Can You Be a Secular Therapist and Hold Firm to Your Faith?

Camille McDaniel (00:28)
Before we jump into today’s episode, I wanna share something briefly. The book that I talked about last episode titled Medical Mimics is now available on Amazon. This book grew out of years of sitting in sessions where I started to pick up on the fact that sometimes a client’s lack of improvement with symptoms is rooted in a medical issue.

There were also times that I wanted to be proactive before referring someone for medication management, especially when it had been years since they’d had a full medical evaluation. If that tension has ever felt familiar to you, you can find the link in the show notes or go directly to Amazon and type in the search bar, medical mimics or Camille McDaniel, and either one will take you right to the book.

now on to today’s episode.

Camille McDaniel (01:27)
Welcome back to Christ in Private Practice. As always, I’m grateful that you’re here and you’re listening and joining me for this episode. So today, I want to review something that I saw online in a therapist group and it really caused me to think. And it led me down this path that I want to share with you. And the question was posed in a therapist group anonymously, so nobody knows who actually asked it.

but it was directed at Christian therapists. And it said, how do you manage being a secular therapist and keeping firm in your faith? And when I read it, I paused, I was like, hmm, my first thoughts was, oh, this question, I guess, really kind of depends on how we actually define things. I didn’t really jump into any particular answer because I thought it assumes that we all mean the same thing when we say,

secular therapist and it also assumes that we mean the same thing when we say Christian faith and that’s where I want to kind of I want to jump into this question that was asked online and I want to kind of break it down a little bit and talk about it for this podcast episode and again the question is how can you be a secular therapist but hold on firm to your faith and they wanted to know.

So before we talk about that question and the tension that lies in that question, I think we need to answer first, what’s secular and then what’s Christian faith actually going to mean, especially because you can ask five different Christians, ⁓ five different therapists who are Christians, what does faith mean? And you’ll get five different answers. And so that brought me to something that I hadn’t thought about.

But when I was thinking about this particular episode, this popped up in my mind and I was like, ooh, okay, let’s rock and roll with this one. All right, so we’re going to look at ⁓ 2 Corinthians chapter 11, and there’s a warning in there that Paul, the apostle Paul talks about. And when I first even saw the scripture, like I was introduced to this scripture because I was looking at something online.

and it was talking about like two Jesuses. And I was just like, what? Huh? We’re in scripture. What are we talking about? So I was going through the scriptures, looking at it, and I’m like, ⁓ wow, okay. And in Paul, in what Paul is saying, he’s talking to believers, not unbelievers, ⁓ that they could actually accept another Jesus.

So if you take a look, he’s warning, be careful that you’re not deceived like Adam and Eve were deceived in the garden. Be careful that you don’t find yourself accepting another Jesus, another spirit or embracing a different gospel without realizing it. And that was sobering. That was, he wasn’t, you know, he wasn’t talking about like anything that was loud or, you know, anything that was like a neon sign walking down.

know the road but this is subtle, subtle reshaping, a version of Jesus that feels familiar but functions differently and it reminded me of something that happened to me when I was about 10 or 11 years old. Let me tell you the story. All right, so I was in a store with my mom ⁓ I

I don’t know what we were doing and all that good stuff, but I was in a store with my mom and I turned to look at something. And when I looked back, I saw who ⁓ I thought was my mom walking out of the store. Same race, at least from the back, looked like same race, same hair, same long trench coat.

same color of trench coat. And so I followed, I followed right on almost out of the store until I heard, Camille! And I turned around and it was my real mom who was still inside the store looking at me like, what are you doing? And for a split second, I was totally confused. I don’t know if this has ever happened to anybody, but

the level of confusion because I could have sworn it was my mom walking out the store but here’s my mom looking confused, looking at me, why was I going out the store? I was certain I was following my real mom but I wasn’t and it looked

like it was her from behind. I wish everybody was there because I’m like, look at the comparison. Doesn’t it look just like her? But it wasn’t the same person. And that’s what Paul is trying to warn us about. A glance away for a moment, you entertain a different philosophy. You absorb a different framework. You look back, you think you’re still following the same Jesus, but somehow,

there was a shift, not always a loud shift, sometimes a very subtle shift. And I gotta tell you here, in my early work

sometime in my 20s, I think maybe it was my late 20s or mid to late 20s, I was saying, I’m a Christian, I’m not a Christian therapist. Like I’m a Christian, but I can help all people. decades later.

I have an understanding of how that works now, how to integrate my faith ethically about informed consent that I was not aware of before so that I still help all people. I help people of different belief systems, different walks of life, all of that. ⁓ But I am able to now bring my whole self into the room. ⁓

I was secularly trained. ⁓ Many, many clinicians that I know also were secularly trained and in graduate school, I was taught not to bring myself into the room, not my whole self, because if I brought my worldview, it would interfere and you should definitely not to interfere. And if your values show up,

that will be an interference as well. So you should not bring your values. Just bring your training, nothing else. No one taught me at that time how to ethically integrate faith. No one was showing me how informed consent included worldview clarity. No one showed how to explain how my faith shaped the way that I interpret suffering or human nature. ⁓ So

I tried to figure out how to separate the two, but it never really sat right with me. So when someone asks, how do you manage being a secular therapist and hold firmly to your faith, I actually am hearing the confusion in it.

Because if secular actually just means like we were talking about before, let’s define it like but if if what we’re talking about when we say secular just means you work with in a professional setting and you serve people of all beliefs, well then yeah Christians can do that, no problem.

But if what you’re trying to say by secular is that it means your faith has no authority and how you reason or evaluate or see human nature and human suffering, then that…

definition may not be compatible with a faith where Christ is Lord over your life. Because holding firmly to your faith isn’t about just talking about Jesus in every session. ⁓ You know, it’s about whether your understanding of truth, human nature, suffering, responsibility and hope is shaped by Christ. And this is where ⁓

something clicked for me over time. If our faith only makes us kinder, nicer, more loving, right? But it never guides our thinking. ⁓ It never actually tells us when to resist. It never shapes us in ways that are maybe a little uncomfortable to grapple with.

then maybe something important has shifted because then faith just becomes comforting like a sunny day and the warmth of the sun on your skin or a soft blanket or you know, it feels good. It feels good, but it doesn’t lead. There’s no authority. There’s no leadership.

except for the places where you want to be led. And so the Jesus in the Bible is not present, he’s not presented as just like a comfort. He’s not like a, you know, a warm snuggly blanket, you know. ⁓ He’s more than that. He is Lord of the universe, savior of all. And so that

something that should give us pause. It means it doesn’t necessarily always fit into what we want to do but if we happen to have submitted ourselves over to the Lord then it is his will and his way not our own. Now

Let’s jump in here because I know we, you know, we are professionals. So I know somebody wants me to bring the ethics in here and you should want me to do that. ⁓ I’m coming. I’m coming. Here I am. Right. So let’s talk about the ethics for a moment. Okay. Because our code of ethics and I encourage everyone look at your individual codes. We also have some listeners who are in Canada, who are in a number of other places. I’ve seen Ireland and Russia.

I’ve seen, where ⁓ else, Portugal, Thailand.

Like I’ve seen some places when I look to see where people are listening in from. So I know that it’s not just the United States. So whatever your code of ethics outside of the United States and Canada, I may not be as familiar with, but within Canada and United States, I can say that our code of ethics do not require us to erase our worldview. Now it does require that you don’t impose it on anybody without

proper what? Informed consent. And our code of ethics do emphasize informed consent and transparency and competence and respect.

The codes don’t require that we totally conceal our values or get rid of them or put them on a shelf, but it requires us to be responsible. So ethically, you can bring your full self into the room, but you have to be honest and transparent about it.

I have actually seen online where people have in certain chats ⁓ in online spaces that were not like therapy space, well, they weren’t spaces for professionals. They were spaces for individuals who may have been seeking ⁓ counseling for themselves or had, you know, just wanted peer to peer help. And talking about how

They really wish people had been honest and open and forthcoming about their belief systems in the beginning because they kind of felt in certain complaints or concerns, I’ll say, that were posted online, people felt a little blindsided when someone’s value system all of a sudden entered the room and it was like, okay, that had never come up until we start talking about certain things. If we go back to 2 Corinthians,

Paul is warning believers that they could end up accepting ⁓ another Jesus without realizing it and not necessarily by rejecting him loudly, but it’s by reshaping him. Again, when you go back and look, it’ll say, you you might be deceived. Be careful that you’re not deceived the way Adam and Eve were deceived in the garden. You know, the deception came ⁓ kind of slightly. A little challenge here.

little nudge there, a little questioning here right? You know that thing gets you thinking and gets you challenging and gets you turning and reshaping. So as we reshape Jesus and Christ, Christ in our private practices little by little, it all of a sudden becomes a Jesus who inspires kindness but never guides our judgment.

⁓ a Jesus that comforts us, but never confronts us. A Jesus who influences our character, but has no authority over our decision making and our discernment. So.

If we go back to the question, how do you manage being a secular therapist while holding firmly to your faith? The answer depends entirely on how you define your faith. If faith is personal and not something that is outwardly expressed, then it will stay in your private life. It will be compartmentalized.

If faith means that Christ is Lord over your life, then holding firmly to your faith will mean allowing Him to shape how you think, how you behave.

This episode is not really about telling people you have to do this or you have to do that, but it is one that I hope causes you to examine. Examine yourself. I’m always examining myself. And quietly or out loud, take a look at the version of faith.

that influences how you practice as a clinician. Christ has given us many gifts and talents to use in this field, that is for sure. And we’ve gotten a lot of training. And so I don’t believe though that in all the gifts and all the talents and all the ways that he has made for us, I don’t think that he intended for those gifts and those talents

to be used while pretending that he has no authority over how they are used. I don’t know what would you say, right? What would you say? I’d love to actually hear your thoughts on this. Shoot me an email. Write it under the video, however you want to. Pass this along to any and everyone who you feel could benefit from this message.

I have thoroughly enjoyed speaking with you today and I hope to see you on the journey in the future with additional episodes. And as always, until we meet again, God bless.