Mental Health Awareness
Mental health, or lack thereof, is a hot topic in today's world. People, especially young people, seem to be struggling with their mental health more than ever. Experts say there are many factors at play, the increasing complexity of our modern world, guns, politics, bigots, and intolerance, just to name a few of the things that get the blame for poor mental health.
The National Institute of Health estimates that 23% of American adults suffer from some sort of mental health issue, and I'd like to put forth that it's far more than that once you realize what mental illness actually is. source
The mental health crisis in America and the World as a whole is far more severe today than it has been at any time in history. The majority of the people you might meet, even in the Church, are dealing with a mental health issue.
People are suffering even to the point of committing suicide because of the strain placed upon their mental faculties, and no one seems to know what the answer is. There are 135 deaths by suicide in America, not every year, but every single day!
135!
Men make up 80% of suicide deaths in America, which is a staggering number. Most of these suicides are either American indian or white men, which is astounding. We are talking 108 men taking their own lives every single day. What on earth would prompt men to reach a place where death seems a better option than continuing to live? Source
I can tell you I’ve been in places where it seemed like a viable option, and I can also tell you what the cure was and is.
We’ll get to the cure in just a bit, but this problem is a tremendous tragedy, and it goes back to mental health and our job as Christians.
Psychologists seem to be at a loss for an answer, let alone a solution, to this issue, and there doesn't seem to be a “medical” answer to be found anywhere. They don’t have any lasting solutions to offer, and for a very good reason.
The 1800s saw the birth, or, as we might better view it, the emergence of many anti-God ideas.
I say emergence, because the root of these ideas existed long before the 1800s in the form of various pagan religions, which all had their origin in the Babylonian religion, which is the religion of Satan. They had been in hiding, more or less, for hundreds of years, but the advent of mass communication enabled these fringe ideas to become widespread in what would rightly be considered a Christian nation.
Ironically, most of the philosophies that are viewed as atheistic in nature are structured in their beliefs as a religion. Communism, evolution, psychology, and many other sciences all have religious-like aspects to their practice.
Of course, we know they do serve a god, just not the true god, which is why they often require blind faith to practice the elements of these belief systems. Humans require something to serve, and they are created with a deep intrinsic need for religion, which is why everyone practices a religion of some sort or another.
America was mainly Christian-based, even in our government, up to the 1800s, but a major shift occurred around that time, and things began to creep in that were beliefs from the religion of Satan, things that encouraged the rebellion of the soul against God.
There were a few early theories of evolution in the 1700s and early 1800s, but no one paid them any mind. The thought that the Earth had no creator was ludicrous to most people, but that all changed in 1859 with Darwin's “Origin of Species.” That marked the turning point of the scientific community when they shifted from believing in a creator to believing in nothing at all.
The shift from creation to evolution greatly influenced some of the beliefs in the Church as the views began to be widely accepted. In the early 1800s, an idea began to be pushed by a Scotsman named Chalmers to align with the idea of evolution that was taking shape in the shadows. We know this idea as the gap theory, or the re-creation theory, but it wasn't widely accepted until the Scofield study Bible put it into its notes in 1909.
The Scofield Bible shaped the theology of the 20th century and introduced many false teachings that had been previously rejected, but now, since they were written in the Bible, they gained tremendous traction.
Communism and feminism also emerged in the 1800s, and these movements began to creep into theology and influence the teaching and interpretation of God's Holy Word.
Around the same time as evolution was being invented and creeping into theology, another “science” was emerging that built upon the foundation of evolution. If there were no God, and if no one made us, we must not have a soul or any spiritual aspect of our minds at all. We must simply be a series of chemical reactions that require a scientific explanation in order to be understood.
Wilhelm Wundt, the founder of modern psychology, did his work in 1879 and sought to explain the human mind through chemicals and without God. He rejected the soul and treated human thought as an evolutionary product of the brain, directly based on the work of Darwin.
Most of us probably haven't heard of Wundt, but we've all heard of Sigmund Freud, who began his work in the early 1900s. Freud viewed human behavior as shaped by primitive animal drives, which he directly derived from Darwinian thinking. Psychology began as a way to explain the human mind and the human condition without God, as a direct result of the theory of evolution.
Freud said, “Religion is an illusion and it derives its strength from its falling in with our instinctual desires.”
We tend to view psychology as a strict science, but even a casual study of what is taught in psychology reveals that it's more myth and theory than it is real, hard facts. Even those who practice psychology readily admit this if they are honest, and psychology is viewed as mainly quackery by many learned doctors.
A famous psychologist named William James said that psychology was,
"hardly more than what physics was before Galileo, what chemistry was before Lavoisier. It is a mass of phenomenal description, gossip, and myth, including, however, real material enough to justify one in the hope that … its study may be so organized even now as to become worthy of the name of natural science at no very distant day.”
Psychology isn't really a science, then, and it's mainly a religion, built on theory and taken on blind faith. The truth is, it originated as a direct competitor to those who were actually doing healing work with the human condition.
Did you know that psychology means the study of the soul?
Psyche is Greek for the soul, and ology is the study of something. Therefore, psychology is the study of the soul, or how to help and give healing to the soul. It's a modality, a practice formed and seeking answers apart from God, and it seeks to bring healing to the souls of people through methods that reject God.
That should make your conscience squirm just a little, and your mind will likely throw up a quick, “Who cares?”
Think about it for a minute, though.
What did people do before the invention of psychology?
Who helped them with their mental issues and provided moral counsel?
Was everyone mentally sick and helpless before some brilliant guy finally thought up the theories and treatments of psychology?
Mental health and the study of the soul were the realm of the Church, and Jesus was seen as the only one who could provide true healing to those dealing with mental sickness.
The anti-God philosophy of the 1800s left no room for this sort of thing, and as those false ideas gained traction, people rejected the church and the soul healing Jesus offered through His Word.
Today, we call it mental health, and the absence of “health” mental illness, but doctors seem to lack a healthy model to weigh their patients against.
There doesn't seem to be a base measure of what a healthy mind is, just subjective data of how people are feeling and what's going on inside their minds on the day they get surveyed.
Science doesn't have a good answer to mental health, in other words.
Is there an answer to this severe problem?
Is there an answer anywhere?
Doctors are only concerned with subjective data in determining the mental health of individuals.
Are they feeling happy?
Are they feeling sad?
Depressed?
Angry?
Well, then, they are healthy or unhealthy depending on this subjective data and the “professional” analysis of it. The results of such therapy are often short-lived, and in many cases, it even worsens the condition, and there's a good reason for that.
If you want to stop someone from committing suicide, you have to give them a reason and purpose larger than themselves to live for. A family provides this to some degree for men because having people depend on you for their survival gives you a purpose higher than yourself, but even this is not a high enough purpose.
Many men with families still commit suicide.
What we are dealing with by looking for an answer to this problem of mental health is actually quite serious. If we are truly dealing with mental sickness, an illness of the mind or the soul, then we must come face to face with something that requires us to examine the views we hold on mental health care.
We claim to be Christians, right?
We claim to be followers of Jesus, so do we really believe that these godless people have found a way to bring healing to people's souls?
We need to look at what is causing this mental sickness in the first place, because offering people a sub-par cure won’t do them any more good than leaving them alone would have.
Why are so many people suffering at the level of the soul?
Psychology doesn't have a good answer for this either. They don't know what really causes the mental sickness in the first place, because they are looking in the wrong spot.
They affirm, build self-esteem, help you learn to love yourself more, help you learn what you should expect other people to do for you, and they listen to what you have to say. They let you talk as long as you want to talk in a therapy they call “talk therapy.”
When you get done, you “feel” better, but you are still sick because all they have done is mask the symptoms you were feeling. The real cause, the main issue, is still poisoning your mind from the inside.
We can expect that on the topic of the soul, the Word of God would reign supreme, and that we would likely find the cause of mental sickness hidden somewhere within, and indeed, we do find exactly that.
Psalm 41:4 NKJV — I said, “LORD, be merciful to me; Heal my soul, for I have sinned against You.”
David seems to be saying that sin has made his soul sick, but surely that's poetic!
Psalm 38:3 NKJV — [There is] no soundness in my flesh Because of Your anger, Nor [any] health in my bones Because of my sin.
Psalm 38:4 NKJV — For my iniquities have gone over my head; Like a heavy burden they are too heavy for me.
Psalm 38:5 NKJV — My wounds are foul [and] festering Because of my foolishness.
Jeremiah 30:12 NKJV — “For thus says the LORD: ‘Your affliction [is] incurable, Your wound [is] severe.
Jeremiah 30:13 NKJV — [There is] no one to plead your cause, That you may be bound up; You have no healing medicines.
Jeremiah 30:14 NKJV — All your lovers have forgotten you; They do not seek you; For I have wounded you with the wound of an enemy, With the chastisement of a cruel one, For the multitude of your iniquities, [Because] your sins have increased.
Jeremiah 30:15 NKJV — Why do you cry about your affliction? Your sorrow [is] incurable. Because of the multitude of your iniquities, [Because] your sins have increased, I have done these things to you.
Our sins make us sick, they stain our souls, and there is only one thing that can cleanse our souls; there is only One person who can heal us where we are wounded. Wounds are very real things; wounds of the heart, the mind, and the flesh absolutely exist, but no fleshly person can bring healing to our souls.
If we are “Christian counselors” who are trying to blend the Bible with the philosophy of godless men, we have some major and very serious questions to answer.
As followers of the Way, our job is to point people to Jesus for healing and for the answers, not to offer them a path to false “healing” of their souls that specifically excludes the only One who can truly heal them!
Jeremiah 17:5 NKJV - Thus says the LORD: "Cursed [is] the man who trusts in man And makes flesh his strength, Whose heart departs from the LORD.
Isaiah 43:11 NKJV - I, [even] I, [am] the LORD, And besides Me [there is] no savior.
We are offering them another savior, bringing in the redemptive and healing work of another savior, and trying to pair it up with the redemptive work of our Savior. Such people are under a curse, both the curse of sin and the curse of those who seek to make men their salvation and healing.
They accomplish temporary healing, but the latter state of such a person is worse than the first because they have only been driven further from the true answer to their mental sickness, only driven further along the path that stained their soul black with sin in the first place.
Jeremiah 6:14 NKJV - They have also healed the hurt of My people slightly, Saying, 'Peace, peace!' When [there is] no peace.
Jeremiah 6:15 NKJV - Were they ashamed when they had committed abomination? No! They were not at all ashamed; Nor did they know how to blush. Therefore they shall fall among those who fall; At the time I punish them, They shall be cast down," says the LORD.
They have been made into prime food for the great dragon, who is Satan, and those of us who mix saviors have aided them in this!
There is no difference between this and spiritual idolatry on our part because we have already committed to serving a savior, and now we are pointing others to another savior, or even seeking another savior ourselves!
2 Corinthians 6:14 NKJV - Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness? And what communion has light with darkness?
2 Corinthians 6:15 NKJV - And what accord has Christ with Belial? Or what part has a believer with an unbeliever?
2 Corinthians 6:16 NKJV - And what agreement has the temple of God with idols? For you are the temple of the living God. As God has said: "I will dwell in them And walk among [them]. I will be their God, And they shall be My people."
2 Corinthians 6:17 NKJV - Therefore "Come out from among them And be separate, says the Lord. Do not touch what is unclean, And I will receive you."
2 Corinthians 6:18 NKJV - "I will be a Father to you, And you shall be My sons and daughters, Says the LORD Almighty."
Mixing the teachings of godless and demon-possessed men with the teachings of the True God is a mistake, and it’s not the separation we are commanded to practice.
We are offering sick men spiritual poison as medicine.
Jeremiah 30:17 NKJV — For I will restore health to you And heal you of your wounds,’ says the LORD, ‘Because they called you an outcast [saying:] “This [is] Zion; No one seeks her.” ’
1 Peter 2:24 NKJV — who Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, having died to sins, might live for righteousness—by whose stripes you were healed.
We can only be cleansed from our sin through repentance and the blood of Jesus, and we can only find healing, true healing, for our souls from Jesus. We have to die to sin; however, if we are going to live for righteousness. If we keep on sinning, we are holding on to the cause of our mental sickness.
No amount of affirmations or tolerance will heal what is a matter of God. They will simply make our journey to death a little more comfortable and a little less painful.
What we are dancing around here is the heart of the gospel!
1 John 1:5 NKJV — This is the message which we have heard from Him and declare to you, that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all.
1 John 1:6 NKJV — If we say that we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.
1 John 1:7 NKJV — But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin.
God cleanses us from our sin if we change our way and walk toward Him. We must seek Him and the healing only He can give us. It doesn't matter if we are Christians or not; if we are struggling mentally, the root cause is that there is sin somewhere in our lives.
1 John 1:8 NKJV — If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.
If we confess our sins to Him, He will forgive us and give us healing.
1 John 1:9 NKJV — If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us [our] sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
1 John 1:10 NKJV — If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us.
Seek out those men learned in the Bible rather than those educated in the knowledge of Satan, because offering godly counsel is one of the primary responsibilities of pastors and elders. Pastors and elders must be equipped to deal with those who are suffering from soul sickness and be capable of pointing them to Jesus for healing.
They must be equipped to recognize the sin that is at the heart of mental illness and to give the correct solution. All Christians should be capable of counseling, but even more so those who are looking after the flock.
The healing is not in these men; however, it is in pointing and directing people to the only One who can truly cleanse and make the heart whole.
Colossians 2:9 NKJV — For in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily;
Colossians 2:10 NKJV — and you are complete in Him, who is the head of all principality and power.
We won't find that anywhere else.
Read through the Book of Ecclesiastes and you'll see what I mean. There is the record of a man who tried everything, bought himself everything, loved himself, gave himself grace, forgave himself, and indulged himself, and he said it was empty. It didn't complete him, not even a little.
Those who tell us we don't need forgiveness from God, that we need to forgive ourselves and give ourselves grace, are distracting us from the real source of healing. Those who tell us that we can have Jesus and a therapist, too, are telling us that the healing Jesus brings us is insufficient.
They haven't experienced the full healing that Jesus brings, and often the reason is that they didn't seek Jesus as sufficient for their soul issues. We are not dealing with medical issues here, physical maladies; we are dealing with stains on the soul, and that is the realm of the Body of Christ.
If we seek Jesus with our whole heart, there is no room for mental illnesses because He will heal our souls. If you want a higher purpose, there is no higher purpose than this, no greater mission than serving God with our whole heart, and no greater reason to keep on living.
We might feel sick physically, but in our souls, we will be whole and able to rejoice.
That is the amazing promise we are given, and we can count on it.
Our job is to point people to Jesus for full healing and restoration. When we live our lives in obedience rather than rebellion, we will have true healing. If you want to know how to have mental health, follow Jesus through the instructions laid out in the Bible.
John 15:5 NKJV — “I am the vine, you [are] the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing.
Our healing and salvation can come from no other source than Jesus. It's not even that we shouldn't seek it elsewhere; it's that we can't find it anywhere else. As long as our soul exists in rebellion against God, it will never find rest or healing.
Isaiah 26:3 NKJV — You will keep [him] in perfect peace, [Whose] mind [is] stayed [on You,] Because he trusts in You.
Regardless of our circumstances, we are promised perfect peace for our minds if we dwell in Jesus and trust wholly in Him.
The goal that everyone has when they go to therapy is promised to us by God right here!
Jeremiah 6:16 NKJV — Thus says the LORD: “Stand in the ways and see, And ask for the old paths, where the good way [is,] And walk in it; Then you will find rest for your souls. But they said, ‘We will not walk [in it.]’
Knowing this, should we be going to therapists?
Going to godless human therapists is like going to the guy who just randomly started doing brain surgery one day instead of the best surgeon in the world. It's pretty foolish.
We can seek counsel from those who know the Word of God and do not mix it with false knowledge from psychology, but we must keep in mind that the healing is not coming from these men; it's coming from Jesus.
I'm not saying there are no situations that might require medication, but the situations that require medication are physical issues, not mental ones. Mental medications don't provide healing; they simply mask the issue for a time.
If you are struggling, the answer is in turning wholeheartedly to Jesus and serving Him with your whole heart, mind, and strength. That was the answer for me so long ago, and Jesus healed me with the same healing He has for everyone who returns to Him with their whole heart.
If you seek Godly men for counseling, they will point you to Jesus for healing and guide you along the Way. What do you think a counselor who is not serving God with his whole heart will do?
Comments
Post a Comment