^“You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives. So then, don’t be afraid. I will provide for you and your children.” And he reassured them and spoke kindly to them.                                                            Genesis 50:20-21

I call it The Redemptive Principle. The passage in Genesis 50:20 embodies the principle of redeeming something bad into something good. I use this often with couples to explain that, for example, a seemingly devastating problem in the relationship can actually become the start of a healing that never could have happened unless the traumatic problem had occurred in the first place. The relationship can be better than it ever could have been had the problems not occurred. We see this time and again, not just in relationships, but in tragic life events. Life altering suffering can work toward long-term good.

In the story of Joseph, had his brothers not treated him so badly- selling him into slavery after planning to murder him- he would not have been in the position of later saving them, and much of the Middle East area from starvation. Joseph himself had the presence of mind, and the influence of the Holy Spirit, to see the events in a larger panoramic. He saw that the evil actions of his brothers had been used by God for the salvation of many, including his nefarious brothers.

At the time of our trauma or tragedy we, of course, are unable to see the long-range arc of God’s redemption of those events. Much later, we can often look back and see God’s hand clearly in the process. Faith dictates that we anticipate that God has his hand on the process for his glory, and our good. This is hard to do. I tell my clients that I do not expect them to see this now. It would be unfair to burden them with this at the time of their pain and suffering. But I ask them to trust that there CAN be a greater outcome than ever could have been if the trauma had never happened. The relationship can be stronger than it ever could have been had the problems never occurred.

Naïve? Pie in the sky? No. I have seen this so many times that I am convinced of the truth of this principle. Yes, it takes time and perspective to see this principle come to fruition. Is it possible?

Yes!  If we allow such thinking, and we work in anticipation of that possibility.

Prayer: Your hand is at work in ways that we cannot understand, but we trust your provision for our ultimate good, Amen.

Keep putting into practice all you learned and received from me—everything you heard from me and saw me doing. Then the God of peace will be with you.                                                                               Philippians 4:9

For those of us of a certain age, this plea- “Give Peace a Chance” from the John Lennon song title, harkens us back to an earlier time of anti-war sentiments during the Vietnam conflict. As I was listening to a podcast this morning about anxiety, the speaker was Tracy Dennis-Tiwary, a professor of psychology and neuroscience. Her views about how to handle anxiety were remarkably similar to mine.

 I was reminded of the idea of giving anxiety a chance- giving it a chance to be our ally and not always an enemy. Hence, “Give Peace a Chance” becomes “Give Anxiety a Chance”. Meaning, give anxiety, that often- unwanted traveling partner, a chance to be a helper sometimes.

Anxiety is like an early warning system to danger. Often, the danger is not actual, but potential. However, the anxiety persists like a bundle of energy ready to be let out. So, instead of bottling it up and letting that energy build to an unbearable level, we need to expend that energy.

We do that by first paying attention to the anxiety. It might be giving us some early warning about danger. When we take the time to make the anxiety present, by recognizing it, we pay attention to what it might be telling us. Maybe the anxiety is letting us know to pay attention to things we can control. If so, our actions can actually benefit us and also help to relieve the anxiety. If the anxiety is about things we cannot control, we recognize it for what it is. An early warning system that perhaps fired too early or too often.

By giving the anxiety a chance- by listening to it- we can determine what it means. What we cannot do is to quickly try to avoid the anxious feelings. That produces more anxious feelings.

Releasing that anxious energy by certain positive actions helps to dissipate the frenzied thinking that anxiety often produces. Think of a balloon that is gradually increasing in size as air is supplied to it. That air builds up, causing great tension on the surface of the balloon. If we allow the process to continue, the tension eventually causes the balloon to burst. However, if we slowly let air out of the balloon, it decreases in size, tension reduces, and the air has been safely released.

So, by giving the anxiety a “chance”, recognizing it, then taking action on it, we have a chance to get peace. So, give peace a chance!

Prayer: Lord, you give us peace, even in the middle of trouble as we turn to you, Amen

Paul stood up in the middle of the council on Mars Hill and said, “People of Athens, I see that you are very religious in every way. As I was walking through town and carefully observing your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: ‘To an unknown God.’ What you worship as unknown, I now proclaim to you. God, who made the world and everything in it, is Lord of heaven and earth. He doesn’t live in temples made with human hands.                                                                                  Acts 17:16-17

In this present era, we experience a type of communication where people are talking across one another instead of to one another. We see Paul as an example of one who knew how to engage people. Paul had a message of good news which he desperately wanted to share with people, because he believed that spiritual life and death were at stake. Instead of demeaning and mocking the primitive beliefs of the idol worshippers at Athens, Paul showed respect for them in their search for truth. He acknowledged their sincere search for truth, and he showed his interest in their culture. He walked around the city and observed what was important to them. He did not judge them, but pointed out and affirmed their own desire to know the “unknown god”. The Athenians were open to the idea of a god that they did not yet know, and they had made idols to various gods. However, in the interest of not leaving any out lest they anger one of those deities, they made an idol to the “unknown god.”

Paul was able to use their own language and concepts to help introduce them to the God that could offer them peace and salvation. He did not mock their feeble attempts to placate the unknown god, he introduced them to the God of their need, the God that they sought and did not yet know.

Paul’s approach is needed today. We need to listen, and understand the language of people with whom we disagree. We need not, and should not, shame and dishonor those with whom we disagree. We need to love them enough to hear their world view. It may be very different from ours, yet people come to a particular world view for a reason. It is arrived at due to a journey different than ours oftentimes.  

As we enter the heated environment of political rhetoric which is so visible these days, let us pause to understand that with which we disagree. You will read, if you complete the 17^th chapter of Acts, that Paul gained a hearing from the people of Athens because he cared enough to hear their story and their world view, different as it was from his. Let us be intentional in respectfully hearing views with which we disagree.

It is good for our soul, and the souls of those whom we love and yet do not agree with.

Prayer: Lord, grant us the patience to hear what we do not agree with, and the grace to patiently share your love, Amen.

The generous will prosper;
    those who refresh others will themselves be refreshed.                                           Proverbs 11:25

Funny how it works sometimes. I had been thinking about the 12^th Step of Alcoholics Anonymous, which states- Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these Steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs. Then the passage used at church for today’s message was Proverbs 11:25. Perfect, right?

The 12^th step is the “give it away step”. The principle is, that by helping others, we end up helping ourselves. For recovering alcoholics, it means that helping another alcoholic stay sober anchors the sobriety of the one who is helping. This concept is foundational in recovery work, especially AA, which literally wrote the book on recovery. Service to others is good for the one who is serving.

The saying that a lot of AA members use is “you can’t keep it unless you give it away”. There is a lot of truth in that statement. The paradox that we live in every day is that very truth. By serving others, we gain life ourselves. Funny how that works…

Finally, I realized that this blog will appear on June 6- the 78th anniversary of D-Day. Those Allied soldiers who gave so much that day served in a special and heroic way. Some of those heroes never came home. Their sacrifice gave so many the opportunity for freedoms that we enjoy today.

Prayer: Lord, you have given us the lessons of paradox, that when we are weak, then we are strong. Help us to better understand your ways, Amen

For the world offers only a craving for physical pleasure, a craving for everything we see, and pride in our achievements and possessions. These are not from the Father, but are from this world                        I John 2:16 (New Living)

The term “mental illness” is very broad. It encompasses common problems such as anxiety and depression that everyone, to some degree, faces. Everyone, at one time or another, can identify times when anxiety or depression caused them some problems. Those conditions are on a continuum, and some people suffer a great deal, some just a little.

The term “mental illness” also includes more significant problems such as psychotic conditions where a person loses touch with reality to a greater or lesser degree. These were the conditions I discussed earlier. The patients at the state hospital where I worked were often psychotic. In some cases, patients had neurological conditions that went undiagnosed. Other patients may have had some long-term residual effects of brain damage and they simply could not function anywhere else.

Finally, there is a category of mental illness conditions called Personality Disorders. The American Psychiatric Association (APA), describes those disorders as “a way of thinking, feeling and behaving that deviates from the expectations of the culture, causes distress or problems functioning, and lasts over time”. Such conditions are not psychotic disorders, but they are difficult to treat. This is especially true since many people with personality disorders do not seek treatment, believing that the problem they have is not an internal one, “but it’s all those people around me!”

All this is to say that blaming much of the violence we experience, especially mass shootings, on mental illness is much too simplistic an explanation, given the broad range of diagnoses that “mental illness” encompasses.

Many years ago, I was setting up some supervised community homes for persons recovering from mental illness. Needless to say, we experienced fierce community opposition from people who did not want “mentally ill people in my neighborhood”. I understood their concerns, their fears.

Our arguments to that included the fact that, statistically, mentally ill people were more likely to be victims of violence than to be perpetrators of it. Further, those neighbors were not aware, and we of course could not tell them, that there were already people in their neighborhood who had been released from a mental institution. Those people had already assimilated into the neighborhood.

Mental illness indeed plays a part in some of the mass shootings that happen. However, having dealt with many people over the years who are mentally ill, I suggest that they pose less of a threat, generally, than a person who is simply angry, feels entitled, and has a victim mentality which they believe can only be satisfied by the suffering of others. Those are often people that have long felt powerless, and now, with a weapon, feel powerful somehow.

Is that evil? Is that a personality disorder? Is that mental illness? I don’t know. I tend to wonder sometimes if people with a true mental illness might at times just be more sensitive to an environment that is toxic. Maybe they are the “canaries in the mineshaft” reacting to a culture that is broken and prone to violence for solutions. Please understand, this is not absolution for the murderous actions of killers.

I have no idea, of course, about the actual mental conditions of mass murderers. However, retrospectively, we try to make a case that a mental illness was the cause of their murderous and evil actions.

Maybe we should also look at the culture of violence that we live in that fuels the flawed thinking of the perpetrators. Maybe culturally we have elevated violent solutions to be some bizarre answer to a perceived sense of powerlessness. I do not know the answers here, but I do know that we need to look at this from a cultural, not simply a “mental health” perspective. There are no easy answers, but we must continue to have reasoned and healthy discussions about a tragedy that continues.

That is the healthy thing to do.

Prayer: Lord, we have departed in pride from your plans. Give us wisdom to proceed, Amen

Asylum: a place of retreat and security: SHELTER

 the protection or security afforded by an asylum: REFUGE

Merriam-Webster

Whoever dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty.                                             Psalm 91:1

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.                                                    Matthew 11:28

The movement to “deinstitutionalize” persons with mental illness was well meaning, and fueled by a few reasonable concepts. One, of course, was money. It was expensive to keep people in a residential setting. The “treatment” in the hospital consisted of medication, meeting the needs of everyday life, benevolent treatment by staff (for the most part), and safety from a world which some of those patients simply could not understand. Indeed, the early concept of mental hospitals, (now highly discredited) was “asylum”. Yet asylum was exactly what some of my long-term patients needed. They were too vulnerable to be sent out into a world that they badly misperceived.

Another reason for “deinstitutionalization” was humanitarian. With the advent of more effective medications to control the florid symptoms of psychosis, patients could, if medication compliant, navigate the needs of everyday life- housing, taking care of personal needs, socialization, even employment. In theory, the “dollars were to follow the patients” into the community to help them become stable and productive persons with dignity and purpose.

No, the dollars did not follow the patients into the community.

However, I followed the patients into the community, and I went to work in the new field of “Community Mental Health”.  I loved the idea of helping to set up support systems for people newly discharged from the hospital. My colleagues and I were starry-eyed optimists, trusting that we could change the world in mental health.  As I found out, we could change the world for some individual people, but we could not change the world.  

Indeed, there were some great success stories of people who formerly had lived for years in an institution, and then went on to succeed in making a good life outside of the hospital. However, there were many who simply could not make the transition. The sobering truth that many of us came to realize was that as the institutional mental health system was shrinking, the correctional system was growing. Many of those patients sent back to the community ended up homeless or imprisoned.

Medications improved, and housing programs that we developed specifically for those with a mental illness helped. Indeed, at one point, community mental health systems were being held financially responsible to keep people out of the hospital. Boy, did we work hard to keep people out of the hospital!

However, the human equation is always the hard one when it comes to money and politics. The homeless problem was largely created by an influx of people coming into the community who suffered from mental illness and who had no access to the “asylum” of a hospital.

Tomorrow I will discuss some societal responses to mental illness.

Stay tuned…

Prayer: Lord, give us the wisdom and strength to see people as you see them, Amen

Part I

In the next several days, I want to discuss the now “hot topic” of mental illness, especially as it relates to numerous cases of mass shootings. Guns and mental illness are significant topics now bandied about in the political world. While I do no know very much about guns, other than that there are more guns than people in the United States, I do know about mental illness. Therefore, I will talk about what I know…

Since the scourge of COVID-19 began in 2020, more attention has been paid to the effects of mental illness in our society. COVID has been blamed, with some accuracy, with ratcheting up stress, anxiety, and depression rates. Further, the recent spate of mass shootings, inordinately an American phenomenon, has drawn more attention to the state of our collective mental health. I have worked in the field of mental health since 1973, and I have some observations about the provision of mental health services in this country in the past 50 years.

Some History…

When I started work at the Dayton Mental Health Center in 1973, I was a social worker on three wards of patients from a three-county area- Darke, Miami, and Shelby counties in southwest Ohio. We had approximately 90 patients on those wards on any given day. Many of these patients were highly institutionalized, meaning that they had been in the relative sanctuary of a state mental hospital for years. In some cases, it had been decades. These were people diagnosed with a significant and profound mental illness which required hospitalization.

The treatment in those days consisted of rather harsh first-generation anti-psychotic medications which were generally effective in subduing the most devastating symptoms the patients faced. The trade-off, if that is the right word, was often equally devastating side effects, such as extreme lethargy, involuntary muscle movements, facial tics, and a gait impairment commonly known as the “Thorazine Shuffle”. Thorazine, of course, was one of those first-generation medications used to treat psychosis. As one of my patients told me, “For you all these are ‘side-effects’, but for me they are primary effects!”

Nonetheless, such medications reduced some florid symptoms such as visual and auditory hallucinations, aggressive behaviors, deeply paranoid thinking, and serious agitation which caused immense disturbance to those suffering from uncontrolled thoughts.

Further, these medications spared some patients the practice of a frontal lobotomy. Yes, that procedure did happen, and some of my patients were survivors of such treatment. The hope and belief of the time was that releasing patients back into society with proper medication and community supports would allow them to function in the world despite a serious mental illness.

Sometimes, it worked.

As medications became better, with fewer side-effects, more patients were able to be released into a community that often was not accepting of them. Part of my job was to make sure that those services (and medications) followed those patients into the community.

In coming days, I will expand on the history, the successes and failures of mental health treatment in the United States.

Over the next few days, I want to address the current national discussion about the tragic mass shootings we have endured. The concept that guns and/or mental illness are a part of the equation is valid. As a mental health practitioner since 1973, I have a historical perspective on the mental illness side of the equation.

Keep in mind that while my focus has always been on the spiritual side of issues of mental health, these next few days may not look quite the same. God is always interested in human affairs, and this is no different. I will try to pull that all together as we move ahead. Please stay with me on this journey as we look into how mental health issues fit into the violence equation,

Blessings,

“Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.”                                                       Philippians 4:6

Most of us remember the 1988 song by Bobby McFerrin, Don’t Worry, Be Happy. It was a fun upbeat, engaging little song that actually reached the top of the popular music charts. It has become a meme in the popular culture since then.

Paul tells us in Philippians 4:6 to be “anxious for nothing…”, and we respond with “yeah, like that’s even possible…”  What does Paul mean when he tells us not to be anxious? Anxiety is a real thing, part of the human condition. I tell my clients that anxiety is our travelling partner- an unwanted partner- but a partner to be sure. Everyone has some anxiety, some more than others, but all of us have some anxiety. Indeed, telling a person with anxiety to “just don’t worry about it” is not helpful. If it were that easy, no one would have anxiety!

So, what is Paul saying when he instructs us to “Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.”?

First of all, because he brings it up, Paul knows that worry and anxiety are a natural part of life. Paul is not chastising those who worry or have anxiety, he is trying to set forth a remedy. He is reminding us that prayer, a conversation with a God who cares about us, is a useful and immediate “tool in the tool box” for anxiety.

Having others who care about us on our “team” is also a critical tool in dealing with anxiety. Becoming aware of our anxious state, naming it, and expressing it to ourselves and others, is a crucial tool in taking control of anxiety.

So, a great first step, as Paul says, is to bring every situation that worries us to God, thereby making him as well as ourselves aware of it in the moment. By seizing this control of anxiety awareness in the moment, we have already begun the process of anxiety control.   

Prayer: Lord, you have given us tools for comfort and relief of anxiety. Help us to become more aware o your presence in our time of need, Amen

Immediately the boy’s father exclaimed, “I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!

Mark 9:24

Sometimes we make definitive statements which are too black and white. Sometimes, in order to try to understand the world, we break things into “either/or” categories. That often is too simplistic. Life is nuanced, and there are simply areas of life that cannot be broken into such clear categories.

An example I see is in the area of “certainty”. I recently wrote a blog on “Certainty” which many of you seemed to enjoy. (Thank you…) Living in a certain amount of ambiguity is uncomfortable. We want an answer. In our faith journey, we often want a simple yes or no, some black or white answer. Yet, I think there are plenty of things which do not lend themselves to easy answers.

Having faith does not mean that we have no doubts. I would argue, that without doubt, there is no need for faith. If everything is simply a matter of blind faith, we leave no room for the discomfort of doubt. I believe that our faith can stand the scrutiny of sincere questioning.

In an earlier post, I made this statement relative to prayer: “We all have doubt, I take that as a given. However, it confirms our faith each time we pray. It affirms our faith, however shaky it may be. Faith, even as small as the mustard seed, is shown when we open our mouth to utter His name.”

The principle here is that we act on faith, even if we are not fully on board. No faith is perfect, but whatever faith we do have must be exercised to become real. It is a counseling principle that we “Do, then feel”- meaning, if we do good and right behaviors, we will begin to feel better. We cannot wait to feel better to start acting better.

So, you have doubt, I have doubt. Let’s not let that get in the way of exercising that small faith that we do have. “I believe, help my unbelief”

Prayer: Thank you Father for giving us the mind to have doubt. Thank you for the grace to give us such space. Thank you for the gift of faith and the room for doubt. Amen