I used to travel around the country and work with different churches, leaders, and youth groups for an old job I had. During breaks, the leaders and I would swap stories about the horrific experiences we’ve had with some churches. One leader told me about a church he worked in expressing their concern for a student who was experiencing anxiety being away from home.
What was the church’s solution? Exorcism.
Christians can sometimes drop the ball when it comes to mental illness. Though a recent study suggests that the church accepts a majority of mentally ill people, 30% of mentally ill people reported a negative interaction from the church.
This is strange, considering that physical illness is so heavily addressed in churches. If someone is struggling from the daily aches, medicine, and care that a physical ailment brings about, the church is ready to offer healing. But when a person who suffers from the daily aches, medicine, and care of a mental illness, people are often quick to defer help to someone else.
Why do we see these as two different things? Why is there a gap in our action between the physically ill and the mentally ill?
I can’t adequately diagnose this problem—why we can sometimes fear or reject mentally ill people in the church—but I can attempt to shed a little, faint light on what might be causing our behavior.
As Christians, we’re somewhat used to easy answers for complex problems. For instance, the reason a child is left orphaned is because there is sin in the world. The reason people lie is because Satan is at work. The reason there is evil in the world is because we are fallen people. Each deep and complex problem has a simple answer to it.
But it is often these same answers that render us unable to practically serve those who are in the thick of these problems. You can’t give a simple Bible verse to a person who is deeply grieving and expect the problem to wash away. In the same regard, you can’t give surface-level solutions for people with mental illness.
Some Christians are experiencing the friction of this idea, and as a result, resort to drastic measures like the church above.
But a majority of churches (as the study indicates) know the gravity of mental illness—they just don’t know how to practically love them.
In the same way a handicapped person needs a wheelchair ramp to enter the church building, mentally ill people need specific solutions to enable their worship. We can no longer give simple answers for a problem we struggle to understand. It’s time we address it with action—because that’s how Jesus would speak into the situation.
Here’s a couple suggestions of how to begin:
1. Begin with a heart for them, not fear.
Mentally ill people have all sorts of stigmas surrounding them, but one of the most troubling stigmas is the idea that they are somehow dangerous. As a result, people typically tend to shun the mentally ill for fear of safety.
Fear always attempts to drive us to complacency. But Jesus let His love speak louder than fear. This is what enabled Him to touch the lepers when no one else would.
How close we are willing to approach the lepers of our society is the measure of Jesus at work in us.
If you let your fear speak louder than your love, then we will never rise to live like Jesus, offering light in the midst of darkness.
2. Understand the misconceptions and what the Bible actually says about mental illness.
The Bible does not say that mental illness is a character defect. In fact, in the Bible, we see plenty of saints struggle with depression and other mental illnesses. For instance, take Paul, who in 2 Corinthians 11 goes on a long monologue about all of his trials. And take David, who in the Psalm 38:6 discusses the mourning of His heart.
The Bible tells us it’s o.k. to feel pain. Let’s stop manipulating it to make it seem otherwise.
3. Provide slower worship from time to time.
A song about joy might not appeal to a person struggling with depression. In fact, too many songs of this nature might turn them away and make them feel alone in the church body.
We can’t solely cater our worship experience to one subset of people, but we can ensure that most people feel included. We can address the depressed individuals in our congregations by delivering songs that are more somber and heavy.
4. Train small group leaders on mental illness.
How sad is it for a leader to shut down a person struggling with mental illness. People we entrust to reach into our lives cannot be the ones who are too frightened to do so. This interaction can scar a person from ever going further in a church community.
As a church, we should invest in training from counselors for our small group leaders. Let’s give them the tools and abilities to thrive in their ministry with people.
5. Avoid using empty Christian phrases.
A simple Christian phrase like “you have joy in God” or “you can do all things through Christ” isn’t going to solve what a person is feeling with mental illness. In fact, the empty phrases we are used to hearing come out of Christians’ mouths might do more damage.
The more we resort to default phrases and clichés, the more we signal our apathy. The measure of true concern is how much we listen, even when it gets messy.
I like how Jesus handled people in need. There is one time where He was walking near Jericho and a blind man called out to Him. Instead of giving Him an empty phrase, Jesus asked, “What do you want me to do for you?” He knew that giving Himself in this situation was what was going to make things better. In the same way, we give ourselves to people who are struggling. We ask what they need and we listen. We don’t write them off with phrases we haven’t thought through.
6. Pray for mental illness in the church.
While you might think people with mental illness are rare enough to not address with the greater body, think again. According to this study, 1 in 4 people will experience some kind of mental health issue in a year. That’s too significant of a number not to address in our church body.
The more we pray for the mentally ill, the more we place mental illness at the forefront of our minds. If we don’t pray together for this, how will the congregation know how to pray individually for this? How do we expect the lives of our mentally ill congregation to be changed?
7. Don’t disqualify mentally ill people from serving.
Mentally ill people are not less capable to serve in the Kingdom of God. In fact, God was always using imperfect people to speak His words. If there’s anything we learn from the Bible, it’s that God uses murderers, adulterers, liars, idolaters, and more to carry His wisdom. It should be no different for the mentally ill.
These are not solutions; these are suggestions. I don’t think we’ll ever know how to truly be there for the mentally ill. But what matters is we stop remaining ignorant and complacent. The mentally ill deserve our care too. It’s time we replace shame with love, ignorance with compassion, and finally do something to come alongside the mentally ill.
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