RSS
Home
An Evangelical response to mental health issues
Print
Email
RSS
Subscribe
.jpg)
How can God use medication to help people?
Chances are good that we each know somebody who has been diagnosed with some sort of mental illness, whether a life-long abnormality or short-term condition. These illnesses affect both believers and non-believers alike. Christians, though, sometimes have a different struggle than others, since a fruit of the Spirit they are promised is joy. For someone who expects joy while in the midst of depression, for instance, then the effect can be crippling.
Different church traditions have responded to this issue in contrasting way. Some see no problem in taking medication and attempting to live a normal life. Others see it much more of a spiritual symptom of a lack of faith for providential healing. This issue comes back to putting trust in human invention or God's intervention, and both extremes miss the central point of medication's role in mental health.
Medication and the councelors who diagnose illnesses and prescribe treatments are tools to be used so that one might fully experience the truth of the Gospel. Jesus' death and resurrection provides for whole healing, both body and soul. No doubt these tools might evolve into something they were never meant to be. People might set up their psychiatrist's opinion as an idol. Or medication might easily become an addiction. But this does not deny that God is able and willing to use these tools so that one is not hindered by experiencing God in his fullest.
To those who are suffering presently, there is always so little that words can do. Joy can only be found through God, and sometimes by way of using those tools described above. But God has also promised a complete healing at the general resurrection. Our bodies will be re-made, but in such a way as to be perfected. 1 Pet 2:24-25, quoting Isa 53:4-5, says "By his wounds we have been healed." No doubt we can claim that we have been spiritually healed by coming into the right relationship with God. But also, because this passage was directed at slaves who had suffered physical beatings, we can be assured of our physical healings. Our mental facilities will also be restored as well, so that we can poclaim God's power over sickness in body and in mind.
We can be confident of God's healing abilities. Just because he does not always give us full healing in the present does not mean that he does not give us other tools to be able to proclaim the truth of the Gospel, which is the basis of our whole healing.
Related Articles:
Add a Comment
