‘You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free’ – Jesus
Psychology asks the right questions, but can’t give good answers.
My mom used to tell me, ‘Wade, psychology asks the right questions, but can’t give you good answers.’
I’ve never forgotten her little axiom.
It stuck with me through pastoring, counseling sessions, and more than a few late-night conversations with hurting people who wondered why the therapy couch never quite delivered them freedom.
Please don’t misunderstand: I’m grateful for professional psychiatrists and psychologists.
When someone is wrestling with anxiety, depression, trauma, or the lingering effects of abuse, I’m the first one to say, ‘Get some professional help.’
The church has spent far too many years acting like mental and emotional struggles are nothing more than a lack of faith or a secret sin issue.
That kind of spiritual arrogance has wounded more sheep than it has ever healed.
So yes, by all means, sit with a wise, compassionate therapist who can help identify what’s going on inside that head and heart of yours by asking good questions.
Psychology is brilliant at diagnosis: It asks the penetrating questions the rest of us are often too afraid to voice.
But here’s where Mom was onto something profound:
The Diagnosis Is Not the Deliverance
To escape the prison of one’s mind, the cell must be opened by truth from God.
You can map every childhood wound, trace every unhealthy pattern, label every cognitive distortion, and still walk out of the office carrying the same old chains—only now you’re able to articulate exactly what size they are and who forged them.
Insight without truth is like a spotlight in a prison cell: it lets you see the bars more clearly, but it doesn’t open the door.
Jesus said, ‘You shall know the Truth, and the Truth shall set you free.’
He didn’t say:
- ‘You shall know your triggers,’
- ‘You shall process your pain,’
- ‘You shall understand your story’
As helpful as those things can be.
Freedom comes when Truth walks into the room, looks you in the eye, and declares who God is, who you now are in Christ, and what is actually, eternally real.
I’ve watched it happen time and again.
A man sits across from me, broken by decades of addiction, fresh out of a twelve-step meeting and a year of therapy. He knows precisely why he drinks, exactly how his father’s anger and his mother’s absence wired him for self-destruction. He can diagram it on a napkin. Yet one day, he opens Romans 6 and reads, ‘Sin shall no longer be your master… You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness.’
The Holy Spirit takes those words, drives them past the intellect, down into the marrow, and something shifts.
Truth Changes the Want-To
The power of the old master is broken, not because he finally understood the question, but because he met the Answer.
Going to a psychologist without regularly feasting on God’s Word is like going to a physician who writes you a prescription, hands you the slip, and then watches you fold it into a paper airplane instead of taking it to the pharmacy.
The doctor can be world-class, the diagnosis flawless, the treatment plan perfect—but if you never swallow the medicine, you’ll never get well.
So by all means, get the diagnosis.
- Ask the hard questions.
- Shine light into the dark corners.
- Figure out the right questions to ask.
But then take those discoveries to the Great Physician, open His Book, and let Him speak healing into every crevice of your soul.
Psychology helps you see the wound. Sacred Scripture, Spirit illumined, makes you whole.
