as has my wife (she does not invest her limited free time in online discussions and debate on these or related issues seeing she is tasked by the government with responsibilities that demand her full attention and attendance with significant travel and time, but because of her professional background and constant interaction with military policy makers where she and her peers are regularly involved in evaluation, assessment and military policy development that includes the evaluation, assessment and determination of arguments and cases and relevant personnel, I asked her to read through this and tell me her thoughts) and we have both come away with the observation that the issues people have taken with you are by and large truly unrelated to the substantive issues you have raised and generally are either personal or related to circumstantial statements of secondary issues.

You have not personally commented on Adams nor have you failed to acknowledge where he might have something valid by way of observation. And it seems your critics, those critical of your criticisms, seem to believe that anything valid Adams may have discovered or observed is somehow a justification for his career long ignorance, mistreatment or simply contention and denial of certain realities of psychiatry and brain disease.

Hopefully someone will come along and instead of attacking your person or finding fault with anecdotal references, imprecise recall, tertiary issues or seeking to limit your responses, they will consider Adam’s blind side and fairly discuss it. It does seem that the poster named Dr. Laura did rather lightly address the possibility of this lack of appreciation by Adam’s but she too seemed to use his strengths to counter or minimize this. However, right now it appears for most here he either does not have one, it is so minimal it need not be discussed or “all the good” he does makes this glaring misstep ok.

Thanks Bob, for your gracious conclusion.

You didn’t offend me. It takes a whole lot to do that, and I can’t imagine that happening in an internet forum of impersonal debate. I have no problem with people who disagree with me.

My original thought when I read your comments about DBTS (and the other seminaries) was that “discredited” was way over the top, even if they actually used the book (which I do not recall, and apparently neither does Dave or Mike Harding). I am not sure where you got that from. I think that was Dave’s point, that “discredited” was way out of line. I don’t know if the “false accusation” is the charge that the book was used or the charge that the seminary was discredited because of its supposed use. I think he only communicated through me because he is not a member and I am.

Enough said.

Alex,

Two points.

1. Not all of those taking issue with Bob’s statements are justifying anything about Adams. I for one said I don’t know much about him. On the other hand, I have taken issue with some very substantive issues that Bob has raised, such as the cause of brain disease, the dynamic between the material and immaterial part of man, the failure of psychiatry to address all possible causes and issues, the lack of a coherent anthropology in modern psychiatry, and other issues as well. None of that had to do with Jay Adams, and they are all substantive in nature.

2. You say that Bob has “not personally commented on Adams.” I am not sure what you mean by “personally commented.” Grammatically, it sounds like you are saying that Bob’s posts were written by someone else since Bob didn’t “personally comment.” It may be that you mean that Bob did not make personal comments about Jay Adams. Yet Bob said that he views “J.E. Adams as a seriously ignorant and dangerous person”(post #5). That sounds like a personal comment. These types of comments were repeated many times, not only about Jay Adams but also about others.

Perhaps you should go back and reread the thread.

[Larry] You say that Bob has “not personally commented on Adams… It may be that you mean that Bob did not make personal comments about Jay Adams. Yet Bob said that he views “J.E. Adams as a seriously ignorant and dangerous person”(post #5). That sounds like a personal comment.

Thanks and you are right, the wording is less than clear, I did mean to say Bob did not make comments about Adams’ person. As to the comment you noted I do not view this, nor do many others, as a personal comment rather a comment about his expertise and effect on the matter, not one about his person.

I did read your responses as I stated both my wife and I read the thread thoroughly. Your grasp of both the content and intent of Bob did not strike either of us as impressionable. Sorry. Certainly this is just the opinion of two people and others may disagree.

It is hard to imagine how “seriously ignorant and dangerous person” is not a comment about his person.

As for impressionable, no need to apologize. It doesn’t affect me. I think there are a lot of people who don’t grasp the deep theological and anthropological implications of this discussion. It quickly becomes a blur to them. I would certainly give it some more thought, particularly in light of revelation. There are some very serious ministry implications. If we are going to truly give people hope, we are going to have to do it from a thoroughly biblical perspective. Anytime this discussion comes up, it seems that so many want to pit the Bible against medicine as if it is one or the other. It isn’t.