Is mental illness a spiritual or physical condition?
Question:
Greetings in the name of Jesus Christ!
I am very grateful to God for having found your site, and I have been learning a lot. What I like most is that your answers are teachings from the Bible and not just your own opinion. May God continually bless you, guide you, and give you wisdom.
My question is about mental illness. Some of my leaders in our church don’t treat mental illness as a medical condition but as a spiritual decline, sin, or moral failure, so they use scripture to show the person that she or he is in sin. One member of our church is suffering from depression. A psychiatrist diagnosed her. During one episode of depression, she chatted with our leader that she felt that she was not worthy to be a Christian, and she felt that she’d sinned greatly before God. The leader sent her Scripture like Luke 13:3, which made my friend even worse instead of being hopeful after her conversation with our leader. Later that day, my friend stabbed herself in the head and was rushed to the hospital. By God’s grace, she survived. There’s another situation that was mishandled because of mental illness by a leader of our church. A brother who was clinically depressed ended his life by jumping on the 28th floor of the building.
My question is: How can I convince our church leaders that mental illness is a medical condition and that the Bible approves of seeking help from medical doctors and not just using scripture, which sometimes, when wrongly used or out of context, can cause someone to feel hopeless rather than hopeful.
Thank you!
Answer:
The difficulty is that you are speaking too broadly. There are mental illnesses that have a physical cause and need medication to treat. See: Should I take medication for my bipolar disorder? Some things are labeled as mental illnesses that are caused by worry or grief over sin. In these cases, the person is not correctly dealing with the knowledge that he has failed.
Regardless of the cause, a person's mental state does not excuse sinful behavior. A person might struggle to control his anger. Still, it remains that anger without cause is wrong (Proverbs 3:30). A schizophrenic has difficulty distinguishing imagination from reality, but that doesn't make stealing justified.
I don't know how much your leadership knows about mental illness in general or about individuals' struggles with mental illness. Your friend told someone that she committed a grave sin. The person she told took her at her word and encouraged her to repent from her sin. None of that was wrong. Someone a bit more knowledgeable would pick up on the fact that she said she felt like she committed a grave sin. Feelings don't determine reality. It would have been better to ask her specifically what she had done and when she had done this sin. You can't assume that someone knows about a person's condition without that person revealing it. To condemn someone for making mistakes because they didn't know everything is not a fair judgment.
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Response:
Thank you so much for answering my question. This is a great help!
