Should I Go to a Hypnotist to Get Free from Habits?
The Bible does not say anything directly about hypnosis, but it DOES have a lot to say about how to get free from bad habits without hypnosis! The Bible way is to put to death the deeds of the flesh by the Holy Spirit, not by your mind. A hypnotized sinner still has a sin nature that will beat him. A saint already has the key to overcoming bad habits through his born-again spirit, so he does not need to be hypnotized into beating bad habits. He needs to renew his mind with the Word to realize who he really is so that he can walk in his victory over sin and the flesh.
Romans 8:13:
For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live.
Galatians 5:16:
This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh.
Galatians 5:22-23:
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith,
Meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.
The word temperance above means self-control. Also, the words a sound mind below also mean self-control or moderation:
2 Timothy 1:7:
For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.
Thus, self-control is a spiritual thing, not something you whip up with your own mind.
Self-control is not the same thing as giving someone else permission to control your mind. It is biblical to meditate on the Word (see Should I Use Meditation to Be Healthier?), and the Bible commands us to renew our minds with the Word (Romans 12:2), but nothing resembling hypnosis is mentioned as a means to achieve this. You are transformed by the renewing of your mind, not by the taking over of your mind by a hypnotist.
I used to hypnotize people back when I was into the occult – for the specific purpose of having occult power operate through the subjects, or better put, victims. I have not engaged in it since becoming a Christian for obvious reasons. While people’s minds are powerful things, a born-again spirit is even more powerful. I am not saying that every hypnotist is an occult practitioner, but hypnosis is definitely used by some occult practitioners.
I suppose this answer will ruffle the feathers of so-called Christian hypnotists, but I maintain that you would do people a better service helping them through spiritual means than through strictly mental means. I’m sure someone will object that he got helped by a “Christian hypnotist” just as some people are helped to some degree through involvement in deistic but non-Christian 12-step programs. In the latter case, peer pressure might assist in abstaining from a bad habit, but there is still a better way to do it using a knowledge of our new covenant. God’s spiritual means are always best. In fact, the cultic founder of a well-known 12-step program managed to break one habit but was run out of the very group he started because he couldn’t break another sinful habit. He still had a sin nature and that was the root problem that he never dealt with.
While we’re on this subject, I maintain that any attempt to hypnotize someone to get him to regress into his past and “picture Jesus there” in a traumatic time or some other such nonsense is anti-biblical, as the Bible tells us to let go of the past, not relive it on a Christian psychotherapist’s couch.
Philippians 3:13-14:
Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before,
I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.
Finally, what about the idea that God is in favor of trances because he put Peter and Paul into trances Himself?
Acts 10:10:
And he became very hungry, and would have eaten: but while they made ready, he fell into a trance,
Acts 22:17:
And it came to pass, that, when I was come again to Jerusalem, even while I prayed in the temple, I was in a trance;
In neither of these cases is there any record that the trance was self-induced or induced by another person. God did it Himself. Importantly, there is no indication that either Peter or Paul asked God to do it. These were actions God decided to do. You can get into a lot of trouble clamoring for experiences yourself, as Scripture is clear that there are agents of the devil able to provide impressive spiritual experiences. The person in Scripture who DID seek after this kind of thing was Balaam, and he was cited as an evil example!