Let's Talk... About Jesus!

more thearchy, less therapy

I hesitate to write about mental health issues, because I know there is much room for misunderstanding and the topic can hit pretty close to home. Yet I feel compelled to write, and I’m prepared for some pushback. Every January on Bell’s Let’s Talk day I see a lot of posts from Christian friends. No problem. If you need help, get help. I am not against medication and counselling per se. We moderns do have a tendency to overmedicate, however, and we may be overcorrecting for previous generations lack of willingness to talk, by talking all the time about everything with anyone who will listen. Pills should be a last resort, and I have a suspicion that all this talking isn’t helping as much as we might think. What’s more, I think I know why. So at the risk of being labelled a reactionary and/or heretic, here goes.

First off, there is a history of mental health issues in my family, as well as lots of self-medicating with alcohol and other substances. I suffered from panic attacks from about age 15-24, and this was at a time when no one had heard of the term. I would wake up in the middle of the night with my heart racing. At first these episodes were far apart, but then they grew more frequent. When I was 24, I became a Christian and the attacks stopped. In my mid-thirties I suffered burnout from running full tilt in ministry for a dozen years. I thought I was superman, but it turns out I wasn’t. Rest isn’t optional. The burnout blindsided me and I had to slow down and take some little blue pills for a while. What I am saying, is that I am well acquainted with mental suffering and sympathetic to those going through it. What I have discovered since then, however, is that God has a better prescription for wholeness for our whole life. It includes very practical things like diet, exercise, and community, as well as more mystical things like spiritual disciplines and living in and by the Spirit. While we obsess about feeling better, God is far more concerned with actually making us better. We live in a time when the therapeutic worldview is dominant; medication and therapy are seen as the answers to every question. A culture of victimhood tempts us to find our identity in whatever our dysfunction is. In fact, we will be encouraged and affirmed for it. But if we resist the temptation to settle for identity in victimhood, God can give us our true identity, which Romans describes as “victors.” It goes beyond that and says we can be “more than conquerors” (Ro 8:37) in the midst of life’s troubles and challenges. Some Christians do not really believe that a life of victory is possible. They think everyone is either messed up and honest about it, or messed up and pretending not to be. But I want to testify as part of the “original trans movement” that transformation is possible, and you can get to the place where there is a “used to be” in front of the “messed up” part. I am not talking about being perfect. I am talking about being a fairly high functioning follower of Jesus, where your identity is more disciple than dysfunction.

So I am all for talking. In fact, I do it for a living. But who we are talking to and the content of what we are saying can make all the difference. There are a small percentage of people who have chemical imbalance, clinical depression, PTSD, etc. I am not referring to those people in what I say next. What I am about to say is for the great majority of us who are simply suffering from lifestyle issues that discipleship can cure. We want to live all wrong and feel alright. The great irony of the modern Church is that for all of our education and professionalism, our programming is not as effective as the Presence and Power of the Holy Spirit in really changing lives. We have substituted talking to each other for talking to God, and replaced the “Counsellor” (Jn 14:16) with counsellors. We meet with someone to resolve problematic behaviours, beliefs, and feelings by talking it out and getting advice. It may be formal or it may be in the context of friendship. There can be wisdom in godly counsel (Pr 19:20), but often we do not like what God is telling us to do so we run to others, looking for a less challenging option that will make us feel better in the moment, without any bothersome lifestyle changes. Many have internalized the pronouncements other people have made over them or they have made over themselves… all the reasons why they are in a special category and can’t be who God is calling them to be. Very often there has been a lot of self-diagnosis and very little memorizing of the promises of God. You know, the ones that says things like: “God has not given us a spirit of fear; but of power, love, and a sound mind.” (2 Tim 1:7) It is all self-focused rather than outward-focused. There is usually the referencing of my social anxiety or my trauma. We are experts at googling symptoms at the first sign of stress and labelling ourselves accordingly. If we are Christians we couch this in more spiritual language. I lean away from spiritual narcissism and more toward the CS Lewis idea of holiness as self-forgetfulness: “ Humility is not think less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less.” Most of us think about ourselves way too much. Jesus encouraged his disciples to get their eyes off of themselves and onto the harvest fields. Or as Tim Keller put it: “ A truly gospel-humble person is not a self-hating person or a self-loving person, but a self-forgetting person.” Most of our best moments are when we are not thinking about ourselves at all. This is a far cry from the obsession with “self-care” that pervades even our church culture. Last year a ministry student at my college told me that everyone should be in counselling. Jesus agrees. That is why He sent us the Holy Spirit, the ultimate 24-7 Counsellor. It is okay to talk to other Christians, but we have created a system of spiritual co-dependency where everyone shares their issues but no one ever gets better. We think that is normal. It is not. The Counsellor gives the kind of guidance that is transformational. One word from God can change us. I know those who have been in secular therapy or Christian counselling for twenty years, with no observable life change. Shouldn’t a person get better at some point if the therapy/counselling is working ?

“If anyone is in Christ he is a new creation. The old has passed away. Behold, all things have become new.” (2Cor 5:17) “Work out your salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God who works in you to will and to act on behalf of his good purposes.” (Phil 2:12-13) Salvation is at once instantaneous and a process. It can happen in an instant, but is ongoing. For some the light comes on suddenly and for others it is more like a dimmer-switch experience. One thing that I have noticed in either case, is thearchy. Thearchy is the rule of God in our lives. No matter how we get there, I have found the more thearchy we have, the less therapy we need. If Jesus is at the center of our lives it brings everything else into harmony. The Bible calls it “the peace that surpasses understanding.” (Phil 4:6) It is an inner peace even when the external world is in chaos. Contrast that with anxiety, which is being in a state of inner turmoil even when the external world is calm. The part of Phil 4:6 leading up to supernatural peace is: “be anxious for nothing, but by prayer with thanksgiving, make your requests know to God.” When Jesus is King, praying lips, a thankful heart, and a peaceful spirit are our default mode of being. Much of our psychological trouble has roots in spiritual rebellion. Tim Keller says: “ The modern self is exceptionally fragile. While having the freedom to define and validate oneself is superficially liberating, it is also exhausting: You and you alone must create and sustain your identity. This has contributed to unprecedented levels of depression and anxiety, and never-satisfied longings of affirmation.” We want the benefits of the Kingdom without the sovereign rule of the King. It doesn’t work that way, and no amount of medication, rationalization, or verbalization will change that.

The Spirit-led life is not easy, but its is simple. God is God and we are not. But we are His people, and He is working inside of us. Sin brings doubt, confusion, and disobedience. It begins with “Did God really say that…?” (Gen 3:1) and moves towards chaos from there. The movement from harmony to dissonance never takes more than a generation. “Then Elijah said to all the people ‘Come near to me.’ So all the people came near to him. And he repaired the altar of the Lord which had been torn down. ( 1 Kings 18:30) Like the people in Elijah’s day, we can forget who we are and where our help comes from. Remember “altar calls?” Those have fallen out of favor, but we must not let what happened at those altars become obsolete. The altar represents that place where we do business not just with each other, but with the living God. Pop psychology and leadership principles are no match for the word of God and the work of the Holy Spirit. I am not saying do not seek out professional help if you really need it, but do not interpret every season of stress or sadness as something abnormal. That is just called life, and you are a lot less fragile than you have been lead to believe. We have much to learn from our less-resourced but more spiritually vital brothers and sisters in the global south. They do not have all of the resources we do, but they have tapped into the one Resource that really matters. I have learned so much about living in the power of the Holy Spirit from the believers I have interacted with in South America, Africa, and Asia. They suffer many things, but they tend not to suffer from our modern neurosis’ and are not plagued by our self-doubt and inner conflict. They know who they are and whose they are. Their simple faith and discipleship are working better than our substitutes, and their churches are growing, numerically and otherwise.

So who we are talking to is important, and so is what we are saying. Proverbs 18:21 says: “Life and death are in the power of the tongue.” Why is that ? “For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of.” (Mt 12:43) Here are two life principles that are very simple, but that few people understand: 1) Whatever we talk about reveals what is inside of us 2) Whatever we talk about gets bigger. Vocalizing is a way of revealing and amplifying our focus. If we focus on and talk about our problems, they will get bigger. The modern concept that endlessly talking about what you are thinking and feeling is healthy because you are “getting it out” is false. You are actually “letting it loose” and giving it power in your life. Have ever been in a room full of old people talking about their illnesses and felt the faith fade and the fear grow ? It is not that aging doesn’t have its issues, but everyone focusing exclusively on that and talking about it can make things worse instead of better. Sometimes prayer is talking to God about how big the problem is, but sometimes it is talking to your problem about how big God is. Let’s talk to and about God. Prayer is better than worry, and worrying out loud in a group is not a prayer meeting. Prayer is asking God in faith to give us what we need and believing he can meet that need and more. I’m not saying we can’t or shouldn’t go to people, but we should go to God first, not last. And when we do go to people, it should be people that have demonstrated a faith that is real and resilient.

Young adults in particular need to see resilience and faith modelled in older Christians. They have been raised with constant adult supervision on one hand, and spiritual neglect on the other. Somehow they have gotten the message that the major goal in life is to stay safe and avoid stress. Unfortunately the world is a very unsafe and stressful place. This leads to the Peter Pan pattern of avoiding what previous generations used to aspire to: adulthood. The major markers of adulthood are now postponed almost indefinitely. Dogs are substituted for children; side-hustles for vocations. A current Relevant magazine headline reads: “ Uh-oh: 63% of Young Adults are Burned Out by Adulting.” In the article, the list of “adulting” stressors are just the ordinary, mundane things mom or dad used to do: car maintenance, laundry, cooking. When I spend time in places like Haiti, there is a resilience among the young adults that is quite inspiring. Yet at home in the US and Canada it seems like the same age group is derailed and traumatized by the smallest setback. How we “frame” the issues in our lives is so important. Framed with a biblical worldview, our understanding of struggle and suffering changes our faith and makes it anti-fragile. “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.” (Js 1:2-4) The good news is that there is a way to maturity and completeness. The bad news is that you have to pass through testing and trials to get there. You can’t have a strong untested faith. If you are a runner, doing a time trial gives both you and your coach valuable information about your performance capabilities. “ Do you not know that in a race all the runners run but only one gets the prize. Run in such a way as to get the prize.” ( 1 Cor 9:24) Paul likens the life of faith to a race. Faith needs to be tried and tested to mature. And spiritual maturity is what God has in mind for all of us: “Until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.” (Eph 4:13)

So yes, let’s talk… but not just to each other. Let’s talk to God. And yes, let’s talk…but not just about ourselves. Let’s talk about Jesus.