Pastor as Physician of the Soul

"There is such a thing as spiritual depression.  Relationships or a marriage can collapse.  Children can disappoint you.  The business can go bankrupt.  Grief or trauma produce states of mind and emotion that call for spiritual counsel.  Because we're to live to the glory of God, all our moods have to be brought into relation to God, his love, his work, and the ongoing process of sanctification.

The sanctifying of troubles is a prominent NT theme.  Troubles are to be expected, but God can sanctify them.  The pastor, in the Puritan understanding is there to be God's agent, God's lightning rod, the transforming link between the distress of the Christian and the love and power of God."

J.I. Packer, quoted in "Broader Pastures, More Breeds," Leadership (Fall 2000), 34.

One of the roles of a pastor is to be a physician of the soul.

This idea comes from the Puritan tradition.  It was a hallmark of their understanding of the role of a pastor.  I also believe that this idea, though not the term "physician of the soul" can be found as a dominate theme describing the role of pastors in the early church.

Why?

Our greatest need is spiritual.  Our greatest problem is at its heart a spiritual problem.  We are people composed of a delicate interaction between body, mind, and heart (or spirit).  Each of these elements of human experience play a part in our overall health.

In the earliest church, perhaps the greatest threat to Christianity was a movement called gnosticism.  Gnosticism emphasized the spiritual element of an individual.  It denied the importance of the physical and it believed that the mental and spiritual were almost one and the same.  In the ancient near eastern and Greco-Roman culture. these ideas struck a chord and in many places the gnostic church arose to combat the orthodox church.

Some of the late writings of the NT illustrate the nature and problems with such teaching.  For example, 1 John was written to address the claims of gnosticism.  It presents a vision of a person as a united whole of body, mind, and soul.  It emphasizes that each element is important, that each element needs to be sanctified by repentance and faith, and that each play a role in how we understand and worship God in Christ.

Today we are not gnostics.  We do not emphasize the spiritual and de-emphasize the flesh.  No, we are materialists.  We magnify, emphasize, stress, and worship the physical while ignoring the spiritual.

We do so to our own peril!

Why do our bodies decay?  Why is there illness and death?  While the cause is often not direct, all of these deviations from the created goodness and perfection of creation arise from a spiritual problem.  Sin has entered the world and now things are not as they should be.  Thankful Jesus is coming back to make things aright again!  Come quickly Lord Jesus.

Furthermore, why do some people have such crazy and dumb ideas?  Why are some entire people groups led astray to patently false ideas?  Even as I write, some people will say, "Who are you to judge the ideas of others?  Each of us get to determine what is good and proper for ourselves."  This is exactly the type of thinking I am calling crazy!  Even if it matches the dominate thought of today!

As individuals and as people groups, we can be lead astray in our thinking.  We can be caught up in false ideas about right and wrong, about power, about truth because of our fallenness.  In other words, Nazi Germany did not occur because of one evil man or a small group of evil folks.  It occurred because in our fallen world, our thoughts can get twisted and warped.  All that is needed is for people who know the truth to be silent or to be forced to silence.  Within a generation, evil can dominate!

Why?  

At its heart, all evil found in the world comes from the spiritual problem of the fallenness of creation.  We cannot ultimately fix the physical problems of this world nor can we fix the evil thought patterns if we do not understand and deal with our spiritual need.

Deep in the center of all our cultural issues are spiritual problems!

Into this great and ignored need should step the pastor.  Our job is to remind people of their spiritual need.  Our job is to encourage people that in Christ God has brought the cure to all of our spiritual needs!

We are not called to be merely therapists who deal with the physical.  We are not called to be merely self help advocates who encourage people to be all they can be.  We are not caretakers of institutions.  We are physicians of the soul who point constantly to Jesus as found in the gospel as the answer to our greatest need.

The tools that we use may be honed by experts in the physical or mental realms, but ultimately our tool box must be filled with ideas and answers that inform the spiritual.  If we do not do it, who in our culture will bring the truth to bear on our spiritual needs?

The answer is no one.  False answers and false gods will be brought to bear on our spiritual needs.  People and cultures will go from lost and struggling to blind and completely evil.

We need more pastors and more believers to understand the often forgotten pastoral role as a "physician of the soul."  The exploding individual and cultural needs demand a return to this difficult but important work!