From time to time people email me with questions about Christian theology, or about how various aspects of modern physics relate to God.\u00a0 Although I am extremely busy these days, I do sometimes try to answer such questions, especially when it is clear that the topic is related to a spiritual struggle that the questioner is going through.<\/p>\n
(If I have not answered your email I am sorry about that.\u00a0 Between caring for small children, an academic career, and some health annoyances, I’ve had less time to answer everybody who writes to me.\u00a0 When I do answer people, it is often after a delay of weeks or months.\u00a0 Thanks for your understanding, and please don’t assume that because I don’t reply, that I therefore didn’t read your email or pray for you.)<\/p>\n
If your question is more philosophical and less personal, it might be better to post it to the comment sections of this\u00a0blog<\/em>\u00a0rather than to my email.\u00a0 For one thing, this gives other people the chance to post their own answers, and also to benefit from any replies.\u00a0 We can all learn together!<\/p>\n However, sometimes a person’s question is deeply personal, and in this case it is natural not to want your question to be exposed to the public.\u00a0 In such cases, writing to me by email might be more appropriate.\u00a0 However, it is still somewhat inefficient if I see the same issues over and over again…<\/p>\n Because of this, I’ve decided to collate some things I’ve written to some people struggling with one very specific spiritual problem, which can cause great suffering to the person afflicted.\u00a0 If you don’t have this particular problem, then great!\u00a0 This blog post is not for you.\u00a0 But I am sure there must be thousands of people out there who need to read this post.<\/p>\n Disclaimers<\/strong><\/p>\n This blog post is not about me, specifically.\u00a0 For some reason it is hard to write a blog post about mental health problems without people assuming it is some sort of cry for help, or a round about way of confessing something that I have been struggling with recently.<\/p>\n It’s true that I wouldn’t have been able to help people struggling with this problem, if I were not also a fellow human being, who has suffered from my own doubts and emotional anxieties and struggles (Hebrews 5:1-3<\/a>), which bear some similarity to the problem the other person is having.\u00a0 But the descriptions in this post are based at least as much on seeing this pattern in the lives of others, even if some of the advice is based on things that have helped me in the past.<\/p>\n If you are one of the people who has written to me about your spiritual struggles, please be assured of the following:<\/p>\n (a) Nothing in this post can be used to identify you; your confidentiality is always assured unless you explicitly tell me otherwise.<\/p>\n (b) Although I might quote my\u00a0own<\/em>\u00a0words from emails that I wrote to you, this post is not about you as a specific individual, but rather about a common pattern that affects many people.\u00a0 That is, of the $$N$$ people who have written to me about this issue, even if we leave you out of it entirely, I could still have written this blog post based entirely on the other $$N – 1$$ people.<\/p>\n This blog post is written for people suffering from a particular sort of spiritual anxiety.\u00a0 If in the last 2-3 months, you have spent less than\u00a01 hour \/ week<\/strong>\u00a0worrying about whether your religious beliefs are true, then this blog post is probably not for you.\u00a0 Or, if you spend more than 1 hour per week thinking about this topic,\u00a0but\u00a0both of the following are true:<\/p>\n (A)<\/strong>\u00a0you usually don’t experience significant negative emotions while doing so,\u00a0and<\/em> then again this blog post is probably not for you!<\/p>\n (Indeed, if you hardly think about the question of religious truth at all, then you might be better served by a stern warning about the importance of the subject!\u00a0 If there might be a God who loves you and wants you to be eternally happy, but who also expects you to live in a certain way, shouldn’t you want<\/em> to know if this is the case?\u00a0 But, I assume the people who need to hear this sermon probably don’t overlap very much with the Undivided Looking readership.)<\/p>\n II. What it looks like<\/strong><\/p>\n The pattern I want to discuss is the case of a person who becomes obsessed with Christian apologetics (i.e. the defense of Christian beliefs) to an extent that becomes emotionally unhealthy.<\/p>\n Something triggers them that is either an event (e.g. the death of a friend), or an argument (e.g. reading an atheist cosmologist who thinks God obviously doesn’t exist because the universe [did\/did not]\u00a0have a beginning<\/a>); or perhaps they are reading the Bible and see something which seems to them to be a contradiction; or perhaps they have a meloncholy or anxious temperament, that is inclined to dwell on doubts about God’s existence or goodness.<\/p>\n Usually the person with this pattern of doubts is a devout religious believer, but in some cases they might also be an irrelegious person who doesn’t like Christianity, but can’t seem to get out of their mind the idea that the judgemental God they perceive in the Bible might somehow still exist, and so they seek a dialogue with a religious believer to voice their fears and anxieties.<\/p>\n For concreteness, let’s invent a concrete fictional questioner named George, and I am going to suppose that he is a devout but struggling Christian.\u00a0 (By this blog’s eccentric\u00a0canonization policy<\/a>, I suppose I ought to therefore call this fictional character\u00a0Saint<\/em>\u00a0George.\u00a0 This is fitting since he does have a dragon to fight.)<\/p>\n Let’s suppose that St. George was raised in a church with a somewhat insular and fundamentalist worldview.\u00a0 He was led to believe that Darwinian Evolution is just atheist propaganda, invented by people in order to attack the biblical account of creation.\u00a0 For a while in high school, he was fed some young earth creationist material which led him to believe that there was some actual scientific evidence that the world is actually only a few thousand years old.\u00a0 But after he went off to college, he realized that it is difficult for a scientifically literate person to believe in this.<\/p>\n This leads St. George to a crisis of authority.\u00a0 The people who taught him made some really bad arguments for Christianity.\u00a0 But maybe there are also some good arguments?<\/p>\n In his spare time George tries to assuage his fears by reading Christian apologetics (or watching videos), as much as he can find online.\u00a0 He discovers that there are some intelligent seeming Christians out there, with a worldview more open to scientific knowledge, who nevertheless believe that there is good evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus.\u00a0 Or, he might get interested in various arguments for the divine creation of the universe, for example Cosmological Arguments (based on contingency or based on Big Bang theory or whatever).<\/p>\n But in order to be fair, and to seek out challenges to his worldview\u2014and perhaps also because of the fascinating attraction of opposites\u2014he also\u00a0consumes anti-religious works on the other side, in order to compare the quality of the arguments.\u00a0 So far, so good.\u00a0 But while St. George finds some of the answers given by the Christians seem to be persuasive, others may not seem so convincing.<\/p>\n Or the answers raise a whole new crop of issues and objections.\u00a0 OK, we know that the disciples didn’t steal Jesus body because there were guards at the tomb, but how do we know that St. Matthew didn’t just invent the story about the guards, or that the Gospel was written by somebody else entirely?\u00a0 And here’s an atheist on the internet who claims that some\u00a0random paper on\u00a0the arXiv<\/a>\u00a0shows that the universe might not have had a beginning.<\/p>\n Nothing ever seems to be fully definitive.\u00a0 (How can it be, when it seems that the justification of Christian faith depends on so many different historical and philosophical factors, which people have been arguing about for centuries?)<\/p>\n George starts to wonder if the problem is with himself or whether the problem is with what he was taught.\u00a0 How can he resolve these perplexing doubts and difficulties?\u00a0\u00a0Does he really need to be an expert in quantum cosmology and biblical criticism in order to decide whether God exists?<\/p>\n Does he simply need to find the right experts, and trust them to give him all the answers?\u00a0 But what if the experts disagree, or if he picks an expert based on the fact that they are telling him what he wants to hear?\u00a0\u00a0It was a shock when he first learned that there are bible scholars with PhD’s from top universities, who think that what he believes about the Bible is dead wrong.<\/p>\n Patterns of Addiction<\/strong><\/p>\n To assuage these worries, St. George\u00a0increases his consumption of the product.\u00a0 After all, some of the articles he read by Christian apologists\u00a0did<\/em>\u00a0seem to be helpful for resolving many of the sillier atheist objections.\u00a0 So it seems like if he can only ask enough questions, and watch enough smart people debating the issue, maybe he’ll reach a state of realization or enlightenment where his intellectual (and spiritual) problems will be resolved.<\/p>\n Unfortunately, this is a potential pathway to addiction.\u00a0 Apologetics is obviously not chemically addictive, but anything can be psychologically addictive if the right conditions are met.\u00a0 That is, St. George is in a situation where doing activity X causes him to feel bad, but where his beliefs are such that it seems the right way to respond to these bad feelings is to do X again.\u00a0 This can cause a feedback loop where X grows and takes up more and more of his thoughtspace.<\/p>\n Now let me be clear.\u00a0 I don’t mean to imply that being interested in Christian apologetics, or deeply caring about its outcome, is\u00a0in and of itself<\/em>\u00a0psychologically unhealthy, and that researching apologetics is necessarily a wrong thing to do when faced with religious doubts.\u00a0 Obviously not,\u00a0or I wouldn’t have written a bunch of apologetics posts!<\/p>\n It’s perfectly reasonable to want to do some research to find out whether what you believe rests on a secure foundation.\u00a0 For the vast majority of people, that’s all it ever is and this blog post is\u00a0not about you<\/em>.\u00a0 Please keep doing what you were doing before, and if you were happy before, please don’t become unhappy by wondering if you have some sort of apologetics neurosis.\u00a0 (Just because you might say, in a causal conversation to a friend, that you are “obsessed” with some hobby or interest, doesn’t necessarily mean you are obsessed in a clinical, bad sense of the word.)<\/p>\n If you really do have the bad sort of obsession with religious doubts, you’ll know it because it was\u00a0already making you miserable\u2014<\/em>I mean before you started reading this post, and wondering about whether it describes you.\u00a0 This is not a problem you can have without knowing about it!<\/p>\n As in other cases of addiction, the instinctive response to dealing with the difficulties caused by excess consumption can sometimes be to\u00a0double down<\/em>\u00a0on the tactics that were originally used to try to solve the problem, by “increasing the dosage”, so to speak.\u00a0 So St. George spends more and more time on the topic.\u00a0 This of course also increases his chances of thinking about the subject whenever he is\u00a0not<\/em>\u00a0reading about it.\u00a0 In fact, he starts to experience his doubts in the form of intrusive thoughts, which make it very difficult to concentrate on his work, or his studies in school.<\/p>\n Pretty soon the other areas of his life start to suffer.\u00a0 To quote a\u00a0psychological<\/a>\u00a0criterion for when a mental pattern becomes a disorder), St. George has started to experience “significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning”.<\/p>\n [I have omitted the word “clinical” here since this I am not a professional psychologist and this blog post is obviously not formal medical advice.]<\/p>\n If St. George has a tendency towards OCD or an anxiety disorder or\u00a0depression<\/a>\u2014again, these conditions are nothing to be ashamed of, and these personality traits can exist in mild forms as well as severe forms\u2014then these may be complicating factors.\u00a0 It might even be that St. George would benefit from seeing some sort of therapist (although if so, he should try to find one who is able to respect the ways in which religion can play a positive role in his life).\u00a0 Human beings have both bodies and souls, and each one affects the other in a complicated way.<\/p>\n It is important to emphasize that none of this means that George is crazy, or about to go off the deep end.<\/p>\n In fact, St. George is quite possibly a highly rational person, whose beliefs might in several respects be\u00a0more<\/em>\u00a0accurate than those of other people.\u00a0 Nevertheless, he has a mental health problem\u2014and this is nothing to be ashamed of, it happens to literally everybody on the planet from time to time!<\/p>\n However,\u00a0St. George has a problem he doesn’t seem to be able to reason his way out of, in part because St. George has a false belief about what his problem actually\u00a0is<\/em>, and therefore what is the right way to fix it.<\/p>\n What people want me to say<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/strong>St. George might stumble across my blog or webpages and say to himself, “Gee, here’s a Christian with a PhD in physics, who is an expert in quantum gravity.\u00a0 I’ll write him an email and he can sort me out!<\/p>\n Dear Dr. Wall,<\/em><\/p>\n Sorry to bother you since you must be busy, but as a fellow believer in Christ I’m hoping you can help me with a problem.\u00a0 I’ve been struggling with anxiety about my faith ever since I heard about so-and-so’s cosmological model where the universe comes out of a Giant Trombone instead of having a beginning.\u00a0 Is the Giant Trombone theory really true?\u00a0 Please help me!<\/em><\/p>\n <\/em>Best wishes, Now it usually\u00a0is<\/em>\u00a0true that the Giant Trombone theory (or whatever is the\u00a0flavor of the month<\/a>) is a highly speculative idea with little evidential support, and I will probably be able to say some things that will reassure St. George about that particular point.<\/p>\n At the same time, I can’t help but feel that St. George is putting me in a somewhat false position, i.e. that he expects a certain degree of scientific certainty which I can’t and shouldn’t provide.\u00a0 What St. George really wants me to say is something like this:<\/p>\n Dear George,<\/em><\/p>\n There is no evidence whatsoever for Giant Trombone theory.\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>In fact, speaking from my authorative position as a scientist, the data is completely conclusive that the universe had an absolute beginning of time.\u00a0 Only a person who is totally biased, with an\u00a0<\/em>a priori\u00a0prejudice in favor of atheism, could believe otherwise.\u00a0 For this reason, you can be quite certain that the universe was created by God 13.8 billion years ago.\u00a0 I hope this resolves your spiritual difficulty.<\/em><\/p>\n Blessings,<\/em> But I will never, ever write this email, because it would compromise my integrity as a scientist and as a theologian to do so.\u00a0 As a scientist, I need to allow for the possibility that Giant Trombone theory (or whatever it is) might turn out to fit the facts, or that there is some aspect of it which I can learn something from.<\/p>\n And speaking as a theologian, I know that God is\u00a0allowed to create the universe<\/a>\u00a0in whatever way he pleases (either with or without a Giant Trombone) and that the Big Bang theory can’t really be the primary foundation of the Christian faith\u2014for the very obvious reason that Chrisitianity is about 20 times older than the\u00a0Big Bang model (as first proposed by the Catholic priest\u00a0St. Georges Lema\u00eetre<\/a>), so it can hardly be the reason why anyone before him believed in God.<\/p>\n For me to endorse, even implicitly, the misconception that the existence of God is primarily supported by the Big Bang model, would commit me to thinking that every Christian in history from St. Peter to the time of St. Maxwell believed in Jesus for the wrong reasons.<\/p>\n Admittedly, if the Giant Trombone theory were actually confirmed to be true (which is admittedly kind of unlikely, because I just invented out of whole cloth a few paragraphs ago), it might be a little bit relevant to some questions.\u00a0 It could potentially push the scales of evidence a little bit, one way or the other, on certain\u00a0very specific<\/em>\u00a0technical arguments for the existence of God.\u00a0 On the other hand, it won’t make any difference at all to several\u00a0other<\/em>\u00a0classes of arguments, such as those which argue that even Giant Trombones would be contingent realities, and would stand in need of an explanation.<\/p>\n In other words it would contribute somewhat to the Great Philosophical Conversation about Everything.\u00a0 But it is a very serious mistake to think that God’s existence rests on whether one very specialized type of argument for his existence is valid or not.<\/p>\n (I think it is probably true that a sufficiently powerful intelligence (e.g. an angel) could point out flaws in\u00a0any<\/em>\u00a0arguments a human being might make for the existence of God, or indeed for the existence of almost anything else that we think is real.\u00a0 But that does not mean the angel couldn’t add: “Yet there is also something essentially right about your argument, if you were able to see even deeper into this topic as I can.”)<\/p>\n If St. George thinks that reviving his certainty about Christianity requires becoming an expert in quantum cosmology, then St. George is simply wrong about how the Christian faith works.\u00a0 And it is more important to correct this wrongness, than to explain to him the particular ways in which Giant Trombone theory is unlikely to be true.<\/p>\n Long before Big Bang cosmology was a thing, someone wrote these words:<\/p>\n By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.\u00a0\u00a0(Heb 11:3<\/a>)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Let me be quite clear here that this word “faith” in the New Testament does not mean belief without evidence (as many atheists falsely allege, because that makes them feel justified in rejecting it.)\u00a0 The\u00a0central meaning<\/a>\u00a0of the word is much closer to the English word\u00a0trust<\/em>.\u00a0 That is, it is primarily a word about\u00a0relationships<\/em>, not a word about propositions.\u00a0 Obviously, there are situations in which trust is justified\u2014it all depends on\u00a0who<\/em>\u00a0you are trusting, and what reason you have for trusting them!<\/p>\n If you trust a friend, then you will indeed believe certain propositions.\u00a0 Presumably you will have a good opinion about their character and reliability.\u00a0 Also, if you trust your friend’s honesty, and expertise about a given subject, then you will also be disposed to believe whatever they tell you about this subject.<\/p>\n All of this is pretty obvious in a non-religious context, in which case a lot of questions about “faith” just sort themselves out naturally.\u00a0 Common sense says that faith is sometimes justified, and sometimes leads us astray, depending on who or what you put your faith in.<\/p>\n Faith only becomes a religious matter when the friend you are trusting is\u00a0God himself<\/em>, the Creator of the Universe.\u00a0 Because we can come to know, at least a little bit, the Creator, we can\u00a0trust<\/em>\u00a0that he is the source of all the beauty we can see in the Universe.\u00a0 This sort of faith actually works in the\u00a0opposite direction<\/em>\u00a0from apologetics about creation.\u00a0 The Christian faith\u00a0starts<\/em>\u00a0with having a relationship with God (which is potentially available to everyone through his promises), and proceeds from there to become confident in God’s ultimate control over everything.<\/p>\n This sort of faith was available even to people who lived before the Big Bang theory, or the disovery of the Second Law of Thermodynamics.<\/p>\n Why doubts can’t always be resolved in the way you want them to be<\/strong><\/p>\n In some ways the root cause of the problem is, paradoxically, that St. George is conceptualizing his doubting as an intellectual “problem” which needs to be “solved”, rather than a present emotional difficulty, which he needs to find resources to cope with.\u00a0 But life, including spiritual life, is not really a problem to be solved, rather it is something to be\u00a0lived<\/em>.<\/p>\n There are indeed intellectual puzzles which pop up along the way.\u00a0 These puzzles are important to think about, and banging our head against them\u00a0helps us to learn what reality is like.<\/p>\n It is indeed true that that the deepest Reality is not an impersonal uncaring force, but rather a loving God.\u00a0 And that the best way to relate to these mysteries and puzzles ideally ought to bring you closer to God, rather than farther away.<\/p>\n At the same time, answering intellectual puzzles cannot be confused with life itself.\u00a0 A crossword puzzle can be solved, and then you are done with it.\u00a0 But a pet dog is not something which can be “solved” once and for all, and then it won’t bother you anymore.\u00a0 It is a living reality which can be related to but not in a way which disposes of it.\u00a0 You can indeed “fix” a dog, but this only deals with one highly specific way in which the dog might be a nuisance to you.<\/p>\n If even a dog cannot really be related to properly with a problem-solution mentality, then still less is it possible for us to relate to God in that way.<\/p>\n St. George is probably a highly intellectual person, and when he encounters a new problem in his life, his instinct is to try to cast it as an intellectual problem to be solved.\u00a0 This means he has to recast the problem as a “debate” for which the proper solution is\u00a0evaluating arguments<\/em>.\u00a0 But if the original trigger for his spiritual difficulties was more of an emotional or relational difficulty, then this might be an entirely inadequate response to the original trigger for his doubts.<\/p>\n In fact, it may\u00a0never<\/em>\u00a0be possible for St. George to resolve his problem using his chosen method, because it doesn’t address the underlying emotional issue.\u00a0 In such cases, increasing the dosage of his chosen “medication” won’t help, it will just increase the severity of the side-effects.<\/p>\n As St. Dorothy Sayers writes in\u00a0The Mind of the Maker<\/a>:<\/p>\n What is obvious here is the firmly implanted notion that all human situations are “problems” like detective problems, capable of a single, necessary, and categorical solution, which must be wholly right, while all others are wholly wrong. But this they cannot be, since human situations are subject to the law of human nature, whose evil is at all times rooted in its good, and whose good can only redeem, but not abolish, its evil. The good that emerges from a conflict of values cannot arise from the total condemnation or destruction of one set of values, but only from the building of a new value, sustained, like an arch, by the tension of the original two. We do not, that is, merely examine the data to disentangle something that was in them already: we use them to construct something that was not there before: neither circumcision or uncircumcision, but a new creature.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n In some medieval versions of the legend, St. George finally defeats the dragon, not by killing it as you would expect, but by baptizing it.\u00a0 Immediately the dragon becomes completely tame, and he is able to lead it into to the village, where it begins to serve the people there.<\/p>\n Perhaps our modern St. George can take the lesson from this, that sometimes a “problem” is best resolved if we jump out of the initial framework we were trying to use to “solve” it.<\/p>\n A Change of Frame<\/strong><\/p>\n You will notice that I have sometimes been discussing the issue of obsessing over doubts as if it were a psychological problem\u2014a problem of addiction\u2014rather than directly engaging with the\u00a0contents<\/em>\u00a0of the doubts.<\/p>\n By this I mean no disrespect to the important philosophical issues that St. George’s questions relate to.\u00a0 As a writer named Sarah Constantin says in a very insightful post called\u00a0Sane Thinking about Mental Problems<\/a>:<\/p>\n There are multiple ways of looking at problems with the mind. \u00a0I don\u2019t think that there\u2019s a\u00a0best\u00a0one, but that it\u2019s practical to switch between them pragmatically and to be mindful of the local advantages and disadvantages of each frame.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n There is a\u00a0medical model<\/em>\u00a0which “speaks of mental illness as a type of disease, which can be treated medically. \u00a0The mentally ill are\u00a0sick<\/em>, and they can get\u00a0well<\/em>. \u00a0They are\u00a0patients<\/em>.”<\/p>\n There is a\u00a0social model<\/em>\u00a0which treats mental problems as disabilities, which require accommodations by society in order to treat everyone fairly.<\/p>\n There is a\u00a0skill based model<\/em>\u00a0which says that “problems of the mind are fundamentally about being weak at a skill, and recovery is about gaining that skill.”\u00a0 About this approach\u00a0Constantin says:<\/p>\n The advantage of the skill-based approach is that it incorporates the human capacities of\u00a0learning\u00a0and\u00a0trying. \u00a0Once you have the lightbulb moment of \u201cwow, I can try to get better\u00a0on purpose?\u201d, once you start\u00a0working directly on things\u00a0rather than waiting for someone to \u201ctreat\u201d you, your progress can accelerate quite suddenly. The skill model takes\u00a0you,\u00a0meaning your \u201cwise mind<\/a>\u201d or the part of you that wants to be sane, seriously as an agent, and enlists your effort and intelligence.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n But I was most interested in how she described a spiritual approach to mental illness:<\/p>\n What I\u2019d call the \u201cspiritual model\u201d is a final family of viewpoints, which are related in that they take the\u00a0denotational content\u00a0of mental problems seriously, especially mood problems.<\/p>\n In this model, if you are having a crisis of faith, then your depression is fundamentally\u00a0about\u00a0religion, and you\u2019re going to need to figure out your answers to religious questions. \u00a0If your problems take the form of extreme guilt, then you\u2019re going to have to engage with ethical philosophy and figure out a form of ethics that is compatible with life. \u00a0If you\u2019re experiencing nihilistic despair, then you\u2019re going to have to find a source of meaning. \u00a0If you\u2019re having delusions, you might need to build up a stable epistemology.<\/p>\n The spiritual model takes unhappiness as a normal or even universal part of the human condition, not something exclusive to \u201cabnormal psychology.\u201d People get profoundly unhappy; people have to find a way to overcome despair; the way to overcome your despair is to figure out where you have a misunderstanding and gain the insight that will resolve it.<\/p>\n The advantage of this approach is that it is\u00a0much\u00a0more individual and fine-grained than the other approaches. \u00a0It deals with\u00a0your\u00a0mind, not the generic mind that has similar problems to yours. And it engages with your mind, including your mental illness, as a peer \u2014 not as something to fix or to accept, but as someone\u00a0to talk to and listen to. It allows for the possibility that your strange thoughts while depressed or manic or whatever\u00a0might in fact be true,\u00a0at least in some facets. \u00a0There\u2019s a sense in which resolving inner conflicts is \u201cgetting to the root of the problem\u201d, actually untangling the knots in your mind, rather than \u201cmerely\u201d palliating symptoms. \u00a0The work of life, from the spiritual point of view, is building a valid and life-sustaining personal philosophy, and almost\u00a0incidentally, this will resolve many \u201cpsychological problems.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Although I have no particular reason to think that this blogger is a Christian, I loved the way she described the spiritual approach here as taking people’s search for truth and meaning seriously\u2014to ask what really does give our lives meaning.\u00a0 Our hearts demand that this be a legitimate question to ask.<\/p>\n I would add that if it turns out that God is the Deepest Truth, and if our relationship to God defines our truest identity, then it would be a mistake to try to construct a purely secular notion of “mental health” in which the answers to religious questions play a marginal role.\u00a0 If God is our true Father who loves us, then anyone who is living as an atheist is for that very reason mentally ill, out of orientation, living out a delusion.\u00a0 Even if they don’t go around dancing naked in the streets, or screaming that people are out to get them.<\/p>\n However, this spiritual frame also has its potential pitfalls:<\/p>\n The downside of this approach is that sometimes your problems aren\u2019t really\u00a0about\u00a0anything discernible, and it\u2019s counterproductive to try to seek meaning in them, rather than just trying to manage or treat or accommodate them. \u00a0Sometimes trying a spiritual approach just means getting trapped in ruminating or becoming an \u201cinsight junkie\u201d, with no productive effect on your actual problems.<\/p>\n It\u2019s very rare to see discussions of mental illness that treat multiple possible frames as valid and usable. \u00a0I\u2019ve seen personal narratives where people shifted from one frame to another and present it as \u201cseeing the light,\u201d but I think that\u2019s not the whole story. I suspect that successfully living with, or recovering from, mental problems involves being somewhat eclectic about frames.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n To summarize: when one frame doesn’t work, it’s worth trying out a different frame. St. George is trying to treat his problem of obsessive doubts as a spiritual problem.\u00a0 And to the extent that the doubts raise genuine philosophical issues which need to be resolved, that is legitimate.<\/p>\n But supposes he finds that, even after “resolving” the issue as well as he reasonably can intellectually, that his mind just goes right back to Step #1 and begins the process all over again, so that he is caught in an infinite loop.\u00a0 And that this looping process is partially involuntary, and occurs even when he wishes it wouldn’t.<\/p>\n In that case, he might do better to think of his doubting as an\u00a0illness<\/em>\u00a0which he needs to\u00a0 recover from.\u00a0 Or perhaps, as a condition for which he needs to develop\u00a0skills<\/em>\u00a0to prevent these doubts from hijacking the rest of his life.<\/p>\n Not to mention, preventing these doubts from derailing his spiritual walk with God.\u00a0 (Despite the way they dominate St. George’s self-consciousness, in all likelihood these doubts are in some ways peripheral to George’s actual walk with God.)<\/p>\n No One is Alone<\/strong><\/p>\n A lot of people might however be reluctant to take the step of trying on the “illness” frame because of the way in which our society stigmatizes mental illness.\u00a0 But the truth is that almost every human being suffers from some kind of mental problem or another, and there is no sharp line separating the “well” from the “ill”.<\/p>\n Mental health problems are not the same as sins.\u00a0 According to\u00a0orthodox Chalcedonian theology<\/a>, this means that\u00a0as a human individual<\/em>, even Jesus was able to suffer from difficulties and burdens of the mind, such as depression.\u00a0 The prophet Isaiah portrays the Suffering Servant (whom Christians identify with the Messiah) as suffering from depression regarding the apparent lack of success of his ministry:<\/p>\n But I said, “I have labored in vain; I have spent my strength for nothing at all.\u00a0 Yet what is due me is in the LORD’s hand, and my reward is with my God.”\u00a0\u00a0(Isaiah 49:4<\/a>)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n and we know from Christ’s words on the cross, that even the Son of God was able to feel abandoned, in a world where his Father seemed to be totally absent (even though in reality the Father is\u00a0never absent<\/a>).<\/p>\n And this is why the following\u00a0verse<\/a>\u00a0about the Savior is true:<\/p>\n Can we find a friend so faithful So the fact that St. George has a mental burden which he finds difficult to bear, does not yet distinguish him from Jesus.<\/p>\n George might choose to reframe his doubts as a form of\u00a0suffering<\/em>, treating an episode of spiritual anxiety just as if it were a bout of nausea.\u00a0 What then?\u00a0 In that case he would try to avoid things that trigger such episodes whenever possible, and would ask God to\u00a0\u201clet this cup\u00a0pass from\u00a0me\u201d to the extent possible.\u00a0 But when it must be suffered, to just try to get through to the other side somehow or another, knowing that he will eventually get through it.<\/p>\n Even Jesus was tempted to try to prove that he was really the Son of God, by taking an\u00a0illicit shortcut<\/a>\u00a0by “testing God”.\u00a0 Jesus declined this offer.\u00a0 (And if you want to follow him, so must you.)<\/p>\n However, unlike Jesus, St. George is a sinner, and this means that he will probably be doubting God in ways that Jesus wouldn’t, and he won’t be bearing his burden with the same degree of patience and trust that the Son of God would.\u00a0 Nevertheless, he will become more Chrsitlike to the extent that he prayerfully refers all his difficulties (most\u00a0especially<\/em>\u00a0including St. George’s\u00a0present<\/em>\u00a0suffering due to doubts) to the loving care of the Father.<\/p>\n Afterlife Anxieties<\/strong><\/p>\n [While the whole point of this section is to be reassuring, feel free to skip to the next bold section if you prefer not to think about this topic right now.]<\/p>\n A complicating factor in some cases is the fear of damnation (either for themselves, or for friends and family members), either as an explicit fear, or an implicit motivating factor.<\/p>\n Suppose that St. George has been raised in a church which teaches that God automatically sends everyone who dies without believing in Jesus to Hell.\u00a0 (His church’s teaching might actually be more nuanced than this, but the question is which theological impressions are controlling George’s mind, which may not even be the same as the theology that he would consciously state if you ask him what you believe.)<\/p>\n This fear of Hell thus acts as a disincentive for a religious person to accept any possibility of a non-religious perspective being valid.\u00a0 Yet many intelligent Christians are sufficiently self-aware to notice this effect on their own minds, and worry that it is compromising their judgement.<\/p>\n Also, the doctrine raises its own set of thorny (and emotionally disturbing) questions about the justice and goodness of God (even though God is both our Father and the Supreme Good), so now St. George has yet\u00a0another<\/em>\u00a0set of religious doubts and fears to process at the same time.<\/p>\n Actually, this effect can work in both directions.\u00a0 A person who might be in the process of journeying from unbelief to Christianity, can find it difficult to admit it to themselves\u2014because taking the possibility of Christianity seriously, could also require taking eternal punishment seriously as a possible outcome.\u00a0 Conversely, many people raised as Christians deconvert, precisely because they experience the threat of Hell primarily as a form of intellectual blackmail, and the only way to win\u00a0that<\/em>\u00a0game is to take a hard line, by refusing to play.<\/p>\n If only they knew how much God loves everyone, and how much he desires for everyone to be reconciled with him!\u00a0 That God has no desire to punish for the sake of mere revenge, but would much rather bless us with the richest of rewards.\u00a0 And that none of the warnings in the Bible were intended to stunt anyone’s intellectual or spiritual development\u2014not at all\u2014but only to prevent people from selling their birthright, by\u00a0refusing<\/em>\u00a0to grow and to love by\u00a0means of various evasions<\/a>.<\/p>\n One day Christ will return and he will rebuke those who, like Job’s friends, tried to use “orthodoxy” (as\u00a0they<\/em>\u00a0undersood it) not in a redemptive way, but as a tool for controlling people, in order to try to keep people from asking honest questions or thinking for themselves.<\/p>\n Anyway, when this doctrine of eternal punishment is introduced in a clumsy and controlling fashion (which is a million miles away from the actual point of the doctrine) it tends to cause both religious and irreligious people to try to repress any spiritual doubts they might have.\u00a0 Because if they took their doubts seriously then it would make them\u00a0extremely<\/em>\u00a0uncomfortable.<\/p>\n But if you belong to the minority of people, who aren’t able to repress these doubts, but also don’t yet know how to process them in a healthy manner, then you are one of the people I’m writing this post for.<\/p>\n Suppose St. George thinks he might lose his faith by reading a sufficiently convincing atheist argument.\u00a0 Now his own eternal happiness also seems to be at stake.\u00a0 That bombastic, confident, suave infidel on the Internet has become an existential threat.\u00a0 But on the other side, St. George thinks that, as a Christian and as an honest man, he also has an obligation to seek the truth.\u00a0 And this means that he should try to believe whatever is best supported by the evidence.\u00a0 This can lead to a sense of conflict within the saint, between the twin demands of fidelity and honesty.<\/p>\n The conflict\u00a0really<\/em>\u00a0arises because St. George has a false picture of God the Father, since he believes on the one hand that God is just, but also that it is possible that God would punish him for exercising a virtue (namely honesty).\u00a0 This is a contradiction in St. George’s worldview, that he will need to find a way to resolve.<\/p>\n (In fact St. George is probably exaggerating the likelihood of his falling away from the Christian faith.\u00a0 His fear of apostasy arises from the same place as his other neurotic fears, by imagining a “worst case scenario” and then playing it out in his head.\u00a0 But in what follows I don’t want to dismiss this concern, but rather to face it head-on.)<\/p>\n Some Christian denominations teach that it is not possible for Christians to lose their salvation.\u00a0 But this makes less of a difference to than you might think, since religious people inclined to neuroticism can\u00a0always\u00a0find a way<\/em>\u00a0to make their religion support their neurosis, no matter what their explicit religious doctrines are.\u00a0 St. George will simply transfer his doubts and fears to the question of whether he was ever saved in the first place.\u00a0 Maybe he never invited Jesus into his heart properly; since if he did, then why is he suffering from these current\u00a0perplexities<\/a>?<\/p>\n (This problem can be exacerbated in a church environment that encourages Christians to always give an up-beat testimony about how their spiritual walk is going.\u00a0 There is a sort of “emotional prosperity gospel” in some evangelical circles, an expectation that if you aren’t happy enough then you don’t have enough faith.\u00a0 This is almost as destructive of a heresy as the physical prospertity gospel which teaches that faith in God leads to material riches.\u00a0 If you are attending a church like this, you should consider finding another place that allows you to express your real feelings.)<\/p>\n It’s sort of a Protestantish version of a Roman Catholic with\u00a0scruples<\/a>, who might think that he has to go over and over again to Confession, in order to confess the same sins, because he fears that he might not have done it properly and with full sincereity the first ten times.<\/p>\n Except that, because Protestantism teaches that salvation is by\u00a0faith<\/em>\u00a0and not by works, a Protestant’s scruples are more likely to concern the question of whether he has enough “faith” to be saved.\u00a0 (If he is a Calvinist he would instead worry about whether he is predestined to be among the “elect”.)\u00a0 As though faith were a psychological state that has to be drummed up with willpower, rather than the gift of God which is granted to\u00a0everyone<\/em>\u00a0who turns to Jesus.\u00a0 (Ah, says the scrupulous person, but it has to be a sincere turning to Jesus, and how can I ever know that I was really\u00a0sincere<\/em>\u00a0in doing so?)<\/p>\n Actually, the main point of the Protestant Reformation was to\u00a0prevent<\/em>\u00a0people from relating to God in this pathological, neurotic way.\u00a0\u00a0But that doesn’t stop individual Protestants from missing the point and doing it anyway.\u00a0 Rather than saying, along with St. Paul,<\/p>\n “If God is for us,\u00a0who can be against us?\u00a0 He who did not spare his own Son,\u00a0but gave him up for us all\u2014how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?\u00a0 Who will bring any charge\u00a0against those whom God has chosen?\u00a0 It is God who justifies.\u00a0 Who then is the one who condemns?\u00a0 No one.” St. George is acting (however much he may try to obscure this to himself) as though his faith is primarily based on some mental contorsion which\u00a0he<\/em>\u00a0needs to accomplish in himself.\u00a0 Rather than being a work which only the God can do, and which God\u00a0will<\/em>\u00a0do if he waits patiently.<\/p>\n These fears and anxieties can exist side-by-side with a real and genuine love for God, and a desire to enjoy him in a less self-centered way.\u00a0 But in St. George’s case this love has not yet fruitioned into the mature state spoken of by St. John, who writes that:<\/p>\n There is no fear in love. But perfect\u00a0[i.e. complete]\u00a0love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.\u00a0\u00a0(1 John 4:18<\/a>)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n When St. George reads a passsage like this, his instinctive response may be to feel guilty because he doesn’t measure up to this standard.\u00a0 He may think that the doubts are his own fault, and that he wouldn’t be having this problem if he were only capable of the kind of trust in Jesus that other Christians seem to have.<\/p>\n But even if all that were true, it doesn’t follow that feeling guilty about it is going to get St. George any closer to perfect love, or that guilt is a useful feeling to have about this.\u00a0\u00a0Yes, God wants to give you this experience of trusting love, but not everyone can expect for it to be be perfectly formed from the beginning of their spiritual walk.\u00a0 Often it only comes with time and maturity, so there is a need to be patient with yourself.<\/p>\n Maybe it would be better for St. George to try feeling compassion for himself.\u00a0 The New Testament says:<\/p>\n Be merciful to those who doubt.\u00a0(Jude 22<\/a>)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n St. George would probably be more charitable towards another person who told him about similar spiritual struggles.\u00a0 St. George needs to realize that if he would have compassion on another person experiencing the same struggles, then God must feel even more compassion towards those having these struggles\u2014including compassion for George himself.<\/p>\n And that is why George is more likely to resolve his anxieties by means of growth in love for his neighbor, than by any amount of religious reading.\u00a0 If George becomes the sort of person who loves his neighbor unconditionally, then he will also find it easier to understand how God can love him unconditionally.<\/p>\n Exiting the Loop<\/strong><\/p>\n In order to make progress, St. George needs to make a conscious decision to exit the mental loop and to\u00a0decide<\/em>\u00a0how he is going to live the next portion of his life\u2014either as a Christian, as a seeker, or as a skeptic.\u00a0 And once he makes this decision, he needs to stick with it for the time being, and not simply go around and around and around in the mental-doubt ferris wheel.<\/p>\n (Let me be clear once more that I am talking to people who have been stressing about this issue for a\u00a0long time<\/em>, and are\u00a0suffering<\/em>\u00a0as a result, and trying to give them permission to take that feeling of pain as a legitimate reason to do something different.\u00a0 If you are encountering Christianity and the arguments for it for the\u00a0first time<\/em>, or if you are currently\u00a0enjoying<\/em>\u00a0learning more about the arguments on both sides, then this blog post is not for you.\u00a0 God might still be asking you to make a decision to give your life to him, in which case you should trust him with that.\u00a0 But you aren’t suffering from the type of obsessive doubt that I am describing here, and depending on your personality and a gazillion other factors, maybe you never will.)<\/p>\n If you are in St. George’s position, it might help to ask yourself what you would do if you were actually\u00a0forced<\/em>\u00a0to decide now.\u00a0 Suppose you needed to cross a scary bridge in the Amazon jungle to bring supplies to help missionaries translate the Bible, or you were trying to comfort a dying child asking you questions about Jesus and Heaven.\u00a0 Suppose there were a clear difference between the course of action you would take if you believed it was all true, and if you didn’t.\u00a0 What would you attempt to do?<\/p>\n In fact, since there are\u00a0always<\/em>\u00a0ways to obey Jesus’s commands more faithfully in any life circumstance, this isn’t really a hypothetical question.\u00a0 You are\u00a0always<\/em>\u00a0in a position to make a decision and act!\u00a0 The\u00a0verse<\/a>:<\/p>\n Trust and obey, for there’s no other way isn’t just for children, but for adults also.\u00a0 If your intellectual ruminations aren’t oriented towards active trust in what you believe\u2014towards some actual actions\u2014then it should be no surprise if your mental processes have gone of the tracks.\u00a0 Trying to force yourself to to “trust” in some way that is decoupled from obedience is total nonsense.\u00a0 Trusting Jesus\u00a0doesn’t<\/em>\u00a0mean managing to execute some complicated mental gymnastics in your head.\u00a0 It means doing what he said.<\/p>\n (I mean, to the extent that you understand what he wants you to do.\u00a0 I’m not advising you to\u00a0initiate a\u00a0new<\/em>\u00a0series of doubts about some part of his teaching that you don’t understand yet, say about whether he\u00a0really<\/em>\u00a0wants you to sell all of your possessions and give them to the poor.\u00a0 But rather to pick one<\/em> thing Jesus said, however small, and start doing it.)<\/p>\n Perhaps you could start by forgiving\u00a0one<\/em>\u00a0enemy or buying clothes for\u00a0one<\/em>\u00a0homeless person.\u00a0 The saints in the Bible who were praised for their faith, like Abraham or Rahab, always expressed that faith by some specific\u00a0action.\u00a0<\/em>\u00a0Otherwise how would we know about their faith?<\/p>\n As another St. George (MacDonald) wrote<\/a>,<\/p>\n Obedience is not perfection, but trying.\u00a0 You count him a hard master, and will not stir.\u00a0 Do you suppose he ever gave a commandment knowing it was of no use for it could not be done?\u00a0 He tells us a thing knowing that we must do it, or be lost; that not his Father himself could save us but by getting us at length to do everything he commands, for not otherwise can we know life, can we learn the holy secret of divine being.\u00a0 He knows that you can try, and that in your trying and failing he will be able to help you, until at length you shall do the will of God even as he does it himself.\u00a0 He takes the will in the imperfect deed, and makes the deed at last perfect.\u00a0 Correctest notions without obedience are worthless.\u00a0 The doing of the will of God is the way to oneness with God, which alone is salvation.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Making a decision isn’t going to magically make it so George never experiences the emotion of doubt again.\u00a0 Time and patience are required.\u00a0 But as long as his\u00a0will<\/em>\u00a0is in the right place, he will get to the right place in the end.<\/p>\n If St. George wants to\u00a0be happy while journeying towards that destination, then he needs to do whatever it takes to exit the infinite loop that is making him suffer mentally.\u00a0 Admittedly this cannot always be done immediately, by direct willpower alone.\u00a0 Hence, at least some of the time when he has spiritual anxieties, he needs to be willing to resolve these anxieties by engaging in\u00a0spiritual practices<\/em>, rather than by re-hashing the same intellectual arguments over and over again.<\/p>\n Spiritual Practices<\/strong><\/p>\n Spiritual practices include things like: singing hymns,\u00a0reciting the Lord’s prayer, meditating on Bible verses, physical postures (like kneeling, bowing down, or standing) intended to express reverence, lighting candles or incense, etc, not to mention the great variety of different types of congregational worship services.<\/p>\n There are a great variety of such practices, used by different Christian groups.\u00a0 Rather than trying to catalogue them all, I will simply note that all Christian groups recommend such practices, and that (assuming theological soundness) you are free to pick whichever practices help you the most.<\/p>\n It should be noted that spiritual practices that reduce anxiety, often involve repetition, which is facilitated by the use of pre-existing material.\u00a0 (For example, at a moment of severe anxiety, you might recite the same Bible verse over again, until you calm down.)\u00a0 To avoid possible scruples, it is worth commenting on the compatibility of such practices, with Jesus’ teaching that:<\/p>\n
\n(B)<\/strong>\u00a0you are usually able to set these thoughts aside, in order to engage in other important activities (such as work, hobbies, interacting with family\/friends, or sleeping),<\/p>\n
\nGeorge<\/em><\/p>\n
\nAron<\/em><\/p>\n
\nWho will all our sorrows share?
\nJesus knows our every weakness,
\nTake it to the Lord in prayer.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\n(Romans 8:31-34<\/a>)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\nTo be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.wall.org\/~aron\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/soul3.jpg\" "\\"soul\\"")
<\/a>I’ve drawn arrows to show how “information” flows through us:<\/p>\n