Adolescent Development

A momentous change has occurred in the church over the past fifty years. A century ago, a great gulf seemed to stretch between the church – which was all about understanding God, Jesus, the Bible, salvation, and sanctification – and psychology, which was concerned with human behavior and helping men and women understand and cope with their problems. Many Christians viewed psychologists and psychotherapists with suspicion, and many psychologists regarded Christianity in particular with skepticism or outright hostility. In the 1950s and 1960s, however, a few Christians – Clyde Narramore, James Dobson, Larry Crabb, Gary Collins, and Paul Meier among them – began exploring and developing Christian approaches to psychology. They began talking about understanding the tenets and techniques of modern psychology with the Bible’s teaching, not substituting the Bible with these tenets and techniques but rather trying to better understand human emotions and relationships in the light of biblical analysis and solutions.