Reviewed Book: Welter, Paul R. Counseling and the Search for Meaning. Waco, Tex: Word Books, 1987. Resources for Christian Counseling; 9

Tjeltveit, Alan C.

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Wilfrid Laurier University

ConsensusVolume 14Issue 1 Essays: Historical and Theological Article 255-1-1988Counseling and the Search for MeaningAlan C. TjeltveitFollow this and additional works at: http://scholars.wlu.ca/consensusThis Book Reviews is brought to you for free and open access by Scholars Commons @ Laurier. It has been accepted for inclusion in Consensus by anauthorized editor of Scholars Commons @ Laurier. For more information, please contact scholarscommons@wlu.ca.Recommended CitationTjeltveit, Alan C. (1988) "Counseling and the Search for Meaning," Consensus: Vol. 14 : Iss. 1 , Article 25.Available at: http://scholars.wlu.ca/consensus/vol14/iss1/25140 ConsensusFred Kaan, Jim Strathdee, Jim Manley and Ron Klusmeier, plus songsfrom differing faith backgrounds, an excellent offering of current hymnodyis presented.The Biblical Index, besides being of great assistance in worship prepa-ration, reflects the faithfilled attention given to an authentic reflection ofour Christian legacy. The texts of the hymns give particular attention tothe current concerns for more extensive imagery for God, and for responsesthat are genuine in today’s church. Heritage hymns such as “All peoplethat on Earth Do Dwell” and “O For a Thousand Tongues” have gained asensitive renewal.The tunes are generally rendered in four-part harmony, with an easymelody line and the words between the staves. The musical needs of thesmall choirs and the limited resources of many small churches have beenaddressed. Family tunes and new words for old songs along with the gener-ous inclusion of “old” favourites such as “Amazing Grace” and “How GreatThou Art”, create a medium for enthusizistic singing.There will be many reactions to the song book. Organists will miss ametrical index and a listing of sources. I anticipated more new hymns, buthaving reflected on the new renditions of many old hymns, I appreciate thisresource and am grateful for its being published. It can be used extensivelyas an agent for integrating our worship, for allowing people of all persuasionsto have a voice; the traditional and the liberated, the conservative and thefeminist. I pray that it will be compassionately received and people will bedrawn to the potential newmess it presents.Enid R. PowellCambridge, OntarioCounseling and the Search for MeaningPaul R. WelterWaco, Texas: Word BooksI approached this volume with considerable anticipation. Questions ofmeaning are often present when a person seeks out a pastor or counselor.Society, including psychologists and psychiatrists, offers a variety of answersto questions of meaning: wealth, security, power, self-actualization, becom-ing more effectively and comfortably focused on meeting our own needs,and so forth. The Christian church also has a set of visions concerningmeaning. Those visions often stand in some conflict with societal visions.The pastor or other Christian counselor has the opportunity to playa special role in helping troubled persons work through issues of mean-ing. Indeed, pastors can talk about the Gospel and its implications forBook Reviews 141meaning in ways in which secular counselors not only do not (because of afrequent failure to believe in the Gospel) but ought not, because the psy-chotherapist’s role in a secular setting is appropriately limited to dealingwith mental health issues, and does not include broader spiritual and moralissues. Issues of meaning, then, are central to questions about the natureof the relationship between psychology and Christian faith and about thedistinctiveness of a Christian approach to counseling.This book purports to address those issues squarely. It is the 9th volumeof the Resources for Christian Counseling series, a series intended to dealwith practical counseling topics in a way that uses Scripture carefully andrelies on “accurate psychology”.Welter, a counseling psychologist at Kearney State College in Nebraska,first focuses on recognizing and understanding the problem of meaningless-ness. The bulk of the book is then devoted to a pragmatic discussion ofspecific counseling approaches and methods, for example, those to be usedin working with the elderly, the grieving, and cancer patients. He concludeswith discussions about the counselor’s use of the self and about preventingmeaninglessness.The primary strength of the book lies in its pragmatic orientation andin the ample clinical wisdom Welter provides. His is a warm, simple style.The result is a helpful, very readable book which more often than not avoidsbeing simplistic.Welter relies heavily, although not exclusively, on the work of VictorFrankl. In Man’s Search for Meaning^ Frankl discusses his observation thatthose who survived the concentration camps with him during World WarII tended to be those who found some sort of meaning in their experience.Questions of meaning therefore occupy a central role in his approach tocounseling.Although he acknowledges that a Christian must go “beyond” Frankl,Welter is inconsistent in doing so. He often appears simply to echo Frankl.For instance, despite acknowledging at times that the spiritual life is, fi-nally, the remedy for the meaningless life, at other times Welter fails tochallenge and even appears to accept Frankl’s position that people sim-ply need to have some sort of meaning in life, any sort of meaning. Thatapproach is certainly legitimate if enhancing mental health is one’s onlyconcern. But ought not the aspirations of a Christian counselor be higherthan that? Unfortunately, this book does not discuss the fact that a vastarray of alternative answers to the question of meaning, with varying de-grees of legitimacy, exist in society today. The issue is not only meaningversus meaninglessness, but which meaning. Surely, part of the Christiancounselor’s role ought to be to help a counselee think through those op-tions, giving particular attention to the offensive particularity of the Cross,to the Bible, to the Christian traditions of ethics and dealing with issuesof meaning, to love of neighbor and the pursuit of justice, and to the re-lationship of ultimate matters to the penultimate matters which most ofsecular psychology assumes to provide the answers to meaning in life. Un-fortunately, Welter fails to discuss how the Christian counselor can do so142 Consensusin a way which does not violate the integrity and freedom of the counseleeand which benefits from the legitimate wisdom to be found in psychology.Equally problematic, in some pcissages Welter appears to acceptFrankl’s position that what is central is that we search for meaning. Thereis minimal appreciation of the fact that, finally, it is not our search formeaning which is central, but meaning’s search for us, Christ’s dying forus and reconciling us to himself.Although I suspect Welter would agree with that last statement, hiswriting is inconsistent. Unfortunately, he evidences the most common flawof writers in the area of pastoral and Christian counseling: a frequentuncritical acceptance of psychology’s value-laden counseling theories, theabsence of a critique of them in the light of the Gospel and Christianethics, and a failure to articulate an approach to Christian counseling whichincorporates consistently both the Christian tradition and appropriate non-value-laden aspects of psychology.In summary, this is a book which needs to be read selectively, due to anoccasional uncritical acceptance of Frankl and an overall failure to spell outhow Christian counselors should address the competition between Christianand non-Christian approaches to meaning. Nevertheless, it addresses a veryimportant set of issues and provides much practical wisdom for Christiancounselors.Alan C. TjeltveitSt. Olaf CollegeNorthfield, Minnesota

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