Nitty-Gritty: The elders are not and never have been marriage councilors nor psychologists nor doctors and have not claimed to be such
I cannot disagree with this, but it's not the whole story.
There was a recent video put out by the GB for the instruction of elders and MS's.
Essentially it was about a sister who had lost her husband a year ago and was still grieving - to the point of contemplating suicide.
If you were approached by this lady, knowing you were completely untrained, ill equipped and inexperienced with this sort of problem, what would you do - refer her to her doctor for proper medical advice, or play at being a psychologist and come up with a few ideas?
Don't forget, if you get this wrong, she may kill herself.
Well the advice the elders gave her in this instructional video was for her to repeat out loud every day "I am an integrity keeper", as if her suicidal thoughts were because she lacked integrity to God - a suggested accusation that would no doubt make her feel worse, not better.
So while you say "elders are not doctors", neither are they trained to demonstrate humility, recognise their limitations, or take the most sensible course of action. They are told they have the ability to help persons, when really they cannot. They cannot set a broken leg, they cannot fix a broken mind, they are not equipped to deal with the complexities of marriage problems.
But they will recklessly and unashamedly try to.
Splash