The Bible and Mental Health
Cards on the table: I have no medical expertise in relation to mental health. Growing up, I don’t even remember it being a thing. If you, dear reader, are of the older generation—a beautifully flexible term, not least because its flexibility allows us to selectively exempt ourselves from it—you may recall the same.
Certainly we were aware of people suffering from ‘stress’. That said, we also heard a lot of unsympathetic if not also harmful ‘advice’ along the lines of ‘pull yourself together’, ‘snap out of it’, and the quintessentially-British concept of keeping a ‘stiff upper lip’—cultural, rather than medical, responses.
Since I have no expertise in mental health, why write at all? As with all of my blog articles, I’m writing to a (mostly) Christian audience to offer a theological and pastoral perspective. I am not in any sense seeking to ‘compete’ with a clinical perspective—quite the contrary; rather, simply to offer some thoughts on how Christians who also have no expertise can (a) be complementary to the medical profession, and (b) equally or more importantly, avoid causing harm through naivety or ignorance (well-intentioned from a Christian perspective as that may be).
Let’s start with a definition of mental health; this comes from an NHS website. Notice two things: one, that it’s framed positively, and two, how comprehensive it is.
Mental health refers to our emotional, psychological, and social well-being. We all have mental health. Our mental health affects how we think, feel, and act. It also impacts on how we cope, interact and form relationships with others, as well as our daily functioning.
Three biblically-sourced thoughts immediately strike me.
The first is that this kind of holistic well-being is very closely related to the Hebrew concept of shalom. English Bible translations tend to render that word as ‘peace’, since they need a single word, but that doesn’t do it justice and, at worst, it leads to misreadings of ‘what it’s saying’—for example, that it (only or especially) means ‘inner peace’ in the sense of a tranquil soul. Shalom is way more comprehensive—it means ‘when the world’s all as it should be’. When everything in life is right and good. It means human thriving. Ultimately, it’s describing the life of the age to come (what we call ‘heaven’ for short), but there’s a sense in which God would have us experience some of it now, and help others to experience some of it now, even in the troubles and trials of this present life.
This leads directly to my second biblically-sourced thought, which is fully harmonious with shalom: John 10:10, where Jesus says, “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.” The ‘thief’ reflects the ‘stealing life from people’ agenda of the enemies of human thriving and well-being: sin, death, and ‘the unholy trinity’ of the world, the flesh and the devil. These forces are aligned directly against Jesus’ agenda of abundant life in the present—tasters of the life of the age to come.
And my third thought, going back to that clinical definition, is the significance of relational well-being. Apparently, one of the factors that can affect our mental health is our relationships. This reminds me of a relational definition of ‘righteousness’—(a) all of my relationships being ‘made right’ and then kept right—with God, self, and others; and then (b) ‘living right’ with God, self, and others (‘doing the right thing’ in each of those spheres).
(IMHO, abstract theological notions of ‘imputed’ righteousness and ‘imparted’ righteousness are unhelpful insofar as they lead us away from those concrete meanings and applications into purely ethereal ways of thinking.)
How, then, does mental health relate to mental illness? From that same website:
Mental health is different from mental illness (which can also be referred to as having a mental health disorder). Poor mental health and struggling to cope is also different from having a mental illness. A mental illness or mental health disorder is an illness that affects that way people think, feel, behave, or interact with others. There are many types of mental illnesses/health disorders with different signs and symptoms.
Mental illness typically has more of a significant detrimental impact across many areas of an individual’s life than episodes of poor mental health which may be situation specific or time limited.
The first thing we need to say is that even though the biblical writers were ‘inspired’ by God in what they wrote (per 2 Tim 3:16) they retained an ancient world understanding of all things to do with biology, health and medical care—they did not have today’s understanding so we ought not to read that into the text (which is to be anachronistic). Necessarily, God ‘spoke to them’ in the language and within the concepts of their day (otherwise their original audience would have been unable to relate to it). Remember that the biblical writers were not writing to us or about us, in the first instance.
The Bible is not a healthcare manual. It is wrong to assume that the Bible is a Book of Answers to everything in life (we just to have to find the right verses). ‘The Bible alone’ is a fundamentalist idea that is, frankly, not good enough—and even, dangerous. That phrase ‘the Bible alone’ comes from the Reformation, as one of the solas: Sola Scriptura. But it was targeting the authority of Scripture over against the authority of church tradition (and personal direct revelation of the ‘God told me …’ variety). It was not intended to be taken out of that context and given a stand-alone life of its own. It was never saying that everything we ever need to know on any subject is to be found there.
The default tendency towards being fundamentalist that’s always lurking just below the surface in evangelicalism (driven by an understandable desire to honour the Bible) can tempt us to think we’re finding timeless divine wisdom on matters of which the biblical writers had no awareness (and hence, to think that it’s offering answers to questions that would never have occurred to them to be asking). The further we move away from what the biblical writers were talking about—the less interested we are in knowing what that was—the more danger there is of reading into the Bible things that are not actually there.
Let’s apply all of this in practical terms.
I regret to say that I have heard more than one sermon in which these principles for ‘reading the Bible well’ in relation to mental health have not been followed. I do not suggest for one moment the speakers were malevolent, but they were at best naïve. To hear Philippians 4:6 (“Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God”) simplistically deployed as a supposedly ‘biblical answer’ for mental illness is appalling. Not least when it’s framed as a divine command, with an implied ‘biblical promise’ that if we obey the command everything will be fine. Not only is that a misreading which ignores (or replaces) professional clinical diagnosis and care, but it’s also likely to cause the person hearing it to experience guilt and condemnation when the verse’s ‘divine formula’ fails to work.
Does Philippians 4:6 have no value or application for those suffering with mental health challenges? No, of course not. The same can be said of a verse like Isaiah 26:3: “Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee” (I learned it in the KJV—and I still like it in that version!). ‘Stayed’ means ‘anchored.’ But there is a ‘however’, which comes from the fact that, as with prayer for physical healing, Rule Number One is never, ever, to tell (or even hint to) the person prayed for that they should stop taking their medicines or stop consulting their healthcare professional. Rule Number Two is never, ever, to say (or hint) that they are ‘now healed’—they ‘just need to claim it and hold on to it’—if patently they are not. That is not faith, it’s just false.
Finally, a subject related to mental illness—where we especially need to acquire a nuanced perspective that harmonises the biblical and the contemporary—is that of evil spirits. Since the biblical world had no awareness of psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia, and hence had no language for it, the biblical writers were describing what they saw: they were observing effects, rather than diagnosing causes. Does this mean there can be no such thing as evil spirits? No, that does not automatically follow; but to fail to take into account diagnostically what we now know (but biblical writers did not) is not honouring Scripture. Pentecostals and charismatics need to exercise wisdom and restraint when it comes to the potential excitement of engaging in spiritual warfare in what’s called ‘deliverance’ ministry. The practice has enormous potential for harm if approached unwisely and naively.
I guess that concerning mental illness, it is easier to perceive a potential for spiritual causes—which can then lead people to seek spiritual solutions—because of its less-visible nature compared to physical ailments. I think this is a mistake. Pastoral care for mental health conditions should be approached as we do (or ought to do) with physical health—working with and alongside medical professionals: incorporating prayer and pastoral care, but in no sense replacing them, or viewing them as being in competition.
The NHS website from which the above quotes are taken is available at https://hampshirecamhs.nhs.uk/issue/mental-health-and-mental-illness-professional/.