What if our therapeutic age is not a solution to our suffering, but a refusal to see it rightly? What if our feelings are not enemies, but rather a signpost? And what if the church still holds the cure not in a padded office, but in the Word and the communion of the saints?
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00:00:16.280You and I both know that this ministry is willing to talk about things that most ministries aren't.
00:00:21.860We need this content for the glory of God to reach more people's ears.
00:00:26.800we are witnessing the birth of a new priesthood they wear cardigans instead of cassocks quote
00:00:35.320brene brown instead of the bible and dispense diagnoses in the place of absolution and for
00:00:41.920millions of americans they've become the final authority on matters of the soul in just one
00:00:47.680generation we've gone from god save a wretch like me to my therapist says the modern language of
00:00:55.200self-care and self-love have replaced self-denial and love for God. All the while, rates of
00:01:02.000depression, anxiety, and suicide have climbed, not fallen. The numbers are staggering. Nearly one in
00:01:09.740five U.S. adults is in therapy. Over 40 million have been diagnosed with anxiety. Even children
00:01:17.480are being trained to identify as mentally ill. But here's the real crisis. It's not just that
00:01:24.160our nation is mentally unwell. It's that the church is copying the world's prescriptions.0.84
00:01:30.480Christians now outsource the care of the soul to secular professionals who deny the soul0.93
00:01:36.080even exists. Historically, the church called this an affliction called melancholy, a burden of body,
00:01:44.420yes, but also a trial of the conscience and a grief of the soul. The Puritans didn't dismiss
00:01:51.320this pain, but they also never called it neutral. They traced it back to disordered loves, guilty0.58
00:01:58.540consciences, spiritual darkness, and then pointed people to Christ, not a fainting couch. This
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00:02:18.200slash right response ministries or you can donate by going to right response ministries.com
00:02:24.360forward slash donate today we're asking a hard question what if our therapeutic age is not a
00:02:31.660solution to our suffering but a refusal to see it rightly what if our feelings are not enemies but
00:02:38.580rather signpost and what if the church still holds the cure not in a padded office but in word
00:02:46.560sacrament, and the communion of the saints. Let's dive in.
00:02:59.200All right, good afternoon, gentlemen. Happy Wednesday. Good to see you all again today.
00:03:03.500Excited for this episode. Before we get started, just want to remind you, if you are listening to
00:03:09.080the video or watching it, please go ahead and hit the like button. Another thing that we don't
00:03:13.180mentioned very often, but all the cool podcasts and YouTube channels do, is share the video.
00:03:18.780Apparently, that's magic in the algorithm as well. That's the quintessential way.
00:03:22.560Send it to your sister-in-law who's going to therapy. This will be really helpful for her.
00:03:26.500She'll love it. She'll appreciate it. Yeah. Better yet, send it to her therapist.
00:03:30.100Yeah, there you go. There you go. All right. Well, that is the topic going on today. We're
00:03:34.920going to be diving into the question of therapy and counseling and just this whole idea of
00:03:42.140mental wellness. Mental wellness is kind of a new term. I'm not sure that it's necessarily new
00:03:49.680in Christian thinking, but it wasn't really ever called mental wellness until recently.
00:03:56.780So one of the things that I did in preparing for this episode was I did a little bit of research
00:04:02.560into some of the statistics of how many people are going to counseling and therapy and things
00:04:07.540of that nature. Is it increasing? Is it decreasing? And one of the things that I found was
00:04:13.980I was surprised on the one hand because I thought the number was maybe a little bit higher. It's a
00:04:20.200little lower than I thought, full disclosure, but it's still a lot and it's increasing quite a bit
00:04:25.320year over year. More and more people are going to counselors, going to therapists. And one of the
00:04:31.640things that has contributed greatly to this is the fact that a lot of new companies are either
00:04:39.000forming or existing counseling companies are adding on digital or distance counseling options.
00:04:49.320And in fact, one of the things I'll talk about later is that this is specifically this online
00:04:56.700counseling is becoming a really, really big industry where you don't actually have to go
00:05:01.520see someone. You can just log into Zoom. There's always a therapist of some sort available.
00:05:06.980You can talk through your issues. And I thought to myself, what a brilliant business model.
00:05:13.340The moment someone is feeling nervous or anxious or depressed or whatever, which happens to,
00:05:18.960you know, many people, possibly many times a day or throughout the week,
00:05:22.380it's not like you have to say well i've got an appointment scheduled for two weeks from next
00:05:27.440tuesday i'm just gonna have to dig in my heels put on my big boy pants and get through until i
00:05:34.620can go see my therapist it's i can zoom immediately in the moment of some sort of anxiety i can log
00:05:41.680in through zoom or through some digital service 55 copay i don't know what it is i'm making that
00:05:47.140number up and immediately talk to someone and i thought man if there's ever a way to get people
00:05:51.740addicted to a service of some sort that is one of them right i've seen them targeted too like it'll
00:05:57.700be ads uh just for men specifically like men are you feeling down yep or the other ones are like
00:06:02.580lgbtq like oh you're gay and we have counseling specifically for these special interest groups
00:06:07.980so it's not just broadly like you can log on you can do this from the privacy of your home0.76
00:06:11.360it's also you very much to belong to this group or to that group we have counseling perfectly for
00:06:15.940you for the low price of whatever it is i i provide specific counseling for those who are gay
00:06:21.620and it's perfect for them like you can call me i won't even charge and i can give you my counsel
00:06:27.300right now to everybody who's listening i you pick up the phone you call me hey i'm really struggling
00:06:31.220i feel depressed you know i feel anxious i'm gay and then i would just say stop it yeah and they're
00:06:36.420like stop stop being depressed no stop being gay yeah just stop that and uh and things will vitally
00:06:42.820improved yeah fantastic counsel some of the best counsel i've ever given yeah absolutely good solid
00:06:47.640biblical counsel stop it stop it yeah i think that was a sketch right a comedy sketch yeah it wasn't
00:06:52.780a biblical uh it was pretty funny though well it was actually a show i think it was boy meets world
00:06:57.700actually oh i think the vex the vex what it was on mad tv okay i was gonna say vivek ramaswami's
00:07:04.800hardest hit uh where like this woman walked in and said i you know i have this terrible phobia
00:07:09.940of being buried alive she goes in to see a counselor yeah exactly and he's like she's like
00:07:13.900oh well tell me about it you know and she's like well i imagine that i'm in a box and it's closed
00:07:17.820and i'm put underneath the ground and they begin piling the dirt on he's like oh my goodness the
00:07:21.660counselor he's like that's terrifying um and then he's like um all right well i'm going to provide
00:07:27.120for you uh some incredibly effective counseling you know and uh and she's like should i you know
00:07:31.480she gets out a pen and paper should i write it down he's like i found that most people can remember
00:07:34.860you know he's like it's two words stop it she's like stop it what do you mean it's like she's
00:07:40.760like but it's it's terrifying i can't help it i said you know i just start imagining the dirt
00:07:44.120piling on i'm being buried and he's like stop it just stop it stop imagining that so anyways yep
00:07:50.160yep good counsel it is actually that would go that would go far so what i want to do today
00:07:56.160before we jump into kind of some of our own thoughts or or the history of what the christian
00:08:02.020Church has thought about this topic is just to look at a little bit of data about the current
00:08:07.000situation. This is all U.S.-based data, but Nathan, let's go ahead and show graph number one here.
00:08:14.400So this is what age groups are receiving mental health treatment, okay? Treatment,
00:08:22.040I'm, for the listener, in quotation marks.
00:08:25.480So 18 to 25 is receiving 26, well, what is that?
00:08:32.180No, 26% of 18 to 25-year-olds, 26.7, are receiving some sort of mental health treatment.
00:08:38.84026 to 49-year-olds, 24.5 of them are receiving mental health treatment.
00:08:43.92050-plus-year-olds, 18% of them, and actually, in other data that I researched, if you go
00:08:50.440to like 60s and 70s it drops down to like four or five percent of really the elderly are receiving
00:08:56.520mental health treatment right what this tells me is that even though um the overall average number
00:09:02.840is about one in five people in america who are receiving this treatment treatment it's a trend
00:09:08.360among younger people and when you say one in five can i just you might have a graph for this so i
00:09:12.840might be beating us to the punch i do not i'm gonna guess that that one in five number is gonna be
00:09:17.960one in like three women well and one in like seven or eight men it is much more it's it's
00:09:26.160the men was actually higher okay um it is higher than the women no or higher than what i just said
00:09:31.020that's fair um there's no way it's higher than the women yep i was about to give some of that
00:09:34.780biblical no no 100 stop your mind but there has been to wes's point there has been targeted
00:09:41.120advertising to men yeah to normalize this idea of going to therapy and in fact my brother works
00:09:47.420in the trades in wisconsin and so most of the most of the people working in trades are men
00:09:54.540and they have a monthly kind of community event where they have someone come in and talk about
00:10:00.220the state of the industry and um they had someone come in one month and was talking about
00:10:06.780the mental health epidemic that is afflicting men in the trades and how they're the overlooked
00:10:11.420um demographic in america and a lot of them have anxiety and worry and it's like well it sounds
00:10:18.040like they're just men trying to provide for their families and they face the brunt of that like
00:10:21.200right and they they probably should well my brother in the q a time um stood up and said
00:10:26.880you think any of this is spiritual and the the lady doing the presentation said no we don't we
00:10:32.260don't really see a link there we it's just more you know so um but to that to that point even at
00:10:37.900a trades um monthly meeting they were there trying to convince employers to make mental health
00:10:45.260counseling services available to their tradesmen right because it's a business they get paid of
00:10:50.880course they're trying to convince that like there's a percent it's just one more thing that
00:10:54.180you can make any company with more than whatever 30 employees or 15 and then you can if you work
00:10:59.140hard enough you might even get you know able to lobby and pass it as legislation and now there's
00:11:03.600you know a law to where every company of this size must have on its payroll you know a therapist
00:11:07.720or mental health day yeah exactly and so then all these companies their therapy companies
00:11:13.000just mandated by force of law that they get to stay in business and keep bamboozling a bunch of
00:11:19.260people actually Joel you can do the you can do the math here on the fly I forget what your one
00:11:24.100in one in eight you went you may have been about right this is around one in eight 25 percent of
00:11:29.280adult women have received some form of mental health treatment in the past year compared to
00:11:33.940about 15% of men. Okay. So I was one in six. Yeah. Well, if he said 15, 15%. So 15% would be like0.54
00:11:45.160one in what was that? One in 6.66. Yeah. Yeah. It's like one in seven. Well, so one in four
00:11:51.760women and then one in six men. Closer to seven. One in 6.66 men versus, so one in seven versus
00:11:59.760one in four. You called it. Yep. Close enough. Quite a few teens, like think about this, like
00:12:05.280young, so not children, thank God, but teens, about 17% of teens have received official mental
00:12:15.080health counseling or therapy of some sort. A lot of where this is going on is in schools.
00:12:19.920And 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.
00:12:37.400and i have a friend who who taught um for a little while at stanford which you think you know high
00:12:42.840performance school and he said that his students he said at least half of his students were
00:12:49.960regularly seeing counselors for anxiety and depression which is just crazy big big in the
00:12:56.360military too when i was in a big push on and understandably you of course have men that have
00:13:01.240come back from war and they would actually hey there's services there's people that's a little
00:13:05.480a little different that's one thing but generally speaking we're talking about platoons and groups
00:13:09.340of people that have never been to combat but they were always just about every every time the
00:13:13.620squadron came together like be aware there's mental health resources you have a family readiness
00:13:17.200officer very much so like we're here we're here we're here yeah yeah okay nate let's show the
00:13:22.580next graph this will be a shock to absolutely zero people but the number of therapists uh the
00:13:30.000statistic there the percentage by gender so not surprisingly um about three quarters of therapists
00:13:37.220are women yes and about 20 a quarter of therapists are men so three three quarters of therapists are
00:13:43.420women yeah that checks out yeah um and well because like yeah it's the same as like why are
00:13:49.820you know why are you look at every hr department with some fortune 500 company and it's the same
00:13:54.940thing it's like three four so in many cases probably even higher 80 85 90 percent is staffed
00:14:00.940by women you know and so and then with therapist it's staffed by women you know and all these these
00:14:06.220types of fields are particularly staffed by women why because they're mom jobs that's why because
00:14:13.600women have an inescapable desire and sensation to want to mother sympathize nurture it's it's a1.00
00:14:23.480domestic feminine impulse that god placed in their their a good thing it's it's a good thing yeah1.00
00:14:31.300but because they're you know so many people are foregoing childbearing and so many women don't1.00
00:14:37.600end up being actual biological mothers in the familial sense the traditional sense then they
00:14:43.540go and fulfill that desire elsewhere so they're like well if i can't have you know babies because1.00
00:14:49.420they've bought into some feminist lie you know whatever uh then they're like well then you know1.00
00:14:53.820the workplace that'll be my home and all these grown men will be my babies and i will be telling0.59
00:14:59.900i will be treating you know 35 year old men as though they're my toddler and i think there's a
00:15:06.060lot of people who just as the family system is breaking down they didn't get a sort of good solid
00:15:13.100fatherly counsel and motherly nurturing growing up and so i remember um one of the jobs that i
00:15:20.220worked at the manager there i mean she was she did more counseling than actual job managing people
00:15:27.300were always in her office complaining about this hard thing about life or this conflict or this
00:15:32.620drama with this other person and she was like her entire like 50 of her job was people coming to her
00:15:39.120they had no one else to talk to about the difficulties in their life and so when people
00:15:42.960don't have truth that they're getting in a church and godly counsel that they're getting from
00:15:48.400brothers and sisters in christ they are going to go somewhere to find someone who will at best pat
00:15:55.200them on the back and at worst like stroke their ego with the modern counseling techniques that we
00:15:59.280have so yeah i just pulled it up like uh percent female majors so social work 85 female major1.00
00:16:06.640health professions close to 80 same thing with education psychology all above 75 majority women
00:16:13.120yeah yeah as i've done research in some of the episodes over the last couple weeks and months
00:16:18.560i find this really interesting what are um marketing or not not marketing but growth reports
00:16:25.280on industries saying in other words people are running financial analysis to determine whether
00:16:30.800a sector or an industry is a good option for investors to invest in and so this is one of
00:16:37.680those reports and it's saying that the the therapy market or the mental counseling the mental health
00:16:44.960treatment market is going to grow by 5.9 per 6 per year currently it's at about i think if i remember
00:16:51.840about 4.5 billion dollars a year in the u.s and they're expecting that by 2033 so eight years
00:16:58.880it'll be up to a 7.3 billion dollar industry um which people would want to know that to know if
00:17:04.480they should invest and there have actually been quite a few fairly large mergers where um i i
00:17:10.800didn't even know that there are these massive counseling networks that have merged together
00:17:16.720in part to be able to offer a more robust online option for for a lot of this counseling so this
00:17:23.040This is an industry that is embracing technological innovation and really targeted advertising, like we said earlier.
00:17:43.180But 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?
00:18:01.040No, a lot of it is like a person felt anxious.
00:18:04.280Well, that sort of person is being told now when you feel anxious, you need to schedule an appointment with a quote unquote qualified professional.
00:18:13.820And so the more that people are told that, the more they're going to say, oh, I feel
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00:23:51.520All right, welcome back. Gentlemen, towards the end, just so you know, I'm going to ask a couple
00:23:56.440questions about the legitimacy of what we term now to be mental illness um wes i'm curious from
00:24:04.200you with your background and research about if you've done anything in um like legitimate mental
00:24:10.280illnesses there are some people out there who say that if you have like uh ocd like legitimate ocd
00:24:17.960or multi multi-personality disorder that this is uh basically just demon possession so i'm
00:24:25.160I'm curious with kind of your research into neurology and things like that, Wes.
00:24:29.400I'm going to lean on you a little bit later on.
00:24:31.280But the categories that we now call mental health are not necessarily new.
00:24:38.620The Puritans talked quite a bit about it.
00:24:41.220They were overly introspective, and maybe that's why they dealt a little bit more with it.
00:24:45.520But they had terms like the dark night of the soul, where they felt like God had abandoned them to depression,
00:24:54.420or anxiety or just long periods where there seemed to be no hope no spurgeon called like
00:24:59.880his own yes the black dog yes something like that yes yeah followed him yes exactly um and one of
00:25:06.380the resources that i read over um in preparation for this episode is richard baxter's uh he wrote
00:25:13.100a series of sermons on the topic of the melancholy of the soul and so christian thinkers puritan
00:25:20.900thinkers have identified for a long time that there are legitimate things that afflict us,
00:25:27.380right? Even the Apostle Paul, we speculate what the thorn was that the Lord sent him,
00:25:35.340the thorn in his flesh. But some have speculated that it was a despondency or a despair,
00:25:42.500a natural sort of despair where his hope in the Lord had to overcome that. It's not a new thing.
00:25:48.500And 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,
00:26:11.980there has been a category of deep and prolonged melancholy like baxter calls it um and so we
00:26:22.640would be we would do well to see that this sort of thing is not the the phenomenon is not new
00:26:30.000in our modern time i think what's new in our modern time is that people um assume that mental
00:26:38.100health is the happiness is the expected state of mental of mental health that if you're not
00:26:46.200happy at all moments you're mentally unhealthy that if you're not actively engaged in loving
00:26:53.180life and if you don't have this overwhelming sense of um you know wonder and joy at all times of
00:27:00.080tranquility then that indicates a lack of mental health and when you set people up for that
00:27:07.560all of them are going to think that they're mentally unhealthy richard baxter goes so far
00:27:11.780as to say that some people who struggle with this melancholy do so because they have unrealistic
00:27:17.800expectations he says the body is frail and so insofar and he dives a lot into whether some of
00:27:25.100these things are physical or mental or spiritual but he says even if they're all physical the body
00:27:30.820itself is frail and for us to expect the sort of state of being that we will experience in heaven
00:27:36.340and in the eternal state now is simply like someone set that person up for a wrong expectation.
00:27:43.040He says that all of life at one turn to the next will have disappointments, frailties,
00:27:51.320weaknesses, trials, tribulations, just in the natural fallen world that we live in,
00:27:56.160apart from spiritual affliction or sin or any of those things.
00:28:00.900And so he said that one of the reasons why people give in to despair and to melancholy
00:28:04.720is even back then he said they have been convinced that life is supposed to be much easier than what
00:28:11.520they are going through right now and i thought that was quite insightful coming from someone
00:28:16.520who lives in a time where they certainly dealt with more grief in some levels in some areas than
00:28:23.500we do him still saying to his parishioners someone convinced you that your life is supposed to be
00:28:29.460easy and that's not how it is under the curse and you need to change your perspective immediately
00:28:35.620the goal of this life is not ease that's what's that's what's promised in the next life the goal
00:28:41.220of this life is faithfulness perseverance hope um and those spiritual virtues that we're supposed
00:28:47.380to cling to so for one point i thought that was incredibly helpful um just on a purely physical
00:28:54.140level that he recognized that that's a real error and temptation that even christians fall into
00:29:00.680it could be said too i've done a lot of thought about this because i used to love the puritans
00:29:05.720more than i would now and if i used to used to love the well i could say one of their
00:29:10.820shortcomings was it they had a very strong introspection right and to the point now
00:29:17.020introspection is good paul and peter speak well of examining yourselves that there are absolutely
00:29:22.340to be times in your life where you take stock of who you are and what you've done. But if there's
00:29:26.880one thing that I could say about them in their personal theology and in their practice, there
00:29:31.340was very much so a meditation upon the inner thoughts, meditation upon the inner man. What am
00:29:36.280I? And often it was in relation to God. So how's my relationship to God? How am I praying? How am
00:29:40.740I thinking? How am I edified? How am I all of these things? But at the end of the day, what I've seen
00:29:46.540and what I've experienced, I would have to say that that can very quickly become, it's not just
00:29:51.180every couple months or so i take serious stock of my spiritual life and and my thoughts and what
00:29:56.400i'm meditating on but but close to daily and then what you do and i've done this before is it's
00:30:01.260always this constant i could do better and it's constantly thinking like is my love for god shallow
00:30:05.500i've spent time with friends and they're crying because they're like i feel like god is so distant
00:30:10.060well like what like what are we talking about here we weren't meant to mediate evaluate our
00:30:17.880relationship to God based on how I felt in the last week. We obey. We do good. We encounter him
00:30:23.680in the Lord's Supper. We encounter him in baptism and the preaching of the word. Those things are
00:30:28.520always as much as possible. God does not give us prayer as a means of grace, actually. He gives
00:30:33.100bread and wine that are corporeal. They're bodily. They're physical. They're tangible.
00:30:37.300And so introspection, some of it, but there most certainly can be too much of it and lead towards
00:30:42.300exactly what Baxter was saying there. I'm just thinking about what I'm thinking about all the
00:30:46.300time. Get up and work and do something. Right. No, you're right. Even the Puritans, though,
00:30:50.680to be fair, I think some of them at least later recognized that and began to speak against that
00:30:57.380by saying, look up and look out. Like when it came to assurance of salvation, for instance,
00:31:04.340many of the Puritans, John Bunyan would be an example. There were many who struggled,
00:31:07.980had prolonged seasons of multiple years. I think in the case of Bunyan was like seven years of
00:31:13.220wrestling like does the lord really love me am i really saved that's part of my own testimony you
00:31:17.100know and struggling with that for years um but but then some of the you know uh thomas goodwin
00:31:22.120would be an example of um a more hopeful puritan in his preaching that really calls men when it
00:31:29.440came to assurance of salvation particularly said uh no it's not um you don't look inward it's not
00:31:35.580naval incessant naval gazing it's not uh well how do i feel do i feel confident about my salvation
00:31:40.760who cares how you feel look up and look out see christ see his love for you and so um i think that
00:31:47.480that's something that some of the puritans course corrected on but you're right i would say you know
00:31:51.500i like the puritans but i would say um too ideological that's one of the things that
00:31:56.740concerns me about the puritans it's too much um ideology and then um too much um of the
00:32:03.320introspection and what both of those things i think like a common tie between them is just
00:32:08.040uh too much uh subjectivity right it's just it was too interpersonal subjective feeling based and
00:32:15.720ideology and say what do you mean ideology like the puritans are known for their expositional
00:32:20.960preaching yeah uh but um every time i'll just say like this um the sermon i preached yesterday
00:32:29.600on easter sunday was very puritan yeah what do i mean um well it was it was uh exegetical
00:32:37.780preaching. I talked about the faith of the paralytic and his friends who took him to Jesus
00:32:44.780to be healed. However, I focused on about half of a verse and preached for an hour. And I could
00:32:53.520easily preach the text again because I did not even get to probably 75% of the text. Now, I
00:33:00.220actually stayed in the text. I was talking about the text. But my point is this. There's a way of
00:33:05.880doing exegetical preaching where you can have um you can have too large of a text to where you
00:33:11.080it's just a cursory you know a gloss line over it yeah fly over you can't actually get into depth
00:33:17.280with anything because it's like my text today is the entire book of exodus you know i but there's
00:33:22.040also a way of like my text today and spurgeon was notorious for this and i like spurgeon but
00:33:26.040spurgeon you know um with the the parable of the four soils you know he he preached that and he
00:33:31.800preached an entire sermon uh he's gonna i'm gonna preach to this parable and he started with his
00:33:36.160first text you would think the text is the parable nope not even close the first text was a sower
00:33:40.720went out to sow right and now he's gonna go 60 minutes on a sower what is a sower went out what
00:33:51.440does it mean to go out uh you know to sow what does it mean and and when you're getting that
00:33:58.080that narrow uh the reality is spurgeon who is is known as being the prince of preachers so i'm not
00:34:04.480trying to cast shade on spurgeon i i really appreciate spurgeon but charles spurgeon um
00:34:10.820like what did he do in that sermon i'm going to say it people aren't going to like it i'm going
00:34:15.080to say it he made a bunch of stuff up that's what he did jonathan edwards like sinners in the hands
00:34:22.020of an angry god the verse is i think from deuteronomy their foot shall slip in due time
00:34:26.260right that was his text that's well to the to that point the book that i read over for the and
00:34:32.320it'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
00:34:38.020least from richard baxter it's all based on the verse less perhaps such a one would be swallowed
00:34:43.800up with over much sorrow from second corinthians 2 7 now he jumps off he says okay let's talk about
00:34:50.180this now let's talk about this now but to that point yeah that that absolutely did happen i i
00:34:54.620wanted to also and i know you're probably here michael so feel free if there's if you want to
00:34:58.600i'm going to read something but then we can go back if there's more you want to say but um so
00:35:02.520we're talking about you know so one is just the um what we've covered so far is like so why does
00:35:07.140everybody think that they're mentally unhealthy right so one of the reasons that we've covered
00:35:10.680so far is well for one because people uh are delusional when it comes to uh their expectations
00:35:16.440of what should be the normative mental state of a person's life that you're not supposed to be
00:35:21.960elated and happy all the time um you're like sometimes you're bored sometimes you're sad
00:35:28.360sometimes you're a little anxious like like like a man who says um and every day i'm anxious for
00:35:36.520a few hours every single day yeah well that's uh part of that is just being a man i'm anxious a
00:35:41.640little bit every day and i understand the bible says be anxious for nothing so i'd like to maybe
00:35:45.160pick a better word here but i am actively concerned and thinking um how how are my children
00:35:53.020going to survive yeah how is my son especially how is he going to get a job and actually provide
00:36:01.080for a family um in a world that hates him because i have to think about like my kids
00:36:07.720as christians and then in my particular case i also have to think about my kids0.61
00:36:12.980who happen to be white like you know the world literally hates christian heterosexual white
00:36:22.460conservative men and i have a son you know and and so i'm i'm thinking like what can and so for me
00:36:29.520like so i you know so how does that produce concern throughout the day you know like i want
00:36:34.000to avoid you know be anxious for nothing but with prayer and supplication make your request known to
00:36:37.600god so i'm praying but i'm also i'm not just praying you know i'm not just lingering long
00:36:41.520in my prayers, you know, like Alfred's brother, you know, as Alfred's out there on the battlefield,
00:36:45.400like, no, I'm also doing, I'm acting. And in my action, one of the things that I'm trying to
00:36:50.000accomplish is I need to do exactly the opposite of the boomers. I need to, because the world has1.00
00:36:57.480been ruined and maybe it doesn't get fixed. And so I need to work hard enough to where I can help
00:37:04.500my son by the time he's of marrying age and these kinds of, as a young man, to be able to own his
00:37:09.640first home um to help uh provide some kind of family business that could be passed down to where
00:37:14.840you can have gainful employment all these kinds of things i need to be ready to do that so uh one
00:37:19.540problem is people just assume that the that the constant you know perpetual state of of mental
00:37:25.440you know the constant perpetual mental state of the average person is supposed to be just
00:37:29.940happy all the time so that's just wrong um that's just wrong and so we we need to lower our
00:37:34.160expectations have more realistic expectations but then there's also is that you know the spiritual
00:37:38.820side and and the spiritual side can be broken up into multiple categories but here's one of them
00:37:43.480here's one of them this is psalm uh chapter 32 uh verse let's start in verse three it says when i
00:37:49.200kept silent this is david when i kept silent my bones waxed old my bones wasted away inside of me
00:37:58.780he's a physical physical consequence uh when i kept silent my bones waxed old through my um
00:38:07.440through my roaring all day long. Verse 4, for day and night thy, that's the Lord,
00:38:13.780thy hand was heavy weighing upon me. My moisture is turned into the drought of summer. So when I
00:38:22.800was silent, my bones wasted away inside my body, and God's hand was heavy upon me, and I began to
00:38:29.900dry up like a drought. Then verse 5, I acknowledge my sin unto thee, unto the Lord, and mine iniquity
00:38:39.240have I not hid. I said, I will confess my transgressions unto the Lord, and thou forgavest
00:38:46.200the iniquity of my sin. One reason why a bunch of people are anxious and depressed, I'm just
00:38:53.060going to say it, I've experienced in my own life, Christians experience this, unbelievers absolutely0.98
00:38:58.220experienced this one of the chief reasons why we have a bunch of mentally uh unstable depressed0.94
00:39:05.120psychotic and anxious people country full of them is because of unconfessed sin yep people are in
00:39:11.840sin and they're not confessing their sin and whenever they do get even close to confessing
00:39:17.060it 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
00:39:23.460who then affirms them in their sin so the moment that they even start to confess their sin like
00:39:29.000well part of the reason that i'm really struggling is because i um i cheated on my wife and i never
00:39:33.900told her and immediately what happens is they're actually consoled and convinced that that's not
00:39:39.920even a sin well really you know what your job's been really hard you know and you kind of deserve
00:39:44.700that and you shouldn't be rested that was best for you and the fact that you didn't tell her
00:39:48.720is probably you just loving your wife because you didn't want to disappoint her and you're trying to
00:39:52.180hold the family together and the whole weight of the world is on your shoulders you know and they
00:39:56.300bust out the world's smallest violin and you're actually uh you're not an adulterer you're
00:40:01.000actually just great now that you've confessed this in i'm actually more impressed by you
00:40:05.860right money please that's right money please don't forget to pay at the front desk on your way out
00:40:11.020yeah i'm actually more impressed by you oh also our 45 minutes is up and uh you will receive an
00:40:15.700invoice for you know for 700 on your way out right um that like you you want to know why uh the0.91
00:40:21.280country is is losing its mind depression schizophrenia anxiety transgender people0.90
00:40:27.800shooting up schools and kids uh because we have uh we are a country that is laden with guilt and0.99
00:40:36.240we know it and we're not confessing our sin and if we do and when we do we confess it to all the
00:40:42.780wrong people who instead of providing absolution for our sin which is only found by someone who
00:40:49.560actually paid for it namely jesus christ on the cross were actually given consolation and convinced
00:40:55.380that we actually have no sin at all but it doesn't work and it doesn't work because we were made in
00:40:59.940the image of god we have a moral conscious within us we know that we're deadbeats we know that we're
00:41:05.200wretches we so all this language all this therapeutic lingo like we did in the cold open
00:41:10.600we went from here i am a wretch well here's the deal with all your 20th century liberalism and
00:41:17.020all your therapeutic talk, the average person in their heart of hearts still knows that they're
00:41:21.320a rich. They know. And R.C. Sproul used to say that all the time. Like, I remember him talking
00:41:24.660about, you know, apologetics and doing the work of an evangelist and arguing, you know, for, you
00:41:30.220know, defense of the faith. And he would say, you know, sometimes he'd be talking with, you know,
00:41:33.620an atheist or agnostic or somebody who was particularly hostile and also, you know, fairly
00:41:38.680intelligent and well-read, you know, and they would be going back and forth and back and forth.
00:41:42.800And for everything that, you know, Sproul said, the other guy's got a quip, you know, some counter
00:41:46.400that he says in response uh but eventually if it wasn't really going anywhere then he would
00:41:50.800just bring out the tko right the total knockout and the tko was this he would say all right you
00:41:55.760know what let's go ahead and uh just end with this right we're not really getting anywhere
00:41:59.440we both disagree so here's my final question what do you do with your guilt that's right
00:42:04.720what do you do with your guilt he doesn't say do you feel guilty yep no no he assumes it
00:42:10.960it you're guilty you're a wretch you know it so how do you live with that yep because everyone
00:42:17.780has to live with that and the answer is of course for most moderns how do you live with that um well0.90
00:42:23.340by paying 700 to my therapist and taking a bunch of drugs and maybe coloring my hair blue and from0.67
00:42:29.580time to time shooting up a school yep maybe cutting off a genital here or there you know0.98
00:42:35.940maybe murdering a baby in the womb here or there you know uh that's how i deal with it0.98
00:42:40.120but here's the here's what's not debatable it's there's a variance of ways of dealing with guilt
00:42:46.020but what's not debatable is whether or not people have guilt that's right the answer is yes yeah
00:42:52.960there's a there's a quote here from baxter that goes along exactly with what you said
00:42:57.040he said too many persons in their sufferings and sorrows think that they are only to be pitied
00:48:53.040So what we want to do here in this concluding episode
00:48:55.480is just talk about one or two quick practical questions that face modern Christians, right?0.88
00:49:04.100As the world around us develops a deeper understanding of how the body works,
00:49:11.300what the connection between the brain and the body is,
00:49:14.580still questions about how that relates to the mind.
00:49:17.840One of the things that we can be tempted to think,
00:49:20.800because we see in the New Testament, we see primarily that a lot of times Jesus heals
00:49:32.600the afflicted, the ill, but then he also casts out demons.
00:49:38.340And so while demon possession is absolutely a legitimate category, there is the question
00:49:45.480of what is the connection to our minds?
00:49:48.940Can our minds have legitimate ailments and illnesses, things like multi-personality disorder, things like OCD or other things like that?
00:50:01.160So, 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.
00:50:10.740I 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.
00:50:17.820i think particularly on ptsd i think yeah particularly on ptsd but speaking more broadly
00:50:22.500and he basically said i think for lack of a better term pretty simply i'm not trying to
00:50:26.800misrepresent him here close to if not they don't exist as far as depression and anxiety those would
00:50:31.800just be descriptions of sin so we're describing anxiety as a condition all we're describing is
00:50:36.580the sin of anxiety if we're describing depression all we're describing is maybe the sin of despair
00:50:41.340different things like that i don't think he's right one of the reasons is in psychology and
00:50:45.860other things. What we're always doing for one is we are looking at the Word of God. God has,
00:50:50.760church tradition has held two books. There's the book of scripture, special revelation,
00:50:55.740but nature itself and the way our bodies are made are also a form of revelation. And so when we do
00:51:00.560different studies and run the statistics and do these tests, what we're not doing is we're not
00:51:05.260just, we're not saying, well, there's the Bible and there's God's Word and then there's just
00:51:09.020nature and everything over here. God made both of them. And so one of the tests that you'll use
00:51:13.140for statistics and for like assessing depression is reproducibility can I take this test and
00:51:19.200reproduce it and get the same results again and again and again and then can I observe
00:51:23.700correlations of people that are above a certain threshold have a higher likelihood for example
00:51:28.000to commit suicide people that are less than this are better well adjusted and so I really do believe
00:51:32.580that these different conditions as far as they exist many of them located in the body although
00:51:37.520we are body and spirit and there are spiritual maladies that can affect us so not exclusively
00:51:42.000But as far as multiple personality, OCD, ADHD, depression, anxiety, anxiety, certainly.
00:51:48.820They certainly can have physical, real ramifications that do have to be practically dealt with.
00:51:55.140We're not talking about demon possession.
00:51:56.460We're not talking about spiritual affliction.