My thoughts on Dobson. Christ matters more than what the world calls Christianity! James Dobson died today, and so, only with some hesitation I write this, yet I feel compelled to share a few thoughts. When my children were growing up, (and my wife and I are blessed with six of them,) on family road trips, we would often listen to Adventures in Odyssey, which probably was one of their (Focus on the Family) main programs. This program was geared to teens and younger children, and although I’m pretty bad at remembering, I know it featured some really likeable characters. Eugene & Connie come to mind, &c., who were always caught up in lessons about “doing the right thing.” Since we did not allow our children to listen to the radio, this was our entertainment on road trips. We had a full size conversion van, all tinted, and everybody just piled in the back. It was the ultimate family party bus, and I was the captain! It was the best of times.
Although our exposure to the entire Focus on the Family culture was limited to this, I knew that behind the children’s programs stood a much larger movement shaping what many people thought Christianity was. That influence reached far beyond family entertainment and self-help. For many, it defined the Christian life almost entirely in terms of family values, parenting techniques, and psychological counsel, and what most thought “Christianity” looked like in America. His voice reached millions, promoting a mixture of psychology, family values, and conservative morals. To the broader culture, he was almost the spokesperson for “Christian family values.” But therein lies the tragedy, what he offered was not the gospel of Christ’s grace, but morality clothed in Christian language, behavior reform mistaken for the faith of Christ, it was simply morality dressed up as Christianity.
From the little I’ve read, and from actually listening to him when I was in my early twenties, I know Dobson leaned heavily on humanistic psychology, blending it with various self-help techniques and behavioral therapies under the banner of “Christian counseling.” This self-help approach turned people inward, not only for relief from life’s struggles, but for salvation itself. It made salvation about you, your faith, your choices, your blessings, your life story, all centered on what you received rather than on Christ Himself, offering a remedy for life’s hardships and a counterfeit salvation.
God becomes little more than a servant to make life easier, while “Christianity” is reduced to self-help steps wrapped in a thin covering of Bible verses and churchgoing. On the surface it looks wholesome, but in reality it undermines the gospel, teaching families to rely on methods and morals instead of calling upon the name of the LORD who alone orders our steps, &c., and when their message turns to the “good news,” it became another gospel altogether, the gospel of free will, where salvation rests on man’s decision rather than Christ’s blood. This is no gospel at all, for it denies the sufficiency of Christ’s atonement and makes the sinner his own savior. Whoever does not see this has missed the very foundation of the Christian faith, which can be summed up in this: GOD is GOD. He alone saves, He alone redeems, He alone is sovereign over every soul. The entire system Dobson endorsed turns this on its head. It does not exalt God but man. It portrays man as the master of his own destiny, while reducing God to a servant, one who waits upon man’s will, who responds to man’s decision, who exists to save when called upon. What could be more wicked than such a thought? This is not the gospel of Christ, but a blasphemous distortion that robs God of His glory and leaves sinners with nothing but themselves. The true gospel proclaims a God who reigns, a Christ who saves to the uttermost, and a salvation that depends not on him that willeth, nor on him that runneth, but on God that showeth mercy. Romans 9:16. To embrace or endorse this sort of Christianity is to blaspheme the name of Christ by presenting a God who serves man, rather than the God who reigns over all. And here lies the danger, when we accept this counterfeit Christianity, we may still use all the right words, grace, faith, salvation, jesus, but we mean something utterly different. Words without truth deceive, and deception here is fatal. To deny the gospel of grace is not a small error; it is to deny Christ Himself. That is why this must be spoken openly and without compromise. The gospel of Christ is too precious to be distorted by the hands of men! To call error what it is, is not hatred but love, for only in Christ is there salvation, and to turn aside from Him is to embrace death. This is the religion the world has embraced as Christianity.
So, did Dobson leave behind a visible legacy? Absolutely! But not one of Christ-centered truth. His mark was to merge psychology with Christianity, to elevate moral reform above gospel grace, and to spread a false message of salvation, a distortion that in effect replaced the Christ of Scripture with one of his own making, and in so doing has left many utterly confused about what the true gospel is. MPJ