Removing the Stigma
Introduction
Like many others it took me a significant amount of time to find the area of life – the trade if you will – where the Lord has uniquely gifted me to labor. I have dabbled in various vocations, but thankfully I found my home in pastoral ministry with a unique and particular focus in biblical counseling.
While I am not a full-time pastor, I am a full-time counselor, and because of my position I am constantly educating myself on the worldview of secular therapy so as to be able to combat it more adequately and guard the church from its gross errors. In the world of counseling there are various schools of thought (or so the secular world would have us believe) all with their particular nuance and peculiarities supposedly better than the next in solving people’s problems, all based on some theory from some psychotherapist, all of which allows some therapists or psychologists to claim their expertise in this or that modality and say that they’re “an expert in gestalt therapy” and hopefully land more clients. However, despite the supposed differences, what all methods and paradigms have in common is the stalworth effort to remove the moral stigma that is attached to the problems people face. There is a concerted effort to make all the immoral behavior one could engage in to be seen as a symptom of the underlying “mental health” disease, rather than a problem in and of itself.
The Removal of Stigma
Take for instance what is called Substance Use Disorder, or SUD. This “disorder” is defined as the recurrent use of alcohol and/or drugs which causes clinically and functionally significant impairment, such as health problems, disability, and failure to meet major responsibilities at work, school, or home. Notice something quite crucial: that this is a new label for an old problem. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders used to call this “disorder” substance abuse and substance dependence. These labels, however, carried with them to heavy a stigma. The words “abuse” and “dependence” are too moral, connotating to much that the will and volition is involved in the persons use of alcohol and drugs. Naturally, the name had to be changed to “use” because, after all, everyone “uses” drugs, and using things isn’t immoral, so now these people are no different from anyone else. You use Tylenol when you have a headache, and the drug user is no different. However, because he has a “brain/mental disease” he can’t control his consumption whereas you can – or so the thought goes.
However, the stigma that is being vociferously rebuffed is actually a product of their own making – the psychological world used to be tethered to a moral standard due to the overwhelming influence of Christianity in our culture. Certainly, secular psychology has never been Christian, but at least it used to be more attached to reality than it is today. Now, the American Psychological Association is trying to backtrack by changing the names of certain “illnesses” so as to remove the stigma that they created themselves. For instance, in an article titled The Science Behind Recovery: Let's Talk About Naltrexone the author says this regarding the reason some people don’t get the medication they need:
“One major barrier [to getting medication] is stigma, fueled by outdated beliefs that recovery should happen without medications. Patients and even providers may feel that using medication for a SUD is “cheating” or not addressing the “real issue." The reality is that addiction is a complex brain disease, not a moral failing—and there’s no shame in using effective medication to support recovery.”[1]
I want to highlight a crucial point that makes this statement diverge from reality. The author says, “The reality is that addiction is a complex brain disease, not a moral failing.” The argument goes like this: during our evolutionary process we developed the ancient (lizard) midbrain. This portion of our brain was meant to keep us alive; this is the “go” portion of our brain that tells us to eat, drink, have sex, kill, etc. It is the survival portion of our brain, our instincts. Over time, as we continued to evolve, we developed the prefrontal cortex as a method of control for the midbrain so that we could stop and think about our actions before doing them. Therefore, when someone has a problem with the prefrontal cortex, this necessarily means that he or she loses control over the lizard brain and will begin to do things that are destructive, like imbibing in massive amounts of cocaine, or participate in voyeurism, or having sex with prostitutes, steal, or even murder. The problem of substance use is then no longer a problem with drinking but instead becomes a disease of choice, a disease of decision making. The ability to make proper decisions becomes impaired due to the “mental/brain illness.” This is why the author can say that addiction is a “brain disease” rather than a moral failing.
Critical Thinking
Notice a couple things. To adopt this argument necessarily requires the adoption of evolution – a belief that no Christian can hold. Let me be clear. If you believe in evolution, you are not a Christian and you will die in your sins. Repent and believe the Gospel and the bible’s description of how God made the world. But I digress.
Also to adopt this view necessarily requires us to view mental/brain diseases as altogether different from all other types of diseases that people catch. This is because the symptoms of brain disease are immoral behaviors like sexual immorality, getting high and losing control of your body, theft, an inability to take care of your responsibilities at home or at work, persistent cravings for the drugs, increased tolerance to the effects of the substance, engaging in high-risk activities, or attempting to stop using the substance but being unable to. Do these sound like normal symptoms of a sickness? No. symptoms of a true illness are never willful or voluntary but unwanted and not self-inflicted: vomiting, nausea, bleeding, diarrhea, body aches, coughing, etc.
No longer are these actions crimes worthy of punishment but are symptoms indicative of a very sick person needing pity and all the tax funded medical treatment necessary to reach a cure. (Because the problem is spiritual, however, the cure must be spiritual – it will never be physical).
Our culture has drifted so far from God, and subsequently immeasurably far from sanity and coherent thought, that the inability to stop drinking, aka the inability to stop willfully taking money out of your bank account, willfully driving to a store, willfully walking into the store, willfully grabbing a bottle off the shelf, willfully paying the proper amount – tax and everything – willfully popping the top, willfully putting the opening to your mouth, willfully tilting your head back, and willfully swallowing the alcohol is now seen as a symptom of a disease rather than a moral failing. And we scratch our heads befuddled that overdose deaths are now one of the leading causes of death over the past several decades in the United States.[2]
But this is just one example. The same exact logic applies to “mental health” issues like anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder, ADHD, autism, PTSD, eating disorders, Schizophrenia, obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), and more.
*it should be noted that people can have legitimate problems with their brains. Dementia, Alzheimer’s, Huntington’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, and others are true brain diseases. But these can all be proven through experimentation, objective testing, and laboratory findings. And, when people present bizarre behavior due to objective evidence that their brain is being destroyed this is an actual disease. “Mental health” diagnoses are formulated by subjective self-disclosure of feelings or subjective observations of clients, neither of which is sufficient to give anyone a proper medical diagnosis because they are a subversion of the scientific method. All the so-called mental health disorders listed above are simply matters of the will, problems with sin, and exist in the spiritual portion of who a person is, and are, by and large, excuses for immoral behavior.
Biblical View of The Person
The bible is very clear, that we are moral agents.
Ezekiel 18:20 “The soul that sins shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son. The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him."
Romans 13:8-10 “Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. For the commandments, "You shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not covet," and any other commandment, are summed up in this word: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law."
Matthew 7:12 “So, whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets."
2 Peter 1:5 “For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love.”
1 Corinthians 15:33 "Do not be deceived: “Bad company ruins good morals.”
Deuteronomy 30:15-20 "See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil. If you obey the commandments of the Lord your God that I command you today…then you shall live and multiply…Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live.”
What’s more, the fact that we are required to repent of sin (Mathew 3:2; Acts 3:19, 17:30) means that we are guilty of our sin (Romans 3:23) and if God is just – and he is – he is right to condemn us for our sins because in the final analysis we willfully chose to commit them (Matthew 15:17-20).
In 1 Corinthians 6:9ff we read, “do not be deceived…no drunkard…will inherit the Kingdom of God.” In this passage God, through Paul, is plainly saying that being a drunkard (an addict in our common parlance) is a moral failure, not a brain disease or a mental health problem, and this is evinced by the consequence. This is a sin problem for which one will earn a one-way ticket to eternal destruction. But notice what Paul says: “do not be deceived.” He says this because he is keenly aware of not only how easy it is but also how badly sinful man wants to make their sin something less than what it is. If addiction is a genetic disorder and a brain disease then certainly God won’t condemn you for what you couldn’t control, right? It’s just like having a cleft lip, an enlarged heart, or spina bifida. If it’s been passed down through genetics, or you develop a mental disease through environmental factors then you have an excuse to struggle with it till you die, and now without any stigma. If someone stigmatizes an addict, they are the cruel, ignorant, non-empathetic, impassionate jerks, not the one getting drunk and destroying the lives of his wife and children. He is sick. You’re just being an ass.
A Helpful Comparison
But let’s go down Paul’s list of sins leading to destruction in 1 Corinthians 6 and compare some of them to modern diagnoses. Paul says all these will not inherit the Kingdom of God because their behavior is willful and sinful, whereas the world says these are diseases or symptoms of disease that are outside the control of individuals, meaning they are sick, not sinful:
The sexually immoral: things like homosexuality, transgenderism, lesbianism, adultery, and fornication, are either entirely sanguine in our culture or fall under the rubric of Gender dysmorphia which is a “mental health” diagnosis describing the distress a person experiences due to a mismatch between their gender identity (their personal sense of their own gender) and the sex assigned at birth. Because of secular psychology, evolutionary theory, and the necessity of empathy sexual immorality now only describes any unwanted sexual encounter. However, if men want to have sex with men, or women with women, or men want to cheat on their wives, or wives their husbands, or unmarried people want to have sex, or women want to have sex with animals, and – in due time – adults want to have sex with little children, love is love, man.
Idolaters: biblically this is the worship of anyone or anything more than God. In our day, however, this is perfectly acceptable, and for those people who are a bit too obsessive about certain elements life (due to their worship of it) and are a bit to hard to handle are labeled as having Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD), obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), or schizophrenia. The conduct of an idolater is also said to be seen in conditions like bipolar disorder, or schizoaffective disorder.
Adultery: This is when a husband or wife in a marriage covenant breaks that covenant by committing sexual acts with someone outside that covenant. In our day, however, there are disorders that “cause” adultery such as: Delusional Disorder which is a mental health condition where a person holds persistent, false beliefs that they are unable to disbelieve, even when presented with evidence to the contrary. Jealousy type disorder, also known as Othello Syndrome, which is a psychiatric condition where a person experiences a persistent, irrational belief that their partner is unfaithful, even in the absence of evidence. There are also certain personality disorders like Borderline Personality Disorder, Narcissistic Personality Disorder, and Antisocial Personality Disorder that may “cause” someone to commit adultery. Additionally, Bipolar Disorder and substance use disorders can also contribute to adultery.
Theft: Biblically, this is when someone takes something that does not belong to them. It can be as small as a pencil, or as significant as a spouse, and it all deserves hell. However, the psychological community says that this is a mental disorder called kleptomania. Kleptomania is an impulse control disorder characterized by an irresistible urge to steal items, even if they are not needed and have little value.
Greedy: Biblically, greed stems from a lack of thankfulness and contentment. It is defined as an excessive, insatiable desire for wealth, power, or possessions and never being satisfied. In secular psychology, however, greed is a symptom of narcissistic personality disorder (NPD), histrionic personality disorder (HPD), and antisocial personality disorder.
What This Means
Even if some of the definitions of particular problems mirror a biblical definition closely, like greed for instance, the fact that it is viewed as a disorder, a mental health problem, or brain disease means that instead of these people being told the truth, to repent, to turn, to control themselves and be shown how, to be strong, to stand tall, to trust in Christ for their salvation, and to act morally according to his word, they are pitied, looked at as helpless, given medicine, and continually told that their problems are beyond their control and that they shouldn’t feel bad about them.
This system of thought and belief has, regrettably, seeped into the church almost entirely – and that is not an exaggeration. The vaaaaast majority of pastors are derelict in their duties to care for their sheep as shepherds. They don’t counsel, they don’t know how to counsel, and when their people need help, they send them out to pagans who worship the cultural idol of therapy and wonder why their men come back effeminate, their women cut all their hair off and refuse to submit, and the kids do drugs and have no work ethic.
Conclusion
We must do better and work tirelessly to overcome this demonic deception that has plagued the world, and largely since Freud. We must work to bring back to the world an understanding of sin, the bankruptcy of their worldview, and the freedom from it that exists alone in Christ.
The church – the true church – must lead the way by showing people the truth of their issues and how to solve them. The church must be the pillar and buttress of truth that God designed her to be, and this includes the truth about who we are as human beings, how we function properly, the solutions to the problems we face, and where to go to find them. The church has for far too long been reticent to grab hold of the fantastic power she has in Christ to win the world. We have been cowardly and refused to just say the truth in love. Just say it and don’t worry about the consequences. Just believe God will keep his promises. How does the Apostle John say the world is overcome? By our faith (1 John 5:4)! If you believe in God, then you should be fearless to do, live, and say what he commands, because if you do it will overcome the world.
Mental health disorders do not exist. The bible and the Spirit of God are the only remedy for the spiritual problems people face. The church needs to proclaim this loudly and proudly and be ready to give compassionate care to those who have been lied to about their conditions!
