Light and Life

The BBC recently posted this video about an Australian weather caster’s on-air panic attack. I appreciate that they used this as an opportunity to educate and encourage their viewers. Things like this make me feel a little less like a misfit in the world. I’ve been fairly open about my own experiences with anxiety and depression, largely because I’m tired of trying to live up to some arbitrary standard of mental health that is elusive at best. Lately I haven’t been able to write my blog posts as often as I used to. When I have time to do so, my brain either descends into fog or jumps and spirals down miscellaneous disconnected paths.

This week I was reading the beginning of 1 John:

“If we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us” (1 John 1:7-8).

I realize that the context is that of walking in holiness and righteousness, confessing our sin to God, and receiving His forgiveness. At the same time, I think we all know that sin is not the only thing we like to keep hidden in darkness. Church culture often tends to avoid revealing any weakness or struggle. Even in small groups it can take a long time to trust one another enough to share our heaviest burdens. (I’ve experienced the awkward silence of a group who didn’t know how to respond to me.) Yet if we can’t share those hard things, how do we ever expect to “confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed” (James 5:16)? Vulnerability has to start somewhere.

In the definition of the Greek word aletheia, Biblehub includes the following: “truth, but not merely truth as spoken; truth of idea, reality, sincerity... In ancient Greek culture, aletheia was synonymous for ‘reality’ as the opposite of illusion.” Sometimes it seems as though we are determined to keep up the illusion of competency and self-sufficiency, even though Scripture clearly says that we are meant to be dependent on God and on one another (2 Cor. 3:5-6, 9:8, 12:9, Gal. 6:2, et al).

Younger generations are more likely to value authenticity, though for many that has come to mean “Affirm me in my sinful state.” That is not the goal of Christian fellowship. We are to share our burdens, struggles, temptations, and sin in order to be lifted up, cleansed, and enabled to love and serve God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. Certainly there are times when confidentiality is necessary, and some people cannot be trusted with personal information, but in general the Church should be a place where it is safe to admit our deepest needs and where we can pray for more than just physical problems.

I used to think that Proverbs 4:23, “Above all else, guard your heart” (NIV), meant to not let anyone get close enough to know what was going on inside. It’s taken me a long time to realize that guarding your heart isn’t done by keeping everyone at a distance, but by allowing trustworthy people close enough to see the wounds and struggles so they can be a source of healing and hope.

Jesus said that not only is He the Light of the world (John 8:12), but that we are too (Matt. 5:14). We have the privilege and responsibility of shining the light of His truth into all the dark spots that keep us from loving God and loving one another as we should. His light shining through us brings life to that which is dead and dying inside.

“Whoever follows Me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life” (John 8:12b).

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Related resource: Why the American Church Can’t Fix Loneliness by Russell Moore

© 2024 Dawn Rutan. Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture are ESV and all images copyright free from pixabay.com. The opinions stated do not necessarily reflect the views of my church or employer.

Encouraging Words

As we near the end of Mental Health Awareness Month, I thought I’d share a selection of resources that I’ve found helpful at different times in life, some of which I’ve quoted in prior blog posts. I may not agree with everything these authors and speakers share, but have generally found them to be helpful and encouraging.

Books

Glimmers of Grace, Kathryn Butler

What Does Depression Mean for My Faith? Kathryn Butler

Not Quite Fine: Mental Health, Faith, and Showing Up for One Another, Carlene Hill Byron

Midnight Mercies: Walking with God through Depression in Motherhood, Christine Chappell

Pursuing Health in an Anxious Age, Bob Cutillo

Spurgeon’s Sorrows: Realistic Hope for those who Suffer from Depression, Zack Eswine

Darkness Is My Only Companion: A Christian Response to Mental Illness, Kathryn Greene-McCreight

Untangling Emotions, Alasdair Groves and Winston Smith

Companions in the Darkness, Diana Gruver

Blessed Are the Misfits, Brant Hansen

Embodied Hope: A Theological Meditation on Pain and Suffering, Kelly Kapic

You’re Only Human: How Your Limits Reflect God’s Design and Why That’s Good News, Kelly Kapic

Walking with God through Pain and Suffering, Tim Keller

When Darkness Seems My Closest Friend, Mark Meynell

A Christian’s Guide to Mental Illness, David Murray and Tom Karel, Jr.

Christians Get Depressed Too, David Murray

Sacred Endurance: Finding Grace and Strength for a Lasting Faith, Trillia Newbell

I Trust When Dark My Road, Todd Peperkorn (free pdf download!)

God’s Grace in Your Suffering, David Powlison

The Scars That Have Shaped Me: How God Meets Us in Suffering, Vaneetha Risner

Depression: Looking Up from the Stubborn Darkness, Ed Welch

Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy, Mark Vroegop

CSB Life Counsel Bible- contains many of the New Growth Press minibook series

Blogs

CCEF Blog

Penetrating the Darkness, Terry Powell

Podcasts

Hope + Help Podcast, Christine Chappell

CCEF Podcast, Alasdair Groves

© 2024 Dawn Rutan. Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture are ESV and all images copyright free from pixabay.com. The opinions stated do not necessarily reflect the views of my church or employer.

Yes, Mental Illness Exists

A prominent Christian leader is reported to have said recently that “There is no such thing as mental illness.” While I agree that we need to normalize the experience of suffering, mourning, and anxiety within the church, his statement is likely to have the opposite effect, which makes me sad. Those of us who take medication for various mental illnesses don’t need added shame for not being able to cope without them. We feel plenty of shame already, because it feels like everyone else has stronger faith and better coping skills than we do. Even if science can’t explain why, some medications do help some people. They don’t necessarily fix the problems, but they reduce the symptoms enough that we can carry on with daily life and, hopefully, get good, godly counsel as well. As Kathryn Butler notes in a new article from TGC:

“The first stop when seeking help for depression is your primary doctor’s office, but it shouldn’t be the last. While a doctor determines whether an antidepressant will help, it’s critically important to couple any medication with counseling.”

However, godly counseling can be hard to find as well, particularly if one is relying on the local church to provide it. Most pastors and church leaders don’t have the training or the time to provide the deep, long-term counseling that many of their church members need. And depending on their theology, they may create more problems than they solve. I’ve been blessed to find a Christian counselor within the medical system, but available appointments are few. For those with more intensive needs, it can be expensive to get the necessary help.

In the CT 2024 Pastors Special Issue, Jeannie Whitlock writes of Recapturing Wonder in a Cynical Age:

“Many of us haven’t even processed everything we have lost, pushed by a culture that urges us to quickly move on. But as Christian Wiman warns, unaddressed grief will make itself known, showing up in ‘every kind of crying but the kind you can see.’ Our bodies keep the score. Bottled sorrow can metastasize into physical ailments, unexplained fatigue, heartache, weakened immunity, or constant irritation. Yet, many American Christians are terrible at grieving.”

Often times it seems as though the church has lost the art of lament, in part because we’ve forgotten how to bear one another’s burdens. We’ve accepted superficial relationships as “good enough.” If the church were better at all the “one another” commands, there probably would be less need for medications and outside counseling services, but those will never completely go away in this lifetime. We live in a broken world, where our bodies and minds are impacted by sickness, suffering, and sin (our own and others’). Telling people “there’s no such thing as mental illness” is somewhere on the spectrum between “Just deal with it” and “If you just have enough faith you will be healed,” neither of which is helpful or encouraging.

In the midst of writing this, a severe storm moved through the area, providing me with an analogy. The property next to my house was recently clear-cut for building an electrical substation. When the storm came, a large pine tree that was left at the edge of the woods fell across the power lines. Because it no longer had neighboring trees on three sides, it was more susceptible to the wind than it had been before. Likewise, many Christians, and especially those struggling with mental illness, feel like they are on the fringe of church life with little support and protection from the storms of life. We need aid in whatever forms we can get it.

Perhaps we all need the reminder that God “comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. For as we share abundantly in Christ’s sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too. If we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation; and if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which you experience when you patiently endure the same sufferings that we suffer” (2 Cor. 1:4-6).

“Therefore encourage one another with these words” (1 Thess. 4:18).

© 2024 Dawn Rutan. Image courtesy of SAMHSA.gov. Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture are ESV. The opinions stated do not necessarily reflect the views of my church or employer.

In Our Weakness

In a recent podcast from The Gospel Coalition, Ray Ortlund pointed out that in Romans 8:26, “Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness” it is not plural, weaknesses, but “in our weakness.” He says, “Weakness is not one more experience alongside all these other experiences. Weakness is the foundation or platform on which we have all experiences. We have never known, for one nanosecond in this life, a moment of non-weakness”

We could put it this way: our experiences of particular weaknesses are the things that remind us of our inherent weakness and neediness as fallen creatures, and they should also remind us that God is the one who carries us through. As the Apostle Paul wrote in a verse I return to often, “He said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me” (2 Cor. 12:9).

This kind of thinking is antithetical to our Western autonomous culture. Children and youth are taught from an early age that they should be self-confident and self-directed, everyone is a winner, follow your heart, feeling bad means something needs to be fixed or changed. Affirmation is the mantra of the day, even if it means affirming them in life-changing decisions and relationships that we know are anti-biblical.

In another podcast that I’ve come across, The Care Ministry, guest Monica Coleman refers to being called by God to break the silences and stigma about those areas of mental health that are so often kept silent even in the church. In many ways, I feel that describes my own calling. I got tired of trying to hide depression and pretending that everything is “fine and dandy.” Life is hard, and mental illness is one particular weakness that many people wrestle with in silence. It is a constant reminder that we’re not the strong, self-assured people that society, and often the church, says we’re supposed to be.

And since I need all the encouraging words I can find, in another of my favorite podcasts from Immanuel Nashville, Barnabas Piper preached on Mark 9 and the man whose son was suffering from an unclean spirit. This was the father who proclaimed, “I believe, help my unbelief!” Piper notes that faith and doubt can coexist. “Doubts are uncomfortable, especially if you have grown up in a church context… ‘I believe’ is a profession of faith, and ‘help my unbelief’ is the prayer of faith… Faith is not measured in certainty, but by trusting Jesus with our needs.”

We are all weak and needy people. Pretending we have no doubts or struggles not only keeps us from seeking strength and help from God, but also isolates us from one another in our many times of need. Someone recently made a comment to me, and perhaps I misunderstood their intent, but it sounded like they were saying that people put on a happy face at church because that’s how they want to feel and what they think will encourage other people. But for those who are aware of their own weakness and trials, that is just one more barrier to connecting with others in a meaningful way.

I feel like a hypocrite when I plaster on a smile and join in singing songs that imply that God heals every weakness and wound in this lifetime. I know that in the resurrection He will do so, but as long as we live in this broken world we’ll have to wrestle with sin, doubt, weakness, and sorrow. To pretend that we are above such things is to join the Pharisees and to lay heavy burdens on the shoulders of those who don’t measure up (Matt. 23:4). Instead, let us acknowledge our weakness and “bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ. For if anyone thinks he is something, when he is nothing, he deceives himself” (Gal. 6:2-3).

© 2023 Dawn Rutan. Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture are ESV and all images copyright free from pixabay.com. The opinions stated do not necessarily reflect the views of my church or employer.

Be Aware, Take Care

We’re nearing the end of Mental Health Awareness Month. One of the things I’ve read and heard from multiple sources is the idea that our culture has pathologized normal human experiences in many ways, and the church is not immune from such perceptions. We know we live in a fallen world with broken bodies. Yet instead of accepting that fact and finding ways to cope with our own brokenness and support others in their brokenness, we look for diagnoses and treatments that will take away anything that we think is less than ideal. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) has grown from 130 pages in its first edition to almost 1000 pages in the fifth edition. Normal experiences of grief, anxiety, or just being a little different from your peers are now seen as something that needs to be fixed.

I’m not saying that mental illness doesn’t exist. I know it does because I take medication for it every day. (I will say that the medication doesn’t remove the problem, it just makes it more bearable.) I also know that God uses all kinds of difficult experiences to draw people closer to Him. I’m regularly reminded that my weakness is meant to make me rely on His strength; my sorrow presses me to go to Him for comfort; my anxieties cause me to pray for His guidance and provision; and my quirky way of seeing things allows me to serve God in ways that others can’t.

A couple podcasts I’ve listened to recently have brought out good points. One said that the rise of “helicopter parents,” who try to protect their kids from any kind of adversity, has produced a generation of young people who don’t know how to cope with normal life. Another pointed out how Christians take verses like Philippians 4:6, “Do not be anxious about anything,” out of context and beat people over the head with it for their “sinful” lack of faith. Many Christians have adopted a type of health and wealth gospel that says if you just have enough faith you’ll never have any anxiety or sorrow, and you can go through life with a smile on your face at all times. That simply isn’t true, because that is not the world we live in.

Jesus Himself was “a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief” (Is. 53:3), and He sweat drops of blood in Gethsemane as He knew what was ahead for Him (Luke 22:44). I heard someone say that if we could have seen Jesus’ face as He told His disciples “Do not be anxious about tomorrow” (Matt. 6:34), we would know that this was not a harsh command to be obeyed, but a gentle, loving reminder that God is in control. I was reading one resource that was trying to make the point that depression is not always a result of sin, but they went on to heap guilt on those who “refuse to take the necessary steps to find healing in your life” (supposedly based on James 4:17). Such a statement is not in line with the gentle correction that comes from those who love God and love one another.

One podcast from Russell Moore and Curtis Chang urges us to use our feelings of anxiety as a pointer to what things we fear losing in the future, so we can learn to give those to God. Sometimes we allow anxiety about the future or regret and sorrow about the past to keep us from living well in the present. Sometimes we need help through medication and counseling to be able to better handle the things God allows to come into our lives. Those can be part of God’s common means of grace in this broken world.

If those in the church were more willing to talk about their struggles with anxiety, depression, feeling out of place, and yes, even sin, perhaps we’d all become better at encouraging and supporting those who need a listening ear or a hug. We were never meant to go through this life alone, nor to stoically pretend that everything is sunshine and flowers all the time. (There’s also poison ivy, which I’m also taking medication for!)

May we be the hands and arms and eyes and ears of Christ for those in need.

“For everything there is a season... a time to weep, and a time to laugh, and time to mourn, and a time to dance... a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; a time to seek, and a time to lose... a time to keep silence, and a time to speak...” (Eccl. 3:1-8).

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© 2023 Dawn Rutan. Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture are ESV and all images copyright free from pixabay.com. The opinions stated do not necessarily reflect the views of my church or employer.

Mental Health and the Church

I recently Not Quite Fine: Mental Health, Faith, and Showing Up for One Another, by Carlene Hill Byron, and following are several quotes worth considering:

22- Our conversation in the United states today suggests that we are living through a growing mental health crisis. But what if the crisis is less about our health and more about how we think about it? What if we’ve so dramatically changed our expectations about mental health that most of us can’t meet the new norm?

26- We understand that to be “mentally ill” is to vary from some standard of mental health. Easy enough. But what is an appropriate standard of mental health? …Ordinary is always whatever is expected or allowable in a given time or place. That means that changing cultural norms can redefine what was once normal as mental illness.

54- People with mental health problems seek help among the faithful for several reasons:

We hope someone can convince us that our suffering has meaning.

We want assurance that our difficult lives have purpose.

We want to experience ourselves as persons who have value—persons who have been assigned an importance that often feels intangible by a God we cannot see, and who desperately crave recognition as valued individuals within the physically present body of Christ.

We are looking for a place where we can belong, even when our mental health problems make us prickly and painful to be with.

We are, with all the faithful, looking for “confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see” (Hebrews 11:1).

89- Mental health problems also tend to isolate people. Many of us, including those with mental health diagnoses, are more likely to draw inward than reach out in our most difficult moments. Stanley Hauerwas writes, “The dangerous thing about mental illness is how it tempts those so afflicted to think they are completely on their own, isolated in their distress.” But we are also likely to be, in fact, more alone than many others.

98- People who can suffer silently and invisibly are welcome in any congregation… We’re even more happy to honor pain once it has been healed. Those of us whose long-lasting suffering limits our lives often have a different experience, in church as elsewhere. This is unfortunate, because when the body behaves as it is designed and called to function, our mental health problems can diminish to some degree. When people feel loved, cared for, and safe, our mental health symptoms may become less challenging. Sometimes the symptoms diminish. Sometimes they are just less overwhelming when we live in a warm community of people who care.

99- When we select as “high potential” members only those who could help quickly multiply the congregation, we risk filling the community with what pediatric epidemiologist W. Thomas Boyce describes as “dandelions”—the kind of people who, like the bright summer flower, do all right under almost any conditions. But we’re likely to miss what he calls “orchid” people—those whose lives are marked by extremely high potential for both outstanding contributions and catastrophic failure because of their extreme reactivity to their surroundings.

100- William Nash said that the people who are most likely to overcome mental health challenges are those who found relationships where “somebody listened to them, really listened… without becoming disgusted, without judging,” and still loved them. For the sufferer to experience that love as genuine, Nash said, “it can’t really be a helping professional like me who’s paid to come in and give you 50 minutes of an hour.” The love that heals is not for sale.

108- When we let ourselves define others by their difficulties, as if these are immutable, we excise God and ourselves from the transforming work God empowers people to do.

123- The quietness and rest that people with mental health problems need is also something we all need… Most of us require more stillness than our cultures are generally willing to give. For us to live according to the pace and drive of contemporary Western culture is for us to burn through our neural circuitry in ways that lead to disruptive and disorderly crises. For us to honor God with our lives, we need to live in ways that may seem out of step with many around us.

129- Successfully managing feelings requires knowing that feelings aren’t less than thoughts; they’re simply different from thoughts. Without feelings, we would miss some of the information God has encoded into our systems of gathering and responding to God’s world… Many feelings are at the core of what allows us to connect and bond in human community.

144-145- For an individual with mental health problems, the special challenge is to discern the useful feelings—those that come in response to a situation and give clues to personal values and purpose—from the feelings that simply come like storm surges. There is rarely any meaning to be found in the latter. All that can be done is to set the feeling aside and do the next thing. But without good discernment, a person risks either ignoring big feelings that have useful information or attending excessively to feelings whose only meaning is to show that one’s body is out of whack right now.

181- What people with mental health problems generally need from churches is not mental health treatment but Christian friendship and the kinds of caring that can emerge only among those committed to each other. Faith communities are designed by God as places where people can belong, find meaning and purpose in life, be recognized as valued persons in the sight of God and other people, and find hope for the days to come. These kinds of caring don’t require professional support. In fact, they happen most effectively when they are provided long term by nonprofessionals.

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“Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ” (Gal. 6:2).

© 2022 Dawn Rutan. Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture are ESV. Image courtesy of Amazon.com. The opinions stated do not necessarily reflect the views of my church or employer.