Psychotherapy Meets Jesus

Confession.  I have struggled with the compartmentalization that happens between mental health and spiritual health in most circles.  As a student of the Bible, I see the intersections.  The vocabulary may be different, but the concepts are the same. 

My goal with this blog is to connect the dots between Biblical principles related to mental health to the promises found in its pages. 

We are created in the image of our God – three in one.  We are spirit, soul, and body.  One part cannot exist apart from the other.  The health of our body affects our emotions found in our soul.  The light of our spirit can be dimmed by the weights in our soul’s thoughts. 

Psychotherapy has sought to label these conditions.  Secular science has created studies to map the terrain of the human’s inner world to find solutions.  The problem most often with the modalities that resulted from these studies is the missing God piece of faith. Yet, the Bible often explains the “what” but the “how” is a little more obscure. 

In the complex existence of human inner world, “love and truth” must co-exist to guide a lost soul to the place of peace.  This reality is witnessed in our world with the paradox of the two sides: light cannot exist without dark, mercy cannot exist without justice, faith cannot exist without the test, forgiveness cannot exist without an offense, and love cannot exist without the evil of hatred.

Freedom from the issues that plague us won’t happen without the tension of action based on awareness.  Change happens when effort is put behind the knowledge.

Biblical Psychotherapy:

My favorite example of this in the Bible was the man in John 5:5-14.  He had sat beside the pool of Bethesda (meaning “House of Mercy”) for thirty-eight years.  He waited on his mat lame hoping the water would be stirred by an angel and that he would be healed. Then Jesus came one day and asked him, “Do you want to be made well?”  He responded with the excuse that he had no one to help him.  Then Jesus told him, “Rise, take up your mat and walk.”  He was healed immediately. 

The man was challenged both spiritually as well as physically.  Would he stop believing the lies of his condition?  Would he stop agreeing with the limits of his condition?  Would he act on the word of the Lord? 

But note this, he was told to carry his mat.  The symbol of his past was still with him but now he was moving in power and instead of the mat holding him down, he was carrying the mat as a testimony of Jesus’s power in his life.

Love and Truth: Change takes effort on our part.