Pop Psychology is fine, but has no place in God's Gospel

I'm still not on board with some of the buzzwords and frameworks I'm hearing from some churches, writers, and ministers about "being real" and "being vulnerable."

In a nut shell most of these conversations encourage "vulnerability" and "being real" with God because He was "vulnerable and real" with us at the Cross.

There are hints of truth in these statements but the poor diction and misguided emphasis tends to lead people into embracing a weak--and therefore incomplete and false--gospel. This framework has four big problems:

1) It robs God of His sovereignty thus taking from His glory

2) Lessening Christ's Divinity

3) Makes man the center of the gospel rather than Christ's Glory

4) Is a gateway into legalism

I don't want to worship a Being that is ever, has ever, or will ever be vulnerable. God did not make Himself vulnerable at the Cross nor was Christ ever himself vulnerable in the true sense of the word while on Earth--to teach this diminishes His Sovereignty and is blasphemous.

The only vulnerability we see at the Cross is that of our own, John Calvin informs this notion wonderfully:

"Christ is called the Prince of Peace, and our peace (Isaiah 9:6; Ephesians 2:14), because he calms all the agitations of conscience. If the method is asked, we must come to the sacrifice by which God was appeased, for no man will ever cease to tremble, until he hold that God ispropitiatedsoley by that expiation in which Christ endured his anger. In short, peace must be sought no where but in the agonies of Christ our Redeemer."

John Calvin, The Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book III, 13.4.

The cross enables us to make ourselves vulnerable to God who is completely sovereign and unlocks unrelenting joy in the inexhaustible goodness of His glory.

God is not a 16 year-old drama queen who "opened Himself up" out of a weak sense of neediness directed at the affections of man. Who wants a God no stronger than an emotionally starved narcissist? Churches need to stop teaching this, it's destructive to the Body and masks the true wonder and beauty of the gospel. This is why we need less pop psychology and more championing of the scriptures in churches.

Healing emotional wounds is fine and there are a lot of tools found in these "Pop Psychology" frameworks that CAN help people--but it just doesn't fit in with the gospel. Let's not pollute the gospel with anything else but God's Sovereignty, Christ's Glory, and the joy spilling out of both.