Understanding the Times: Therapeutic Culture
When wellness becomes the mission
Summary: Therapeutic culture teaches that the goal of life is to feel good, manage pain, and maximize happiness. It rightly identifies our need for healing but distorts this truth by centering wellness instead of serving God’s mission. Christianity contends with this worldview by acknowledging our need for healing while refusing to make comfort the mission.
What is the movement?
The therapeutic turn in culture can be traced to the rise of modern psychology, from Freud to today’s multibillion-dollar self-help industry. The half-truth it recognizes is that humans do need care and restoration. Scripture affirms this: “The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit” (Ps. 34:18). But therapeutic culture absolutizes this truth: suffering becomes the greatest evil, emotional wellness the highest good, and life’s meaning is reduced to feeling better.
The sociologist Philip Rieff described this shift as “the triumph of the therapeutic.” Premodern societies structured life around God and moral order. The modern age elevated autonomy and liberation. In the therapeutic age, Rieff argued, the highest authority is emotional well-being. Even religion is repurposed to support self-esteem. The moral life no longer aims at holiness or truth but at psychological adjustment and wellness.
How does it intersect with Christianity?
This vision tempts Christians to approach faith through what Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton call Moralistic Therapeutic Deism: God exists to make me happy, remove obstacles, and support my goals. Scripture becomes a tool for self-help, and discipleship a path to wellness.
The danger is that in this framework the cross itself becomes unintelligible. If our main problem is a lack of wellness, not the reality of sin, then a crucified Savior seems excessive, even irrelevant. But the gospel diagnoses a deeper unwellness: we are alienated from God, enslaved to sin, and in need of reconciliation. Jesus does not come as therapist-in-chief but as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. A worldview that avoids suffering cannot make sense of a Messiah who suffers on our behalf. As Paul says, “We preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles” (1 Cor. 1:23).
How do we contend faithfully?
Christianity acknowledges our need for healing but refuses to make comfort the mission. Jesus says, “Whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it” (Matt. 16:25). Paul adds, “We rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope” (Rom. 5:3–4). Our true life is not found in self-care but in self-surrender: “For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God” (Col. 3:3).
Therapeutic culture promises peace by centering wellness. The gospel gives peace by centering Christ. Wellness is a gift to be stewarded, not a god to be worshiped. In its proper place, it equips us to pursue the larger mission: to love God and neighbor, to share in Christ’s sufferings, to advance His mission, and to be transformed into his likeness until he makes all things new.
