(Having described the dismal situation created by the worldly approach of patterning family after a non-Biblical pattern in the last installment of this series, we move now to considering a better pattern for family life that can effectively counter the mental health crisis.)

              If we humbly accept that the family unit, including the Christian families of our society, have played a role in the mental health knot by following the world rather than God’s design, we have a choice to make. We can continue this self-destructive pattern and wait hopelessly for the state or those with worldly resources to untangle the knot or we can turn to a Biblical pattern.  In such a Biblical approach we should evaluate whether our basic principles of family line up with God’s prescriptive and proscriptive principles.  The foundations of society in family must be directed at the “shalom” and “eirene” which I described earlier as God’s intentions for man’s peace in this world.  We must not only turn away from the world’s failed man-centered approaches but also turn towards God-centered approaches and goals.

              In breaking from the patterns of the present, we must start at the beginning with the correct beliefs about family.  From beliefs, we then move to knowing what to value.  After that we can change our actions and develop new patterns of family life which then lead to different outcomes than what we currently experience.  At the heart of the change, some of the core Biblical principles and beliefs underlying a God-centered approach to family include:

              Children are a gift from God to parents.

              Children are first and foremost entrusted to their parents for raising up.  

               Children are to be raised in the fear and admonition of the Lord.  

              Parents are accountable to God as stewards.  

              Parents are commanded to raise children to obey God.  

              Marriage is between one man and one women till death parts them or the covenant is violated.

              Children are accountable to parents and ultimately to God.

              Parents are under covenant with God to raise children His way.

              The goal of parenting is Godly children who continue under this covenant.

               Children are born into this family covenant with obligations.

               The family institution is a foundational means by which God produces both thriving individuals but also a thriving mentally well society.

(Psalm 127:3-5; Ephesians 6:1-4; Deut. 6:6-7)

               Such beliefs and principles then lead to values that we as parents then pursue.  Beliefs serve as the foundation for how we view the reality in which we live out family life.  If we truly believe these truths, we will choose daily based on these beliefs.  The impetus then turns to what we value, what we hold to be worthy of our time and effort to pursue or appreciate.  The world in its attempt to supplant God’s values claims the opposites of these values, but the following values must undergird the beliefs just mentioned:

               Godly children who walk in God’s ways are more important than worldly successful children.

               Pleasing God is more important than pleasing other men. (1 Thessalonians 2:4)

               While temporal life has value, eternal life has more value. (1 Timothy 4:8)

               Worldly pleasures which violate God’s Word are to be avoided. (1 John 2:15-17)

               Family relationships have a precedence over non-familial relationships. (Ephesians 5:25, Proverbs 11:29)

               Understanding the covenant we and our children live under is worthy of time and effort.

               We value relational connections over hyper-individuality and independence (1 John 4:20).

               A family legacy of Godly children is worth the sacrifice (Deuteronomy 6:5-7

               Once we come to believe the principles and agree with these values, then our behaviors will begin to conform to these foundations.  If our behaviors do not conform, then we must ask if we believe and agree as much as we claim.  Some, but not all of our appropriate responses include:

              Children are taught to submit to God’s commands.

              Children are taught Godly values.

              Children are taught to function as part of a family rather than only as individuals.

              Children are taught to consider family needs and the needs of others.

              Children are taught to honor the relationships within the family and outside the family.

               Children are taught responsibility which continues into their adulthood and future work.

              Children are protected and guided through providential adversity rather than solely shielding from adversity.

              Family relationships are honored by considering how our actions affect our family.

              We stop trying to replace the roles of the family with governmental programs.

              We stop following the world advice on educating our children.

              Individuals within families recognize their responsibilities to the family and act accordingly.

              With such beliefs and such values leading to these behaviors, we can realistically hope for different fruit than the current worldly approach.  We can look around us and see the obvious fruits of the present worldly approach.  These rotten worldly fruits are the primary reason we are having this discussion and looking for alternative answers.  Enacting more previously faulty solutions based on the beliefs and values of the world will only tangle the shoelaces even further.  Returning to the original design of the Designer becomes the only hope for bearing the following fruits:

              Emotionally more resilient children and adults.

              Such children and adults who are not overcome by the challenges of life in a fallen world.

              Families and the churches or communities arising from them which function more harmoniously.

              Familial, church, and community support networks which prevent mental health decline rather than looking to the state or worldly experts.

              Such networks naturally providing support at a fraction of the cost that government solutions cost.

              More productive individuals and a society without a mental health crisis.

              Children are taught to submit to God’s commands.

              Children are taught Godly values.

              Gods peace of “shalom” and “eirene” will arise more abundantly from such families.

              I agree that this sounds almost too simple and overly optimistic.  You will ask me if it is really this straightforward.   I agree that this is not that simple to carry out in our fallen world with both the pressures of false worldviews contrary to God’s standard and the realities of the fallen physical world.  However, I do emphasize that the work does begin with families committed to the Biblical standard for family function, relationships, and purpose.  Without the foundation of Godly families, the church must carry an even greater weight and perform much more remedial work in discipling the up-and-coming generations towards a Godly sourced “shalom” and “eirene”.  As we turn to the responsibilities and roles of the church, we must recognize that the church’s role generally flourishes more when the family foundation is present and sturdy on these principles, beliefs, values, and behaviors.

(With a clearer picture of the role the family must play in solving the mental health crisis, in the next installment we consider the role of the church alongside the family.)

(After a preparatory series of blogs, we now turn to proposing a response to the mental health crisis which has been our focus over the preceding weeks of this series.)

               Fourth, our responsive solution must focus the right amount of effort or force at the necessary root cause factors or else little will change, at least to the extent we are hoping for.  Sometimes, your child’s knotted shoelace needs a pointed object to be pressed at just the right place in order to pull out a loop that would otherwise be seemingly content with remaining entangled until the end of time.  The present mental health of our society exists because the factors identified earlier continue to exert pressure on individuals and communities to hold them in place, if not tightening the mental health dysfunction knot.  Until an appropriate countering force is pressed at the root of the problem, the mental health knot will continue to tighten under the influence of the worldly pressures.

               Before spending time considering true and proper responses to the root issue we just finished describing, we will briefly review the world’s flawed responses.  The world candidly exhibits its opinion of the nature of the mental health crisis by the solutions it offers.  Other essays on this Whole Person Whole Life website have addressed or will address how our Tennessee legislators view the mental health crisis with their proposed solutions during the Special Session this past summer.  Their proposals focused primarily on more money and more mental health professionals.   They proposed hiring more mental health experts in schools and the community and paying for more mental health care with government money.  They continue to look to governmentally based solutions working without regard to the underlying spiritual issues of those suffering.

               Another example of the world’s approach comes from a recent opinion piece in The Tennessean by guest columnist Scott Pierce.  There Mr. Pierce lamented that only 56% of psychiatrists accepted commercial insurance and expressed his belief that “The fundamental driver behind these stats” (referring to 1 million mental health diagnoses in Tennessee) “is inaccessibility to needed care. Simply put, there aren’t enough mental health providers. And most are concentrated in urban areas, often operating outside of the health insurance system.”  His solution is to increase the reimbursement for mental health services to mental health professionals.  Again, more money and more expert care.  He goes further later in the article to express how Blue Cross Blue Shield insurance company is changing its case management of these patients to increase the compliance with medications.  So, besides more money and more care, the problem needs more medications.  (“Scott Pierce is executive vice president and chief operating officer of BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee.”)  These worldly responses have not taken into consideration the myriad factors of society which clearly lies at the root of this crisis.  They have definitely not considered the spiritual issues and goals discussed in prior installments of this series.

               From these descriptions and from our own experience, we repeatedly see and hear from the world that the mental health crisis needs more money, more experts, more mental health providers, and more regulation of society by government legislation.  Every last nuance of this comes wrapped in the worldview of materialism although it will often paint itself in the makeup of religion where the consensus of society still holds such supernatural views of the world.  They use the religious heart hook by claiming their approach is what Jesus would do for the sufferers or that it is our calling as Christians.  This flawed approach is what brought us to this point of a tangled shoestring, yet as is always the case, they keep pressing us to follow the same failed plan down the same doomed road promising that it will be different this time around.  We have thrown more and more money into health care for decades without receiving a worthy return on such an ongoing hefty investment.

               A Biblical response then stands out as our only hope against this backdrop of guaranteed failure of humanistic attempts at untangling the shoelaces.  Rather than starting with programs aimed at changing behaviors and diagnoses like the worldly approach, a Biblical approach begins with the human spirit as it relates to the one who created it.  No civil government can lead in this spiritual work, but instead must get out of the way and guard the boundaries of the two “institutions” which can do the real work.  These institutions are the family and the church when they operate according to a covenantal framework and move towards the spiritual goals of “shalom” and “Eirene” as described in prior blog installments. For the family and the church to have space to work on untangling the knot of mental illness, the state should step back rather than forward.  The fingers of the state will only get in the way of untangling the knot when it throws more money, more experts, more legislation, and more programs all tied to a faulty worldview at the crisis. 

               Once the government turns its hands away from the knot and towards giving the family and the church room to work, these God-ordained institutions must turn away from their own worldly patterns.  Both must wash themselves of their unbiblical methods which currently resemble the world more than the Bible.  While modern mankind can claim that it had advanced in terms of raising children and in terms of building a church, ultimately God’s original design still holds as the true instructional guide which leads to fruitful families and churches.  These two God ordained institutions must work together in moving not only themselves, but the whole of society towards God’s design of “shalom” for mental health. 

               We start by looking at the misdirected approach currently at work in the family.  In the setting of family from nuclear to extended, the world’s values have permeated and saturated the beliefs, the values, and the goals of family leaders and therefore refashioned the behavioral patterns and the actual individuals who result from these worldly fashioned families.  Parents and other adults in the family often view and treat children differently than the Bible instructs.  Many of these views are simply faulty extremes of otherwise Biblical values.  For example, the admonition to protect the weak (Psalm 82:3; Proverbs 31:8-9; Isaiah 1:17) often becomes an overprotective indulgence in which children receive so much doting and coddling that they do not mature with their own fortitude to handle life.  Having received every participation trophy possible, having been provided every entertainment as a child, having never been told “no”, and other similar overindulgences they frequently become adults who expect the rest of the world to baby them like their parents.  They more quickly crumble under conflict. They often run from challenges.  They complain that work is hard or wonder why someone expects them to earn their way.

               These generational products just described grow up to be the young adults who value themselves so much that they do not even want children.  Having children would hinder their own entertainment, travel, and lifestyle.  While one can live a fulfilled life if God calls them to be single or God withholds children from a marriage, a married couple’s choice to choose their freedom and lifestyle over having children indicates a lack of understanding about how children are a blessing from God.  This becomes an almost worse situation when such couples are blessed with children and the children are viewed either as a burden or become a surrogate to the parent’s own vicarious self-fulfillments.  In the former situation, the parents continue to live their dreams while the child is sent to various other care providers so as to stay out of the way.  In the latter, the child is pushed to perform in some way such as through academics, sports, or music so as to feed the parent’s pride and sense of accomplishment.  The dysfunction of each consequent generation only deepens and moves further from a Biblical approach if nothing intervenes in this cycle.

               Within these settings, the prevailing parenting advice of the world further misleads Christians in how to raise children.  They are urged to socialize their children in schools so that their children can function in a global economy.  They are encouraged to let their children have room to grow into their own adult lives by making their own life decisions.  They are convinced that it is necessary and good to send their children away to learn on their own and be more heavily influenced by others of their own age.  Each of these and other worldly values parading as good values, even couched in terms of being Godly values at times, lead away from a Godly design for families. 

               When the church does try to push back against the worldly advice, it sometimes swings the pendulum too far.  By overemphasizing strictness and control, some have advocated for hyper-religiosity and legalistic submission which produces its own rotten fruits in families’ lives.  Rather than resting in the simplicity of God’s instructions for parenting, they actually create another human-devised approach.  Without mentioning names that have been in the news in the past 10-20 years, such supposedly Christian leaders gather a following around what they promote as guaranteed Godly parenting strategies.  For the Christian families who attempt such approaches, they either suffer shame and guilt for not living up to the standard or produce resentful children who rebel against the control and legalism.  For those watching from the world, they then have more fodder to throw at Christianity for this harmful false portrayal of Christian parenting. 

               From each of these inappropriate approaches to parenting and family, the resulting next generation is set up for mental health dysfunction.  As mentioned earlier, some are set up to expect an easy life and frequently crumble when the world does not serve that easy life.  For others, they are so hurt by the bad view that they cannot respond beyond the trauma of life nor look to parents for support.  When their lives bring trials and storms, besides lacking internal fortitude, they do not have family support systems in which connected mothers and fathers provide a steadying force to the waves of life.  As examples of this common unfavorable outcome, many statistics show that sons without good fathers in their lives struggle either with mental health or turn to lives of sinful behaviors that lead to adverse consequences.  The National Center for Fathering describes real world consequences of children without fathers on their website.  Likely with a little searching we also find similar statistics for the results of children without a motherly presence in their lives.   These self-destructive patterns lead to more mental health dysfunction.  By following a worldly pattern of parenting and family life in contrast to Biblical pattern, we are producing a society of individuals far more prone if not pushed towards mental illness.

(Having described the dismal situation created by the worldly approach of patterning family after a non-Biblical pattern, we move in the next installment to considering a better pattern for family life that can counter the mental health crisis.)

Bibliography:

Pierce, Scott. “Partnerships to Improve Tennesseans’ Access to Mental Health Care Are Critical | Opinion.” The Tennessean, 26 May 2023, www.tennessean.com/story/opinion/contributors/2023/05/26/mental-health-improving-tennesseans-access-to-care-is-critical/70248377007/. Accessed 15 Sept. 2023.

“The Consequences of Fatherlessness.” National Center for Fathering, fathers.com/the-consequences-of-fatherlessness. Accessed 15 Sept. 2023.

(Having examined the Old Testament concept of “shalom” as including the goal of peace in mental health, we look to the New Testament for its further elaboration of this goal for mental health.)

             A New Testament counterpart to this connection between blessing and peace is found in John 14:27 where Jesus speaks to the disciples.  In this verse, Jesus tells them that “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you.”  The New Testament counterpart for “shalom” is found here in the word “eirene” translated also as “peace”.  As we know that Jesus loved His disciples and laid His life down for them, as well as reading that He next told them to not allow their hearts to be troubled, we can assume that this “peace” was a good thing, a blessing. 

             Paul reiterates this aspect of “peace” being an expected and desired blessing in Galatians 5:22-23 as well as Romans 5:1. In Galatians the fruits of the Spirit are listed and include “eirene” translated as “peace”. Obviously, in this context “peace” is a fruit born alongside the other blessings of a life lived in the Spirit.  In Romans 5:1, we are told by Paul that as a result of being justified by faith we now have peace with God through Jesus.  We are back to the beginning idea that the foundation of peace in life begins with having peace with God.

             Seeing that the “peace” described in these and other verses is clearly a good thing to desire, we are told not only that it begins with God, but also that it is through faith in Jesus by which we are justified.  While the simplicity of faith in Christ solely brings us into God’s kingdom and family, we should seek to understand what this simple faith means for how we live.  Both Jesus and Paul teach in Scripture that we should live responsively to this change in our status.  Jesus said “if you love me, you will keep my commands” (John 14:15 ESV).  Paul regularly urged his readers towards the ends of his various epistles to live like ones who have been made new.  This paints a fuller picture of the life of one seeking “peace” with God, but something deeper is still to be uncovered.

Throughout the Old Testament, God interacted with the children of Israel through covenants.  The most explicit ones include the Noahic, the Abrahamic, and the Mosaic.  Careful reading of the Bible also reveals covenants mentioned with Adam and with David in less explicit terms.  The people of God, the Jews, continued to fall short in keeping these covenants such that God promised a New Covenant to come in the words of Jeremiah chapter 31:31-34.  Several promises were made here including the forgiveness of sins and that God would fulfill the covenant Himself.  Jesus and other New Testament authors, especially the author of Hebrews connects Jesus’ work with this New Covenant foretold by Jeremiah.  The New Testament people of God would enter this New Covenant through the priestly work of Jesus. 

             Therefore, beyond the simple but true fact of coming to God through faith in Christ, we see that believers are now under this New Covenant.  The response of faith, as a gift of God, begins this Covenant relationship temporally yet it was established by God’s election in eternity past.  The response of one under this covenant should include obedience to the design of God for life as revealed in nature and as revealed in the Word.  To be given such a gift of life and after accepting it to then refuse His commands is not only unconscionable but guaranteed to bring about far different results than the “shalom” or “eirene” described earlier. 

             We must therefore view ourselves in covenant through Christ with the necessity of responding in gratitude for such an undeserved blessing.  To respond appropriately to God within this covenant framework, we must pursue it according to the His designed means of obtaining the “shalom” and “eirene” that comes with God’s blessing.  This includes learning how He has designed the natural world in terms its physical laws and how we has instructed us in the spiritual realm of relationship with Him and with others.  By beginning at the beginning of how we relate to God in Covenant through Jesus and following it through to the fruits of such a life lived in accordance with God’s design, we can offer hope for mental health.  By beginning with this as our goal for mental health, we can then hope for real changes which affect not only individuals within the society, but can also change society as a whole.

             I emphasize that this is an all or nothing process. Trying to take the first step of faith in Christ without the next step of seeking to follow God’s design for life in covenant will still leave us with the dis-ease of mental illness.  Even Christians who try to pursue mental health through the ways of the world will find themselves distressed and without the wholeness of “shalom” promised in the Word.  A Christian trying to live by the world’s rules will still find himself with a tangled knot of a shoelace wondering why God does not just untie it for him.  While the finished work of untangling must come from God, it must come through the work of our hands submitting to His design for life. 

             With this covenantal and Biblical understanding to the foundations of mental health firmly established before us as our primary goals, we will face the effects of the Fall differently.  The effects of Adam and Eve’s original sin will still present us with sin and its effects, temptations, trials of life, struggles, and ultimately death, yet the state of our hearts and minds will possess a heavenly sourced peace which transcends all understanding (Philippians 4:7).  As individuals, we will have a tower that defends us against fear as well as guarding us against the emotional pain of physical or relational losses.  As a society, we will find many blessings.  We will find mutual support and edification in the body of Christ rather than isolation.  The weaker brother will find support rather than disdain (Romans 15:1).  We will find forgiveness rather than rejection and also be conveyors of God’s forgiveness to others (Matthew 6:14-15). 

             Given the purpose of this longer than originally intended article is to point towards real solutions and away from superficial worldly solutions, we cannot stop at this point however.  Having pressed our search for the foundational reason for the mental health crisis and having found this lack of proper goals for mental health, we are now left with a variety of options. We could consider this to be an impossible goal and retreat back to more superficial levels, less challenging.  At best this would still fail.  We could continue trying to solve this spiritual problem with worldly solutions.  At best this would still fail.  We could give up hope and resign ourselves to living with tangled shoelaces.  At best, this doubts the very promises of God we have read about above and throughout His Word.  From here we move beyond the descriptive where we sought understanding of what is and what we have been told in the Bible should be. There we have been given clear instructions that mental health requires spiritual health and spiritual health requires peace with God lived out according to His design under covenant.  Therefore, we move next to considering how we should begin to live out untangling the mental health crisis’ shoelaces.

(With the last two installments in this series having elaborated a Biblical grounded view of how we should view the goals of mental health, in the next blog posting we finally reach the fourth of the original questions which offers an approach to solving the mental health crisis.)

(Having reviewed materialistically focused contributors to the mental health crisis, we now go deeper for real root causes.)

              Ultimately all these factors depend on our spiritual view of reality and our response to it.  How we harness technology to improve life rather than be pushed along by it depends on our beliefs about ultimately reality having purposes to pursue outside ourselves.  How we choose what work to do, how much work is right, and how we go about work depends on our beliefs and values about what is true and important in life.  The choices we make regarding work-life balance, whether regarding what we balance against work or how we balance it, depend again on values and beliefs shaped by our view of reality.  The composition and function of our families will depend on our spiritual values and beliefs.  Even our participation in government and our response to it depends on our view of ultimate reality.  Holding a correct view of the spiritual truths of reality and applying them to our lives can extensively modify the impact of each of these contributors to mental health as well as any other factors that could be named. 

              Viewing the totality of life as comprised solely of the material which we see, taste, touch, smell, and hear but ignoring the unseen reality of the spiritual will only lead to problems.  Ignoring the reality of a Creator God who continues to reign over all things with expectations of our compliance with His natural order of the physical world as well as our obedience to His ethical commands will only result in problems such as we are experiencing or worse.  Up to this point, these physically focused views of the mental health crisis’ contributing factors ignored this spiritual reality, while their overwhelming portrayal of the problem was mounting a depressing picture.  Looking solely at the physical realities in the mental health crisis is like untangling the shoelaces by looking at only one shoelace and pretending the other knot does not exist.  They are left staring in disbelief at the fact that the knotted shoelaces are still a mess, maybe even worse than before they started.

              With this acknowledgement that the materialistic reality focused view falls woefully short, we could reflexively shift our attention to a spiritually simplistic view which still oversimplifies the crisis.  For example, we could jump to blaming various sins and that would still be inadequate though not technically wrong to include.  Sinful drives for pleasure, greed, lusts, gluttony and other sins do affect mental health.  We all know countless examples of how each of these sinful desires have destroyed the lives of someone around us.  As a society we also recognize the role of drug addiction in the present crisis of mental illness.  Each of these sins drive personal and societal forces and predictably lead to poor mental health as they were never meant to produce mental health, but to tempt us away from true health.  Simply trying to satisfy these tempting desires will not lead to mental health, but simply trying to avoid these sinful drives does not automatically guarantee mental health either.  Simplistically restraining sin through legislation or individual self-control only addresses the spiritual aspect of reality superficially.

              Another woefully short attempt to address the spiritual reality behind the mental health crisis can be found in a man-centered spirituality.  While going beyond physical responses, such a self-directed attempt still fails to address the totality of the spiritual need.  At times, these man-centered responses are promoted for individuals to use in overcoming their mental illness or to prevent it.  They come in various forms.  Meditation and mindfulness offer some superficial comfort for mentally hurting, but their mind over life challenges approach does not address the fullness of the spiritual realities and thus cannot heal at the deepest levels.  Self-help strategies are promoted to strengthen individuals who tend toward the “feeling powerless to change” attitude in order to teach them how to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps.  Psychological strategies employed by a multitude of practitioners of different types also attempt to equip individuals to overcome their mental illness by learning to think differently and thus feel differently.  Their mind over emotion approach can lessen the suffering at times but without approaching life in its wholeness including a correct view of spirituality, the balm of relief only goes so deep and lasts so long.  Each of these individual responses falls short in fully or truly preventing or treating all the nuances and depths of mental illness.

              This same mindset of attempting to solve mental illness through man-centered means and philosophies can also be worked out in larger more systemically applied approaches.  One particular approach to life, the revolutionary mindset, claims it is aiming at solving the wrongs of individual and societal life while actually creating more mental disease through its forced application.  The revolutionary mindset refers to the age-old and often repeated worldview that the currently shared system of society is the primary source of our problems.  This mindset claims that our primary focus should be to overturn and replace that presently overarching worldview with something different, something revolutionary rather than simply reforming the current. 

              The claims that our society has been driven primarily by systemic racism for a few centuries serves as a present-day poignant example.  Those who promote this philosophy appear to see such systemic racism at work not only in the whole timeline of history but in practically every contemporary aspect of life which goes against their beliefs and values.  This mindset can then go beyond the racism one might think of in regards to skin color or nationality and extend into endless polarizations of us versus them regarding various lifestyles.  This revolutionary mindset at work in the proponents of modern-day systemic racism only creates more dysfunction in not only the broader mundane functions of society but also in the foundations of society, particularly families and churches.  Individuals are taught that they are being abused by nebulous forces working through their own neighbors, their own family, their own churches, and more.  Distrust and distress create angst and emotional disruptions which press them into mental illness.  Each of these man centered attempts at spiritual share the common approach of looking to self or to others for resolution so that we do not have to look to God for solutions. 

              Instead of these man-centered approaches, we must look deeper if we are to find a more wholistic picture of the mental health crisis.  The reality comes into focus that we as individuals and collectively as a society are not only pursuing the wrong desires, but we don’t even know what good mental health should look like.  (While a Christian’s goal is not technically primarily mental wellness / well-being, for the general audience seeking answers for mental illness, we approach from this angle so that we show that mental wellness requires spiritual wellness at its deepest foundation.) With respect to mental health we are trying to avoid the problem of mental illness, but don’t really know what we should be aiming at.  It must be more than satisfying a physical desire, sinful or not, and more than avoiding some bad feeling.  It must encompass more than pursuing something that we simply like better than something else and more than just a vague sense of feeling “good”.  We must have a better picture of the mental health shoelaces as they should look so we can pursue that ideal.  Then we have a chance of untangling the knot since we have no chance to just “start over” with the mess we see now.  We have to start from a tangled knot and work our way back to better mental health individually and societally.  

              We must understand what true mental health should look like based on something beyond us as looking no deeper than our own likes and dislikes and our own feelings will not provide a picture of what it should be.  The superficial goals will only partially explain what is now existent.  Instead, we must admit that a standard beyond us and an intended design for mental wellness exists.  We need to understand that standard and that design from the revelation of God’s Word in the Bible since our human view and understanding is inadequate due to the sinful natures which we all possess.  No matter how many human ideas we combine, the contamination of sin will never allow us to accurately reason out right from wrong, good from bad, mental health from mental illness in its entirety.  Only by revelation from the One who created all things can we hope to best understand what we should pursue in mental health.    Only by first understanding what mental wellness should look like can we then pursue it correctly.  

              In the revelation of the Bible, we can begin understanding God’s design for mental health by looking at some of the words used to describe health.  These words and their context describe what we should pursue.  This can begin by seeing mental health as just one part of the Hebrew word, “shalom” or the Greek word, “eirene”.  Another blog series (LINK HERE) spends its entirety working through these words and others in regards to what true health looks like, but for now I focus on these two words in regards to mental health.  “Shalom” refers to a state of wholeness in regards to physical, spiritual, and relational well-being having been derived from the Hebrew, “shalom” meaning complete.  (paraphrased from Brown-Driver-Briggs dictionary) “Eirene” similarly conveys individual or collective tranquility, freedom from war, peace between individuals, and also to the state of man after salvation through Christ as he or she stands before God (Thayer’s).

              Prior to delving into these Biblical words for well-being, we must acknowledge the reality of our condition.  Such conformity to a revealed standard will sound daunting in terms of understanding it and in terms of living it.  The conformity required by God is perfection (Matthew 5:48: could also be translated as “mature” but with same connotation of becoming “mature” like God which is unattainable by our own efforts).  Our human limits in terms of knowing, reasoning, and doing rightly fall short in terms of natural abilities and also in terms of our sinful natures.  Only through the work of the Holy Spirit within us can we rightly understand general revelation or special revelation (1 Corinthians 2:6-16).  In order to know God and his design rightly, we must know God in terms of relationship such that His Spirit makes our understanding as clear as is humanly possible. 

               Once we know God in relationship, we can then press into understanding God’s intent for us.  Aiming at “shalom” or “eirene” means that we attempt to live in that wholeness which only God gives.  We live in that wholeness when we live according to His given design for our bodies, our relationships, and even our environment. We do this by living according to the spiritual ethics of our Creator revealed supernaturally and according to the physical laws of our Creator revealed in nature.  This design applies to our relationships with family, with church, and with community, as well as with the physical environment (dominion mandate of Genesis). 

              We see this goal of “shalom” in various verses of the Bible as the ideal goals for the state of our whole-being.  Numbers 6:24-26 serves as a beautiful example as it connects this “shalom” in verse 26 translated as “peace” to God’s blessing in verse 24.  In the three verses of 24 through 26, blessing is connected with God’s keeping, His face shining on them, His grace towards them, His countenance upon them, and finally with giving them “shalom”.  This state of blessing and “shalom” depends entirely on God’s disposition towards them and is the basis for the well-being of our lives.

              We see a similar proclamation in Psalm 29:11 where the Psalmist first petitions for strength for His people.  Then the Psalmist petitions for the blessings of peace.  Given the inspired nature of the Psalms and no nearby Scripture context to refute this petition’s appropriateness, we can assume that this prayer for peace was consistent with God’s will.  Again, peace is connected as a core part of God’s blessing. 

Bibliography:

Thayer’s Expanded Greek Definition, Electronic Database.  Biblesoft, Inc.  https://www.studylight.org/lexicons/eng/greek/1515.html  Accessed 10/28/23

Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon, Unabridged, Electronic Database.  BibleSoft.com.  https://www.studylight.org/lexicons/eng/hebrew/7965.html Accessed 10/28/23

(In the next installment, we will carry this concept of “shalom” into the New Testament with the Greek word “eirene”.)