ABSTRACT
Marie Hoffman asserted that from “a Christian perspective, patients are not only recognized in their complexities and struggles, but they are also recognized as bearing God’s indelible image within them and having a meaningful destiny before them, a destiny in which the therapist has a role to play”. The author started working with people in mental health contexts in 1967. He has done it as a Navy corpsman, as line staff in a psychiatric hospital, in a children’s residential treatment center, in an adolescent residential treatment center and therapeutic school, and then as a mental health therapist in a co-occurring disorders psychiatric hospital. Biblical counseling in the spiritual attitude uses much more listening than telling, because the counselor understands that people meet God in diverse ways and God’s agenda with each one varies. There is a humility involved that respects the patient’s relationship with God. There is an eavesdropping on the client’s experience with God.
