Cognitive behavior therapy

"You can change your behavior by changing your thinking."
That is the underlying principle of Cognitive Behavior Therapy, a burgeoning craze in today's society. It has been a craze for some years now, though I have only recently come in contact with it. CBT is the twin sister of Robert Schuller's "Health, Wealth, and Prosperity" teaching, and the estranged second-cousin of transcendental meditation and other Eastern "Mind-over-matter" philosophies. There have been studies that show CBT is successful in that it helps people overcome various emotional disorders. At the youth treatment facility where I worked, CBT is the primary pedagogical tool they use to help troubled and delinquent youth make better decisions. The curriculum they use is called "Thinking for a Change". The opening statement of this post is the main emphasis of the course. As I worked at this youth treatment facility (a.k.a. detention center), I noticed several aspects of CBT that seemed to be extremely erroneous and problematic.
The first problem is with the word "change." What does it mean to change? According to TheFreeDictionary.com, change can mean:

To cause to be different
To exchange for or replace with another, usually of the same kind or category
To become different or undergo alteration
To undergo transformation or transition

Whichever definition you use, the word intimates two different objects, or states--an old one, and a new one. In the context of CBT, a person changes from one type of behavior to another. Why would a person feel the need to change? Unfortunately for many CBT-ites, the answer is a bit ambiguous. In most cases, the reason is that the old behavior was not productive/beneficial. It proved to be unsatisfactory for the person. The behavior did not match societal norms. For the kids with whom I worked, their old behavior landed them in jail. Unless there is a standard, it is difficult to establish why the old behavior needs to be discarded. Many alcoholics and addicts do not see anything detrimental about their lifestyle, which is what makes them alcoholics and addicts. The fact that their behavior harms themselves is meaningless. We live in a society where the individual is exalted beyond measure. Every man should do what is right in his own eyes. If a person thinks it is right to harm their own body, then so be it. So many times at work I would ask a kid to stop doing something. So many time their answer would be, "Why? It is not hurting anyone." The only ground we have, therefor, is that it harms others--their family, their friends, their neighbors. Yet if we are individuals, then why should we care what our behavior does to others. Shouldn't we do only what feels good to us? The other side of the issue is, to what do we change our behavior? We have enough trouble identifying what behaviors are unacceptable. How are we ever to determine what is acceptable? I suppose we must simply poll the average American as to what behavior they find to be proper. We are going to run into problems with that, however. Some people think incest and polygamy is proper. What happens if the majority of people accept that type of behavior? In order for someone to change, they need to identify both what is acceptable and unacceptable behavior. In today's relative climate, that is nearly impossible to do.
Another problem is the emphasis on feelings and belief. Part of the process of CBT is to identify the feelings and beliefs that affect our decisions. I know as well as anyone that it does make a difference what you believe. However, the emphasis here is more on past events. A person may "believe" that drugs help them calm down and stay focused, because in the past drugs helped them calm down and stay focused. A girl may "believe" that the only way to be loved is to be sexual, for, in the past, when she was sexual she received attention that she accepted as love. These believes, which might properly be called "emotional baggage," has nothing to do with what we should be doing. If there is a proper way to act, then we ought to act that way regardless of everything else. It shouldn't matter what we have experienced in the past. The issue becomes the decision making process rather than the decision itself. This results, possibly unintentionally, in people making excuses. "I act this way because my stepfather never loved me." "I have to act tough to overcome my insecurity." "I chose alcohol because of . . . whatever." What is right to do is right to do no matter whether we want to do it or not, no matter whether it is easy to do it or not. (I must apologize, for I have fallen into a trap. I used the word "right." I briefly forgot that there is no right or wrong, there is only acceptable and unacceptable. Allow me to continue.) Though feelings and "beliefs" have a role in the decisions we make, they shouldn't. When we focus on past experiences, it becomes easy to forget our present situation, which is to do what we are supposed to do.
Finally, CBT rightly identifies the problem as being a thinking error. We have an inaccurate perspective that needs to be altered. This, however, brings us back to the issue of what is an accurate and what is an inaccurate perspective. We have already covered that. So we will go a bit further/farther. Can we truly change our thinking? Is it possible to alter our perspective? As a Christian, I understand that the answer is firmly, "No." The problem is our thinking. Furthermore, the problem with our thinking is our Adamic nature. Our Adamic nature is utterly corrupted. Thus, our thinking will always be utterly corrupted. We are not like a computer with a virus. We cannot simply extract the faulty program and be cured. The whole system is faulty. When you plug 2 + 2 and should get 4, we are getting Q. Nothing that we can do can fix our faulty nature. We can move from one specific line of bad thinking to another specific line of bad thinking, but we can never move to a line of good thinking. We are Ezekiel's pot that is marred in the Master's hand (Note: not "by" the Master's hand). We must be remade in the image of the Master. That is what Christ has done for us on Calvary. Our old nature has been rendered incompatible. We have a new nature in Christ. Trying to fix our old nature is like trying to fix a PC--it cannot be done. We need a new nature (possibly a Mac). The problem with fixing ourselves is that ourselves is the problem. This last point is an unabashed Christian one. However, even outside a Biblical perspective, CBT has several fundamental errors that render it ultimately ineffective.