In your right mind
Sunday, 03 September, 2006
I mentioned Kirsty's article in my last blog post. Here are some quotes from the article, reproduced with Kirsty's permission:
... when it comes to mental health, there seems to be something that Christians in particular can offer. That is, there is a Christian understanding of what it is to be ‘in right mind’, to be mentally healthy and thinking in the right way about the world, that is truly universal. For our aim is to become like Christ, the only truly right-thinking human who ever lived.
There is a strong theme of mental renewal in the New Testament. We are saved to have right relationship with God, and our thinking is a crucial part of this. The unsaved are lost “in the futility of their minds”, Ephesians 4:17 tells us; they are “darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart”. The sinfulness of humankind inevitably means that people “become futile in their thinking”, and God as a result “gave them up to a debased mind” (Romans 1:21, 28). Christians, on the other hand, are to be “renewed in the spirit of your minds” (Ephesians 4:23) and “transformed by the renewal of your mind” (Romans 12:2).
This is congruent with the idea of wisdom, a significant theme in the Bible. For in the understanding of wisdom we have the idea not only of right relationship with God, and a moral renewal that makes us capable of obeying his righteous commands, but also of right understanding of the world. With the help of the Holy Spirit, we can understand things that the unredeemed mind simply cannot comprehend, “for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Corinthians 2:15). Knowing the mind of Christ, we have the capacity to aim for right thinking and judgement about the world. Also in the teaching of the Bible we have God's revealed wisdom—that is, in the things the Bible addresses, we have the content of right thinking ...
Having been thoroughly taught that mental problems are not spiritual and cannot have a religious answers; that the place to find answers is naturalistic science, not anywhere else; is it surprising that now people turn to science for everything? With no wider framework to understand what we are as people, how to relate, what our lives mean, why there is suffering in the world, we have deprived ourselves of understanding of what are just normal aspects of living in a fallen world. Especially with no doctrine of suffering, we cannot understand why we feel unhappy or why bad things happen ...
In practice, it would seem to be that the goal of pastoring people is to see them in right relation with God, which is the only way to find ultimate psychological health—that is, in heaven, when we are remade in the image of Christ, the perfect human. Before heaven no one will have perfect psychological health, but in many ways counselling techniques might help with the nuts and bolts of getting there.
Alan Craddock, emeritus professor of psychology at the University of Sydney, is very helpful here. His model seems similar to Keller's ‘Christian psychology model’; he calls it ‘complementary’. Craddocks talks about counselling being primarily about developing insight; that is, helping the person who understand better how they are thinking and feeling, and why. Craddock says, “My experience as a counselling psychologist has led me to the conclusion that one of the most powerful parts of the counselling process involves facilitation of insight through the working relationship formed with a client.”
In this way, Craddock is able to distinguish between the roles of psychological and biblical knowledge in helping a person. I can imagine this working out in particular pastoral problems. So, for instance, a person comes to the pastor with a problem—‘I'm forever losing my temper and shouting at people’. From the Bible, the pastor can clearly counsel that this is wrong behaviour, and the person should try to stop it with prayerful willpower. At the same time, tools from psychology might be very useful in that effort. The person can be helped to understand ‘What is my self-talk at the time I get angry?’, ‘What emotional reactions from my past have I not properly understood and dealt with?’, ‘What behavioural cues can I change in myself to help me control my angry outbursts?’
In this way, both the moral directives of the Bible and the psychological techniques of counselling are working in the same direction. We know that this person must try to control his anger. But if he does not understand why he gets angry, or what is happening when he gets angry, he may well be trying in a totally wrong way. Effort alone will not necessarily create right actions (although of course the Bible itself, with the help of the Holy Spirit, contains guidance). A child learning to ride a bicycle may be putting tremendous effort into pushing the pedals backwards. Some helpful instruction about pushing forwards can enable the effort to be far more effective.
(Kirsten Birkett, “In Your Right Mind: Christianity and psychotherapy”, Case #9, 2006, pp. 18-23.)
Current:
Bible: Isaiah (ESV) 28/09/2010
seen: Tropic Thunder 26/09/2010
seen: The Life of Mammals 24/09/2010
seen: What a Girl Wants 19/09/2010
seen: Jerry Maguire 19/09/2010
seen: The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 06/09/2010
seen: Tomorrow Never Dies 05/09/2010
seen: Nanny McPhee 28/08/2010
read: Mercury (Hope Larson) 27/08/2010
read: Spellcheckers Vol 1 (Jamie S Rich, Nicolas Hitori de, Joelle Jones) 16/08/2010
read: Solipsistic Pop Vol 2 (Solipsistic Pop) 16/08/2010
read: Chiggers (Hope Larson) 15/08/2010
seen: Josie and the Pussycats 14/08/2010
seen: Mr & Mrs Smith 14/08/2010
seen: Step Up 2 13/08/2010
Blinks:
How to recalibrate the home button on your iPhone.
Unsolicited manuscripts accepted by Pan Macmillan with certain conditions.
Thought Balloon is a group blog in which the writers tackle a new theme every week? month? with one-page scripts. This URL is for their Phonogram ones.
How to sew a zipper on a knitted garment.
Issues organised by tale.
Online magazine that publishes fairy tales that are not reworkings of old tales.
Journal that publishes fairy tale writing.
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Disqus comments
Other comments
Do you think God wishes us to be mentally unwell sometimes to achieve his aims?
I’m not sure that “wishes” is the right word for it. Certainly everything that happens is his will and certainly his power is made perfect in our weakness, and we are made stronger through suffering, but I don’t think we should ever say that mental illness is a “good” thing. We must always remember that we’re looking forward to the day when we will have perfect mental health, and I’m sure our Father will rejoice with us when we do.
To re-iterate what you said, we can trace any human fault such as mental illness back to original sin, although mental illness is part of God’s plan it is not part of his desire for our our intended state.
However, God uses our weaknesses to further his ends and build strength often in a place of struggle.
Can we not say it is good to be made stronger through suffering as perhaps there is not many other ways to be made stronger in some areas no amount of teaching can suffice in place of an experience, and a shared experience between people becomes a common bond of understanding and an opportunity for Christians to relate.
Yes, I definitely think it’s good that we’re made stronger through suffering. Suffering is one of the ways in which God disciplines us so that we bear “the peaceful fruit of righteousness” (Heb 12:11). I was also reading something today that talked about how we know Christ better through suffering—I thought that was interesting.
So there is certainly a lot of good in suffering and so, like J.C. Ryle, “I cannot regard it as completely evil”.