Faith & Mental Health

Welcome to the Uncut Podcast. I'm Pastor Luke. And I'm Pastor Cameron. And this is the Uncut

Podcast, where we have uncut and honest conversations about faith, life, ministry, and the Bible,

and all of the above. Things we're frustrated or angry about. Things we're frustrated or

angry about. So today we're going to be talking about sort of the intersection of faith and

mental health. So we're going to dig into this. So I feel like there is a, I mean, there's a lot

to talk about here. But maybe the place to kind of start is a place where maybe a lot of our

listeners have experienced this or maybe not. But I've encountered a couple different people,

more than a couple different people in ministry who struggle with mental health. I personally

have my own mental health journey which I will probably be talking about a lot during this episode.

But people who are struggling with mental health are sharing and dealing with that in a context of a faith community.

And almost inevitably, it seems like somebody will come up to them at some point and say something along the lines of,

you know, have you prayed about your depression? And have you thought about why your depression hasn't left or God hasn't answered your prayer to remove your depression?

Or, you know, you still have depression because you lack faith.

Right. And so this is something that comes up like annually, I would almost say, of.

Encountering someone who's had this said to them in the past or is wrestling through their own kind

of story of like, does this mean that I'm somehow broken or lacking in faith because I am depressed

and I'm a Christian, can these two things coexist?

Right.

Yeah. Yeah, I would, you said we deal with it annually. I would say that we, I mean, we probably deal

with some sort, some form or sentiment of that monthly.

Yeah. You know, where someone, you know, would come to us and or in the context of any conversations

or having just have a significant sense of like, why am I so broken?

Why won't God deliver me from this? How do I have more faith to believe that I can be free?

How can I name and claim my healing in the name of Jesus?

And there's a lot there to talk about. One of the things, I can't say this for sure because,

in almost 20 years of pastoral ministry, I've really only ever pastored two, well, three churches,

but two for long periods of time. And so I don't have a great perspective on a multiplicity of

of churches, but what I will say is that it feels like when you begin to talk about something,

like mental health within the context of the church, you get.

Really one of two sort of like responses. One, you get one that's like a, oh, that's just a

a spiritual issue and we need to pray that away. And if you're not experiencing victory,

then you don't have enough faith or whatever.

The other that I, and so you would see, so it seems like in those churches,

no one's gotten any mental health issues, right?

No one is depressed, no one is ever anxious, No one has ever like experiences, you know,

bipolar mood swings or anything like that.

The reality they're being, we know, is that those things do exist within the people

in that church, but they- Are not talking about it. Right. Or they're not naming it.

Right, they have not, they don't find that they are safe enough within the community,

faith community that they're a part of, to talk about what actually they deal with

on a day-to-day basis.

And so they live in the environment of Christian platitude all the time.

Yeah. The other side of that coin is that you do have freedom to talk about it.

It is a thing that's like consistently.

As consistently as is appropriate, is consistently on the table of ministry.

So people feel a sense of safety and there's not as much stigma around it.

And so it becomes, and so it almost feels like it comes out of the woodwork of everyone's life.

And I feel like that's a little bit where we are here at Conduit. Yeah.

Is that we've been able to create a culture culture or an environment of safety around the area of.

People struggle with mental health and have given them an environment or a place where it is okay,

to talk about those things, especially within the context of faith.

I've heard that described, I encountered someone who heard that described that as like,

some churches kind of tend to become kind of ERs. They, for one reason or another,

they kind of become a place where people, the church gains a reputation and a ministry of being

able to kind of triage people with maybe past church hurt or hurt from other places or.

It's a place where you can come and you can talk about those things and sometimes churches kind of

And not every church is like that.

And so sometimes it can feel a bit like, is everybody just coming here who kind of like

feels a need for that kind of engagement in a spiritual community?

I think that brings up an important question that I kind of want to just ask out into the open air.

I don't even know that it's one that we've necessarily talked about extensively ourselves before,

but like when it comes to,

When it comes to mental health issues or mental health concerns or however you want to put it,

what is or what should be the role of the church?

That's a complicated question. Yeah. Well, because I think that we would probably both agree that there are

are there are mental health struggles and issues and we're just going to use those words like.

I don't know, like, okay, because you're depressed, it doesn't mean you have issues or is that,

does it not, you're struggling. So just understand that when we use this language

or using it just as a form of communication, not as a form of judgment on about anything.

But I think we both agree, and we've maybe talked a little bit about this,

that at least from a pastoral or a personal perspective,

that there are mental health issues that are more significant than others or more pronounced than others,

or maybe present more urgently.

Or situations. Or situations that present more urgently.

So that one of the most important things, at least for us, I know,

is that a church kind of needs to understand its boundaries relative to its resources.

Yeah. Yeah, there's, again, I feel like so many things we talk about, there's these spectrums, right?

There could be the church or the ministry or the pastor who just completely abdicates in some way.

We have nothing to contribute here either because it's just something we don't talk

about or we just don't deal with that.

It's just not a safe place to talk about that.

Maybe they're even just, they're like, yeah, it's a thing, but just go somewhere else.

And I don't talk about these things at all.

Or there's the other side, the other end of that spectrum is someone who sees it as like their primary thing.

And they're just like, it becomes the pastor's job to fix or to like save or to rush in.

And that's all they're doing.

Well, and they tell their people, you don't need to go to a counselor.

Right. You don't need any medication. Just come talk to me. Right.

We'll pray through it. We'll get you through it.

Yeah, and that can look that can look two different ways that can look like the like.

Hyper spiritual approach to it can also look like the person who.

Thinks they're a psychologist and isn't yes Right, right. They read a few books in seminary or something like that and and that's not to say that,

There are some churches who are well equipped to do that. In fact, it's part of kind of our,

medium range goal here to have someone on staff that that is either a licensed mental health counselor or,

We would not that a licensed social worker or.

Something similar to that so that we Would have a greater breadth of resource to help minister to that dynamic of a person's whole,

being Yeah so understanding I think your resources relative to

boundaries and things that you're going to tackle or not tackle.

If someone is maybe experiencing a mild case of depression or is anxious about something,

it may give some, there's maybe a little bit more freedom to work within your own personal,

boundaries in your own personal view, areas of expertise or certification or whatever,

then it is someone who is experiencing regular psychotic breaks, needs very, very significant

resources and help that I'm not equipped to give and don't want to try and step into that role.

Yeah, yeah, so like for us like I know that that kind of looks like we don't.

As a general rule, we don't typically counsel people,

with Through mental illness on a long-term basis Or who are in a situation of crisis. Yeah. No. Yeah like,

Maybe it looks like you know, cuz we're often the safest people that other people have.

So we might receive that person in the midst of their crisis,

but work as diligently as we can to triage,

and then refer out even as much as like, let's get in my car and let's go right now together.

So yeah, understanding boundaries. boundaries what else is And isn't the church's role

Um, could or couldn't be the role?

Well, we're not diagnosticians either. So saying, oh yeah, you are obviously bipolar.

Yeah. I think we sometimes, and this is again maybe a tendency some churches have,

and is part of the problem when we get to the place of you do not have enough faith.

We're coming to a diagnostic conclusion over why someone is experiencing what they're experiencing

and we're like, oh, we got it figured out.

We got all the information we need and we know it is this. And that can lead people from pursuing other avenues of help that maybe they could really

benefit from.

Yeah. Right. Right. I think that the church can certainly be a place or certainly should

be a place of empathy, of safety.

It should be a place where, I mean, I don't know, like I think some people disagree with

this, but I think the church should be a place where there is essentially no, like nothing

is off limits in terms of what is talked about.

In the human experience. I don't really get the sense that it's a very productive or worthwhile.

Bury your head in the sand type of technique to say because I don't understand this or because

I don't feel a resource to deal with it or because I'm confused about the integration of maybe let's

say mental health and illness and my own personal faith. I'm just going to pretend it doesn't exist

this, but certainly to, or not to not talk about it, but certainly like, we,

should have the freedom to be able to talk about all those things because it,

does, you know, they afflict people.

Right. And, you know, we're doing our best to love people in the moments and maybe

not just the moments, but the seasons of their significant pain or, you know,

emotional dysregulation or whatever. I think also the church can do a better job at maybe.

Talking about teaching, preaching, but the nature of the self.

Yes.

It's like the nature of the holistic self.

Yeah. Because I think that is the answer. So if we were to pose the question like, why

Why is it that depression, like from the beginning of this podcast episode, you and I have been,

obviously operating with the assumption and the conclusion that if you're experiencing

depression or anxiety or any other mental health issue, that it usually is not only

a matter of spiritual faith.

Usually not only.

Yes. Correct. conclusion we've been operating under. And I think if someone were to ask us, well, like,

Well, why isn't my depression just a lack of faith?

What you're starting to talk about that picture of the holistic self is the answer to that question. So,

So cameron, why is my depression not only a matter of faith?

Well, because we are not just We are not just like Um, I guess how would you say?

God has created us as holistic beings or people, meaning we don't just have a soul, we don't just have a body, we don't

just have emotions or a mind or thoughts or whatever, as if those things are compartmentalized

off from one another. He has created us as a very intricate, weaved together, whole person

and to separate the soul from the body, from the mind, from the emotions, whatever categories you

want to use is to, I think, have an improper or incorrect understanding of who we are as people.

Right?

And I think this is pretty firmly established in scripture as well. And so they're...

There is a sense when you ask that question, why isn't my depression cured by just a continued or a growth in my faith,

a belief that God can heal me is because, well,

because your depression may not have been caused by a lack of faith,

maybe or depression has been caused by a actual, very significant chemical imbalance in your brain

that doesn't allow your neurotransmitters to absorb the correct chemicals that they need to

in order to process the world and the things around you.

Like in the most healthy manner it can be sometimes, Sometimes, usually, whatever you want to use, a chemical biological process that is happening

within you.

I don't know, I think that we should say, I mean, I don't know, like I want to say,

that okay, does that mean we shouldn't pray that God heals my depression and I should

just go take medicine instead?

Gosh, no. Yeah, that's not what we're saying. nor are we saying that God does not choose to heal in that way.

You know, God does choose to heal in that way. That's very clear through the laying out of hands and prayer.

And because we are holistic, we can't ignore the spiritual dimension of our healing,

along with the physical dimension of our healing and the mental dimension of our healing.

Healing. It's like why would you? We don't do this with anything else. We only

do it with mental health if you if I got diagnosed with cancer.

You wouldn't be like, well, why do you have cancer if you're a Christian?

Well, sadly to say, Cam, there are a minority of some churches that would say something like that.

Oh, well, shame. Churches do exist that say things like that.

Not by any means, I think, a large majority. I think more churches struggle to integrate with mental health and they do physical health.

For me, it's a fascinating question.

Like, what is it about those things that are so different?

Well, you know, it's kind of like there's a undergirding philosophical thing going on.

Like it's the continuation of the Gnostic influence in its own sort of way.

And if you're like, Luke, what's Gnostic? Gnostic being Gnosticism being an early church, like heresy, false teaching, philosophy.

There's a whole bunch of things that different branches and pockets of narcissism in early

church, but the kind of core philosophical tenant of it was somehow a separation of the

spiritual from the physical and the physical being less than, worse than, or bad in the

spiritual being good or positive.

A lot of times, narcissism attributed that to the personhood of Christ.

They would say, well, God, God maybe kind of like possessed Jesus.

And then like at a certain point during the cross, he left, God left Jesus and just the

man Jesus died and God did not die. All matters bad.

All spirit is good. All spirit is good. And so like that continues to be a bit of a thing that I think we, we deal with and

it's kind of, there's a, there's a whole bunch of reasons why I think that is.

I think we have a myopic or small view of redemption.

We think, okay, my body is just garbage. It's going to die.

Leave the shell and I'm going to go up to heaven be a spirit.

And so, and that's all our view of eternity is just us being floating spirits. We kind of,

we take certain aspects of Paul's teaching, right? Like renewing of your mind,

comes to mind, things that we kind of prioritize and say, well, mind over matter or mind over body

or mind over spirit, body over spirit and all that. And we ignore the time when Paul was,

telling Timothy to drink some wine because it might be good for him.

It's still like, yeah.

You know, Paul encourages people to pray for things and then he also just encouraged somebody

to just take some wine because it just might actually help his stomach a little bit.

So it's this kind of myopic view of it and we just we kind of just tend to I think fixate on this

like continued dichotomy and separation of like well the spirit. Spirit's the good thing, the

body's just the bad thing and I'm gonna leave that behind and it doesn't matter and my whole point

of my life is to just ultimately transcend and leave this whole physical thing behind.

I wonder also too if we talked a little bit about this in our class last night about the type of

theology that has come out of enlightenment rationalism and how there's the sense of the

things that we do not understand from a rational or maybe scientifically fact-based type of.

Ground of being like that we tend to We tend to throw away as illegitimate. So the supernatural for instance has come under,

You know major assault in the last 400 years because well the supernatural is not,

Natural and so if it can't be reproduced in a lab if it doesn't fit within the scope of the scientific formula

then it can't possibly be real.

And I think that with mental health issues, there is this sense like, well, okay,

why would we say that to someone who has depression?

Like, well, you just had enough faith, you wouldn't struggle with depression,

but we wouldn't say that to a cancer patient, right?

It's because, well, we can take a cancer cell and put it under a microscope and we can look at it

and we can see it and we understand what happens to it.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's no depression cells. Well that we found.

That we found, right? You know, it is, it, it exists within a sphere of our being that is not necessarily as empirically.

Viewable or verifiable as with the exception of we see the changes that we see the changes that happen in people's demeanor

and their mental processes when we change the brain chemistry.

Through maybe medication.

We see a result. Yeah, I think that's because I think that makes me at least

step back out of our context a little bit because we've been talking like primarily from a Christian

ministry standpoint.

And even if we were to just take just the world in general, I know that there's been

significant moves forward in taking more seriously mental health and it being like acknowledged as a thing.

But there are still pockets of people who outside of Christian philosophy and thought

and theology who are just like, ah, that's just all hogwash, just like, you know, man

up or grow up or get over it, you know.

So even outside of our own context, this kind of dismissal or just like it's a lesser, it's.

Less real, or it's somehow just like a thing that you can just choose to get over is still

a thought that is out there even outside of our context.

Context just perhaps colors that with some more.

A faith talk. Yeah, so, right. Yeah, and I think, you know, so we're saying that, like,

God has created us as full beings. We have mind, we've got emotions, we've got a spirit,

we've got a physical body that experiences things. And rather than us being, you know,

I think if you've ever encountered maybe someone teaching on anthropology or the nature of a human

being from a Christian context, a lot of times they do this kind of tri-division, mind, body, soul.

And what a lot of times happens when we teach about the self as being a mind, a body, and a soul is we.

We end up thinking one of those is more important in that because we kind of use a pie chart

and the visualizations got these divisions between the three.

Even that visualization shows a separation between the mind, the body, and the soul.

When really those divisions, those walls really ought to be like dotted lines or permeable,

because the mind affects the soul, the soul affects the body.

There is this incredible unity. We might be able to say there's like maybe three aspects if we want to continue

to use those three distinctions to a person.

But they're permeable. They're not like these, it's not like I can just pluck my mind out of me and then still have me.

You're getting into some Trinitarian stuff here. All jazz stuff about this.

Well, because it's like, this is the stuff that I get excited about.

But we're, you know, somebody, you know, if someone comes to me and they're like, you know,

I don't know, this is like a, they're just like, you know, it's winter.

I'm just having a really like, I'm feeling really down. like, Pastor Luke, what should I do about it?

Like, you know, this is very generic and very like just broad-boned, broad spectrum.

But I would say, OK, well, maybe take some vitamin D, get outside during the day,

during the brightest time of the day for maybe 30 minutes.

Make sure you're spending time with people. Pray about it. Spend some time with the Lord.

And then if this is continuing on for a couple weeks, maybe go talk to a counselor for a couple sessions.

Like address all of the aspects to it. It's not a like one thing, right? Because all of those things.

Well, and like one of the things you said is most people can understand the connectivity of the

various parts of your being even if you don't talk about it in that way. For instance, you almost

always feel better mentally when you exercise physically.

Yes.

Right. So why would that be if those things are not permeable and completely separate?

Or I don't know about anyone else, but like when I haven't had anything to eat.

Oh, I get, I get nasty. I get, I get angry. I get so do I.

And Sherry has come to, my wife has come to know that, oh, your attitude sucks right now.

Did you eat today?

And like, oh yeah, I guess I am hungry. So like here, have this Snickers bar, you know,

that you hold Snickers commercials.

So there is, we all, I think, tend, we have intrinsically this understanding

that there's a significant connectivity

between the various parts of who we are,

and that goes, you know, that is the same with our mental health as well.

Yeah, right. It goes across the board. And so I think, yeah, I guess just to say loudly

it loudly to say it loudly and clearly like you know if you're dealing with,

mental health issues like there is no shame in pursuing counseling, professional

help, medical help, prayer, prayer, exercise, exercise, community, right, right. Take a

holistic approach to take a holistic approach to treating to treating what is

is a holistic problem in your life.

I think there's also, you know, that's, I wouldn't necessarily,

that's a fairly practical response to it.

Pastorally speaking, how can we speak to the people that are like.

Dealing with this, maybe in the context of them having been told in the past that you obviously

don't have enough faith or there's a real issue with your walk with Jesus then or what is the

response of those who love with the heart of Christ to people who have been told stuff like that?

You know, my first thing is just to kind of say like, my first response is just I'm sorry,

that that's happened because a lot of time that ends up in a place of blame, right? Blame and shame

because it's like I have done something wrong, I am causing my own suffering, and it's a marker

of a character defect in me. If you want to talk about something that will make your depression

or anxiety or mental condition worse, those are some big things. And then I would just point to

to like the testimony of scripture and say that like, if you read your Psalms, you'll

find a broad spectrum of human experience. A large amount of it will be very sad, a lot

of suffering. And, you know, I always think of...

Elijah after his fight would kind of fight but showdown with the prophets of bail and then runs and is kind of in hiding from Jezebel still and he has this like this very hard.

Kind of just like it's probably the best.

I don't want to over-clinicalize the Bible and say like Elijah definitely was depressed at that point.

But like if you want to talk about a picture that's as close to depression as we probably

get in a story, like that's probably one of them.

And God's response to Elijah was very gentle and was bringing him along and included physical

nourishment as well as a spiritual experience. So just from a pastoral standpoint, if you want

the quick biblical hermeneutic of like, you know, why do you say that? What's the biblical proof?

That would be my quick, like this is what the Bible seems to also... And like the Bible was not

written with when a concept of mental health was like a concept. So to read the Bible and say like

the Bible is like conscious of mental health is an overstatement because I don't think it necessarily,

is. But we can see threads that point to human experience. So I think there's a parallel

parallel truth or however you want to call it that, that is not necessarily associated

with just mental health, but with suffering in general. And that would be, well, like the typical.

Maybe thought is that if you're suffering or if life is hard or if you're going through significant

experiences, significantly difficult experiences is because you're doing something wrong.

Right.

And your suffering is a consequence of your wrongness. Yes.

Either wrong belief or wrong action or wrong something.

Um, and do we believe that about the Bible? Do we believe that suffering always is a,

is a indication that I am in the wrong? No, we don't. You're like setting, like this is just

like a big passion topic for me. You're like, I'm trying to throw you like an underhand.

Can I, I want to say this for everybody. I'm going to say this for the people in the back of the room,

right? The Bible does not teach that because something bad happens to you, it automatically

means that you are somehow responsible or have done something wrong or lack faith.

Yes.

Right? The Bible does talk about testing, trials, and those are not reasons for suffering. They are

outcomes of suffering, right? When we talk about Peter, 1 Peter in the first part of that book

talks about like you rejoice in your salvation in knowing Christ even though for a little while you

suffer and endure trials which are producing your genuineness of faith and outcome and salvation of

your souls which is more precious than that of gold which is refined by fire. That whole thing is

not a saying you're suffering because of or you're experiencing trials because of these things.

It's saying this is an outcome of it or a benefit of it or how God uses to magnify or show His glory,

through bad things happening to you. It's not the reason. The reason might be your own negative

choices, might be someone else's sinful choices, might be just the sinfulness and brokenness of

of the world. And a lot of times people wrestle with all of this and try and find reasons

or even like really complicated like we could get really big and we could blow up the question

to like why is there evil in the world period? And that's an apologetic question a lot of

people spend a lot of time on. And most of the answers to that question are partly true.

But I just want to simply say that if you were to read the book of Job, which is entirely

about suffering, from its 43 chapters of dealing with a philosophical and practical life of

a man who is enduring extreme suffering. I always hesitate when anyone quotes from Job,

because depending on what chapter you're quoting, you might be quoting someone or something

who's saying something that the author is trying to hold up as an argument that's wrong or false.

Because a lot of it is Job is the simple story of Job. Job's a righteous good man,

follows the Lord. He loses everything. Everything. A couple of times. Couple of times.

Like all in one day. Awful suffering befalls him. Some friends show up, hang out with him for a

couple of days. And then they begin to say, Job, do you think all these things happened to you

because you did something wrong? Job, do you think maybe one of your children did something wrong?

Job, maybe you haven't been worshipping the Lord, or maybe you were becoming prideful in

all of the things that you owned.

And Job's like, no, these things are not true. If that's why God is doing this to me, that's not why.

And then eventually, after 40 some chapters, Job loses it and becomes angry at God.

And he turns to God and he says, God, you need to come down and give me a reason as

to why I'm experiencing suffering.

Here I'm gonna put you on trial and I'm gonna demand that you explain why you've

allowed suffering in my life. God shows up but doesn't not to be on trial for

himself right he displays himself in full fury and glory and he essentially

responds to Job and he's like...

I am God, you are not, you cannot have an answer to this. You do not get the answer to why you

experience this suffering. And then Job accepts that, accepts that he is not God and humbles

himself. And that's the point of the book of Job is that we don't get the answer to why we

we experiencing experience suffering.

Sometimes I think God gives us a glimpse of that and gives us a glimpse of what he,

uses to bring about in our lives because of suffering.

Yeah. Produces character, right? Hope, right? Perseverance.

You might get bits and pieces to the Y of your suffering, right? Like,

well I'm suffering because somebody did something stupid and hurt me.

Yep. That's an easy Y. Pick that up and take it and then move on.

Too many people will spend years yelling into the clouds, demanding God to give them the

full explanation of why.

And you may get that later, but probably not the full picture until the other side of eternity.

And so just from a very biblical perspective, the Bible is clear and Christian history is

clear that suffering is part of the Christian life and that to suffer is an opportunity,

to follow after Christ in a deeper way, in a more significant way.

It's not an indication that we are somehow lacking. Jesus himself probably would not have suffered in the way that he did. Right.

Yeah. You know. Exactly. Well, and this is like to finish like my little bit of

tirade here. If you're experiencing suffering.

God's glory and God's redemption is upside down from the way that we often would think about it.

If we wish we could write the story of our lives, we wish we could write it very clean and very straightforward.

We'd love the line graph to just go up.

We'd love for us to continually get better, achieve our goals, go from one step to the other,

not be sidetracked, not have detours, not totally miss things that we expected for our life or we wanted.

That's the life we would love to draw for ourselves.

And that's not the life that we live. Anybody lives. No one lives a life in a straight line without suffering and without detours in exactly the way they wanted it to.

That just doesn't happen.

God used the most horrendous thing in history, the death of his son, the death of God on a cross, to bring about redemption and glory for the world.

What might God use your suffering in your life to bring about? It's not the reason.

It's not the reason. But if you're in a place and you're struggling, and you're like, why? Where does this go?

I might say, God wants to do something there. When I counsel people, I'm still relatively young, younger as a pastor goes.

I don't know, maybe I'm not anymore. But I talk with people, a lot of times people older than myself and something I've been

told multiple times is they're like, Luke, how, like you get it.

How do you know all of this stuff? How is it that you're able to speak into my experience of suffering and sadness and depression

in such a way?

My answer is simply, well, I've been there. I've experienced clinical depression for multiples of years and I've had a long journey of dealing

with that and processing through that, both physically, mentally, spiritually, and communally,

of those aspects. And so, it's not the reason why I experienced depression, but it's something

that God has allowed me to use in my ministry in a way that I think is, I hope, brings glory to him.

I think if there's any last word to people who are suffering under this from, you know.

Let me apologize on behalf of any other church or pastor who said, you just don't have enough

faith or whatever the case may be.

And to say that God is close to you, God is not far off. is not delight in your pain. God is not using it as some kind of harmful lever to make you suffer.

And that there are people who love you enough to walk with you and receive you and accept

you and pray with you and comfort you and help to resource you for victory or at least.

Good passage through those things.

Do you have any last words on the topic of mental health and faith?

I mean, like we, I don't even, I don't even think we can say that we scratched the surface on it.

No, we didn't. I think the last thing, one thing I would just simply say is like, I'll give this like

example, which was an illustration that came, that was helpful for me at a certain point

in my, in my journey is like, let's say for a moment that someone has a headache, right?

Again, we seem to have a lot of clarity over how to deal with physical illnesses, but struggle

with the mental. Let's say someone's got a headache.

What would you do?

Well, okay. I would take some Tylenol. I would maybe put down my screen, stay away from the phone, maybe go somewhere quiet and

dark and I'd take a nap.

Wouldn't just do one of those things. Right? Because you like or the point, the goal is

to work through it, right? And deal with the headache. But for some reason, sometimes when

it comes to mental health, we I don't know, out of like a sense of pride or a sense of

conviction or something. We want to maybe just do the one thing.

To kind of, I don't know, for some reason we are scared to take advantage of all avenues.

And we wouldn't do that with a headache. I wouldn't take away the screen and just say,

okay, let's see if the screen, getting rid of the screen will get rid of my headache.

You'll probably see some benefit, but probably not right away or like maybe as quickly as you

you maybe hope, as if you were also just to take the screen away, take some Tylenol and go to sleep.

Right? Doing all three works towards the goal. Yeah. But for some reason, when we kind of come

to mental health issues, we like to come in and we like to just pick one avenue and say, let's see if.

This and almost out of we just want to prove that the other ones weren't needed.

Rather than being willing to say like, we are in a place that let's just take everything we have and work on it together.

And so to circle back to that first question, like what's the church's role in mental health and all of that?

It's to be part of the team, part of the, like not the, but part of, like if you're

dealing with it, like we want to be part of the solution or part of your healing and helping

process.

Not exclusive, not replacing, but coming alongside all the other things that you're seeking to

do. Almost three years ago now, it's like April 26, 2020 in the middle of COVID. I preached a

sermon ending with this. It was a sermon on the intersection of mental health and Christian

faith and ended with this quote from a lady named Catherine Butler. I don't know, have any idea who

I don't know where I came with this quote, but the quote reads this and we'll end this.

Episode of the podcast here.

Fellow churchgoers, hold the power to either fan the flame of condemnation or to snuff

it out. Our words matter.

With them, we may trample the downtrodden for the glory of our own lofty opinions, or

we may choose to embrace those who are suffering with open arms and hearts,

and in so doing, embody the love of Christ.

We have a choice.

We can fan the flame of condemnation and guilt and fear.

Or we can stuff that flame out. We can trample over people with our lofty words in order to,

support our own misguided opinions, or we can embrace those who are suffering with open arms

and open hearts and in so doing embody the love of Jesus Christ for them. I think that when we're

honest with ourselves, then the answer is pretty clear. So yeah, let's be Christ. Let's be Christ.

Thanks for joining us today on the podcast as always. You can send in, text any of your questions to our texting line.

We'll have it here on the screen and in the show notes.

So just click on the description, it'll be there. So we appreciate you guys.

Catch you in the next one.

Music.