The Forgotten Downtrodden

The elephant in the room of contemporary Biblical counselling, in my view, is correctly responding to mental illness.

While there has been a resurgence of Biblically based counselling over the last 30 years, many Christians, in my view, are still behind the eight ball in how they deal with the scourge of mental illness.

While we believe the Scriptures are sufficient for every spiritual malady and for equipping believers to be in experience, what they are in position before God, this does not mean the Bible promises instant solutions to the problems of living in this present world.

One of the first unequivocal references to mental illness in the Bible is found in Deuteronomy 28:28. Madness is promised as a judgment of God (along with a whole host of mostly physical diseases) if the Nation of Israel abandoned the commands of God while in the promised land. Significantly, mental illness is listed alongside many other common physical sicknesses and diseases.

If that text is used to show that mental illness is always a judgment of God for personal disobedience, then you also have to insist that every time anyone gets sick then that must also be a judgment of God. Jesus renounced such falsity in John 9 when healing the man who was born blind. Neither his parents nor he had sinned, said the Saviour, but rather God was working out his eternal purposes in their lives for His glory.

For a believer to deny the reality of mental illness, they must, at least logically, (though they may have never expressed it thus) first arrive at the position that every part of man is under the curse except his brain and bio-chemistry. The Apostle Paul dismisses such a position in Romans 8:22-23 when he says that ‘we also’ groan and are burdened in our earthly bodies (which last time I checked houses the brain) and so we wait for our future glorification.

I assist on a professional basis people who have diagnosed mental illnesses on almost a weekly basis. What has stopped many of those people from either taking their life or ending up in jail has been the skilled care of the medical profession. The medications and counselling available to them have been nothing less than medical saviours.

No it won’t get them to heaven, but it does relieve them of crushing and almost unshakable thoughts of the severest kind that literally leave them physically and emotionally debilitated.

God sends rain and sunshine on the just and unjust and has given us the intelligence to discover medical solutions to our present day maladies and diseases. It pleases God to see unnecessary suffering being alleviated just as Christ relieved the hurting and diseased while on the earth. While Jesus performed miracles to prove His deity; that He also healed out of loving concern for people and their problems is also uncontroversial.

Unfortunately pastors are often at a loss to explain or deal with anti-social, bizarre or destructive behaviours (for no logical or apparent reason) apart from simply branding such conduct as ‘deliberately sinful’.

Many so-called ‘biblical’ or ‘nouthetic’ counsellors give them every encouragement to label such actions as simply sinful choices, without appreciating the fact that while mankind is sinful, the Bible also says we are weak and fragile (Psalm 103:13-15).

It is interesting that when David was on the run from Saul he decided to pretend he was mad so King Achish would show him mercy and not kill him (1 Samuel 21:10-15).

It is ironic to me that a pagan king a couple of thousand of years ago had more compassion for the mentally ill than some believers do today.

For that reason many people, including believers who sincerely love the Lord, are left groping in the darkness and are ashamed to go and get professional help.

As one writer skilfully noted, all diseases from the ‘neck down’ are acceptable in churches. But whatever you do, just don’t have any in the head.

I hope this little broadside will provoke us to study this issue more and bring some compassion to the table if we have opportunity to minister to the mentally ill. Or, if we are struggling with mental health issues, to go and get some medical help.

The Gospel saves and transforms all people, whether mad, bad or sad (or any combination of the three). But God has not promised to remove every aspect of the First Adam’s curse until the Second Adam reigns with all the ransomed throng in the heavenly city.

The good news is there is grace and at times medicine to be had while we wait for that Day.

Now we exhort you, brethren, warn those who are unruly, comfort the fainthearted, uphold the weak, be patient with all. 1 Thessalonians 5:14

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