The NXR Podcast - THE LIVESTREAM - Why You’re Still Sad After 10 Sessions

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00:00:16.280 You and I both know that this ministry is willing to talk about things that most ministries aren't.

00:00:21.860 We need this content for the glory of God to reach more people's ears.

00:00:26.800 we are witnessing the birth of a new priesthood they wear cardigans instead of cassocks quote

00:00:35.320 brene brown instead of the bible and dispense diagnoses in the place of absolution and for

00:00:41.920 millions of americans they've become the final authority on matters of the soul in just one

00:00:47.680 generation we've gone from god save a wretch like me to my therapist says the modern language of

00:00:55.200 self-care and self-love have replaced self-denial and love for God. All the while, rates of

00:01:02.000 depression, anxiety, and suicide have climbed, not fallen. The numbers are staggering. Nearly one in

00:01:09.740 five U.S. adults is in therapy. Over 40 million have been diagnosed with anxiety. Even children

00:01:17.480 are being trained to identify as mentally ill. But here's the real crisis. It's not just that

00:01:24.160 our nation is mentally unwell. It's that the church is copying the world's prescriptions. 0.84

00:01:30.480 Christians now outsource the care of the soul to secular professionals who deny the soul 0.93

00:01:36.080 even exists. Historically, the church called this an affliction called melancholy, a burden of body,

00:01:44.420 yes, but also a trial of the conscience and a grief of the soul. The Puritans didn't dismiss

00:01:51.320 this pain, but they also never called it neutral. They traced it back to disordered loves, guilty 0.58

00:01:58.540 consciences, spiritual darkness, and then pointed people to Christ, not a fainting couch. This

00:02:06.000 episode is brought to you by our premier sponsors, Armored Republic and Reese Fund, as well as our

00:02:11.700 Patreon members and our generous donors. You can join our Patreon by going to patreon.com forward

00:02:18.200 slash right response ministries or you can donate by going to right response ministries.com

00:02:24.360 forward slash donate today we're asking a hard question what if our therapeutic age is not a

00:02:31.660 solution to our suffering but a refusal to see it rightly what if our feelings are not enemies but

00:02:38.580 rather signpost and what if the church still holds the cure not in a padded office but in word

00:02:46.560 sacrament, and the communion of the saints. Let's dive in.

00:02:59.200 All right, good afternoon, gentlemen. Happy Wednesday. Good to see you all again today.

00:03:03.500 Excited for this episode. Before we get started, just want to remind you, if you are listening to

00:03:09.080 the video or watching it, please go ahead and hit the like button. Another thing that we don't

00:03:13.180 mentioned very often, but all the cool podcasts and YouTube channels do, is share the video.

00:03:18.780 Apparently, that's magic in the algorithm as well. That's the quintessential way.

00:03:22.560 Send it to your sister-in-law who's going to therapy. This will be really helpful for her.

00:03:26.500 She'll love it. She'll appreciate it. Yeah. Better yet, send it to her therapist.

00:03:30.100 Yeah, there you go. There you go. All right. Well, that is the topic going on today. We're

00:03:34.920 going to be diving into the question of therapy and counseling and just this whole idea of

00:03:42.140 mental wellness. Mental wellness is kind of a new term. I'm not sure that it's necessarily new

00:03:49.680 in Christian thinking, but it wasn't really ever called mental wellness until recently.

00:03:56.780 So one of the things that I did in preparing for this episode was I did a little bit of research

00:04:02.560 into some of the statistics of how many people are going to counseling and therapy and things

00:04:07.540 of that nature. Is it increasing? Is it decreasing? And one of the things that I found was

00:04:13.980 I was surprised on the one hand because I thought the number was maybe a little bit higher. It's a

00:04:20.200 little lower than I thought, full disclosure, but it's still a lot and it's increasing quite a bit

00:04:25.320 year over year. More and more people are going to counselors, going to therapists. And one of the

00:04:31.640 things that has contributed greatly to this is the fact that a lot of new companies are either

00:04:39.000 forming or existing counseling companies are adding on digital or distance counseling options.

00:04:49.320 And in fact, one of the things I'll talk about later is that this is specifically this online

00:04:56.700 counseling is becoming a really, really big industry where you don't actually have to go

00:05:01.520 see someone. You can just log into Zoom. There's always a therapist of some sort available.

00:05:06.980 You can talk through your issues. And I thought to myself, what a brilliant business model.

00:05:13.340 The moment someone is feeling nervous or anxious or depressed or whatever, which happens to,

00:05:18.960 you know, many people, possibly many times a day or throughout the week,

00:05:22.380 it's not like you have to say well i've got an appointment scheduled for two weeks from next

00:05:27.440 tuesday i'm just gonna have to dig in my heels put on my big boy pants and get through until i

00:05:34.620 can go see my therapist it's i can zoom immediately in the moment of some sort of anxiety i can log

00:05:41.680 in through zoom or through some digital service 55 copay i don't know what it is i'm making that

00:05:47.140 number up and immediately talk to someone and i thought man if there's ever a way to get people

00:05:51.740 addicted to a service of some sort that is one of them right i've seen them targeted too like it'll

00:05:57.700 be ads uh just for men specifically like men are you feeling down yep or the other ones are like

00:06:02.580 lgbtq like oh you're gay and we have counseling specifically for these special interest groups

00:06:07.980 so it's not just broadly like you can log on you can do this from the privacy of your home 0.76

00:06:11.360 it's also you very much to belong to this group or to that group we have counseling perfectly for

00:06:15.940 you for the low price of whatever it is i i provide specific counseling for those who are gay

00:06:21.620 and it's perfect for them like you can call me i won't even charge and i can give you my counsel

00:06:27.300 right now to everybody who's listening i you pick up the phone you call me hey i'm really struggling

00:06:31.220 i feel depressed you know i feel anxious i'm gay and then i would just say stop it yeah and they're

00:06:36.420 like stop stop being depressed no stop being gay yeah just stop that and uh and things will vitally

00:06:42.820 improved yeah fantastic counsel some of the best counsel i've ever given yeah absolutely good solid

00:06:47.640 biblical counsel stop it stop it yeah i think that was a sketch right a comedy sketch yeah it wasn't

00:06:52.780 a biblical uh it was pretty funny though well it was actually a show i think it was boy meets world

00:06:57.700 actually oh i think the vex the vex what it was on mad tv okay i was gonna say vivek ramaswami's

00:07:04.800 hardest hit uh where like this woman walked in and said i you know i have this terrible phobia

00:07:09.940 of being buried alive she goes in to see a counselor yeah exactly and he's like she's like

00:07:13.900 oh well tell me about it you know and she's like well i imagine that i'm in a box and it's closed

00:07:17.820 and i'm put underneath the ground and they begin piling the dirt on he's like oh my goodness the

00:07:21.660 counselor he's like that's terrifying um and then he's like um all right well i'm going to provide

00:07:27.120 for you uh some incredibly effective counseling you know and uh and she's like should i you know

00:07:31.480 she gets out a pen and paper should i write it down he's like i found that most people can remember

00:07:34.860 you know he's like it's two words stop it she's like stop it what do you mean it's like she's

00:07:40.760 like but it's it's terrifying i can't help it i said you know i just start imagining the dirt

00:07:44.120 piling on i'm being buried and he's like stop it just stop it stop imagining that so anyways yep

00:07:50.160 yep good counsel it is actually that would go that would go far so what i want to do today

00:07:56.160 before we jump into kind of some of our own thoughts or or the history of what the christian

00:08:02.020 Church has thought about this topic is just to look at a little bit of data about the current

00:08:07.000 situation. This is all U.S.-based data, but Nathan, let's go ahead and show graph number one here.

00:08:14.400 So this is what age groups are receiving mental health treatment, okay? Treatment,

00:08:22.040 I'm, for the listener, in quotation marks.

00:08:25.480 So 18 to 25 is receiving 26, well, what is that?

00:08:32.180 No, 26% of 18 to 25-year-olds, 26.7, are receiving some sort of mental health treatment.

00:08:38.840 26 to 49-year-olds, 24.5 of them are receiving mental health treatment.

00:08:43.920 50-plus-year-olds, 18% of them, and actually, in other data that I researched, if you go

00:08:50.440 to like 60s and 70s it drops down to like four or five percent of really the elderly are receiving

00:08:56.520 mental health treatment right what this tells me is that even though um the overall average number

00:09:02.840 is about one in five people in america who are receiving this treatment treatment it's a trend

00:09:08.360 among younger people and when you say one in five can i just you might have a graph for this so i

00:09:12.840 might be beating us to the punch i do not i'm gonna guess that that one in five number is gonna be

00:09:17.960 one in like three women well and one in like seven or eight men it is much more it's it's

00:09:26.160 the men was actually higher okay um it is higher than the women no or higher than what i just said

00:09:31.020 that's fair um there's no way it's higher than the women yep i was about to give some of that

00:09:34.780 biblical no no 100 stop your mind but there has been to wes's point there has been targeted

00:09:41.120 advertising to men yeah to normalize this idea of going to therapy and in fact my brother works

00:09:47.420 in the trades in wisconsin and so most of the most of the people working in trades are men

00:09:54.540 and they have a monthly kind of community event where they have someone come in and talk about

00:10:00.220 the state of the industry and um they had someone come in one month and was talking about

00:10:06.780 the mental health epidemic that is afflicting men in the trades and how they're the overlooked

00:10:11.420 um demographic in america and a lot of them have anxiety and worry and it's like well it sounds

00:10:18.040 like they're just men trying to provide for their families and they face the brunt of that like

00:10:21.200 right and they they probably should well my brother in the q a time um stood up and said

00:10:26.880 you think any of this is spiritual and the the lady doing the presentation said no we don't we

00:10:32.260 don't really see a link there we it's just more you know so um but to that to that point even at

00:10:37.900 a trades um monthly meeting they were there trying to convince employers to make mental health

00:10:45.260 counseling services available to their tradesmen right because it's a business they get paid of

00:10:50.880 course they're trying to convince that like there's a percent it's just one more thing that

00:10:54.180 you can make any company with more than whatever 30 employees or 15 and then you can if you work

00:10:59.140 hard enough you might even get you know able to lobby and pass it as legislation and now there's

00:11:03.600 you know a law to where every company of this size must have on its payroll you know a therapist

00:11:07.720 or mental health day yeah exactly and so then all these companies their therapy companies

00:11:13.000 just mandated by force of law that they get to stay in business and keep bamboozling a bunch of

00:11:19.260 people actually Joel you can do the you can do the math here on the fly I forget what your one

00:11:24.100 in one in eight you went you may have been about right this is around one in eight 25 percent of

00:11:29.280 adult women have received some form of mental health treatment in the past year compared to

00:11:33.940 about 15% of men. Okay. So I was one in six. Yeah. Well, if he said 15, 15%. So 15% would be like 0.54

00:11:45.160 one in what was that? One in 6.66. Yeah. Yeah. It's like one in seven. Well, so one in four

00:11:51.760 women and then one in six men. Closer to seven. One in 6.66 men versus, so one in seven versus

00:11:59.760 one in four. You called it. Yep. Close enough. Quite a few teens, like think about this, like

00:12:05.280 young, so not children, thank God, but teens, about 17% of teens have received official mental

00:12:15.080 health counseling or therapy of some sort. A lot of where this is going on is in schools.

00:12:19.920 And there's been not only targeted at men, but there's been a massive campaign on college campuses, especially to make mental health counseling available for free by some sort of resource officer or whole department of the university now that is responsible.

00:12:37.400 and i have a friend who who taught um for a little while at stanford which you think you know high

00:12:42.840 performance school and he said that his students he said at least half of his students were

00:12:49.960 regularly seeing counselors for anxiety and depression which is just crazy big big in the

00:12:56.360 military too when i was in a big push on and understandably you of course have men that have

00:13:01.240 come back from war and they would actually hey there's services there's people that's a little

00:13:05.480 a little different that's one thing but generally speaking we're talking about platoons and groups

00:13:09.340 of people that have never been to combat but they were always just about every every time the

00:13:13.620 squadron came together like be aware there's mental health resources you have a family readiness

00:13:17.200 officer very much so like we're here we're here we're here yeah yeah okay nate let's show the

00:13:22.580 next graph this will be a shock to absolutely zero people but the number of therapists uh the

00:13:30.000 statistic there the percentage by gender so not surprisingly um about three quarters of therapists

00:13:37.220 are women yes and about 20 a quarter of therapists are men so three three quarters of therapists are

00:13:43.420 women yeah that checks out yeah um and well because like yeah it's the same as like why are

00:13:49.820 you know why are you look at every hr department with some fortune 500 company and it's the same

00:13:54.940 thing it's like three four so in many cases probably even higher 80 85 90 percent is staffed

00:14:00.940 by women you know and so and then with therapist it's staffed by women you know and all these these

00:14:06.220 types of fields are particularly staffed by women why because they're mom jobs that's why because

00:14:13.600 women have an inescapable desire and sensation to want to mother sympathize nurture it's it's a 1.00

00:14:23.480 domestic feminine impulse that god placed in their their a good thing it's it's a good thing yeah 1.00

00:14:31.300 but because they're you know so many people are foregoing childbearing and so many women don't 1.00

00:14:37.600 end up being actual biological mothers in the familial sense the traditional sense then they

00:14:43.540 go and fulfill that desire elsewhere so they're like well if i can't have you know babies because 1.00

00:14:49.420 they've bought into some feminist lie you know whatever uh then they're like well then you know 1.00

00:14:53.820 the workplace that'll be my home and all these grown men will be my babies and i will be telling 0.59

00:14:59.900 i will be treating you know 35 year old men as though they're my toddler and i think there's a

00:15:06.060 lot of people who just as the family system is breaking down they didn't get a sort of good solid

00:15:13.100 fatherly counsel and motherly nurturing growing up and so i remember um one of the jobs that i

00:15:20.220 worked at the manager there i mean she was she did more counseling than actual job managing people

00:15:27.300 were always in her office complaining about this hard thing about life or this conflict or this

00:15:32.620 drama with this other person and she was like her entire like 50 of her job was people coming to her

00:15:39.120 they had no one else to talk to about the difficulties in their life and so when people

00:15:42.960 don't have truth that they're getting in a church and godly counsel that they're getting from

00:15:48.400 brothers and sisters in christ they are going to go somewhere to find someone who will at best pat

00:15:55.200 them on the back and at worst like stroke their ego with the modern counseling techniques that we

00:15:59.280 have so yeah i just pulled it up like uh percent female majors so social work 85 female major 1.00

00:16:06.640 health professions close to 80 same thing with education psychology all above 75 majority women

00:16:13.120 yeah yeah as i've done research in some of the episodes over the last couple weeks and months

00:16:18.560 i find this really interesting what are um marketing or not not marketing but growth reports

00:16:25.280 on industries saying in other words people are running financial analysis to determine whether

00:16:30.800 a sector or an industry is a good option for investors to invest in and so this is one of

00:16:37.680 those reports and it's saying that the the therapy market or the mental counseling the mental health

00:16:44.960 treatment market is going to grow by 5.9 per 6 per year currently it's at about i think if i remember

00:16:51.840 about 4.5 billion dollars a year in the u.s and they're expecting that by 2033 so eight years

00:16:58.880 it'll be up to a 7.3 billion dollar industry um which people would want to know that to know if

00:17:04.480 they should invest and there have actually been quite a few fairly large mergers where um i i

00:17:10.800 didn't even know that there are these massive counseling networks that have merged together

00:17:16.720 in part to be able to offer a more robust online option for for a lot of this counseling so this

00:17:23.040 This is an industry that is embracing technological innovation and really targeted advertising, like we said earlier.

00:17:30.500 And it's only growing and increasing.

00:17:32.160 And the thing about it is that I admit that there are people who have times, you know, in life where they need advice, right?

00:17:43.000 Sure.

00:17:43.180 But when you're told any moment of anxiety or fear or worry or being depressed is a mental health incident, because a lot of the things when you dive into the numbers, you say, well, what are the mental illnesses?

00:17:58.980 Do they have schizophrenia, bipolar?

00:18:01.040 No, a lot of it is like a person felt anxious.

00:18:04.280 Well, that sort of person is being told now when you feel anxious, you need to schedule an appointment with a quote unquote qualified professional.

00:18:13.820 And so the more that people are told that, the more they're going to say, oh, I feel

00:18:18.740 anxious multiple times a week.

00:18:20.780 Really?

00:18:21.180 Multiple times a week?

00:18:22.600 That's a lot.

00:18:23.960 Yeah, that's not normal at all.

00:18:25.280 You need a therapist.

00:18:26.560 In fact, let's get you signed up for three times a week, you know?

00:18:28.920 And so it is going to, I think, the direction it's going, it is an industry that's only

00:18:34.000 going to increase.

00:18:34.660 And I think, I'm sure there are well-intentioned people out there, but I think what we're going 1.00

00:18:39.760 to find is that it really is something that preys on the fears and anxieties of, uh, weak women and,

00:18:48.380 and weak people, um, who are not getting good, solid counsel in other places. So cool. The last

00:18:56.000 chart I wanted to show before we kind of, um, move on from the state of the situation in America

00:19:01.440 is really, really interesting. Uh, so Nate, let's look at this one. This one has two trend lines on

00:19:06.720 it so the black trend line is um the change in the rate of those getting mental health care

00:19:13.720 and so this starts back in 2002 and um it starts at a flat line so it's just a change in the rate

00:19:20.160 it's not objective numbers but the the trend line generally goes up in 2004 it dropped a little bit

00:19:26.720 but more and more people it's showing are getting mental health care to the point where now and

00:19:32.460 well, this was from 2021, I think, 32% more people in America were getting mental health care than

00:19:41.920 in 2002. Well, you see on the chart, the trend line, it goes in basically almost the opposite

00:19:49.220 direction, especially recently, where the change in rate of people who are reporting excellent

00:19:53.960 mental health. Initially, back in 2001, 2002, 2003, it seemed like mental health, this is

00:20:02.500 reported rates, it's not an objective metric, but it seemed like it really spiked. People were

00:20:07.040 saying, I am more mentally healthy than I was before. But what you see on the graph, for those

00:20:12.940 of you listening, is especially coming into about 2012, 2011, somewhere in there, as the rate of

00:20:20.840 people going to mental health counseling increases, the rate of people who said,

00:20:27.700 I feel like I am in excellent mental health drops and drops and drops until it plummets

00:20:32.820 right around 2019, 2020. And so the point of this graph is to show that while mental health

00:20:41.320 counseling options and appointments have increased significantly in the last 20 years,

00:20:47.780 the relative or the perceived mental health that people have has has dropped off a cliff almost at

00:20:55.120 the same rate especially over the last 10 years it was funny it was literally just on monday the

00:20:58.740 episode we talked about the pope we talked about yep he's elected in 2013 and that really is the

00:21:03.860 part where the zenith of everything that you could call what we're opposed to really begins to rise

00:21:09.040 and i would say the peak of it being 2018 2019 2020 and i don't think it's a coincidence obviously

00:21:14.840 more people are going to therapy that's not great but also too i don't think it's coincidence that

00:21:19.380 people's sense of whatever it is be it their self-worth be it uh their ability to maintain

00:21:23.600 a job all of these different things they just fall off you go from holding relatively steady

00:21:28.540 through for example a great global depression yeah recession yeah the recession you only see

00:21:34.820 a huge change tons of people lost their jobs lost their livelihoods at the end of the day they didn't

00:21:39.200 in mass just lose their mental health but then you get to whatever this was and it's white privilege

00:21:44.140 and you should feel guilty 0.90

00:21:45.320 and America's racist,

00:21:46.520 this, that, or the other,

00:21:47.300 and you need to be in therapy

00:21:48.560 and your mental health

00:21:49.820 just tanks off a cliff.

00:21:51.120 Yeah.

00:21:51.360 Yeah.

00:21:51.680 The lowest recording.

00:21:53.100 Yeah.

00:21:53.480 Yeah.

00:21:54.200 Okay.

00:21:54.620 We're going to hit

00:21:55.180 our first commercial break.

00:21:56.180 When we come back,

00:21:57.340 we're going to start

00:21:58.020 to talk a little bit about

00:21:59.100 how the church,

00:22:01.500 especially through

00:22:02.040 the Puritan times,

00:22:03.520 talked about some of these

00:22:05.480 real issues

00:22:06.580 that people experience,

00:22:08.040 but how they diagnosed it

00:22:09.540 and what kind of solutions

00:22:10.480 they offered.

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00:23:51.520 All right, welcome back. Gentlemen, towards the end, just so you know, I'm going to ask a couple

00:23:56.440 questions about the legitimacy of what we term now to be mental illness um wes i'm curious from

00:24:04.200 you with your background and research about if you've done anything in um like legitimate mental

00:24:10.280 illnesses there are some people out there who say that if you have like uh ocd like legitimate ocd

00:24:17.960 or multi multi-personality disorder that this is uh basically just demon possession so i'm

00:24:25.160 I'm curious with kind of your research into neurology and things like that, Wes.

00:24:29.400 I'm going to lean on you a little bit later on.

00:24:31.280 But the categories that we now call mental health are not necessarily new.

00:24:38.620 The Puritans talked quite a bit about it.

00:24:41.220 They were overly introspective, and maybe that's why they dealt a little bit more with it.

00:24:45.520 But they had terms like the dark night of the soul, where they felt like God had abandoned them to depression,

00:24:54.420 or anxiety or just long periods where there seemed to be no hope no spurgeon called like

00:24:59.880 his own yes the black dog yes something like that yes yeah followed him yes exactly um and one of

00:25:06.380 the resources that i read over um in preparation for this episode is richard baxter's uh he wrote

00:25:13.100 a series of sermons on the topic of the melancholy of the soul and so christian thinkers puritan

00:25:20.900 thinkers have identified for a long time that there are legitimate things that afflict us,

00:25:27.380 right? Even the Apostle Paul, we speculate what the thorn was that the Lord sent him,

00:25:35.340 the thorn in his flesh. But some have speculated that it was a despondency or a despair,

00:25:42.500 a natural sort of despair where his hope in the Lord had to overcome that. It's not a new thing.

00:25:48.500 And so the first thing I want to say is while there are a lot of good and proper reactions from Christians about modern mental health counseling and just kind of poking fun at how silly, how worldly those things are, even in Christian communities like among the Puritans and among the English Puritans,

00:26:11.980 there has been a category of deep and prolonged melancholy like baxter calls it um and so we

00:26:22.640 would be we would do well to see that this sort of thing is not the the phenomenon is not new

00:26:30.000 in our modern time i think what's new in our modern time is that people um assume that mental

00:26:38.100 health is the happiness is the expected state of mental of mental health that if you're not

00:26:46.200 happy at all moments you're mentally unhealthy that if you're not actively engaged in loving

00:26:53.180 life and if you don't have this overwhelming sense of um you know wonder and joy at all times of

00:27:00.080 tranquility then that indicates a lack of mental health and when you set people up for that

00:27:07.560 all of them are going to think that they're mentally unhealthy richard baxter goes so far

00:27:11.780 as to say that some people who struggle with this melancholy do so because they have unrealistic

00:27:17.800 expectations he says the body is frail and so insofar and he dives a lot into whether some of

00:27:25.100 these things are physical or mental or spiritual but he says even if they're all physical the body

00:27:30.820 itself is frail and for us to expect the sort of state of being that we will experience in heaven

00:27:36.340 and in the eternal state now is simply like someone set that person up for a wrong expectation.

00:27:43.040 He says that all of life at one turn to the next will have disappointments, frailties,

00:27:51.320 weaknesses, trials, tribulations, just in the natural fallen world that we live in,

00:27:56.160 apart from spiritual affliction or sin or any of those things.

00:28:00.900 And so he said that one of the reasons why people give in to despair and to melancholy

00:28:04.720 is even back then he said they have been convinced that life is supposed to be much easier than what

00:28:11.520 they are going through right now and i thought that was quite insightful coming from someone

00:28:16.520 who lives in a time where they certainly dealt with more grief in some levels in some areas than

00:28:23.500 we do him still saying to his parishioners someone convinced you that your life is supposed to be

00:28:29.460 easy and that's not how it is under the curse and you need to change your perspective immediately

00:28:35.620 the goal of this life is not ease that's what's that's what's promised in the next life the goal

00:28:41.220 of this life is faithfulness perseverance hope um and those spiritual virtues that we're supposed

00:28:47.380 to cling to so for one point i thought that was incredibly helpful um just on a purely physical

00:28:54.140 level that he recognized that that's a real error and temptation that even christians fall into

00:29:00.680 it could be said too i've done a lot of thought about this because i used to love the puritans

00:29:05.720 more than i would now and if i used to used to love the well i could say one of their

00:29:10.820 shortcomings was it they had a very strong introspection right and to the point now

00:29:17.020 introspection is good paul and peter speak well of examining yourselves that there are absolutely

00:29:22.340 to be times in your life where you take stock of who you are and what you've done. But if there's

00:29:26.880 one thing that I could say about them in their personal theology and in their practice, there

00:29:31.340 was very much so a meditation upon the inner thoughts, meditation upon the inner man. What am

00:29:36.280 I? And often it was in relation to God. So how's my relationship to God? How am I praying? How am

00:29:40.740 I thinking? How am I edified? How am I all of these things? But at the end of the day, what I've seen

00:29:46.540 and what I've experienced, I would have to say that that can very quickly become, it's not just

00:29:51.180 every couple months or so i take serious stock of my spiritual life and and my thoughts and what

00:29:56.400 i'm meditating on but but close to daily and then what you do and i've done this before is it's

00:30:01.260 always this constant i could do better and it's constantly thinking like is my love for god shallow

00:30:05.500 i've spent time with friends and they're crying because they're like i feel like god is so distant

00:30:10.060 well like what like what are we talking about here we weren't meant to mediate evaluate our

00:30:17.880 relationship to God based on how I felt in the last week. We obey. We do good. We encounter him

00:30:23.680 in the Lord's Supper. We encounter him in baptism and the preaching of the word. Those things are

00:30:28.520 always as much as possible. God does not give us prayer as a means of grace, actually. He gives

00:30:33.100 bread and wine that are corporeal. They're bodily. They're physical. They're tangible.

00:30:37.300 And so introspection, some of it, but there most certainly can be too much of it and lead towards

00:30:42.300 exactly what Baxter was saying there. I'm just thinking about what I'm thinking about all the

00:30:46.300 time. Get up and work and do something. Right. No, you're right. Even the Puritans, though,

00:30:50.680 to be fair, I think some of them at least later recognized that and began to speak against that

00:30:57.380 by saying, look up and look out. Like when it came to assurance of salvation, for instance,

00:31:04.340 many of the Puritans, John Bunyan would be an example. There were many who struggled,

00:31:07.980 had prolonged seasons of multiple years. I think in the case of Bunyan was like seven years of

00:31:13.220 wrestling like does the lord really love me am i really saved that's part of my own testimony you

00:31:17.100 know and struggling with that for years um but but then some of the you know uh thomas goodwin

00:31:22.120 would be an example of um a more hopeful puritan in his preaching that really calls men when it

00:31:29.440 came to assurance of salvation particularly said uh no it's not um you don't look inward it's not

00:31:35.580 naval incessant naval gazing it's not uh well how do i feel do i feel confident about my salvation

00:31:40.760 who cares how you feel look up and look out see christ see his love for you and so um i think that

00:31:47.480 that's something that some of the puritans course corrected on but you're right i would say you know

00:31:51.500 i like the puritans but i would say um too ideological that's one of the things that

00:31:56.740 concerns me about the puritans it's too much um ideology and then um too much um of the

00:32:03.320 introspection and what both of those things i think like a common tie between them is just

00:32:08.040 uh too much uh subjectivity right it's just it was too interpersonal subjective feeling based and

00:32:15.720 ideology and say what do you mean ideology like the puritans are known for their expositional

00:32:20.960 preaching yeah uh but um every time i'll just say like this um the sermon i preached yesterday

00:32:29.600 on easter sunday was very puritan yeah what do i mean um well it was it was uh exegetical

00:32:37.780 preaching. I talked about the faith of the paralytic and his friends who took him to Jesus

00:32:44.780 to be healed. However, I focused on about half of a verse and preached for an hour. And I could

00:32:53.520 easily preach the text again because I did not even get to probably 75% of the text. Now, I

00:33:00.220 actually stayed in the text. I was talking about the text. But my point is this. There's a way of

00:33:05.880 doing exegetical preaching where you can have um you can have too large of a text to where you

00:33:11.080 it's just a cursory you know a gloss line over it yeah fly over you can't actually get into depth

00:33:17.280 with anything because it's like my text today is the entire book of exodus you know i but there's

00:33:22.040 also a way of like my text today and spurgeon was notorious for this and i like spurgeon but

00:33:26.040 spurgeon you know um with the the parable of the four soils you know he he preached that and he

00:33:31.800 preached an entire sermon uh he's gonna i'm gonna preach to this parable and he started with his

00:33:36.160 first text you would think the text is the parable nope not even close the first text was a sower

00:33:40.720 went out to sow right and now he's gonna go 60 minutes on a sower what is a sower went out what

00:33:51.440 does it mean to go out uh you know to sow what does it mean and and when you're getting that

00:33:58.080 that narrow uh the reality is spurgeon who is is known as being the prince of preachers so i'm not

00:34:04.480 trying to cast shade on spurgeon i i really appreciate spurgeon but charles spurgeon um

00:34:10.820 like what did he do in that sermon i'm going to say it people aren't going to like it i'm going

00:34:15.080 to say it he made a bunch of stuff up that's what he did jonathan edwards like sinners in the hands

00:34:22.020 of an angry god the verse is i think from deuteronomy their foot shall slip in due time

00:34:26.260 right that was his text that's well to the to that point the book that i read over for the and

00:34:32.320 it's a book it's it's i don't know it's not this is online but it would probably be 60 pages at

00:34:38.020 least from richard baxter it's all based on the verse less perhaps such a one would be swallowed

00:34:43.800 up with over much sorrow from second corinthians 2 7 now he jumps off he says okay let's talk about

00:34:50.180 this now let's talk about this now but to that point yeah that that absolutely did happen i i

00:34:54.620 wanted to also and i know you're probably here michael so feel free if there's if you want to

00:34:58.600 i'm going to read something but then we can go back if there's more you want to say but um so

00:35:02.520 we're talking about you know so one is just the um what we've covered so far is like so why does

00:35:07.140 everybody think that they're mentally unhealthy right so one of the reasons that we've covered

00:35:10.680 so far is well for one because people uh are delusional when it comes to uh their expectations

00:35:16.440 of what should be the normative mental state of a person's life that you're not supposed to be

00:35:21.960 elated and happy all the time um you're like sometimes you're bored sometimes you're sad

00:35:28.360 sometimes you're a little anxious like like like a man who says um and every day i'm anxious for

00:35:36.520 a few hours every single day yeah well that's uh part of that is just being a man i'm anxious a

00:35:41.640 little bit every day and i understand the bible says be anxious for nothing so i'd like to maybe

00:35:45.160 pick a better word here but i am actively concerned and thinking um how how are my children

00:35:53.020 going to survive yeah how is my son especially how is he going to get a job and actually provide

00:36:01.080 for a family um in a world that hates him because i have to think about like my kids

00:36:07.720 as christians and then in my particular case i also have to think about my kids 0.61

00:36:12.980 who happen to be white like you know the world literally hates christian heterosexual white

00:36:22.460 conservative men and i have a son you know and and so i'm i'm thinking like what can and so for me

00:36:29.520 like so i you know so how does that produce concern throughout the day you know like i want

00:36:34.000 to avoid you know be anxious for nothing but with prayer and supplication make your request known to

00:36:37.600 god so i'm praying but i'm also i'm not just praying you know i'm not just lingering long

00:36:41.520 in my prayers, you know, like Alfred's brother, you know, as Alfred's out there on the battlefield,

00:36:45.400 like, no, I'm also doing, I'm acting. And in my action, one of the things that I'm trying to

00:36:50.000 accomplish is I need to do exactly the opposite of the boomers. I need to, because the world has 1.00

00:36:57.480 been ruined and maybe it doesn't get fixed. And so I need to work hard enough to where I can help

00:37:04.500 my son by the time he's of marrying age and these kinds of, as a young man, to be able to own his

00:37:09.640 first home um to help uh provide some kind of family business that could be passed down to where

00:37:14.840 you can have gainful employment all these kinds of things i need to be ready to do that so uh one

00:37:19.540 problem is people just assume that the that the constant you know perpetual state of of mental

00:37:25.440 you know the constant perpetual mental state of the average person is supposed to be just

00:37:29.940 happy all the time so that's just wrong um that's just wrong and so we we need to lower our

00:37:34.160 expectations have more realistic expectations but then there's also is that you know the spiritual

00:37:38.820 side and and the spiritual side can be broken up into multiple categories but here's one of them

00:37:43.480 here's one of them this is psalm uh chapter 32 uh verse let's start in verse three it says when i

00:37:49.200 kept silent this is david when i kept silent my bones waxed old my bones wasted away inside of me

00:37:58.780 he's a physical physical consequence uh when i kept silent my bones waxed old through my um

00:38:07.440 through my roaring all day long. Verse 4, for day and night thy, that's the Lord,

00:38:13.780 thy hand was heavy weighing upon me. My moisture is turned into the drought of summer. So when I

00:38:22.800 was silent, my bones wasted away inside my body, and God's hand was heavy upon me, and I began to

00:38:29.900 dry up like a drought. Then verse 5, I acknowledge my sin unto thee, unto the Lord, and mine iniquity

00:38:39.240 have I not hid. I said, I will confess my transgressions unto the Lord, and thou forgavest

00:38:46.200 the iniquity of my sin. One reason why a bunch of people are anxious and depressed, I'm just

00:38:53.060 going to say it, I've experienced in my own life, Christians experience this, unbelievers absolutely 0.98

00:38:58.220 experienced this one of the chief reasons why we have a bunch of mentally uh unstable depressed 0.94

00:39:05.120 psychotic and anxious people country full of them is because of unconfessed sin yep people are in

00:39:11.840 sin and they're not confessing their sin and whenever they do get even close to confessing

00:39:17.060 it it's not to um the clergy it's not to a priest it's not to a pastor it's to their female therapist

00:39:23.460 who then affirms them in their sin so the moment that they even start to confess their sin like

00:39:29.000 well part of the reason that i'm really struggling is because i um i cheated on my wife and i never

00:39:33.900 told her and immediately what happens is they're actually consoled and convinced that that's not

00:39:39.920 even a sin well really you know what your job's been really hard you know and you kind of deserve

00:39:44.700 that and you shouldn't be rested that was best for you and the fact that you didn't tell her

00:39:48.720 is probably you just loving your wife because you didn't want to disappoint her and you're trying to

00:39:52.180 hold the family together and the whole weight of the world is on your shoulders you know and they

00:39:56.300 bust out the world's smallest violin and you're actually uh you're not an adulterer you're

00:40:01.000 actually just great now that you've confessed this in i'm actually more impressed by you

00:40:05.860 right money please that's right money please don't forget to pay at the front desk on your way out

00:40:11.020 yeah i'm actually more impressed by you oh also our 45 minutes is up and uh you will receive an

00:40:15.700 invoice for you know for 700 on your way out right um that like you you want to know why uh the 0.91

00:40:21.280 country is is losing its mind depression schizophrenia anxiety transgender people 0.90

00:40:27.800 shooting up schools and kids uh because we have uh we are a country that is laden with guilt and 0.99

00:40:36.240 we know it and we're not confessing our sin and if we do and when we do we confess it to all the

00:40:42.780 wrong people who instead of providing absolution for our sin which is only found by someone who

00:40:49.560 actually paid for it namely jesus christ on the cross were actually given consolation and convinced

00:40:55.380 that we actually have no sin at all but it doesn't work and it doesn't work because we were made in

00:40:59.940 the image of god we have a moral conscious within us we know that we're deadbeats we know that we're

00:41:05.200 wretches we so all this language all this therapeutic lingo like we did in the cold open

00:41:10.600 we went from here i am a wretch well here's the deal with all your 20th century liberalism and

00:41:17.020 all your therapeutic talk, the average person in their heart of hearts still knows that they're

00:41:21.320 a rich. They know. And R.C. Sproul used to say that all the time. Like, I remember him talking

00:41:24.660 about, you know, apologetics and doing the work of an evangelist and arguing, you know, for, you

00:41:30.220 know, defense of the faith. And he would say, you know, sometimes he'd be talking with, you know,

00:41:33.620 an atheist or agnostic or somebody who was particularly hostile and also, you know, fairly

00:41:38.680 intelligent and well-read, you know, and they would be going back and forth and back and forth.

00:41:42.800 And for everything that, you know, Sproul said, the other guy's got a quip, you know, some counter

00:41:46.400 that he says in response uh but eventually if it wasn't really going anywhere then he would

00:41:50.800 just bring out the tko right the total knockout and the tko was this he would say all right you

00:41:55.760 know what let's go ahead and uh just end with this right we're not really getting anywhere

00:41:59.440 we both disagree so here's my final question what do you do with your guilt that's right

00:42:04.720 what do you do with your guilt he doesn't say do you feel guilty yep no no he assumes it

00:42:10.960 it you're guilty you're a wretch you know it so how do you live with that yep because everyone

00:42:17.780 has to live with that and the answer is of course for most moderns how do you live with that um well 0.90

00:42:23.340 by paying 700 to my therapist and taking a bunch of drugs and maybe coloring my hair blue and from 0.67

00:42:29.580 time to time shooting up a school yep maybe cutting off a genital here or there you know 0.98

00:42:35.940 maybe murdering a baby in the womb here or there you know uh that's how i deal with it 0.98

00:42:40.120 but here's the here's what's not debatable it's there's a variance of ways of dealing with guilt

00:42:46.020 but what's not debatable is whether or not people have guilt that's right the answer is yes yeah

00:42:52.960 there's a there's a quote here from baxter that goes along exactly with what you said

00:42:57.040 he said too many persons in their sufferings and sorrows think that they are only to be pitied

00:43:04.000 This is true. 0.96

00:43:04.620 When you have someone who is convinced that they are mentally unwell, they believe that

00:43:11.040 they're entitled to pity.

00:43:12.860 And so he says, they think that they are only to be pitied and take little notice of the

00:43:17.340 sin that caused them or that they still continue to commit.

00:43:22.400 And then he says this, and too many unskillful friends and ministers, and I'm going to add

00:43:28.100 and therapists do not do only comfort them when a round chiding that's a chastisement

00:43:36.140 and discovery of their sin should be the better part of the cure and he was speaking here in a

00:43:42.680 Christian environment of ministers and so how much more you know I think actually um I know 0.96

00:43:49.120 there's common grace but for for unbelievers to expect that they would have any degree of mental 0.94

00:43:55.800 health uh is is delusion preposterous yeah it really is uh that's one of the prophet's

00:44:03.480 condemnations is you heal the wound lightly yeah my people are wounded my people are in sin

00:44:09.080 and you've come along you're looking at a fractured break you're looking at traumatic bleeding

00:44:13.800 oh my goodness we have got some bamboo band-aids right here for you that's literally what it is

00:44:19.320 guilt and sin and all these different things and it's like it sounds like you need 45 minutes

00:44:23.400 every other week yeah to really get you feeling on the up and up yeah right um so that's um

00:44:29.240 unrealistic expectations um unconfessed and sin and baxter goes on to say that many people who

00:44:37.320 are are aware of their sin um are still unwilling to let it go right and so there's that that that

00:44:43.240 just makes it even worse unconvinced or unconfessed sin but then also uh unconf unconvinced of uh

00:44:50.760 forgiven so and then he points to a third one and that is attacks by the devil he said even the

00:44:56.740 christians the devil shoots his darts at us but for unbelievers especially they are um they have

00:45:04.240 no defense against the schemes and the terrors that the devil obviously still even for unbelievers 0.67

00:45:10.360 under god's providence um you know because sometimes god allows the devil to go so far that

00:45:16.120 He terrifies people into faith and repentance.

00:45:20.860 Drives them towards Christ with terror.

00:45:22.120 Yes.

00:45:22.680 Yep.

00:45:23.740 Bunyan, again, is helpful on this.

00:45:25.100 I was just thinking of Bunyan.

00:45:26.580 But like, this is a generalization, right?

00:45:29.960 So, you know, there's some, you know, take it with a grain of salt.

00:45:32.140 There's some exceptions here.

00:45:33.140 But at the risk of overgeneralizing, I think it provides a certain measure of simplicity

00:45:39.060 that I do find helpful.

00:45:40.720 When it comes to the devil, he has two primary strategies.

00:45:43.520 when it comes to unbelievers primarily it's a strategy of deception yes when it comes to

00:45:49.620 believers primarily it's a strategy of despair yeah so for the unbeliever deception for the

00:45:55.660 believer despair so you think of doubting castle right in pilgrim's progress you know with christian

00:46:01.020 and hopeful and it's giant what's his name despair yeah right and so giant despair finds them you

00:46:07.560 know asleep in his meadows because they had gone off the king's way and he captures them and they're

00:46:12.520 shaking with fear they didn't even try to run you know so he captures them and he takes them

00:46:16.320 and throws them in his dungeon you know in in doubting castle and um and they're not deceived 0.97

00:46:23.540 they're despairing but my point is this for the unbeliever where deception is the chief tactic 0.78

00:46:27.880 of the enemy uh well the thing about deception is ultimately um if you don't come out of that 0.95

00:46:32.900 deception by the grace of god you will go to hell but in the meantime in this life so long as you're

00:46:38.040 deceived you can be deceived and rather happy but i don't know anybody who despairs and is happy

00:46:43.380 so christians may be less deceived but they can despair and so temporally in this life they can

00:46:49.120 be quite miserable yeah yeah bunyan's personal testimony is such a good example they get seven

00:46:54.760 years so he is a drunkard he's a reviler and he gets saved but it's seven years he wrestles with

00:47:00.000 assurance and there's one point where he literally feels to your point michael about that third

00:47:04.040 category. He feels as if he's being attacked day and night. Deny Christ, deny Christ, be away with

00:47:10.040 him. And he says like even in just the slightest moment, he just even thinks. It's not an

00:47:14.300 articulation. It's most certainly not even him writing it down, but he says he thinks the

00:47:18.500 thought away with him, if you will. And I think it was almost a year then later that he thought

00:47:22.700 he'd committed the unforgivable sin that everyone else in church could be saved but not him.

00:47:27.500 Despairing of salvation, despairing of life until he comes out on the other side of it

00:47:31.940 through scriptures, through returning to the promises and saying, wait, I don't have to

00:47:36.280 despair. Wait, I've been assured of this. I've been assured of that. I'm not without hope. I can

00:47:40.300 be saved. And that literally set him free to sit in prison for 12 years for the truth and write

00:47:44.980 Pilgrim's Progress because he said, I'm not despairing anymore. I have an assurance of the

00:47:49.320 hope that I have. Yeah. Let's go to our second commercial break and we will be right back.

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00:48:51.460 All right, welcome back.

00:48:53.040 So what we want to do here in this concluding episode

00:48:55.480 is just talk about one or two quick practical questions that face modern Christians, right? 0.88

00:49:04.100 As the world around us develops a deeper understanding of how the body works,

00:49:11.300 what the connection between the brain and the body is,

00:49:14.580 still questions about how that relates to the mind.

00:49:17.840 One of the things that we can be tempted to think,

00:49:20.800 because we see in the New Testament, we see primarily that a lot of times Jesus heals

00:49:32.600 the afflicted, the ill, but then he also casts out demons.

00:49:38.340 And so while demon possession is absolutely a legitimate category, there is the question

00:49:45.480 of what is the connection to our minds?

00:49:48.940 Can our minds have legitimate ailments and illnesses, things like multi-personality disorder, things like OCD or other things like that?

00:50:01.160 So, Wes, I want to actually throw it over to you and just kind of get your perspective on this, having researched more heavily into the brain than the rest of us have.

00:50:10.320 Yeah.

00:50:10.740 I remember it was probably, what, maybe a year and a half ago or so that MacArthur gave some comments that were very controversial on mental health.

00:50:17.820 i think particularly on ptsd i think yeah particularly on ptsd but speaking more broadly

00:50:22.500 and he basically said i think for lack of a better term pretty simply i'm not trying to

00:50:26.800 misrepresent him here close to if not they don't exist as far as depression and anxiety those would

00:50:31.800 just be descriptions of sin so we're describing anxiety as a condition all we're describing is

00:50:36.580 the sin of anxiety if we're describing depression all we're describing is maybe the sin of despair

00:50:41.340 different things like that i don't think he's right one of the reasons is in psychology and

00:50:45.860 other things. What we're always doing for one is we are looking at the Word of God. God has,

00:50:50.760 church tradition has held two books. There's the book of scripture, special revelation,

00:50:55.740 but nature itself and the way our bodies are made are also a form of revelation. And so when we do

00:51:00.560 different studies and run the statistics and do these tests, what we're not doing is we're not

00:51:05.260 just, we're not saying, well, there's the Bible and there's God's Word and then there's just

00:51:09.020 nature and everything over here. God made both of them. And so one of the tests that you'll use

00:51:13.140 for statistics and for like assessing depression is reproducibility can I take this test and

00:51:19.200 reproduce it and get the same results again and again and again and then can I observe

00:51:23.700 correlations of people that are above a certain threshold have a higher likelihood for example

00:51:28.000 to commit suicide people that are less than this are better well adjusted and so I really do believe

00:51:32.580 that these different conditions as far as they exist many of them located in the body although

00:51:37.520 we are body and spirit and there are spiritual maladies that can affect us so not exclusively

00:51:42.000 But as far as multiple personality, OCD, ADHD, depression, anxiety, anxiety, certainly.

00:51:48.820 They certainly can have physical, real ramifications that do have to be practically dealt with.

00:51:55.140 We're not talking about demon possession.

00:51:56.460 We're not talking about spiritual affliction.

00:51:58.180 We're not talking about the devil.

00:51:58.800 Which is not to discount that those things do exist.

00:52:00.620 Exactly.

00:52:01.080 They do.

00:52:01.600 They can, but not always.

00:52:03.520 So if you were depressed, it would not necessarily always be spiritual.

00:52:07.580 As far as your individual case, there's different individuals where you could look at them and

00:52:11.560 say your depression could be stemming from the way you spend your time you're just men especially

00:52:16.760 like men need a mission like you just you don't look at a man and it's like well what do you do

00:52:21.060 and it's like well i get up around 10 a.m ish in a given day maybe i eat breakfast maybe i eat

00:52:26.820 lunch maybe i play video games you don't look at a man like how would you feel if you didn't eat

00:52:30.740 breakfast but i did eat breakfast hang on but you don't look at a man that has no mission and

00:52:38.600 and probably for the most part for women too,

00:52:40.500 and say that's someone that is healthy,

00:52:43.140 driven, focused, and happy.

00:52:45.800 You're gonna look at someone that's very,

00:52:47.180 as we were talking about earlier, introspective.

00:52:49.180 And so for one individual,

00:52:50.280 it could be the way that they spend their time.

00:52:52.180 For another, it could be the patterns of thought

00:52:54.180 that you've trained yourself to think again and again,

00:52:56.620 and you focused on the negative. 1.00

00:52:58.180 And women have a tendency towards this. 1.00

00:52:59.860 There's five personality traits, 0.96

00:53:01.720 openness, conscientiousness,

00:53:03.520 extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism.

00:53:06.500 That neuroticism, that final trait, 0.98

00:53:08.600 is very high in women. Women have a tendency towards negative thoughts. Some of that is 1.00

00:53:12.660 towards protecting children. So they're inborn to be more wary of threats, more wary of sickness,

00:53:17.760 more wary of something that could hurt children. But for women to be aware, are you thinking 0.93

00:53:21.440 negative thoughts and you're thinking them day after day after day? You're not interrupting it

00:53:25.240 to say, hang on, I spent two hours thinking about how miserable this is or how terrible that is or

00:53:29.580 how this could go wrong. I haven't stopped myself. I haven't quoted scripture. I haven't prayed.

00:53:33.600 Well, if you haven't done those things and you just thought those same thoughts, you've done

00:53:36.820 that for months and then you take a standardized test that's reproducible and you have anxiety

00:53:41.620 well of course you do you've thought about these things over and over and over again so in some

00:53:46.520 cases it's how am I taking care of the body in my diet in my activity in my edu in my uh my career

00:53:54.360 my profession and others of it how am I thinking and others of it am I sleeping well there's a

00:53:59.820 myriad of causes for it I couldn't sit here and say you're a man you're depressed it must be this

00:54:04.860 must be that. But they really do exist. And all that being said, reading the Bible in and of

00:54:10.520 itself probably isn't going to solve it. Now, if it's spiritual, and the malady is spiritual in

00:54:15.360 nature, then you do have to go to the scriptures and say, God has said this and said this, and he

00:54:19.720 will take care of me. Nothing can separate me from the love of God in Christ Jesus, and I'm going to

00:54:23.820 stand on that. But also practically, like some of you young men need to put on some boots and go get

00:54:27.900 a job. Oh, what a surprise. I'm not depressed anymore. Well, who would have thought? And so

00:54:32.200 take an honest assessment what do i do what could i improve on i could sleep better i could i could

00:54:38.400 work harder i could do this thing to address what are i think real categories that really just we

00:54:43.880 live in a fallen world and our bodies themselves are awaiting the redemption and the resurrection

00:54:48.340 when they'll be perfected and they won't have depression anxiety etc so in terms of biblical

00:54:53.400 anthropology we are not bodies who have a soul and we are not souls who have a body but rather

00:54:58.300 we are embodied souls embodied souls you're both so when we go to a funeral even for the christian

00:55:04.820 you know and and it's an open casket you know and it's grandma and she was a christian and we're

00:55:09.740 about to put her six feet under the ground um we don't we don't just say well that's an empty shell

00:55:14.920 and that's not grandma no that is grandma uh so grandma is in in terms of her her spirit her soul

00:55:20.540 um there is grandma who is with the lord right uh paul says in scripture to be absent from the

00:55:26.980 body is to be present with the Lord. So grandma is with the Lord. And also that body that I'm

00:55:32.540 looking at at this funeral in this open casket that we're about to bury six feet under the ground

00:55:36.420 is also grandma. It's not just an empty, meaningless shell. That's grandma. And we love

00:55:42.300 her. And that part of her, namely her body, is going to be resurrected by Christ on the final

00:55:48.820 day. And the soul and the body will be rejoined. And so she's going to have a prolonged existence

00:55:54.860 in the soul with the Lord, but upon the final resurrection in glorification, right? There's

00:56:03.840 justification, there's sanctification, there's glorification, glorification, the resurrection

00:56:07.520 of the body. When that takes place on that final day, her body is going to be a resurrected body,

00:56:13.620 a new body, but it's not a new body, meaning another body. It's that same body that we just

00:56:18.240 buried, made new. So that body matters. It has significance and it's going to be resurrected

00:56:23.160 and glorified and rejoined with her soul, and she's going to have an eternal existence as an

00:56:28.740 embodied soul with the Lord forever. That's the type of creature that we are. We're not just

00:56:34.520 bodies with a soul, and we're not just souls that possess, temporarily possess a body. We are

00:56:39.480 embodied souls. And so because of that, we're not Gnostics, meaning that we recognize that the

00:56:45.000 physical does matter. God created a physical, literal world, and upon its creation, God says

00:56:52.080 it is good right god god didn't say he made the world and it's really bad you know and the body

00:56:58.280 is really just a prison and the soul you know it's it's ultimate endeavor and goal in life is

00:57:02.600 to escape the prison you know and get out of the body um no the body is good fallen because of the

00:57:07.980 curse of sin but but good um and so all that being said um when we deal with depression anxiety and

00:57:14.360 all kinds of mental disorders there is the spiritual side uh one is just expectation the

00:57:20.040 mental side of just, we need to have realistic expectations. Life has challenges, life has

00:57:26.000 difficulties. And so to expect to be, you know, constantly and perpetually, you know, happy all

00:57:30.740 the time is just an unreasonable expectation. But then as we go to matters of the soul,

00:57:35.880 the dark night of the soul, melancholy, these kinds of things that the Puritans and others

00:57:40.260 wrote about, we need to consider unconfessed sin. We also need to consider demonic activity

00:57:45.940 and oppression. I don't believe that Christians can be possessed by demons. I absolutely reject

00:57:51.900 that. So I don't believe that for the Christian, 1 Corinthians chapter 6, your body is a temple of 0.80

00:57:56.660 the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have received from God. You were bought with a price, 0.91

00:58:01.480 therefore honor God with your bodies. So your body is a temple of the third member of the Trinity,

00:58:06.820 and the devil does not like to be roommates with God. And so if you are a Christian, 0.90

00:58:13.860 the Holy Spirit resides within you, and the Holy Spirit is not going to be roommates with

00:58:19.000 the devil or any of his minions. So I don't believe that the Christian can be demonically

00:58:22.980 possessed, but the Christian most certainly can be demonically oppressed. And so there can be 0.94

00:58:29.320 demonic attack, demonic pressure, demonic activity, and oppression. So that's a matter of the soul as

00:58:37.200 well. So with the soul, do I have unconfessed sin? Also, in terms of a matter of the soul,

00:58:41.840 do I have an assurance of salvation? That's a huge one. Am I confident in my salvation that

00:58:47.100 Christ has provided? Do I understand the foundation of the gospel, the security I have in

00:58:52.000 Christ? Also, am I fighting against the enemy and attacks from Satan? And then on the physical side

00:58:59.140 of the equation, start simple and then build up, right? So I am not in the position that you can

00:59:05.440 never take any medication. I think the majority of the time, we are an over-diagnosed culture.

00:59:11.840 And we have a pill for everything.

00:59:13.440 So I think we should be extraordinarily wary about that.

00:59:17.360 But I don't hold just a universal position.

00:59:20.800 There can never be any medicine, period.

00:59:22.580 But start with the basics.

00:59:23.860 So first, am I sleeping at night?

00:59:26.600 And am I going to bed at 2 a.m.

00:59:28.160 Or am I trying to go to bed at a reasonable time,

00:59:30.340 wake up at a reasonable time?

00:59:31.920 In addition to that, do I have good eating habits

00:59:34.400 and good diet?

00:59:35.380 In addition to that, exercise.

00:59:36.900 So sleep, diet, exercise.

00:59:39.100 Then beyond that, that's all physical, right?

00:59:41.080 Because you're not just a soul that has a body, but you're an embodied soul.

00:59:44.220 The body is you, and the soul is you, both.

00:59:47.600 So sleep, diet, exercise, and then beyond that, if you've done all of that,

00:59:53.040 if you're confessing your sins, acknowledging your sin, repenting of your sin,

00:59:57.140 trusting in the gospel of Jesus Christ and the assurance of salvation that he's purchased on your behalf,

01:00:02.620 and you are praying and fighting against temptation and the tactics of the enemy and demonic oppression,

01:00:10.400 and you're also sleeping and you're also eating a healthy diet and you're also exercising

01:00:14.800 and there's still something that just is terribly wrong, then it might be time to consider some

01:00:21.280 measured form of medicine. But that should probably be a last resort. And I'm willing

01:00:28.360 to bet that for the majority, this spike of just mental insanity that is a plague and an epidemic

01:00:36.860 in our country. I think for the majority, it's not just because everybody has some medical case

01:00:43.720 that needs some kind of medicine. I think for the vast majority, I'm... Chemical imbalance theory is

01:00:48.640 really falling out in the medical literature that used to be for a while. Like, well, there's

01:00:52.380 depression. It's because some people have a chemical imbalance in their brain. Oxytocin and...

01:00:56.600 Exactly. That's just, for one, SSRIs are not great for it. And that theory, just as you know more

01:01:02.840 about the brain, it's really not holding up. And so don't buy into that idea. Like, oh, you're

01:01:06.420 depressed. It's not anything you've done. It's just your brain is unbalanced. You just need this

01:01:10.520 little magical pill that also, you know, kills your drive, your ambition, keeps you in bed all

01:01:16.480 day. That's what you need to fix it. Well. So for the vast majority of Americans, I think many of

01:01:22.400 their problems, the vast majority would be solved simply by diet, exercise, sleep, and then even

01:01:28.740 more importantly, believing upon the Lord Jesus Christ, being secure in his gospel and his

01:01:34.460 salvation, confessing your sins regularly to other brothers and sisters in Christ. And in your

01:01:39.940 confession, you're not just acknowledging your sin, but you're agreeing with what God says about

01:01:44.400 your sin. You're not looking to be consoled, but rather you're looking to repent. Not looking merely

01:01:49.500 to be consoled in your sin, but to repent of your sin. And then the last thing that I would leave it

01:01:54.480 with in the case of women who do struggle at a much higher degree than men is also consider

01:02:00.280 getting off of birth control. Oh, well, birth, if you are on birth control, you have to get off

01:02:06.380 that. Yeah. It's just, it's, it's terrible. I'm not, you say, if you are on birth control,

01:02:10.660 just for the record, I'm not on birth control. Yeah. Well, but they do prescribe it to men too

01:02:15.080 for acne sometimes for other things. So, but, but real, real quick, Wes, just because we've

01:02:20.340 talked about this before, maybe we could kind of land the plane here. Cause I can hear my family

01:02:24.360 in the other room, but with, with birth control, doesn't that, I'm not wrong there. No, absolutely.

01:02:29.520 it increases i think risk of suicide risk of cancer in women and this is the craziest one

01:02:34.800 women will date a man on birth control so they'll be on birth control and they'll find him attractive

01:02:38.880 because what birth control is doing it's essentially mimicking like a certain part

01:02:42.160 of the cycle and all of this and a woman's she changes as she goes through the month so the

01:02:47.840 birth control mimics that artificially so a woman will be attracted to a man start to date him marry

01:02:52.400 him on birth control and then she'll go off of it and actually not be attracted to him now in and

01:02:58.240 and of itself i mean that's not like happens every single time but what he's getting at is that this

01:03:03.520 is fundamentally altering something that we don't understand that a woman's cycle and the progesterone

01:03:09.680 luteinizing hormone all the different things that ebb and flow during the during the month

01:03:14.000 god not create that you can just oh we're gonna press a button we're just gonna do more of this

01:03:17.680 everything's gonna be fine you get crazy things weird things suicide hormonal changes i mean tons

01:03:23.760 of women they've done birth control i remember friends and they're like in the first couple

01:03:27.280 months of marriage we started it and it was terrible like my wife was moody she was anxious

01:03:32.740 she was snapping we got off it off of it she's like oh i feel a lot better it is not anything

01:03:37.940 aside from and i know endometriosis is one case where it's sometime prescribed you'd have to look

01:03:42.960 into typically you'll actually do surgery to try to remove that but if you need too short term to

01:03:47.300 manage it that's one thing but generally speaking i can almost not fathom a case where a christian

01:03:52.180 woman would need to be on birth control for years it was hormonal birth prescribed heavily for acne

01:03:56.800 in teens especially female teens and my wife who does a consulting service for with functional 1.00

01:04:05.160 medicine she's having to detox women still who are suffering from the effects of five years of

01:04:12.520 adolescence on these hormonal birth control drugs not for birth control but for acting and

01:04:19.080 it has just absolutely devastated their body's natural ability to to gain health and this i'm

01:04:25.300 talking 10, 20 years later, still dealing with it. All right. Well, we hope that this episode

01:04:31.520 has been helpful for you. And Lord willing, we will see you guys again this Friday.

The NXR Podcast - April 23, 2025

THE LIVESTREAM - Why You’re Still Sad After 10 Sessions

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