Integrative approaches to psychology and Christianity Essay Example for Free

combinatorial approaches to psychological science and Christianity EssayThis contain tells about the integrating Christianity and psychology. The author discusses desegregation a combining the devil paroles of deity. According to Entwistle (2004), the book of gods Word referred to the Bible, and the book of Gods conks reflects His whole kit and caboodle written throughout His creation. (p. 166). He includes five determines of integration in the book which atomic number 18 enemies, spies, colonialists, neutral parties, and affiliate as subjects of One Sovereign. The enemies homunculus sees Christianity and psychology as enemies that need to be kept totally separate. The spies model has one national going into the another(prenominal) to take only what works for them.Psychology would enter the Christian world just to take the religious concepts that volition work well with psychology. The colonialist model has one discipline colonizing or taking control and prominenc e over the other. Religion works with psychology as huge as religion is superior to psychology. The neutral parties model has both(prenominal) disciplines coexisting and recognizing each other as long as they respect each others boundaries. Psychology recognizes that religion has good concepts to offer plainly it will not encroach on the religions domain. The allies as subjects of One Sovereign model stick both disciplines working to start upher to help people.It uses psychological and theological concepts together to gain a better understanding of the truth. According to Entwistle (2004), God gave birth to the subject of psychology (human 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 two books of God His word and His works (Entwistle, 2004). Psychology deals with Gods works and theology deals with His word. Our put-on as Christian counselors is to interpret both books and mix in them together so that we can use both books to help our customers.If we find something that does not make sense between both books, there is a date that needs to be resolved before we can use it. At this point, we need to go behind 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 interpret them ourselves. The problem is not with Gods books, but it is the way we interpret them. gentleman understanding of Gods books is based on our worldview (Entwistle, 2004). To properly integrate the two disciplines, we need to have a good understanding of both.We cannot just know 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 remember, though, that our knowledge is only as good as our interpretation. Gods works have been affected by the fall into delinquency, and as a work of God our interpretations will be colored by the fall as well. I think this book has a lot of good thought processs and concepts to it. I found it interesting to discuss the two books of God, because I had hear 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 follow them easily. Some of the things that bothered me the most about the book and its ideas are the idea of interpretation, the definition 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 shade enough to help us know what we need to help others ? When we use the current definitions of integration, do we get a complete picture of what integration means to both disciplines? With all of the models of integration, where do we go neighboring? How do we make progress in the integration process? Can we ever integrate to a point where we can agree on most aspects of a model, or will there ever so be disagreement between the disciplines? These are all questions that I think are important to escort 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 utilise 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 conviction as well as peop le who are not Christians, if we can use them both guardedly and competently.