Therapy and Holiness

Secular therapy (or even Christian therapy) doesn't always aim at bringing a person to a complete relationship with God. There's always a danger with any seeking of well-being apart from a relationship with God that it can be too successful and leave people in a bad establishedness that keeps them from seeking God. When we go through pain that is bad enough, it tempts us to think its alleviation is all that really matters. Psychic pain can do that. If a therapist is our society's sanctioned way to deal with psychic pain, and they are successful, then we might think that that fixing was all that mattered, and not seek God.

So therapy has dangers to it. But therapy's goals can align with those of holiness to some extent. For instance, if therapy is meant to address issues like past bitterness, it can help people forgive, which is good in God's eyes. Or if someone seeks to be free of dark triad traits, that intention is a case of having God's values, and therapy may be able to make evil have less of a hold on the client. Sinful habits are something of which we are healed as much as it's something we repent from. Perhaps therapy can give people space from their pain so that they can notice how their relationship with God is going, or that God exists.