The church in the 21st century (and even more significantly in black-majority Churches) seems more likely to show empathy with one who is suffering from physical illnesses such as cancer for example, but someone in the church with depression for illustration is shown less empathy and sometimes wrongly judged, only making worse the feelings of shame, hopelessness, and guilt in the affected person.
The church in the 21st century must begin to show empathy to those with mental health challenges because we must never forget the spiritual battles, we all face in life will also takes place in the mind before it even manifest in the physical realm. (2 Corinthians 10:5)
“We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ.”
According to the Bible, all illnesses and ailments have come about as a result of the original sin of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Therefore based on this fact many believers typically conclude that all human sickness which includes mental illness as primarily a spiritual problem, assuming sin in the person’s life led to the difficulties or due to the operation of demonic spirits.
And biblically speaking many sicknesses (both mental and physical) indeed are linked to oppression of demonic spirits but not all.
In Luke 4:40-41
When the sun was setting, all those who had any that were sick with various diseases brought them to Him; and He laid His hands on every one of them and healed them. 41 And demons also came out of many, crying out and saying, “You are [p]the Christ, the Son of God!”
Notice that Jesus laid hands and the healing power in him caused all to be healed but if you read vs 41, closely we are told something extra that in many of them (referring to those who were healed) demons also came out of many of them.
Indicating the fact that in many sicknesses are certainly due to the operation of demons but not all. This account of the miracle of healing done by Jesus highlights the fact that some sicknesses were due to natural abnormalities in physiological, biochemical, and anatomical processes.
It’s also the same factor with the issue of sin. Yes, that many diseases are as a result of the issue of sin (Psalm 38:3; There is no soundness in my flesh Because of Your anger, Nor any health in my bones Because of my sin. NKJV). Sickness can arise due to personal sin or generational sin.
The story of Gehazi is one example in the bible of how personal sin can result in an impairment in one’s health and also how the sin of a forefather can cause patterns of sickness to follow his generation. 2 kings 5:25-27
25 Now he went in and stood before his master. Elisha said to him, “Where did you go, Gehazi?” And he said, “Your servant did not go anywhere.” 26 Then he said to him, “Did not my heart go with you when the man turned back from his chariot to meet you? Is it time to receive money and to receive clothing, olive groves and vineyards, sheep and oxen, male and female servants? 27 Therefore the leprosy of Naaman shall cling to you and your descendants forever.” And he went out from his presence leprous, as white as snow.
Clearly Gehazi’s sin brought sickness into his life. No doubt personal sin or disobedience to God can open a door for sickness whether physical or mental to locate a person. Furthermore the sins of your ancestors can open you up to certain patterns of diseases like we note that will now begin flow in the family line of Gehazi in our study.
Additionally, violation of God’s principles on maintaining the right balance in the four domains He created man to function in as it relates to health at the physical, mental, and spiritual level of a man will bring sickness on anyone whether they are believers or unbelievers. I will elaborate on this in the next few pages but let’s consider Proverbs 25: 16 & 27
Have you found honey? Eat only as much as you need, Lest you be filled with it and vomit. (v16)
It is not good to eat much honey; So to seek one’s own glory is not glory. (v27)
Beyond just food, God is actually teaching us to maintain the right scriptural balance in all the four domains of life we are called to function in. If we use the example of physical health to mirror mental health, you see some adult believers, eating junk food every day and fizzy drinks and they say God will give me divine health, only to find out that later in life they have become obese, now have high cholesterol and are now hypertensive. They will now blame the devil but truly this one, the devil was on vacation they put themselves in it.
I will share with you a personal testimony of how God used this principle to heal me. As a young man, when I checked my BP, it was high (this was around 160 systolic!) and God used my knowledge of medicine to help me. He said “son, stop eating salt”, and when I did, over a period of 5-10 years my BP came down to normal levels just by excluding salt alone in my diet. Growing up my family we eat salt literally! Everything had to have salt. Little salt was never enough. I learnt from that scripture that because I violated a principle of God as it relates to maintaining the right balance in what I put into my body, it impacted my physical health. The same is true for mental health too. For some you over-work yourself in the name of making money, your work-life balance is affected, you don’t find time to rest, they hardly spend time with God anymore because of career commitment, it will ultimately impact on your mental health also. They end up suffering from medically diagnosed burn-out and work-induced stress which forces them to take time off from work and for many for a lengthy period before they are mentally fit to come back to work.
Therefore sin and/or violation of God’s principle on getting the right life-style balance as it relates to your well-being will induce mental health impairment.
But again not all mental health impairment are as a result of sin or demonic bondage as we saw in Luke 4:40-41, there are some that will be due to a natural mediated abnormality in the physiological processes in the brain. For example many mental health conditions are linked with abnormalities in the neurotransmitter activity or levels in the brain such as ADHD, Schizophrenia, Mania and so on. That is why God in His ultimate wisdom has permitted the world of medicine to help humanity, especially those cases that have no spiritual roots as God loves humanity greatly and even though He hates sin, He does not delight in the death of sinners also (Ezekiel 33:11) but desire that they turn from their ways.
Jesus’ healing of a man blind from birth as recorded in John 9:1-3 can also help us challenge our viewpoint that mental illness are always a consequence of sin. The disciples asked the Savior whether the blind man or his parents had sinned. Jesus said neither; rather, the disability allowed for God’s glory to be displayed. “The disciples wrongly looked at it as a spiritual issue in which there was sin in the man’s life,” But from the divine wisdom of Jesus, He showed that not every illness is a result of sin.
So as a Pastor, even though I know that many sicknesses whether physical or mental are due to sin or demonic bondage, I will be acting in error to categorise everyone that comes for prayer with depression for example, to just label them as all due to spiritual causes. As some will be due to natural mediated abnormalities in physiological processes and function. Some sickness will also be due to environmental factors, the ageing process and so on. Hence, as pastors or believers in Christ when our members present with some form of mental illness, we need to examine each case carefully and prayerfully, seeking God’s wisdom and guidance on how best to support them. And it may mean that even after you have in faith prayed for them, God may lead you to refer some of them to health professionals for further evaluation.
However, whether the mental illness is due to a spiritual reason or non-spiritual reason, I want to stress that God absolutely has the divine power to heal them all. For nothing is difficult for my God (Luke 1:37). All He wants you to do is just have faith and believe in Him. Believe in Christ Jesus that can save your soul as a starting point will open the door for your healing mentally and physically.
Biblical perspective of mental health
Mental health as understood from a biblical perspective begins in Genesis.
“God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth… And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good… Then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature” (Genesis 1:27, 28, 31; 2:7).
When God created us in His image, He created us with the capacity for relationship across four areas:
- relationship with God (which generally relates to our spiritual health)
- relationship with one another (relates to our emotional health)
- relationship with creation or our environment (relates to our physical health)
- relationship with ourselves. (relates to our mental health)
In Genesis 2:25 presents the peak of these perfect relationships by noting how “The man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.”
How could they be naked and yet not ashamed?
Adam and Eve were first and foremost in an intimate and perfect relationship with God, then with one another as a couple in a loving marriage, and their environment by working the ground and subduing it as God had designed. Adam and Eve were also in an intimate and perfect relationship with themselves, meaning that on a personal level their self-awareness and perspective was not distorted or selfish, not seeking to justify or rationalize thoughts and behaviours as their mental construct was in line with God’s will. Also they had no worries, fears, or concerns before sin came into this world.
Worries, fear, concerns, anxieties are the hallmarks of many, if not all mental health conditions but these things came after the fall of Adam & Eve. Therefore it is right to say that disturbances in man’s mental well-being is also the hallmark of man’s separation from God. And because of man’s separation from God, the other domains of relationships which were held together by man’s relationship with God, following the fall of man, the other 3 domains have also been severely affected and hence explains the natural tendency to dysfunctionality in man. And we see this dysfunctionality as expressed as mental health problems of various grades in humanity.
Although this article focuses on mental health but in broad terms, an individual’s health (mental, physical, emotional, spiritual) will be affected when one or more of these 4 relationship domains is disturbed.
Regarding mental health specifically, the Bible contains no one word for mental illness. This is in part because Old Testament writers chose a variety of biblical Hebrew words to express the three dimensions of man (spirit, soul, and body).
Just to give you a very brief biblical history about the old testament; there are 39 books in the old testament. Also, according to both Jewish and Christian view, the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy (the first five books of the Bible) were all written by Moses in about 1,300 B.C. The other 34 books were written by King David, King Solomon, and other prophets
Though they lived before modern scientific understandings and psychological research, I honestly believe that these men who wrote the old testament were endowed with divine supernatural wisdom and understanding far above their era as they recognized that humans are incredibly complex as inspired by the Spirit of God. And through their writings our modern generation is able to deduce the physical, mental, and spiritual compartment that make up the well-being of a man.
For example, the Hebrew word for soul (nephesh) is also used in the Old Testament to mean an individual (Numbers 31:28) or their inner being (Psalm 103:1). The Hebrew word for heart (lev) can also be translated as mind (Deuteronomy 29:4) if the meaning is focusing less on the physical and more on the mental aspects of a person. These words are used not just to describe the condition of a person but also the means through which they interact with God at the mental and spiritual dimension.
Therefore even if you cannot find words like schizophrenia or paranoid delusions in the bible, there are interpretations, that suggest mental health illness.
For instance, in Deuteronomy 28: 14&28,
“So you shall not turn aside from any of the words which I command you this day, to the right or the left, to go after other gods to serve them.” (vs14)
“The Lord will strike you with madness and blindness and confusion of heart.” (vs28)
God was warning the Israelites about disobeying His words and also the dire consequence of worshipping idols. The consequence in both instances would be that they would be struck with madness.
You would agree with me that “madness” is a reference to mental health impairment that has a broad category. Madness can in this modern day can refer to:
- The state of being mad; insanity.
- Senseless folly.
- Frenzy; rage.
- Intense or over-excessive excitement or cheerfulness.
- Behaviour or thinking that is very foolish or dangerous.
- Mental illness.
- Behaviour that is not reasonable when considering certain situations.
Clearly from what we have read in the bible we can see that mental illness would be one of the results of disobeying Him and also the worshipping of idols (which in reality is the worship of demons).
Now you may choose to disbelieve me but by God’s grace I have been a pastor now for 14 years in the Redeemed Christian Church of God and to be frank, it is my assertion that many of the mental health illnesses that I have seen in the ministry and even as a doctor have been linked to some degree of involvement in occultic or witchcraft connection. Let me be frank, any kind of involvement in idol worship or the occult has the capacity to open you up to mental health illness as the book of Deuteronomy 28 has shown us. And if you have been even in the slightest form involved in any form occultic practice or read occultic books, and now you notice some form of mental impairment, by all means see your health professional but I will strongly advise you in addition to also contact your pastor for godly counsel because of the real possibility of a demonic involvement.
If for instance we define madness as behaviour that is foolish and not reasonable under certain conditions, then King Nebuchadnezzar undoubtedly “went mad” (Daniel 4: 31-33 NKJV).
31 While the word was still in the king’s mouth, a voice fell from heaven: “King Nebuchadnezzar, to you it is spoken: the kingdom has departed from you! 32 And they shall drive you from men, and your dwelling shall be with the beasts of the field. They shall make you eat grass like oxen; and seven [j]times shall pass over you, until you know that the Most High rules in the kingdom of men, and gives it to whomever He chooses.”33 That very hour the word was fulfilled concerning Nebuchadnezzar; he was driven from men and ate grass like oxen; his body was wet with the dew of heaven till his hair had grown like eagles’ feathers and his nails like birds’ claws
In this narrative, King Nebuchadnezzar acted in pride, rather than give glory to God for giving him a very massive empire, he arrogated the glory to his might and wisdom and consequently was struck with madness. Disobediance to God can open the door to mental health impairment and disease. Furthermore by the eye of the Spirit, we can see that the sin of pride can be can open the door to sickness in man’s life and it can include some form of disturbance in the mental well-being of a person. Avoid sin and pride in particular by submitting yourself to the Holy-Spirit and God’s word. God bless you. (look out for part-2 of this article)
Altar call: For anyone reading this article who is not saved and wants to be part of the family of God or you want to re-dedicate your life back to Jesus, please repeat this out loud. “Lord Jesus, I acknowledge that I have sinned against you. Lord Jesus forgive me of my sins. I repent of my sins. Lord Jesus come into my life and be my Lord now and forever in Jesus Name“
Prayer: O God arise and destroy any power assigned to distort my mental well-being in the name of Jesus.
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