SHOULD CHRISTIANS EVER GO TO SEE A PSYCHIATRIST?
Some decisions are left up to the individual. There are some things that can only be decided by you. God has given us many abilities. One of them is the power of choice. Part of being human is being able to make our own choices.
Many things have a very clear mandate from God associated with them, based on what we read in the Bible. Don’t get drunk with alcohol. Don’t use people to fulfill sexual lust. Don’t steal. Don’t lie to deceive and hurt people.
These are not debatable issues. God has spoken on these matters. Anything that God has spoken about, and has given clear directives concerning, are settled matters.
Often Christians wonder whether or not they should go and see a psychologist or a psychiatrist or even a counselor of any kind. For some reason such an activity is associated with a lack of faith in God.
How it came to be this way is a bizarre thing to consider. Where did the idea come from that if you seek outside help for your mental problems, then that in any way negates the idea of biblical faith?
Is it because faith is a mental matter, a choice that we make with our will to think about God and to trust in him? Is it because faith takes place in the mind that it is associated with the all-out eradication of mental problems? If so, we are not using our minds to think very deeply about the issue.
Faith is not a mental condition. It is a choice about what we will think about. Faith is a matter of the will. It is a decision.
A person can be depressed or happy, paranoid or completely in touch with reality, and have faith in any or all of those circumstances. Because faith is choosing to trust God in spite of problems, even problems that are going on in our minds.
Faith does not necessarily eliminate depression—it will help you through it. Depending on the nature of the depression you are suffering from, faith may eliminate it, but that is not its purpose. The purpose of faith is to help you through it.
Faith does not remove the obstacles of life—not even the mental obstacles of life. Faith gives you the strength to get through them because you are trusting in something outside of yourself. And that something is someone. And that someone is Christ.
So faith usually has nothing whatsoever to do with mental issues that are plaguing you. If a person is attacked by bees and is allergic to them, faith does not make those allergic reactions go away. But faith will give them hope and strength while they suffer.
Faith is not like an aspirin that you take to get rid of a headache. You do not have faith and automatically get rid of mental issues. That is not how the mind works and that is certainly not how faith works. That is a silly misunderstanding of both natural physiology and biblical faith.
Christians struggle with mental issues just like everyone else. To think that becoming a Christian gets rid of all of your mental problems would be like thinking that becoming a Christian means that you will never have heart or lung or kidney problems. It is an absolutely ridiculous idea.
A person can love Jesus Christ with all of their heart, think about Jesus constantly, live a life of prayer, and still struggle with depression, anxiety or any number of other mental issues.
It would be hard to imagine anyone who was more dedicated to the cause of Christ or more focused on Christ than the Apostle Paul was. And yet he had serious anxiety at times. He told the Corinthians that he had visited them in weakness, fear, and much trembling (1 Corinthians 2:3).
If you know the background of his visit to Corinth, which we find out about from the Book of Acts in chapter 18—the visit that he is referring to in 1 Corinthians chapter 2 where he speaks of fear and trembling—Paul had been through an extremely intense period of suffering. He was on the verge of what we would probably call a nervous breakdown.
But the Lord appeared to him and told him not to be afraid to proclaim the gospel in Corinth because God was going to put a hedge around him and give him some time to rest (Acts 18:9-11). He had to have the direct strength of God on that occasion because he was dealing with serious mental issues.
That causes some people to wonder why God does not always put a hedge of protection around us, and keep mental suffering from coming our way. But that is totally illogical. If he would not do that for Paul all the time, why would he do it for us? And even more silly it is to think that he would protect us from mental anguish, when he did not protect his own Son from that.
Do you remember that in Isaiah 53 the Bible calls Jesus a man of sorrows acquainted with grief? That speaks of mental anguish. Jesus certainly had mental problems. Because everyone has mental problems. He was human. He became a man and humans struggles with mentally.
The only person who can decide whether or not you see a psychiatrist is you. It’s a decision that each individual must make for themselves. But it needs to be a decision based on informed facts, not on silly superstition, or the denominational doctrines of man.
Psychiatry is a branch of modern medicine. It serves the same purpose that other branches of medicine serve. To help heal the body.
The brain is a part of the body. And sometimes it does not work right. This is not an issue when tendons don’t work right. When internal organs, other than the brain, do not work right. But somehow it becomes a religious issue when it pertains to the brain. And that is silly. Brain malfunction has no more to do with faith than other malfunctions of the body.
Of course, there are those who would tell us that all sickness is a matter of faith. That God’s desire is for everyone to be healthy all the time. Anyone who teaches such nonsense should be rejected completely as any sort of responsible Bible teacher. Because the Bible does not teach that or anything like it.
The miracles of Jesus are misused to teach that God wants everyone to be healthy. But that was not the purpose of miracles. The miracles of Jesus and the apostles were not to demonstrate God’s desire for temporary health. They were to demonstrate the power of Christ as the Son of God. To prove that he was who he claimed to be.
Nowhere will you find the Bible suggesting that it is a sin to be sick. Which, if sickness is associated with a lack of faith, then that is exactly what all sickness would be. Anything that comes about as a lack of faith is sinful. So sickness is sinful if these man-made doctrines are to be believed.
People who cannot even understand something as simple as what the purpose of the miracles, signs and wonders of the Bible were do not need to be telling you what kind of doctors you need to see. They themselves are the snake oil salesman and quacks. For them to put down someone who has put in the time and work to learn about the human mind so that they can be in a position to help others is just a ridiculous concept.
Should psychiatry be trusted blindly? Of course not. Not all doctors are good in any field. No matter what we are discussing, there are good ones and bad ones. Preachers, car salesmen, teachers, police officers, or physicians. The nature of humanity demands that there will be people who are dominated by good and people who are dominated by evil. Everyone makes their own choice as to whether or not they care enough to strive to be good or if they will just do wrong.
So there are several things to consider when the Christian thinks about psychiatry or whether or not they should go and see any mental health professional.
First of all, the mind of mankind must be understood in connection with the soul. The word “psychiatry” itself derives from a root word meaning soul. To try to consider mental illness in a totally humanistic fashion, thinking of human beings solely in terms of matter, is a ridiculous mistake. Common sense, as well as basic observational evidence, should tell us that there is more to a human being than what exists as flesh and bones.
We should also remember that healing comes from God. It is a gift of God. There is nothing wrong with asking God to heal you of something. He may decide to do it. He may say no.
The apostle Paul had some sort of persistent ailment—physical or emotional, we do not know—that he pleaded with the Lord to remove, but the Lord said no. You can read about that in Second Corinthians chapter twelve.
Just because Pentecostals and others do not have the power that they claim does not mean that God himself cannot heal. But when we sit around and wait for God to heal rather than taking advantage of things that God has already provided that provide healing, such as medicine, we might be in some ways tempting God.
It is like the oft told story of the man who was caught in a flood, and the flood waters were rising higher and higher. The waters got so high that he had to get up on the roof of his house.
To demonstrate his faith in God, when the rescue workers came by in a boat, he said that he would wait for the Lord to save him.
Not long after that, as the waters continued to rise, another boat came by, but he refused again to get inside, claiming that he would wait for the Lord to save him.
Finally, the waters were almost up to his head, and a helicopter flew over, dropping a rope down for him to take hold of. But he insisted that God was going to save him.
It would be easy to predict what happened. The man drowned. And as the story goes, he asked the Lord when he saw him, “Why did you not save me from that flood when I put my faith in you?” And the Lord said, “Man, I sent you two boats and a helicopter.”
That is the way it often is with people and their sicknesses. There are actually religious groups out there who teach that it is sinful to go to a doctor for any reason. We call them crazy. We say that their children should be taken away from them because they would let a child get sick and die before they would take the child to see a physician.
But what is the fundamental difference between that and the attitude that says that if you’re struggling with depression or emotional problems, you have no business going to see a psychiatrist? You just need more faith. It is the same ludicrous idea.
Only you can and should make the decision, but it could be that a psychiatrist could help you. And if the reason that you refuse to see one is simply because you have been told by religious quacks that to do so would mean that you don’t have faith in God, that is an absurd reason not to go.
Maybe you should do some logical research into the matter. Investigate and see if maybe there is a professional who can help you if you are struggling with mental illness or mental issues of any kind. You may be suffering needlessly simply because you have not gone to see someone who can help you.
Of course, no amount of human help can replace the power of God in your life. Do not trust in medicine any more than you trust in an exercise program or eating right. Trust only in God.
But remember that God wants you to exercise and eat right. To take care of yourself. Those are sensible things, and those are biblical things. And by doing them, that does not mean that you are not trusting God to take care of you. And it is the same way with seeing a physician or taking medicine.
Let go of all of the silly thinking that so often prevails in “Christianity.” If you need professional help, get it.
Dewayne Dunaway
