Welcome back to week 32. We hope the past week has been a blessed one for you. Last week we briefly considered the presentation and performance levels in biblical counseling and why they are important. This week we will briefly examine the “preconditioning level” and why it’s important to the biblical counseling process. 

Let’s first define what the preconditioning level in counseling means. The preconditioning level of a counselee’s problem is his or her habitual self-programmed response pattern to various stimuli in life. The performance level problem, as important as it is to address, is only one instance in the bigger preconditioning problem. 

The preconditioning level problem can be thought of as the master cog of a gear which spins the teeth. The teeth, in this illustration, represent the performance level, that mesh with the counselee’s life (identified by the counselee in the presentational problem). The counselor can and should address the sin laden teeth of the gear, but unless the bigger picture of the cog, the preconditioning level, is seen the counselor is only performing crisis intervention. Furthermore, the counselee is not learning how to take off unrighteous responses and replace them with righteous responses if the counseling stops at the performance level.^[1]

In order to get to the cog of the gear the counselor must seek to understand what metals, so to speak, the counselee has repeatedly used in order to forge the gear upon which the sinful teeth are meshing with his life. To accomplish this task the counselor will usually need to help the counselee review his life to identify non-biblical response patterns. 

A behavioral response review can be very revealing for both the counselee and counselor. It gives the counselor more data with which to work and help the counselee. It also helps the counselee realize how he has been wrongly responding to life. 

Abusive and unloving parents can shape a child’s response patters. For example, they hit him, so he hits others.^[2]They do not show him affection, so he shows no affection to others. At the same time, past circumstances need not govern the counselee’s life. 

Since we live in a sin cursed world the counselee will always encounter people who abuse him or her in one way or another. He will also encounter those who do not love him for any reason or no reason at all. However, Scripture offers hope for change in the midst of those scenarios. Thus, there is no legitimate excuse to carry on in sinful, habitual response patterns (Rom. 8:19-23; 6:10-14). We really do need to move from the performance level to the preconditioning level. An example of why we need the move can be seen below.

Beverly, a believer, who is severely overweight, came in for a nutritional consultation. She was experiencing several health concerns due to her weight. Beverly’s presentation level problem was her weight. After data gathering, we moved on to helping Beverly with her problem. We wanted to help Beverly with her weight concern (i.e., the presentation problem). However, we needed to help Beverly see, based on her answers to our questions, and through Scripture, that she was idolizing food. Food idolization was the performance problem.^[3] However, we wanted to better understand the why behind the what. What she was doing (idolizing food), was wrong and needed to be addressed. Why she was doing it (i.e., preconditioning), though, would be more helpful to us both to understand.

Because it would have been negligent to stop at the performance level, we walked Beverly back in time to her childhood.^[4] We did this to retrace her unbiblical responses to various stimuli in her life. We walked from her early youth until current day reviewing what happened and her responses to it. It was ascertained that Beverly developed habitual patterns of eating in response to abusive parents and boyfriends. 

In learning this historical information, we could help Beverly see, through the contrasting and convicting Scripture, that she was seeking the comfort of food rather than Christ. The performance level informed us that Beverly was idolizing food. The preconditioning level showed us why she was idolizing food. With the cog fully exposed Beverly knew from what sin she needed to repent. She had now seen herself practicing it all these years. That is a good thing because God offers hope for sinners who repent. He’s not so big on offering diet plans in place of righteousness. 

This is why it’s important to properly identify and deal with the preconditioning level problem. It helps all involved get at the core issue and better understand why it’s there. Once the sin problem, whether in action or reaction, is identified repentance can take place. There’s hope in repentance because God forgives repentant sinners!      

We hope our short time considering the preconditioning level in biblical counseling was helpful. It is critical that we understand the preconditioning level problem so that we can better address the cog, the big picture, the core issue, rather than symptoms of the core issue and repent. Lord willing, next week we will consider a “complicating problem” in biblical counseling.  What do we do when a complicating problem arises while trying to help others? Until then may our Lord bless you and keep you.

^[1] Paul speaks about putting off sinful habitual ways of life and putting on righteous ways through the power of the Holy Spirit, cf. Eph. 4:25-32.

^[2] We are not talking about the rod of discipline, rightly used, as advised and even commanded in Scripture (Prov. 10:13; 13:24; 14:3; 22:15; 23:13-14; 26:3; 29:15). We are talking about actual physical abuse.

^[3] Everyone engages in the occupation of worship; cf. Ex.20:1-6; Rom. 6:16; 12:1; Jer. 2:13; 1 Kings 18:21; Matt. 6:21; 12:34; Jos. 24:14-20. However, worship can easily become idolatry if placed anywhere other than on Christ; (cf. 1 Kings 11:4; Ezk. 14:1-11; Rom. 1:25; 1 Cor. 10:1-14).

^[4] This is not the same as psychologically based regression therapy.