In today’s society, it is increasingly difficult to form meaningful relationships with people who have been taught to relate through the lens of secular psychology. Far from being a neutral tool, modern psychology—especially as filtered through the education system—has done significant damage to Christianity and to the covenant of marriage. Instead of forming hearts for love, sacrifice, and truth, the system is training minds for self-preservation, emotional fragility, and ego-driven interaction.

The Rise of Therapeutic Individualism

Beginning in early education and extending through higher academia, students are immersed in a worldview that elevates personal feelings over objective truth. Emotional safety is equated with moral rightness, and discomfort—especially when challenged—is labeled as harm. This mindset flows directly from psychological theories that treat human beings not as moral agents accountable to God, but as fragile psyches whose highest goal is emotional well-being.

But Scripture presents a very different view. Jesus said, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me” (Luke 9:23). Christianity begins with self-denial, not self-esteem. Yet students are taught the opposite: to prioritize their own fulfillment and to remove people or relationships that cause stress, discomfort, or offense—even if those are the very means God uses to shape character.

The Effect on Marriage

Nowhere is this more visible than in the modern view of marriage. Couples increasingly approach marriage not as a covenantal bond to weather hardship but as a contract contingent on emotional satisfaction. When psychology replaces Scripture, the language of the covenant gives way to therapeutic jargon: “You’re toxic,” “You’re not meeting my needs,” or “You’re triggering my trauma.”

Rather than learning to bear with one another in love (Ephesians 4:2), to forgive as Christ forgave (Colossians 3:13), and to love sacrificially (Ephesians 5:25), people are taught to draw boundaries, cut off relationships, and guard their sense of self at all costs. Marriage becomes a negotiation of rights, not a union of grace.

The Education System’s Role

This breakdown doesn’t start in adulthood—it begins in the classroom. Public education, infused with secular psychology, promotes a model of the human person rooted in autonomy, therapeutic language, and identity relativism. Children are taught that their truth is the truth, that validation is love, and that disagreement is violence.

By removing God from the center of knowledge (Proverbs 1:7), education replaces divine wisdom with human speculation. Young minds are trained to see relationships as emotional transactions, and they carry this mindset into their future marriages and churches—crippling their ability to endure hardship, confront sin, or commit beyond convenience.

Returning to a Biblical View

The antidote is not to reject all psychology, but to reject psychology as the master lens through which we interpret the world. We must return to the Word of God as our authority on the nature of man, the purpose of marriage, and the foundation of healthy relationships.

• Man’s problem is sin, not trauma alone: “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23).
• Healing comes through Christ, not self-discovery: “By His wounds we are healed” (Isaiah 53:5).
• Marriage is a covenant of mutual self-giving: “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her” (Ephesians 5:25).
• True maturity is dying to self, not centering the self: “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Galatians 2:20).

Conclusion

When people are trained to relate through psychology rather than Scripture, relationships become fragile, marriages break under pressure, and the gospel is overshadowed by self-help. The education system has played a central role in this cultural shift by replacing formation with therapy and truth with affirmation. If the church is to preserve the integrity of marriage and restore true relational health, it must reclaim a biblical anthropology—starting with the renewal of the mind (Romans 12:2) and a return to Christ-centered love.