Mental Illness and the Bible: What Christians Need to Know (Sermon Clip)

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Our culture has learned to reach for a label where Scripture calls for a confession. And if we lose the category of sin, we lose the hope of forgiveness and real change.

In this episode, I share a clip from a recent sermon at Redeemer Church from our series through 1 John. Before the clip, I give some quick context: what the sermon was addressing, why this topic matters, and what I am (and am not) saying about mental illness. Here's the full sermon: God is Light / 1 John 1:5-2:2

Using narcissistic personality disorder as a case study, we walk through what the DSM-5 can do (describe patterns of behavior) and what it cannot do (explain the heart or offer forgiveness). What the DSM calls grandiosity, Scripture calls pride. What the DSM calls entitlement, Scripture calls selfish ambition. A diagnosis can describe you, but only Christ can change you.

To be clear: not every mental illness is a sin issue, and people with real afflictions should get real help. But Christians need biblical categories for thinking about sin, temptation, and the labels our culture offers.

"If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." (1 John 1:9 CSB)

Resources mentioned:
Serotonin and Depression: Four Questions and Answers About a New Study by Ed Welch, Mike Emlet, and Alastair Groves (The Gospel Coalition)

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Well let let me give a third example of how I think actually this might be the most dangerous one for modern Christians, at least here in the West. So we're gonna spend a little bit of time here, and that is modern psychology and the epidemic of mental illness. People today redefine sin and temptation in some respects as a mental disorder or a mental illness. Let me spend some time here before y'all send me an email. Let me be clear. Let me give an example. So I have a copy of the DSM 5. If you're not familiar with that, that is the diagnostic manual that you know the mental health professionals use to diagnose people with a mental illness. And for the sake of the sermon, I looked up one NPD, narcissistic personality disorder. Maybe you know someone who's a narcissist. Don't look at them right now, just look at me. But narcissistic personality disorder. Sounds fancy, doesn't it? Let's look at what this is. As defined in the DSM 5, it is defined as a pervasive pattern of grandiosity, need for admiration, and lack of empathy, and often begins in early adulthood. Now, how does mental health professionals diagnose NPD? Well, diagnosis requires that the counselee exhibits five of nine traits. Here's the traits: inflated sense of self-importance, fantasies of unlimited success or power, belief that one is special, need for excessive admiration, a sense of entitlement, exploiting others, lack of empathy, envy, and arrogance. So if someone is sitting down with a professional and as they're having conversation, if they are exuding at least five of those nine traits, which is that's interesting in of itself, how did you just come up with nine? How did you determine you only need five? So if someone has four, they're not a narcissist? I don't know. That's interesting. However, as if someone has at least five of those traits, they will be diagnosed with NPD. Now, here's why that is interesting. Number one, they would walk out of someone's office with a mental health diagnosis, even though there was no biological test run whatsoever. As a matter of fact, most mental illnesses, and again, I'm not I'm not trying to bash all the mental illnesses people real wrestle with real afflictions, but most of them, friends, are not connected to any kind of science or biology. It's not someone sitting down and the specialist is running tests on your brain. And like if you go to the doctor and they say, hey, I hate to break it to you, but you have cancer because we ran this test and we can see the cancerous cells. We know what type of cancer you have, and we know how we can treat it. That's science. But someone sitting down, and give it, don't get me wrong. So those traits I just read, those are actually helpful. If someone came to me and said, Cam, I need help, man, I'm destroying my marriage, I suffer from MPD, that is helpful to me to understand, okay, that manual is describing a cluster of behavior patterns. So at least I can categorize what is their experience, what are they struggling with? How are they thinking and believing and behaving? But here's why this is subtly dangerous in some respects. Instead of someone recognizing that I am living in a broken world and a broken body with a sinful nature, they recognize I am a victim. I have NPD. I have something, I am a victim of something that is afflicting me. But notice those traits I read off. When the DSM, what the DSM rather calls grandiosity, Scripture calls pride. What the DSM calls entitlement, scripture calls selfish ambition. What the DSM calls lack of empathy, scripture calls loving others rather than our, or rather loving ourselves more than we love our neighbor. The Bible also is a manual that describes a cluster of behavior patterns, and sometimes it describes some of those behaviors as sinful and needing to be repented of and for sanctification to ensue so that someone can grow more into the image of Christ. Here's where the categories differ at the root. A disorder is something that happens to you. Sin is something you do that you're responsible for. And only one of those can be forgiven. Only one of those can lead to a sanctified life. To be clear, a diagnosis can describe the pattern of someone's behavior, but it cannot explain the heart. The Bible says the heart is deceitfully wicked. Who can know it, right? We need a word that goes deeper than an observation. Again, observations are helpful. They are, they really are, to understand what is your experience, what is afflicting you, what are people observing in you? But a psychologist or psychologist can only prescribe some medications. They can't get to the root issue because they don't even have Christ. They don't understand sanctification, they don't understand sin and repentance, but they can be helpful in describing behavior. So psychology says the narcissist rarely changes. And the remedy for MPD is talk therapy. So let's just meet once a week for an hour and talk about it. That could be helpful, don't get me wrong. However, scripture says if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. 1 John 1 9 says, if we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. All that to say we as Christians can sit in front of that same person and say, brother or sister, some of these things are sinful. And I don't say that to bash you or to shame you, but to help you understand the root issue of what you're calling MPD. And here's another hopeful message I can give you, brother. You can change. Because if you're in Christ, his spirit indwells you. His word says you're not a victim of this diagnosis. You're a child of God struggling with temptation, and there is hope that you can change and glorify the Lord. This diagnosis is not something you have, it is sinful behavior structures that you are struggling with. Let me be very black and white and clear. I am not saying every mental illness is a fraud. I am not saying every mental illness diagnosis is a sin issue. I am not saying that. I am saying the majority of them are, though. They do not align with scripture. Uh in 2022, many of you are probably already aware of this because it hit the airwaves like crazy. But in 2022, Dr. Joanna Moncrief, I hope I'm saying her name right, she conducted what's called an umbrella review uh with a whole team of professionals, and she led it. And what she did is she surveyed the major psychiatric research on a chemical imbalance connected to depression and other mental health diagnosis. And she concluded that there are no convincing evidence that depression is caused by serotonin abnormalities, challenging the chemical imbalance explanation most people assume as settled science. To summarize, she said, it's time to be honest. This whole chemical imbalance thing, it's always been a theory. There is no science behind it. Now, again, we got to be careful. People who wrestle with depression and bipolar and things like that, I believe if we wanted to use more biblical terminology, they're wrestling with extreme deep sorrow and grief. And there could be many things causing that. But these are, and again, this doctor and her team, we're not talking about believers in Christ here. We're talking about secular professionals in the world of psychiatry and psychology who are saying this thing that we're using to diagnose everybody and put everyone on drugs, it's not based on science. It's a theory, and the theory has proven empty. If you want to learn more about that, let me know. There's an article called Serotonin and Depression, Four Questions and Answers about a new study. Uh the Gospel Coalition put this out. It's written by Ed Welch, Mike Emlett, and Alistair Groves, who are all biblical counselors, and two of them are medical doctors, and one was trained in psychology and converted over to biblical counseling. I would recommend that to you. I'm only bringing this up because I know this sometimes steps on toes. If any of you have any disagreements or concerns about what I'm saying, I am happy to have a conversation to help you out. But understand why I'm bringing this up. And these other two examples is because we live in a culture that is still positing the same theory of we have no sin. We just redefine sin as something else. Now, again, some people carry real afflictions and they should get real help, especially if something is connected to their biology. But what I'm saying is that our culture has learned to reach for a label where scripture will call for a confession. And when that happens, we become victims running around with this label, and we are unconvinced that sanctification and sin and repentance play a factor, but instead, no, I am a victim of something. I have a mental illness, and everybody needs to just learn how to cope with me. And I'm just going to take this medication for the rest of my life. To be clear, I am not saying that all mental illnesses are a sin issue because they certainly are not. But what I am, look, give me let me give an example. Go read David's confession of his sin in Psalm 51. David today would be diagnosed bipolar, manic depressive, but we know the whole story, don't we? He certainly read it carefully. He certainly had some physical afflictions going on, right? However, we know the story. Well, he, depending on how you read the text, I would suggest he abused, we got little ears in the room, but he abused his authority to have Bathsheba, which we would call that rape, right? Had her husband murdered, lost his child, and did not confess his sin. He would not go to the Lord to be restored. And it ate him inside. Well, if he went to a secular professional today, they would just try to help him as they should, but they would not come to him from a biblical worldview, from a biblical anthropology of man, sin, forgiveness, grace, the holiness of God. All that to say, brothers and sisters, even in our culture, there are various ways that we are being convinced we have no sin. And guess what? If you don't have sin, well then you don't need repentance. You don't need a savior. You don't need Jesus to die on the cross and rise on the third day if you don't have sin. But the gospel of Jesus Christ gives us the hope that you can change. Look at verse 9. The positive statement. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Friends, be grateful that verse is in the Bible. If we confess, which means, friend, you're you're to do something. If you're here this morning and you were not a Christian, John is speaking to you this morning. The hope of salvation is literally held out to you. If any of us confess our sins, he, meaning Jesus Christ, the Savior of the world, is righteous to forgive you of your sins and to cleanse you from all unrighteousness. That is what the blood of Jesus does. He saves to the uttermost.