Is Confrontation Always What’s Needed? A Potential Pitfall of Nouthetic Counseling

Kirk E. Miller

Nouthetic counseling emphasizes the need to help people primarily by confronting their sin and offering what is perceived as Biblical correction. As the Logos Factbook defines it, Nouthetic counseling is “[a] form of Christian counseling emphasizing biblical teaching and confrontation of sin to address personal problems.”

Now, I’m not trying to broad brush all practices of Biblical—or Nouthetic counseling—as necessarily being guilty of this error. But I do worry that this emphasis on confronting sin as the remedy leads many to too quickly see confronting sin as the needed medicine in almost every pastoral encounter.

When the only tool one has is a hammer—when this is all one’s may trained in or attuned to look for—everything can look like a nail. One goes on the hunt for nails—or worse, creates them when one can’t easily find one.

Furthermore, when one perceives their primary job as sin-confronting, this can encourage one to be quick to make assessments (assumptions) in order to swiftly identify that sin that needs confronting. When one thinks their primary job is to confront, they’re more apt to become slow to listen and quick to speak (cf. James 1:19), since, of course, confronting requires speaking. And if it’s actually loving to confront (as indeed it sometimes is), we can give ourselves license to ungentle, blunt speech.

But contrast this one-size-fits-all approach to pastoral care with Paul’s wise words in 1 Thess 5:14: “[W]e urge you, brothers, admonish the idle, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, be patient with them all.” Paul instructs different approaches to different people facing and experiencing different situations. Notably, consider his words about the fainthearted and imagine the effect that assuming confrontation is the one-size-fits-all, blunt-confrontation solution might have on this person.

And when we disciple others in this approach, we unwittingly train them to respond to others like Job’s friends (“There must be some sin at root here that’s to blame”)—whom God rebuked, we should remember.