Tag Archives: Jesus

Christians and medication

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First, I’d love for you to read the following by John Piper:

Should Christians use anti-depressants? (by JOHN PIPER … not Jackie!)

It is a gray area. I don’t preach against anti-depressants, though I have mentioned them before and dealt with a good many people who use them.

In the secular world at large there is a huge reaction these days against the overuse and dangers of anti-depressants. The world itself is recognizing that we may be doping up too quick and too superficially.

But still, if you go to a doctor now, very often you’ll be prescribed a medicine for almost any kind of relational, emotional, or behavioral problem that you’re having. That is happening too quickly I think.

I appreciate the concern people have about the use of anti-depressants among Christians. God had something to teach Job—who didn’t have Prozac—through his pain, and he might have something to teach us too.

Therefore, I encourage slowness to use anti-depressants. God may have a way forward for someone before they start altering their mind with physical substances.

However, on the other side, it seems clear to me that the brain is a physical organ with electrical impulses and chemicals, and that mental illness is therefore not merely spiritual. No man could persuade me that all mental derangement is owing to a spiritual cause that has a purely spiritual solution.

There are physical damages that happen in life or that a person is born with that alter the brain’s functionality. The question then becomes whether we should only pray for it to be healed, or whether we might also use medicine to help it.

Just like you take aspirin to get you through a very serious back-ache, you might, for a season, take some kind of medicine that would enable you to get your bearings mentally so that you can then operate without the medicine.

Near our church there is a place called Andrew home and it houses people who are severely mentally disabled. All of them are on heavy medicines to keep them from killing themselves, killing other people, or being totally unable to work.

A few of them worship with us at Bethlehem, and I believe that through their medication they perceive and know God and that God is in fact using them for good. They are seriously mentally ill. I don’t know all of their circumstances, but I couldn’t rule out the option of medicine for them (or for others struggling with certain forms of serious depression) as a means to try and help them get their bearings.

One way medicine can be helpful is if it gets people to a point where they have enough stability to read the Bible. Then, through being able to read the Scriptures, people are able to be refreshed in the Lord and, in time, come off of the medicine. In that case medicine is a means to an end, and that seems perfectly natural to me.

© Desiring God

Well, hey there.  Jackie again. What are your thoughts on this?  I’d love to generate some discussion in the comments.  I want everyone to weigh in.  I’ll share my thoughts in another post very soon!

thought for today

Quote

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A writer — and, I believe, generally all persons — must think that whatever happens to him or her is a resource. All things have been given to us for a purpose, and an artist must feel this more intensely. All that happens to us, including our humiliations, our misfortunes, our embarrassments, all is given to us as raw material, as clay, so that we may shape our art. -Jorge Luis Borges, writer (1899-1986)

Thank You, Lord, for my OCD.  Thank You, Potter, for making this vessel exactly as is.

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I have a friend who is struggling with depression right now.  She has plans to see a therapist soon, but today, she told me that she feels ashamed.  “Like if Jesus is the savior of my life, why am I like this?” she asked me.

My poor, dear friend.  I’ve been there.  All the questions, most notably: why doesn’t it seem like Jesus is enough?  I am definitely that cheeky pot that sassed back to the Potter, “WHY did you make me like THIS?”  There was no answer for a long time.  But now that I’ve been sharing my story– in chapels, youth groups, online, in personal conversations, and in my novel– and I see the way that God is using it … well, I get it now.

My friend feels ashamed.  I told her not to feel that way.  But as I sat at my office desk and thought about it some more, it settled over me that as sinners, our shame is natural– but Christ has redeemed His people, has lifted up our heads.  Do the two cancel each other out?

And to my mind came this quote from Aslan, “You come of the Lord Adam and the Lady Eve.  And that is both honor enough to erect the head of the poorest beggar, and shame enough to bow the shoulders of the greatest emperor on earth. Be content.”

I am not saying that we should be happy for mental illness. 

But I am confident that God knows what He is doing.  He has His reasons. 

God, give us faith to trust You.

 

a memory

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Highlight of today: watching several adults (including one senior citizen) ballroom dancing to “Tik Tok” by Ke$ha at the state fair.  Wow.  Just wow. 

Desiree and I spent a few hours working at the great Minnesota get-together this afternoon, manning the Northwestern College booth.  You really get the whole range of folks at the state fair.  My favorite visitor to our booth was a five-year-old girl genius (she could read and write at two!), with whom I discussed the American Girls and Little House on the Prairie books.  Gosh, I hope I have a brilliant baby someday.

A memory came to me while I was sitting in the education building.  Years ago, I wore my “Aslan is on the move” t-shirt (yes, I KNOW it’s nerdy … I can’t help it) to a coffeeshop.  The barista was a gorgeous boy who said, “Nice shirt.”  IT WAS NOT CONDESCENDING OR MEAN IN ANY WAY, and yet, when this hottie commented on it, I realized I was the biggest nerd in the room.  I was wearing a NARNIA shirt, for goodness sakes!  I was worse than a Trekkie.

And afterward I sat down at my table in Caribou with my drink, thinking, “If you are embarrassed to be wearing this shirt, then you are ashamed of it.  And if you’re ashamed of it, then you’re ashamed of Aslan.  And if you’re ashamed of Aslan, then you’re really ashamed of Jesus.”  Of course it became an obsession.  It was just the natural chain of events for about twenty years of my life.

But not anymore.  And tomorrow I am going to post about that.  Stay tuned!

the biggie, continued

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I tried to explain my way out of it, any way I could.  Maybe because these curses were just in my head and not outloud they didn’t truly meet the “criteria” for blasphemy of the Spirit.  And then there was always the confusing line in the Mark 3 passage:

28 o“Truly, I say to you, all sins will be forgiven the children of man, and whatever blasphemies they utter, 29 but whoever pblasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin”—30 for they were saying, “He has an unclean spirit.”

For they were saying, “He has an unclean spirit.”  Now, what did that mean?  That it wasn’t really a word spoken against the Spirit that was the condemning act?  That it was, in fact, something else– the attributing of the Holy Spirit’s works to Satan.

Well, that’s like laying out a feast for OCD.  It jumped all over it.  Almost immediately I began to doubt if Jesus was really who He said He was.  I let my mind go so far that I started to wonder if Jesus might really be Satan in disguise. 

Now I was sure I was condemned.  One way or the other, I must have committed the unforgivable sin!  Any way you cut that cake, you’d find hell in the center.

I was devastated, hopeless.  Have you been there?  Are you there now?  Leave a comment.  I want to encourage you– because there IS still hope.  My life has turned around, and in spite of OCD, I am confident that my heart belongs to Christ.

the biggie

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I can still remember the day at summer camp when a fellow camper first mentioned the unforgivable sin to me.  It sounded completely foreign, like something a cult-member had made up, nothing like what I’d heard my whole life: Jesus loves you.  Jesus can forgive you for anything.  ANYTHING.

Years later, this unforgivable sin (actually mentioned in Matthew 12 and Mark 3) would become the torment of my life.  Nothing has stolen more joy from me than OCD making me doubt my salvation.

Blasphemy Against the Holy Spirit

22 wThen a demon-oppressed man who was blind and mute was brought to him, and he healed him, so that the man spoke and saw. 23 xAnd all the people were amazed, and said, x“Can this be the Son of David?” 24 But when the Pharisees heard it, they said, y“It is only by Beelzebul, the prince of demons, that this man casts out demons.” 25 zKnowing their thoughts, ahe said to them, “Every kingdom divided against itself is laid waste, and no city or house divided against itself will stand. 26 And if Satan casts out Satan, he is divided against himself. How then will his kingdom stand? 27 And if I cast out demons by Beelzebul, bby whom do cyour sons cast them out? Therefore they will be your judges. 28 But if it is dby the Spirit of God that I cast out demons, then ethe kingdom of God has come upon you. 29 Or fhow can someone enter a strong man’s house and plunder his goods, unless he first binds the strong man? Then indeed ghe may plunder his house. 30 hWhoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters. 31 iTherefore I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven people, but jthe blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. 32 And whoever speaks a word kagainst the Son of Man lwill be forgiven, but jwhoever speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in mthis age or in the age to come.

So of course– my intial thoughts were that cursing the Holy Spirit was unforgivable.  To me, this would clearly be “speaking against the Holy Spirit.”  Immediately, my head began to think of curses toward the Spirit.  I was plagued by this for years actually, so much so that I eventually developed a prayer compulsion to combat it.  If I’d start thinking of a curse in my head, I would instead redirect it to a prayer: “Father God, I love You.”  This happened so frequently that it was liking hearing one track in my head overlaid against the track I heard from the real world.