Many Christians considering Hypnotherapy often wonder if it is against the bible. There are many debates online. I can understand why there is much fear around it. I believe in interpreting the bible instead of it being entirely literal. With this post, take what resonates. I welcome any other objections and doubts you may wish to discuss – I can be emailed at lorraineboh@gmail.com
The four main questions considered here are:
- Is Hypnotherapy a loss of control of your mind?
- Is this the kind of thing Scripture warns against under divination and sorcery
- Isn’t God who we trust to handle instead of ourselves?
- Does the bible’s verse in Romans 12:2 “Be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind…” mean that the mind is renewed by the Spirit and not a technique?
“Is Hypnotherapy giving up control of my mind?”
No. In Subliminal State Therapy, You stay conscious the entire time. In fact, I rely on your consciousness and our interaction to do the therapeutic work. You can hear everything, you can speak, you can stop at any point, and you can reject any suggestion that doesn’t sit right with what you fundamentally believe.
Hypnosis is closer to the state you’re in during a long, focused prayer, or absorbed in worship with your eyes closed, than it is to sleep or to anything being done to you. Nobody can make you do or believe something against your will in that state — if anything, the guarded, watchful part of you is still fully present and still allowed to say no.
The irony is many people give up control and power of their mind when they are influenced by whom they perceive to be authority. Subliminal State Therapy is about returning that control to you.
“Isn’t Hypnotherapy the kind of thing Deuteronomy warns against?”
This is a fair question, not a paranoid one, and it deserves a real answer rather than being waved off.
Let’s pull up the verse.
“When thou art come into the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee, thou shalt not learn to do after the abominations of those nations. There shall not be found among you any one that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, or that useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch, or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer. For all that do these things are an abomination unto the LORD… Thou shalt be perfect with the LORD thy God.” (Deuteronomy 18:9-13)
Deuteronomy 18 does warn against child sacrifice, divination, sorcery, consulting mediums, and contacting the dead. Practices aimed at reaching spirits to predict the future, controlling others, manipulate or to give your power over to them.
Does a Trance state invoke spirits therefore hypnosis being against the bible?
It’s a common misconception that any relaxed or deeply focused mental state falls into that category. It doesn’t. There’s no spirit being consulted here, no fortune being told. It’s a state of relaxed, focused attention — the same territory as deep prayer or contemplative stillness — used to reach the part of the mind that’s still running an old pattern the conscious mind has already tried, and failed, to reason its way out of.
Reasonable Christians land in different places on this, and that’s worth respecting rather than arguing away.
Here’s what I understand to be the actual mediumship, psychic work – from my own knowledge of this territory rather than a verse in the bible that spells it out. Scripture names the practices prohibited, however it doesn’t explain their mechanics: a trance state on its own isn’t what invokes a spirit. Invocation requires an active command, a request, an invitation extended to something outside yourself and also, permission. That’s the line. Nothing in a hypnotherapy session issues that invitation. Everything in Subliminal State Therapy is permission based.
As Christians in Hypnotherapy, you CAN request the guidance and presence of Jesus in your session much like how you request Jesus to be in your every day life.
“Why would I need this when I have God?”
This isn’t really a question about hypnotherapy. It’s a fear that reaching for anything else means your faith wasn’t enough. It’s a false choice, and it’s worth naming as one.
Prayer and Scripture work at the level of truth, will, and spirit. But plenty of people can pray about something for years, know exactly what’s true, and still find their body reacting from an old fear the moment it’s triggered — not because their faith is thin, but because knowing something and having it settled at the root aren’t the same event.
That gap isn’t a faith problem. It’s where this work sits — not instead of God, but as a room you can bring Him into, the same way you would any other room in your life.
Hypnotherapy may even bring you closer to God
I would argue that Hypnotherapy can bring you closer to God instead of away from God. It is the human conditionings that prevent us from hearing the truth of God. As Subliminal State Therapy helps eradicate the toxic fear that Scripture itself says does not come from God — “God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind” (2 Timothy 1:7) — and the shame, guilt, and resentment that keep a person from Him, SST works on the side of God.
Resentment: Ephesians 4:31–32 tells Christians to put away bitterness, wrath and malice and instead move toward compassion and forgiveness. If left to be tolerated instead of resolved, “See to it… that no ‘root of bitterness’ springs up and causes trouble.” — Hebrews 12:15
Toxic Shame: Shame in a healthy way helps guide, toxic shame however is detrimental to your spirit because it is about self condemnation. Subliminal State Therapy helps you to stop condemning yourself and see yourself the way Christ would. Psalm 34 says:
Those who look to God “are radiant; their faces are never covered with shame.”
Guilt: “Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death.” — 2 Corinthians 7:10
“Doesn’t Romans 12:2 already say the mind is renewed by God, not a technique?”
This is the real question underneath all the others, and it’s worth taking seriously rather than skating past it. “Be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind” is sometimes read as meaning renewal happens through prayer and Scripture alone, and that reaching for anything alongside that short-circuits the process. That’s a reasonable reading.
Here’s another one: Paul names that a mind has to be renewed at the root, not managed from the outside — but he doesn’t specify the only mechanism by which that renewal reaches all the way down to the part of a person still running the old program.
Prayer and Scripture change what you know to be true. This work can be the place where a truth you’ve already prayed into being finally reaches the part of you that hasn’t caught up to it yet. This is why the same sin can be named, understood, even confessed — and still repeat, because knowing what it is was never the same thing as being free of it.
To explain this simply, our automatic behaviour is due to programs in the subconscious. The program was formed by a sensitising event unique to you. While you can intellectually understand what you do is negative and where it came from generally, the behaviour continues automatically the moment you stop watching yourself. Have you ever told yourself to stop being jealous and yet you cannot help it? Was it really a lack of will power and watchfulness? The truth is, the change needs to be made where the program lies – in the subconscious. Hypnosis is a method to get to the subconscious, the therapy is how the change is made.
God explicitly says in the bible to be in control of yourselves — “Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour” (1 Peter 5:8). SST brings you back that control rather than take it away from you. In my experience, Hypnotherapy does not compete with a life centred on faith and prayer.
Free Will
“Now the LORD had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, unto a land that I will shew thee: And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing: And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.” (Genesis 12:1-3)
Read this only at face value, and it’s still asking something real of you: leave what’s familiar. But sit with the specifics Scripture chose. Not just “leave home” — country, kindred, and father’s house, named separately.
Worth asking yourself honestly: which of those three still has more say over your choices than God does — the expectations of the culture around you, the pull of family opinion, or the script you inherited simply by whose household you were born into?
You don’t have to read those three as symbolic to feel the weight of the question. I do read them that way — leaving the conditioning of your country, your kindred, and your father’s house, in trust and obedience to God above all. That’s when I believe a person can actually claim what makes them human: free will. Not the freedom to do anything, but the freedom to choose from consciousness instead of running on inherited programs. Being aware of your conditioning isn’t the same as leaving it. Subliminal State Therapy is how I leave mine, as each layer gets revealed to me.
I am not your average Christian. I use words that sound New Age and have ideas that literal bible readers may baulk at. However, let that not detract you from my explanations. As always, I am happy to learn from you and discuss.
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