Mental Health? We've all got it!

The reality is that mental health is something that everyone possesses and whilst many might consider theirs to be sound, the reality is that squalls can appear on the most tranquil of waters at the most unexpected times. Some years back I watched a science programme which billed Uganda's LakeVictoria as the stormiest place on the globe with Italy taking the most consistently good prize - and I don't know it that's right or not, but the same goes for people - some are known for their storms whilst others for their constancy or tranquility. That said I've experienced sunny days on the shores of Victoria (bilharzia and nasty snappy things too) and had raging storms in Italy. Climatic squalls and brainsqualls can affect us all and with some they pass and others they remain to act as limitation, debilitation and curse.

It seems to me that here are a number of taboos in our society today but that which tops the league is to be found in the area of mental illness and even though it cannot be caught, it is treated as contagious and those who suffer from it are often treated much like mediaeval lepers. What I find is that those who should seek to keep the faith with the mentally ill and tolerate the excesses that the illness brings, rarely do.

I know that sufferers can be embarrassing - but so can we at times and we don't have the excuse of  any illness, and yet we seek understanding and continuing love, don't we?

I know that those who are shackled by mental health issues live lives that often exist in solitary confinement - trapped in walls made of brick, perceptions and responses (theirs and ours).

I know that those who care for those with mental illness are sufferers too! They live in the perennial fear that the next crisis might be the last the focus of their love might have. They find themselves shut in as they fight to keep their loved one stable, supported and, often, alive.

A man I worked with years ago, speaking of his psychosis said that he, 'Lived a death sentenced waiting to be carried out!' Sadly for him, that sentence was never commuted and he eventually took his life. The 'Black Dog' made so famous by Winston Churchill, eventually delivered a fatal bite.

So I'm writing this as a bit of a plea, asking that we - theist or atheist - take a moment to think of those we know who have issues with their own mental wellbeing or perhaps those for whom they care; asking the questions:

How do we care for those who care for people with illness (physical or mental), and do we deal equally between the two?

How do we regard the two? Are they regarded equally or do we have prejudices and blind spots?

We are called to love and provide places of security for the weak, the marginalised, the oppressed, the acted against and disenfranchised. All things that can be found residing in one blanket term:

 Mentally ill.

What are we doing to help others become as well as we might like to think we are?

What are we doing for those with mental health issues to help them, and those who care for them,  to help them live in a supportive and caring place?

Pax

Triumphalism - is there ever a place for it?

I'm one of those sad people who believe that God really is the 'Lord of All' and that with one word (although I prefer Jeremy Begbie's 'one chord' or 'one note' - how great to think God 'sang' it all into being) caused everything that is to be. After all, if the Big Bang was 13.7bn years ago then the scientific question has to be what or who caused it! (I'd also be interested to hear how we find ourselves in the right place (as the third rock from the hot thing) to live with all the conditions (temperature, gravity and more besides) to actually support life and the chance of that life being is another great issue to discuss one day too!).

But, what really gets me going is those people who love to greet their neighbour with the:

'God is able'

cry in the morning;  for if a loud shout is a pain and a vexation I'll leave it to you to guess at what order of magnitude this is magnified by!

'Our God is able, ALL you need to do is merely rebuke satan and he will flee,' they cry.
'The power of God is in you to rebuke illness, just claim it and you will be healed!' 

And the sadness is that in all reality that words are true, but not as they understand or use them!

I believe that God heals - in fact in my time as a God-botherer I have prayed for blind people and they saw (I'll have to tell you that story some time) and I believe that when we call upon the LORD, He hears and acts. The problem is that more often than not it is the Christian who 'live with a thorn in their side' who more often than not will quote the Hinns, Meyers, Cerullos and others of the glam Christian Evopersonality types that cause me the most trouble, for they take authority over what is with (or within them) when they should be letting it humble and temper them. They live in victory and yet exist in chains!

You probably know the type - one minute they are limping along and the next they are singing hallelujahs and claiming everything in sight - binding this and claiming that and living in the freedom of God for a few minutes before they swing back the other way. The problem is that their problem wounds others and  makes God look like a woman buying a hat (I know this first hand as my mother usually left with the same thing she cam in with!).

Let's be just a little rational about this and understand that:

i. The Apostle Paul had his problems and so too, will we. I don't think it is always valid to rebuke stuff and bind, cast out or claim in the name of Jesus' to overcome all of ours. What we need is to pray for peace, acceptance, solution, people to come alongside (it's called being a paraclete) and (most of all) God's presence, inspiration and strength.

ii. People die because that is what we do - it's a human condition! When people ask why 'n' died, especially if they were Christian, I have to explain that:

a. If being Christian meant we didn't die a mortal death, then everyone would be in Church.

b. All the time we get is what we get and we need to live it well for tomorrow we may not be here - so 'carpe diem' (or as my predictive texting once had it: 'Carpet Firm'). Be the best you can be today for tomorrow might not come!

c. Death, and illness, are always with us - now I have prayed and seen healings that can only be regarded as miraculous - and I have prayed and watched people make promises, claims and be disappointed (and wound many). 

We need to pray intelligently, listening to God and praying with Him - not ordering Him to do as we command (the clue is that He is God not a blessed genie!).

The trite -'All you need to do is claim it in God's name - rebuke it and it will be gone!' is great, especially when you can see the reality of it in the witness of the person making that statement - but sadly, too often that is rarely the case. 

Our God is able to do the very best for us at all time and in all situations - but when we place ourselves in certain places, the outcomes are limited and the opportunities for redemption when we have painted ourselves into a corner are few an far between.

Now I really like to remind myself of the 'Pain in the flesh' personified - the Apostle Paul and his words in 2 Cor 2.14 (ish - using the Message): 

'In the Messiah, in Christ, God leads us from place to place in one perpetual victory parade. Through us, he brings knowledge of Christ. Everywhere we go, people breathe in the exquisite fragrance. Because of Christ, we give off a sweet scent rising to God.'

The over-reached and realised eschatological wonderland that is triumphalism is a curse.

It is a curse spoken over those with problems because obviously they name it, claim it and yet never feel it and this begets the question, 'Why can't I live up to being a Christian and stand in the victory?'

It is a curse spoken out against God for when these well-meaning (aren't they always?) people call upon God and nothing happens they make Him out to be like Baal in 1 Kings 18 with the result that others ask where He might be - 'Is He on the toilet or otherwise indisposed?' they mock.

In Jesus the final victory is won, but this doesn't mean we won't have to face battles now. We do have authority but we also have discernment and wisdom and the Word (living and written) and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit and these (and more besides) come together to make us a force to be reckoned with, unless we shoot into the air (and wonder why some around us fall)!

One of the biggest buzzes I ever had was to realise that anyone can resist satan but we have even more clout and authority because 'He who is in us is greater than he who is in the world! We have riches in heaven and riches on earth and we need to discern which we store up where. Too often our possessions possess us. Although we stand before those who oppose us, in ALL things we are more than conquerors (and I've buried a number of obviously healed people - they just still had the disease that killed them!) and we indeed will overcome (as the spiritual tells us).

We aren't fatalistic or defeated but neither do we proclaim, or claim, what obviously isn't.

It is OK to be depressed.

It is OK to be ill.

It's even OK to have terminal illness (and I have had some good teachers on this subject for my role is to help people die well).

BUT

Where people make great claims in the lives of others when they don't come near in their own - when they preach about walking in the light when it's obvious they aren't - when they don't see how they don't have a job, or a partner, or a house or a new car or whatever when they are 'a child of the Living God', then they've lost the plot and are in need of a size nine commando boot up the bum!

AND

When they do as for the wrong thing OR tell God what He needs to do OR claims what isn't as if it were in His name - they are wrong, wrong, wrong! (was that clear enough?)

We are indeed in a perpetual victory parade - a parade which I am led to understand relates to the parading of one's defeated foes - and one which has before it an empty cross and a broken and powerless sin (for if the penalty is gone so too is the power!). we live to demonstrate that the hold that sin had over us is no more we lead in triumph (sin behind us and satan humiliated) with Jesus before us (for we know who we follow) for we too are His friends AND servants (hallelujah?).

We have much and many blessing are ours but we need the maturity and understanding (which I don't think the glam Christian Evopersonality types will always make ours - well not unless you send a donation anyway!) to understand what is in the overarching and what is in the now. You can rebuke your headache or you can stop drinking or have an earlier bedtime or stop banging your head against brick walls (real and metaphorical) or just take an analgesic. I'm not against praying - just what, why and how we do it and it hands power to anyone but God, if it wounds others, if it causes others to doubt their salvation or faith than all I can says is this:

STOP IT!

I pray that we will all develop the maturity and discernment to learn when we should be praying for something or claim something as if it is when perhaps that's more about us than God; I pray we will learn to learn that illness, weakness, loneliness and need aren't signs of defeat or oppression - after all what gives us the right to prosperity or healthy lives - we were only promised an eternity of being whole and with Him and if you can read this, it hasn't started yet ;-)

Pax

Age, health and language

A couple of days ago I was listening to a programme which ran a piece on immune systems and subliminally made note of the fact that our immune systems cope well with various attacks until we get towards being eighty. It seems that passing seventy is the benchmark that leads us into the reappearance of chickenpox, in the form of shingles, and other ailments that until then have been effectively repressed. Subliminally, somewhere deep inside what passes for a mind, I thought to myself, "Wow, that's the three score and ten bit then. Perhaps after that we're potentially out of warranty!"

Now, looking at my system, the many hundreds of funerals I have conducted yield an average age of 87 and so it seems that the machine is so well designed that, like the old washing machines (some of which I still see in homes running as well as they did thirty years ago) we can just keep on going even though some of the lights no longer work and we leak a bit!

A new item this morning regarding Rashida Chapti, a British citizen, and her husband, Vali. Rashida wants her husband to come and join her but he cannot do sio unless he learns some basic English (an immigration rules requirement). Now this move is being branded 'racist' and Rashida says that her husband, being 57, is too old to learn a new language. Not only that, but (according to the Councillor who is supporting this case, whilst, "There's nothing wrong with speaking English," apparently it isn't necessary.

Now I can understand that perhaps culturally the learning of English is difficult but the reason cited, being 57, seems a bit hollow. Rashida also points to the fact that living in a rural community the forty to fifty hours of teaching required is cost prohibitive (perhaps a better reason than age). Apparently Vali doesn't need to speak English for he could have a job working in the same factory as his wife, but that doesn't resolve the immigration law requirements does it? This is not about age but the cultural, geographic (rural) and societal stuff and to to focus it on age as this morning's piece did is likely to win little support amongs many (especially those in their late fifties).

This is a mixed reaction issue for me, for having living in non-English speaking places (i.e. Southall) I am aware that people do come and settle here and live adequately within their own communities without a word of English (and they weren't just the older folk). I am also aware that across the world you will find Americans who never learn the language of the place in which they now live (including many missionaries who never spoke a word of the local or national languages even though they'd been there for twenty plus years - Brits on the whole at least appear to try).

The problem is that in Hounslow and Southall, it was very much a them and us situation because of the cultural and language barriers. Many of the locals resented the street signs in multiple languages and the fact that the community was one people divided into many because of the language and cultural issues.

Basically I think the immigration law might be correct but it, like all laws and policies, looks harsh and uncaring when it is personalised. There is of course a very simple resolution to getting them reunited, but it won't be popular, in that Rashida could of course just decide that it's time to return home and settle down with her family there. Throughout the discussion this was never offered as a solution - think I might be under-rated!

I see this as a story of desire rather than age and can see many making capital out of this for all the right and wrong reasons. Interestingly, before the new law came in Vali wouldn't have been eligible under the old laws either - so just moved the focus onto something that is 'racist' from something that would most likely also have been labelled such anyway.

Hey ho - life is always difficult when it becomes focussed on individuals!

Pax