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To listen to an audio version of this post, visit www.covenantchurch.ca/podcasts/covenant-weekly.
This first Tuesday of the month, I normally offer a short prayer or blessing from the broader church. For May, I am pushing that to next week to bring a focus on Mental Health Awareness Week which runs from May 6-12. Several years ago, when Glenn Robitaille shared on a Sunday morning during Mental Health Awareness Week, he showed us an image called “The Mental Health Continuum.” This chart shows that the issue of mental health isn’t just for people with diagnosed mental illnesses. Every one of us, for a variety of reasons, can have mental health struggles. When considering this issue, there is no “us and them.” There is just us.
Mental health is not an area that I am very qualified to speak about. But I’m grateful to be a part of a church community that isn’t afraid to discuss it. Within our Covenant family, we have people at all different places on The Mental Health Continuum. We have people with severe mental illness diagnosis - some of whom are struggling and some of whom are doing very well. We have people without diagnosis who are struggling and who are doing well. Among those people are several mental health professionals, including therapists, social workers, psychologists, program facilitators, and hospital workers. One of them is Jay Sutton. Jay’s been a part of our Covenant Family for a couple of years. It was largely his own journey that led Jay to become a mental health professional. In 2020, Jay graduated with a Bachelor of Christian Counselling Degree - specializing in Marriage and Family Relationships. He followed that up with a Master of Divinity degree specializing in Clinical Counselling from Tyndale Seminary. As a Registered Psychotherapist, he now operates Flip Flop Family Therapy through which he lives out a deep desire to help men, women, and families work towards mental and relational health. Jay has graciously agreed to write a reflection for this Covenant Weekly for May 7, 2024. I pray this is a blessing and encouragement to you.
-Jon
Hello one and all, and thank you Jon for asking me to be a part of this season’s blog series.
As you may or may not be aware of, we are currently in the midst of mental health week here in Canada, and as a result, Pastor Jon has graciously asked me to prepare a little something for this week’s installment; and being a Registered Psychotherapist here in Ontario, I was only too happy to oblige.
Truth be told, the concept of mental health has quite a storied past in the church. For years, mental maladies were a sign of “unrepented sin”; or in cases where “sin” wasn’t particularly apparent, the affliction was often blamed on “generational” motivators; a failing(s) somewhere within the family bloodline. This is what’s called the theology of divine retribution, and it assumes that God blesses those who are faithful to him and punishes those who act, or think in a manner that is in contrast to His one and Holy way. And while we have come to know that this isn’t always the case, the idea, in and of itself, isn’t without biblical support.
We see evidence of this mindset in the book of Job as all three of his closest friends theorized that he simply must’ve done something to “anger” God, for Him to allow the calamities in Job’s life to persist. You can read their accounts in Job 4(Eliphaz), Job 8(Bildad), and Job 11(Zophar) But if we read in the account in its entirety, we readily discover that this was hardly the case.
Thankfully, as time went on, medical comprehension and competency continued to advance, and through it, we came to the understanding, and acceptance, that the source of our mental health struggles were often much more complex than simply a matter of obedience and/or repentance. This revelation also precipitated a shift in (some) church’s understanding of the matter as well, as they began adopting more of a hybrid model of addressing ailments which were psychological or emotional in nature, whereby it became more permissive as it were to seek help from an outside agency, and her members were cleared so to speak, to seek out professional-medical support for their maladies, but were cautioned to not lend too much emphasis to it so as not to pervert their faith or compromise their position in Christ.
To these folk, if a problem was perceived to be physical in nature, then it must naturally be a medical issue; if emotional, it must be a psychological concern; or, if spiritual, a religious matter; but never the two shall meet! It was assumed that each language describes a different objective reality and each domain demands experts in the language that describes it.
Once again, thankfully, through much more research and scientific study, we know now that this certainly isn’t the case, and as such, the etiology, or cause of a particular pathology can, and in most case do, stem from any number of biological, psychological, social, cultural, and spiritual factors in one’s life. In fact, I’ve come to realize in my career field, that it is exceedingly rare to see a case of mental illness or struggle which doesn't reflect a combination of factors. Thus, I believe that not only must these afflictions be addressed in tandem, rather than isolation, I also believe that our interventions and preventative strategies need to reflect the impact of these crucial variables so as not to “carve up” the human being in a way that appears to stand in contrast to God’s original design in Genesis 1:27.
Therefore, it is my conviction that in order to be effective in identifying, assessing, and evaluating the sources of pathology in one’s life, the conscientious therapist must adopt a posture of “responsible eclecticism”, a term used to describe one who is adept at learning how to access information and ideas from a variety of disciplines and resources in the name of helping another. Additionally, as studies continue to show that one’s own decisions-convictions about their life, and their specific worldview, also plays a significant role in both the etiology and treatment of the various "crisis'" that arise over the course of their life, I would suggest it be prudent of us to include these in our considerations as well. And while the available data doesn't support the belief that any one particular creed or conviction makes us any better at coping than another, the evidence is clear however, that how we factor and apply such convictions into our lives surely does.
With this in mind, it could be said that it's more important to know what type of person has a specific malady, rather than which malady a specific person has, because it can make a world of difference in one's capacity to heal if they see themselves as a valuable, and active, agent in the stewardship of their life, rather than simply a helpless victim of circumstance. This is why I personally continue to adopt a posture of compassionate curiosity within an integrative approach to healing.
But why does any of this matter?
Well if we return once again to Scripture, we see that within the confines of all three synoptic Gospels, Jesus replies to the question of which commandment is the greatest by the same phrase; “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself. And while most of those who have spent any amount of time in church could most likely recognize and recite this, I imagine very few would hold an awareness of the concluding verse of this passage that sees Jesus affirming that, All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments. Not some, not most, but ALL. This would appear to say that God holds personal relations and interactions with others at a precedent over any other law or commandment that we may think is important to our Christian life; a concept that’s fully reaffirmed in 1 Corinthians 13:1-3, that asserts that we can speak in the tongues of men or angels; we can have the gift of prophecy and fathom all mysteries and knowledge, or even give all we possess to the poor and give our body over to hardship, but NOT have love, WE GAIN NOTHING! So therefore, the building and maintaining of relationships is something that appears to be integral to our life here on earth.
But as somewhat of a paradox, this is also the area where our own mental health strengths and frailties are showcased to the greatest measure because in order to be able to forge and maintain any degree of real and true relationship, we must first be marginally healthy ourselves because it is virtually impossible for one to be relationally healthy, if they aren’t first individually healthy. Unfortunately, the trauma and attachment deficiencies we have all invariably suffered at various points in our lives has had, and may be continuing to have, an enormous effect on both our identity within ourselves, aa well as our behaviour around others because of the inherent fear we hold about getting hurt.
This means that "problems" in our lives tend to occur when our acquired (or inherited) vulnerabilities become threatened or strained(whether real or perceived), by internal, or external, factors and we become tangled in a various states of overarousal in one or more of these specific areas.
And this is where therapy can really help! If you, or a loved one is currently struggling in your own life, or that of your relationship, I urge you to reach out to a mental health practitioner for a chat. You see dear friend, more often than not, we tend to hold a disproportionately negative view of our situation (which is based more on emotion than fact). A skilled therapist can often offer a fresh perspective and a measure of relief-sometimes within a very short time; this can help get you and/or your loved ones back on the same path.
With that, I thank you for your time in reading this, and wish you the very best on your own journey towards health and wellness. And on behalf of all mental health practitioners, may you learn to be well, live well, and love well; we’ve left a light on for you!
Be blessed.
Jay