“I believe that there will be deaf people, blind people, and people with all sorts of mental illnesses in heaven”
Following that line from my professor, my cohort immediately divided into emotionally-charged, separate camps, drawing from personal connections and convictions from many experiences. It wasn’t the presence of spirituality or the word “heaven” that made this topic so controversial. I enrolled in a teaching program that corporately practiced Saturday devotions and whose mission statement was “Christian love expressed in equal education” so the word “heaven” came up frequently. Rather, it was because none of us truly knew how to internalize mental disabilities with our Christian faith. Before my mind fully processed my professor’s claim, I thoughtlessly retorted with, “or maybe we ought to stop over-glorifying mental illnesses” and stubbornly dug my trench for the incoming arguments.
My brash response may have lacked love, but there clearly is a rise in assuming celebrating the person with the disability means celebrating the actual disability. I’ve thought a lot since then about how the religious modern west talks about mental illnesses. Is mental illness some sort of divine punishment or consequence? But what if it’s involuntary? Do mental illnesses have to do with demonic activity? These questions are tricky but pragmatic and necessary, and like most things, we have to see how it is addressed in the bible.
Are Mental Illnesses a Curse or Punishment?
Today, we use this almost trinitarian language of “body, mind, spirit” concerning our health and have insisted that these are different parts of us that are distinct and deserving of separate categories. I’m more of a soul and body bipartite person myself and, admittedly, it is tempting to almost compartmentalize each of the categories and talk about them as sections.
However, one of the places where this always completely falls apart — and it’s happened a lot recently with all the political, racial, and religious events in our society — is whenever mental disorders are discussed. It doesn’t take more than a couple of Google clicks after searching “mental illnesses” to realize how much the term “mental illness” suffers from a category problem. According to the CDC, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder are under the same umbrella of mental illnesses alongside anxiety, emotional disorder, and a person’s capacity to relate and understand others. With our earthly understanding of the human condition, it can be difficult to determine if mental illnesses are a physical event with spiritual consequences or a spiritual event with physical consequences. It is even harder to give a single theological answer to blanket the entire umbrella of mental illnesses.
Whatever the category, it is clear from the scriptures that mental illnesses, like physical illnesses, disasters, or other forms of suffering, were not creation’s original design but an echo of the original Fall of Man. Jesus’ ministry of revealing the kingdom of God regularly consisted of bringing our world back into The Garden of Eden by healing the broken, the sick, and the demon-possessed. In Matthew 15:30, the tax-collecting author writes, “and great crowds came to him, bringing with them the lame, the blind, the crippled, the mute, and many others, and they put them at his feet, and he healed them”. Jesus made people whole again to confirm the gospel and provide a glimpse of heaven. To believe mental disabilities are not a result of original sin would be to argue that these conditions would persist into our resurrected body and soul. Telling friends that their anxiety is prelapsarian would be an assault on the blessedness of heaven for the sake of comforting the people here. While it may strike our culture as tactful or poetic, it can spiritually have the opposite effect. Like G.K Chesterson appropriately said, “A moment’s thought will show that if disease is beautiful, it is generally someone else’s disease. And even the wildest poetry of insanity can only be enjoyed by the sane”
However, the distinction should be made clear here that typically mental illnesses are a result of the Fall of Man in Genesis instead of a specific sin or weakness. Modern mental illnesses are not typically the same as Miriam being struck with leprosy or Nebuchadnezzar being stripped of his sanity. A child born with Emotional Behavior Disorder or autism hasn’t received his or her condition as a punishment from God. Like very much a physical illness, a mental illness is not commonly the consequence of personal sin, but a result of the original sin and a reflection of Adam’s brokenness. Jesus makes this clear in the Gospel of John while healing the man born blind. The Rabbis ask Jesus if the man was born blind as a result of the man’s sins or his parents’ sins. Instead of quoting Ezekiel 18, Jesus writes in John 9:3 that, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but this happened so that the works of God would be displayed in him”. The man’s brokenness wasn’t attributed to his own actions, but the sinful human condition.
This does not mean as a Christian our suffering has no purpose. Jesus makes the effort to note that the man’s suffering condition was used for the glory of God. The rest of scripture appears to echo this mantra. In Romans 5:3-4, Paul writes, “More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope”. Again, we see the same language of comfort and hope used in James where it is written, “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness”. Once Christ returns, we will be made whole just like how Christ did not leave the man born blind broken. But while we are on earth we must even rejoice in our sufferings to point to the glory of God.
Are Mental Illnesses a Result of Demonic Activity?
Accompanying the misguided belief that mental illnesses are a result of God’s divine punishment, there’s a floating doctrine that all mental disorders are a result of demonic activity. Typically posed by our more charismatic brothers and sisters, this belief is usually supported with the contention that in the New Testament, demonic possession and attacks seem to show the same symptoms of mental illnesses today. However, scripture does not support this argument.
While superficially mental illnesses and demonic activities can share the same surface-level symptoms, we must not mistake similarity with sameness. For example, in Matthew 12:22, we are introduced to a mute and deaf man explicitly experiencing possession and scripture records the event attributing it to a demon. Contrastingly, in 1 Samuel 21:12-15, we see the author write,
“And David took these words to heart and was much afraid of Achish the king of Gath. 13 So he changed his behavior before them and pretended to be insane in their hands and made marks on the doors of the gate and let his spittle run down his beard. 14 Then Achish said to his servants, “Behold, you see the man is mad. Why then have you brought him to me? 15 Do I lack madmen, that you have brought this fellow to behave as a madman in my presence? Shall this fellow come into my house?”.
We can see that the biblical authors used very different terms to ascribe mental illnesses as opposed to a demonic attack or possession. If Jesus was God, we can have comfort that he probably would have termed mental illnesses as a mental ailment as opposed to demonic activity. If scripture suggests that the person was demonically possessed, it is safe to assume that they are. If someone was simply mentally ill, we can safely assume scripture would categorize them as so. This does not mean that supernatural attacks can not shroud themselves in the normality of mental illnesses. The supernatural power of the gospel can shroud itself in normality today, such as when an individual comes to saving faith and rises from a dead man to a living man. It would be inconsistent to believe that demonic supernatural attacks can not also be present in the everyday workings of life.
From the Gospels, it seems that demonic activity and demon possession does not have to be dramatic. There also appears to be some cases where demonic activity and a mental illness can be coexisting at the same time. While some demonic attacks or possessions in the bible are explicitly clear, such as when one has supernatural strength, there are others where it overlaps. For example, John 10:20 writes, “Many of them said, “He has a demon, and is insane; why listen to him?”. From the scriptures, it seems like the only way we can tell the difference today, as unflashy as it might be, is only through the Holy Spirit. However, in a world where demons can possess nonbelievers or spiritually affect humans, it does not seem like a far-cry to contest that only the Holy Spirit can provide us discernment. It would be an indicator that we do not fully understand the power of Christ if we believe demonic forces can possess and influence humans but the Holy Spirit residing in Christians cannot provide the ability to discern.
What about Involuntary Sin?
In the clutter and mess under the umbrella of mental illnesses, it isn’t too difficult to figure out which are the result of personal, accountable sin. Alcoholism, for example, usually comes about after a couple of nights of neglecting Ephesians 5:18. However, it can get more grey in the area of involuntary mental illnesses, such as anxiety. The overwhelming flood of anxiety builds as one thought decides to show off what it learned at math class and decides to multiply itself. Despite our mind’s attempts to build a dam, our imagination takes each thought as fact and conjures one nightmarish scenario on another and another. If this, then that, then we all die in a fire. Because of the lack of personal responsibility in involuntary illnesses, it seems tone-deaf or even harsh to categorize this action as a sin.
Many of us may have attended churches whose pastors advised us to pray away mental illnesses. As a result, we’ve grown hardened and dismissive of any conversations with sin and mental illness in the same sentence. However, it still must be said that while mental illnesses do not birth from actionable sin, it can lead to personal sin.
While no one personally had done anything to deserve anxiety, trauma, or PTSD, it can still cause us to lash out and commit sin. Anxiety, in particular, is still involuntary worry and in disobedience to 1 Peter 5:7 and Philippians 4:6-7. Just like how some of our Christian brothers and sisters struggle with homosexuality or how we all involuntarily struggle with lust or pride, we still need to understand that the consequences of these conditions are areas we are being sanctified from.
How should we Personally Respond to our Involuntary Sins?
According to the scriptures, the answer is not in guilt or repeated rebuke, but rather actually in casting oneself to Jesus. While it does seem like a cop-out answer like an “I’ll pray for you” or “God is always on the throne”, there’s a substantial amount of comfort that gets overlooked whenever the scriptures talk about mental illnesses. Notably, with anxiety, every verse identifying excessive worrying as sin also comes with comfort. In 1 Peter 5:7, it writes “Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you”. Not because He is punishing you or hates you, but because He cares for you. Despite our stumbling blocks, we must continually remind ourselves of the gospel and continue the work of casting ourselves onto Christ, rebuking our natural inclination to avoid the warmth of Christ. This does not mean we need to white-knuckle ourselves into trying to rid ourselves of our mental illnesses with our works, but that amid our suffering we continue to rejoice in the God of the Bible, trusting that we will someday, like Revelation 21:4 states, have our tears wiped away and have our pain and sufferings fade away as we stand blameless before the throne. Spurgeon sums up this beautifully when he writes, “my soul has been converted and my body will be”.
How should the Church Respond?
In 1 Corinthians 12, we are invited by Paul to behold a beautiful image of how God’s community ought to demonstrate biblical unity and fellowship. Executing the unity prayed for by Jesus in John 17, we are called as a body of Christ to suffer, rejoice, and deeply know one another. Spurgeon, according to his autobiography, had over 6,000 believers in his congregation and is said to have known each one by name. Likewise, we are called to spiritually know and support one another, loudly proclaiming the finished work of the cross by the way we rub shoulders with one another. This is, again, commanded in Galatians 6:2 where Paul writes, “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ”.
The church might do an excellent job of bearing one another’s physical disabilities, but we tend to slip up when a member is struggling with something invisible. This is understandable. The needs of a person in a wheelchair are much easier to identify than depression. Even between mental illnesses, it can be complicated. According to the CDC, everyone expresses the symptoms of mental illnesses differently and one person’s experience with one kind of mental illness does not necessarily provide the expertise to understand another person’s struggle.
Conclusion: So what should the Church do?
There seems to be a clear need in addressing mental illnesses in a compassionate and informed way. No one in the congregation should feel as if their mental illness is something that can’t be confided or shared in their small group or with their SALT discipler. This does not mean that the church has to unilaterally fix those struggling with mental illnesses. Just like how it would be unwise for the church to advise the man with a broken arm to not take medications or go to the hospital but instead to trust in the healing powers of the church, we ought to work with health professionals as a means of healing the symptoms while trusting in God to ultimately heal the root.
The church was meant to proclaim the rich beauty of her Groom by demonstrating Christ’s love for one another. A forward step can be in helping carry the invisible burdens of our brothers and sisters with mental illnesses so that we can sing Christ’s praises just a little bit louder on our Sunday services.
If you found this article helpful and wanting more, we’ve included some additional resources below. First, we’ve included a PDF full of questions that you and your small group can go over. Second, we’ve included some links to reputable websites that you can learn more about mental health in relationship to your faith. Also, if you haven’t already, please check out more of TLC Creative’s content such as The Divine Council or How Should Christians Respond to Death.
