If John the Baptist walked into your church next Sunday
morning, would he be welcomed, or would his apparent lack of mental stability
frighten the body, and cause noses to be turned up toward the sky?
I open with this question not to offer commentary on John’s
mental health, but to press in on our ability and willingness to understand and minister to those who dress in animal skins, eat bugs for dinner,
and reside in less than desirable conditions.
By all accounts, John the Baptist would fit today’s description
of an emotionally disturbed person (EDP). With a ruddy complexion, and an
appearance that would make some good Christians uncomfortable, his entrance
into a packed sanctuary would leave just a few clutching their children tightly, and
secretly praying, “Oh, dear Lord, don’t let him sit by me.”
But, this example is too easy. It’s too much of a cliché.
While there’s always a group of us in the body who secretly desire John to sit
elsewhere, there’s also a group of us who revel in the opportunity to show how
spiritual we are—sitting with John, it turns out, is sometimes our way of proclaiming our
fast to the masses (Matt. 6:16).
Here’s a challenge: If we invite John to sit with us in church
on Sunday, but wouldn’t think of inviting him to dinner on Monday, what does
this really say about the direction we’re moving in as God’s people, in relation
to those with apparent mental health disorders?
In a broad sense, the church in America is still too distant,
but growing closer to those with these and similar concerns. Some generations
ago, as modernity took control of society’s understanding of man’s condition,
it gave up the proper place of counseling within the church almost entirely to
the field of secular psychology.
The end of this is that, today, if you want to get well, you go see your psychiatrist, begin a regimen of psychotropic drugs, and only then, if
you still desire a little entertainment, you talk to a naive pastor about God. Considering
that the field of psychology is founded upon the work of men who denied the
very existence of God and man’s need of the Gospel, this reality shouldn’t come
as a surprise.
Things are changing though.
Thanks to the good work of some of God’s most gifted men and
women in our own time, folks like David Powlison, Brad Hambrick, Ed Welch, and
Elyse Fitzpatrick, the body/soul connection is being re-established in the
middle of a culture bent on the denial of Christ. Once again, the word of God
is being elevated to its proper place in our anthropology—and that place is not
in subjection to man’s theories about the causes of behavior and the
appropriate remedies.
We call this movement Biblical
Counseling.
Not to be confused with the field of Christian Counseling, Biblical
Counseling is re-discovering for the church at large the many and diverse ways
that the Bible speaks with precision to our sin and suffering. Once again, sense is being
made of the condition of man. Where modernity distorted truth, and left us
gasping for answers it promised but never delivered, God still speaks.
In past generations, Christians were told to move away from
those who suffered from various mental health maladies. Conditions like
depression, anxiety, fear, worry, anger, bitterness, and even more complex mood
disorders, it was said, can only be understood by learned men in white coats. With increasing intensity, the church was informed that it had
little or nothing to offer those who needed help.
The experts couldn’t have been farther from the truth (2 Tim. 3:16).
Today, armed with the inerrant, infallible, and
authoritative word of God, a growing consensus within the church is seeing to
it that we’re once again moving toward those with mental health concerns,
instead of drifting away. As long as we have the word of God, we will have a word
from God to deliver to those who are struggling. And none of this precludes or denies the good work and contributions of modern science.
With confidence, the church is being empowered to help the
weak, admonish the unruly, and encourage the faint hearted (1 Thess. 5:14).
Here is the work of ministry as it was intended in the beginning, moving toward
those in need, and extending the hope of healing and restoration to the
hopeless.
We do this for John, because Christ did it for us (Romans 5:8).
