God and Mental Illness

Part 7, How God Acts in Our Lives

I have two big points I want to make concerning faith and mental health. The first point I've already shared. Specifically, if Christians will embrace our embodiment we'll be less likely to stigmatize mental illness, recognize the place medications will have in our mental wellness, and give us a more realistic and compassionate posture toward chronic mental illness.

In the final posts of this series I want to turn toward the second big point I want to share. Reckoning with our embodiment is important. But what can we expect from God by way of help?

There are many desolations here. Mental illness is painful. The journey toward health is long and difficult, often with many setbacks. We can feel god-forsaken and abandoned. Why isn't God taking this pain away?

These laments will never wholly go away. As I described in the last post, our mental health participates in the groaning of all creation. Again, our posture has to be eschatological, calling for patience and hope.

But much of our desolation is also produced by mistaken assumptions and expectations about God's involvement in our mental health journey. These expectations create false hopes that get dashed, leading to desolation and disappointment. If we could get a better grasp of how God accompanies us in our mental health journey we'd be less likely to have overly triumphalistic expectations. 

Here's the point I want to make. Most of our imagination about how God works in our lives has been shaped by soteriology. (Soteriology concerns our beliefs about salvation.) That is, when we talk about God's actions in the world we mostly talk about how God saves us. This creates a habit of mind, an imagination about the shape and nature of God's actions in our lives. But this imagination, while appropriate for talking about salvation, isn't always the best for thinking about mental health. Basically, we import a soteriological imagination into therapeutic contexts where it is not appropriate or realistic. Let me explain.

When we describe God's actions in saving us, a couple of descriptions come to mind. For example, salvation is experienced as:

1. Immediate

2. Complete

3. Permanent

4. Passive

5. Gnostic

Let's unpack the list. By "immediate" we experience salvation as an event that happens in a moment. We aren't partially saved over time. It's instantaneous. Relatedly, salvation is total and "complete." We aren't 34.7% saved. We're 100% saved. Salvation is also considered to be "permanent." And if not permanent, then pretty durable and hard to lose. Salvation isn't fragile. 

We also experience salvation "passively." We don't save ourselves. Salvation happens to us.

Lastly, salvation is experienced as "Gnostic." By "gnostic" I mean the event is largely invisible and spiritual. Salvation is mostly understood to be something that transpires in my relationship with God. Salvation doesn't involve doing anything with or to my body. 

Because we mainly think of salvation when we think of God, the above list are the words that come to shape our imagination regarding how God acts in the world. When God acts in our lives those actions and effects are immediate, complete, permanent, passively received, and Gnostic (affecting the spiritual rather than the physical). As I hope you can see, these sorts of descriptions about God's actions in the world, while perfectly legitimate for soteriological conversations, are wholly unrealistic when it comes to mental health. Consider how we experience our mental health journey. Our journey toward mental wholeness is experienced as:

1. Slow

2. Incremental

3. Faltering

4. Effortful

5. Embodied

As should be obvious, this list is pretty much the exact opposite of our soteriological expectations. Healing takes time, often over many years. It's an incremental, step by step journey. We can also stumble and fall. We can have setbacks. The process is hard and effortful. There's no silver bullet, just the work. Finally, as we've been discussing, our mental health is embodied. There are biological aspects that need to be examined and addressed.

In short, I would argue that it's the clash between the two lists above that creates much of the desolations we experience with mental illness. Our expectation is that God will act in our lives immediately, completely, permanently, passively, and Gnostically. Basically, I can say a prayer and my depression will go away. 

So this is the second point I want to make. A lot of confusions and desolations about God and mental illness happen because we are importing soteriological expectations into our mental health journey, how we think God should be acting in our struggles with mental illness. These expectations, as you can see above, just aren't realistic. 

So, beyond embracing our embodiment, we also have to police creeping soteriological expectations when it comes to describing God's activity in our mental health journey. Yes, God is with us, more on that in the next post, but that doesn't mean our journey toward wholeness won't be slow, incremental, faltering, effortful and embodied. Slowness isn't a sign of God's absence. Taking it step by step doesn't mean God has failed you. Having a setback doesn't mean God isn't with you. Doing the work isn't a lack of faith in God. And taking medication isn't a spiritual failure. Thinking otherwise means you've been mis-imagining how God acts in our lives.