Mental Health in the Church

The following is an uncorrected transcript generated by a transcription service. Before quoting in print, please check the corresponding audio for accuracy. 

Jeremy Pierre
My name is Jeremy Pierre, and I teach at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in biblical counseling and practical theology. I’m also dean of the Graham School of missions, evangelism and ministry there, and I am it’s a joy to be here with you all here at TGC, and I’m very thankful they gave me a very uncontroversial topic like mental health. Okay, so I hope, actually, to serve you all well in a very specific way in this talk, okay? And it’s entitled, as you know, speaking wisely about mental health in the church, because mental health lingo is everywhere, trauma, triggering, toxic relationships, emotional manipulation, emotional blackmail, gaslighting, narcissism, intrusive thoughts, boundaries, coping skills, connection, self care. Everyone’s using mental health lingo. So I got good news for you. I’m going to cut through all of the complexity, and I’m going to solve all of the problems of human existence in the next 45 minutes, and I’m going to provide for you. Thank you. A very simple list of words that you can use and words that you cannot use faithfully. If anybody tries to do that to you, you can get up and walk out of the room. Okay, if only it were that easy. It’s not that easy, because that’s not how language works. That’s not the complexity of what we experience in this world. So again, this talk is about speaking wisely. That’s actually the emphasis speaking wisely about mental health in the church. So I’m going to be asking and answering, hopefully, the larger question behind that, a larger question than even the specific terminology that a person might choose to use versus another. Here’s the larger question, how do the people of God properly speak to one another about the problems they’re facing in life, especially the complex ones? So I’m just going to tell you my angle. This is, this is my angle that I’m approaching this with. I’m a pastor, and I train pastors and ministers and missionaries to care for people in a church setting, to care for people in the culture in which we live. So my main concern is actually not going to be the disciplinary debates or precise definitions of mental health, but rather how to shepherd people effectively, how to care for people effectively, in a psychologized culture, and by that, I just mean a culture where people have been catechized with much of the language of mental health. Okay, so in a sense, folks, this talk is more about the purpose of language than it’s going to be about the specific terms that you can put a check mark next to or an X next to. My purpose is again, to step above all this and ask the question, what are we doing with language? What is the purpose of language when we’re choosing this word rather than this word, rather than this word, to describe something that I feel and experience inside or in response to my external context? So I’m not saying the technical definitions are are unimportant or conceptual schemes are unimportant, but what I have found in ministering to human beings and not textbooks, is that most people in counseling or church care situations. They’re just grabbing any lingo they can grab to try to explain the pain that they’re feeling in the in the in the life, in their life. So you might be thinking, since I’m using the word lingo, that I’m going to automatically dismiss this all, okay, but I’m using the word lingo in a very intentional way. Lingo is just typical language of a particular field or group or culture that they use to describe what what they believe to be important. So you all know this, guys, if you don’t, when you talk to your unbelieving neighbor, you quickly realize there’s church lingo. Did you know this? And when you talk to a Presbyterian, you realize there’s Presbyterian lingo and Baptist lingo. There’s gamer lingo. If you talk to your teenage boys, there’s Tiktok lingo, Jim bro lingo. You have to learn when you go into the gym, don’t act, don’t say certain things, or you look like an idiot, which I’ve found out many a time, okay, but my point to you is that all these different groups, all these different sort of subcultures, have words that they use to describe what’s important to them, and so people use words to convey when we’re talking about mental health lingo, they’re using their words to convey the meaning behind their troubles, behind their pain. So the question that I think that we as Christians always have to be asking ourselves about what language we use to describe and apply attribute meaning to our troubles is, is the language we use adequately conveying the priority of meaning that God places on our troubles? That’s just the question we should always be asking, and I think that question actually guards us against two extremes that we can make errors about when we’re talking about mental health lingo. Okay, on the one hand, I think asking that broader question and approaching it this way is gonna guard us from dismissing the concerns that people have when they’re attempting to convey with these words the pain and the suffering that they’re going through. Okay, so it’s going to help us avoid a mentality that basically says something like mental health lingo is always wrong to use. You should only use language from the Bible to describe your problem. I actually don’t think that’s a reformed understanding of how language actually works, okay. But on the other hand, I want to guard I think that larger question approach guards us against another extreme that we will not affirm ideas that either contradict what God has said about human design in Scripture, or here’s a greater danger or mis prioritize aspects of human experience that end up decentering what God is most concerned about in this situation. So what we’re avoiding here is sort of mentality of mental health is this person’s real problem, and the Bible doesn’t speak to that particular trouble. So we need other sets of language. I think both of those things are actual errors that I want to sort of guard us against. So here’s what I’m driving at, if you want a main point. And by the way, don’t not that. I’m assuming anybody would even want to write down anything I say. But don’t worry about scribbling this all down. If the t if, if the editors at TGC allow me, I’m going to convert this into an article and post it for you if you would like it. But here’s my main point, the chief purpose of the language we use to describe our experience should align with the chief purpose of our design as persons, and that is to know God. To know God in Jesus, Christ, specifically so this is our purpose as embodied beings, and everything we say about mental health should be conscientiously downstream from that. Okay, so that’s my main statement, and what I’m going to do in this talk is I want to construct a theological case for what I just said, and then I want to give you a very practical, simple strategy for having a conversation with an actual human being in a way that I think is productive and helpful and not dismissive of their concerns, while still guiding them to see the centrality of who God is to them. Make sense? That’s a lot to do in 45 minutes. Okay, 37 minutes as I look okay. So first I’m gonna construct this my theological case, and I’m gonna do this in just a number of different statements. So here’s my first one. God made human beings to know him as their Chief design purpose. Okay, if you if you were to ask yourself the question, Why was I created? Why were human beings made? There would be one chief answer. There’s lots of other answers, other purposes, but the one chief answer is to know God, to love him. We know this from many different places in Scripture. We know this from when Jesus says in Matthew 22 when he summarizes the entire law, the entire revealed will of God for human beings, the law, the prophets. It’s summarized in this. Do you know what it is in Matthew 22

Jeremy Pierre
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart? Soul, mind and strength, and the second is un The second is like unto it. You should love your neighbor as yourself. That’s why God made humanity to know Him and love Him. That is how He glorifies Himself in us. Okay, there’s lots of other places that Scripture makes this case, Jesus ends his high priestly prayer the night before he was killed with these words from John 17, I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known that the love with which You have loved Me may be in them, and I in them. It’s beautiful. Guys, think about this. You were made to love God in return for his love for you that came first. That’s why you were made so so. So I’m not saying that’s going to solve all mental health problems. Don’t think that I’m going there, but what I am reminding you of is, anytime we’re talking about troubles downstream, we have to remember what’s the source, what’s the center of your design? The purpose God made you is to know Him and to find life in His love for you. So the purpose of personhood should dictate the purpose of the language we use to describe what goes wrong with us. Okay, so there’s my first statement. Here’s a second statement to just I’m building my theological case. Second God made human beings in His image as interpreters of the world. God made you to interpret your experience, to interpret the world as he laid it out. There’s many different places we could look to for scripture to make this case. I think the most obvious one is Genesis. One in the creation account. If you were to read verses 26 through 28 it’s this sort of Interplay where the Trinity is discussing, all right, what are we going to do as we make man? Let’s make him in our image. Let’s let’s give him dominion over all of these different facets of creation. Then verse 27 says, so he makes them male and female. Then verse 28 records the very first conversation that God has with human beings. Do you know? Remember the content of that conversation? It actually wasn’t, let me introduce myself to you, Adam. I’m God. It’s actually the topic of the first conversation between God and man. Was man. He said, Hey, this is who you are. And I’ve and I’ve given you this task to have dominion over the world. And as we continue reading into chapter one and chapter two, we see that one of the main ways Adam exercises dominion is actually through naming, through the use of words, through through attributing the correct meaning to the world in which he lives because he listened to God. Oh, this is who I am. I am listening to words about myself. So as I believe those words about myself, I now rightly am interpreting everything that you are telling me now to do. So God made man in His own image, with different capacities to bring order to the world and language is one of the maybe first capacities and most important cap capacities that we have. The first thing God did again was speak to Adam and and that was how Adam then understood the reality in which he had been placed and so friends. What this means for us is we’re constantly interpreting our experience. We’re constantly interpreting the things around us. The question is, are you going to attribute the right meaning or the wrong meaning? I wish it were even that simple. It’s more like in what kind of ways and corners are you doing it right, interpreting it right, and then in what ways and corners are you interpreting it wrong? Are you attributing the wrong meaning to something but, but that’s but my point for now is simply, you’re an interpreter. God made you that way, so the things that happen to you take that process of what meaning will I attribute to this? Okay? So that leads to a third statement, the language we use displays the meaning we attribute to the world, including our experiences. So like I said, you continue reading from Genesis one into Genesis two. Then the Lord formed all of the animals out of the ground, and he parades them in front of Adam. Do you remember what purpose he puts them in front of Adam? Remember he just got done saying, Hey, I made you to have dominion over all these so here they are, and he starts to express his dominion by doing what. By naming them. Okay? Now you gotta, gotta remember your Bibles, right? The importance of what naming actually is. It’s not just that. Adam was like, Oh, look at that thing with a funny, long neck giraffe. That’s a silly sounding word, because it’s a silly sounding thing. Oh, giraffe, elephant, Frog, no. When he was naming, he was categorizing, he was attributing meaning to he was organizing. It was, in other words, it was part of his dominion function. He was, he was attributing meaning to all these things. And how do we know that this is what he was doing? Because you may not realize this, but it was in that process where Adam realized, hey, there’s not another one of those that are like me. I understand that I am alone. I understand that I am incomplete. Adam came to understand something about his experience accurately as he was listening to the words of God and attributing words to other things. And so that’s why God put him to sleep, took out a rib and made and made Eve, and he was blown away. And suddenly poetry falls out of him, okay, about how beautiful she is. So Adam’s language, I want this to be clear to you, Adam’s language didn’t create reality, but it showed his understanding of reality. It shows that he was trying to track along with the task that God had given him in assigning meaning to everything around him. Okay, so next statement, statement number four, God made the world beyond our ability to comprehend exhaustively, including your own experience as an embodied soul living in this broken and fallen world. So in other words, this is what I’m saying to you guys, you and I are never going to understand everything there is to understand, even about our own existence. So the language that we end up using is going to is going to be limited. It’s going to be partial. It’s going to be describing part, not the whole. It’s not wrong. We just have to recognize that that’s part of our limitations, and it’s not part of God’s limitations. God alone sees every dimension of who we are and how we suffer and what we go through. So it makes me think of Hebrews, 11, three, by faith, we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible. By faith. We have to grasp this. We have to recognize the difference between God’s knowledge and creative capacity and our limited knowledge and created capacity. So here’s what I’m getting at with this main point, folks, your life is actually probably more dimensional and more complex than you typically realize. And so I’m about to sort of what I’m building the theological case for is not that we reject all understandings of mental health in terms of things can go wrong with our bodies. There’s a brokenness to it. But what I am pointing out with this is the Bible actually tells us a way richer and more dimensional understanding of what goes wrong with us. There’s at least four dimensions that are repeated over and over and over again. Anybody from sort of Reformed circles, what are the three enemies of your soul? You guys know the world, the flesh and the devil. Okay, that’s sort of how the Bible talks. You can kind of double click on the flesh, and it expands into two. So let me, let me explain what I mean and how this is important. Okay, think about when you are in when you experience pain, when you experience difficulty. You’re like, Man, I shouldn’t be thinking this, but I am. I shouldn’t be overwhelmed by this emotion, but I am. What’s going wrong with that? We want to have as dimensional a worldview of that as the Bible gives and what the Bible says is, okay, you have, you have a sinful and corrupt heart that’s part of your flesh. We’re fallen, guys. Genesis three was a serious, historic situation that put all of us in a place where our hearts are set against the one chief design purpose already laid out to you. We were made to know God, but now we run from Him. Now we don’t want to have anything to do with him. We fear His Holiness, we prefer his gifts, and we want to ignore him as giver. So guess what that is? An element of your suffering is your own sin.

Jeremy Pierre
But that’s not the only element you can, kind of think flesh too, if you will. There’s also, that’s moral evil. We’ve also, we live in a fallen world, in fallen bodies, and so that means we also suffer. There is a natural evil. God that we also suffer from your body doesn’t work right entirely, and some of your bodies work wrongly in different ways than the way other bodies are broken. Some of you have digestion issues constantly. Some of you have some of you will one day have cancer. Some of you will struggle with mental focus in ways that others will not. My point to you is God’s good design of the created world was thrown into chaos by Adam and Eve’s sin, and that’s another element of your suffering. You’re not just as sinful. You don’t have just a sinful heart that’s corrupt. Your body also suffers and is broken and doesn’t function optimally, as God made it to but there’s more that the Bible actually says, and we typically don’t think about this. And maybe it sounds weird to you to meant to for me to mention the next two things in a talk on mental health. But you know what another enemy of your soul is and the disrupter to your experiences is the world. You know what the world is? The world is that it’s the cacophony of voices that speak to you and undermine your ability to see and trust God. It’s all of the messaging out there that’s in. It’s on the voice of your neighbors. It’s on your screen as you’re scrolling. It’s on the news when you turn it on. It’s in the music you put on your earbuds. All of this friends is this is what John talks about in first John two that the world does not want you to continue to believe that God is who He says He is, and to trust him in Jesus Christ. That is an element of your suffering you’re getting messaging all the time on who you should have been, what you do have a right to, how relationships really should work, what a really ideal marriage ought to be, all these messages that are mixing you up and shifting and changing your expectations are part of the formula, aren’t they? And now you’re really going to get freaked out when I say this last one, the devil guys the Bible has a very real view of the evil one’s activity in causing disruption in the lives of his children and the lives of people who aren’t his children. The enemy is here to steal and kill and destroy. Have you ever noticed guys when you read in the gospels that if you’re looking in the Bible narrative for the closest thing that we could call, like, sort of mental breakdowns or psychosis and stuff like that. People going crazy, convulsing, throwing themselves down. You ever notice it’s about, it’s about demon possession. How do you, how do you deal with that, in terms of what, what’s a good hermeneutic of Scripture? There is it? Oh, that was in Bible times. We that doesn’t happen now. No, I don’t think so. I also wouldn’t actually go the other extreme and just say every, every sort of psychosis somebody goes through, or if there is something going wrong with their brain, it’s because they’re possessed by a demon. I’m not making that case either. I’m just simply saying we have four dimensions that scripture provides for us to have a richer, fuller view of what’s going on when my when, when I can’t even keep things straight. Does that make sense to you guys? So I’m talking dimensions, right? This is the only object I have within my grasp, okay? But when I say dimension, what I simply mean is like objects that we have have multiple dimensions. I’m not talking like Interstellar, even though that’s a cool movie with different dimensions. But this bottle has a width. This bottle has a length. This bottle has it looks like a circle. If you look at it from this angle. We could measure the water temperature in here. We could mention we could measure the water purity in there. My wife is always telling me to buy spring water. This one’s purified water, which she would spit out of her mouth. Okay, she’s pretty bougie, not really. She’s an Indiana girl. I’m just playing around. But my point to you guys is when so when we say things like, hey, that is a mental problem. We’re not necessarily saying that’s also not a spiritual problem, and it’s also not a problem where the evil one is really trying to attack someone, and also not a problem where the world’s influence in shaping expectations is on display here, does it? I hope that made sense to you. I know that was a lot. So here’s another statement for you. The language people use will only partially convey the meaning of a given experience. Okay? So there’s gonna be a tendency. Is to emphasize one thing over another thing when you’re describing to your friend or you’re describing to yourself what has gone wrong. Okay, because you’re not God and you can’t see all things as they are immediately and have access to all knowledge, that means that you are going to sort of do shorthand when you’re telling yourself what it is that you’re going through. So you’re the language you use takes those shortcuts and puts emphasis and priority on one thing, probably usually to the exclusion of other things. Okay, so, so let me give you an example. I hear the word triggering all the time. Now do you as well? Very triggering. My workplace is triggering to me. I don’t think I can mentally function in that environment. Okay, that may not be a false statement, okay, but, but, but using that language, what is the point of emphasis? What gets priority of attention? When you say triggering, it’s what gets priority of attention is the effect that your workplace has on your emotional state. Okay, so again, there’s tough workplaces, and workplaces can definitely have the effect on provoking certain emotions in us, okay, but, but I think where I’m challenging us to think broadly is that’s only part of the story of it, isn’t it? And so what, what we often do is we say things like, that’s a very triggering work environment, and we’ve put the period as if it’s concluded we now know the problem when we’re only seeing part of the problem. The external provocation is certainly part of the meaning. But it’s not the only meaning to consider. The person was also responding from their spiritual heart, her her beliefs and desires were active in her negative response to that, that admittedly negative environment. So I guess what I’m saying is, God has much to say about both things, and we need to be considering both. So here’s my next statement. These are stacking. I’m moving somewhere. Every language choice is here’s a key word for the whole talk. Is a prioritization. It’s a prioritization. We’re setting a priority language is about both the truth content of something, but also the priority we place. So what we choose to prioritize in the language we use is what we’re drawing most attention to as the center of the problem. Does that make sense? Here’s a silly example. I’m an Ohio State Buckeyes fan. Anybody else out there. Thank you The Ohio That’s right. Okay, there’s two ways to describe. I’ve heard the national championship, Ohio State Buckeyes. Okay, here’s one way, the nine time national championship, Ohio State Buckeyes, or the $20 million roster purchased national championship Ohio State Buckeyes. Okay, my Michigan friends say this, my Ohio State friends say this, here’s my That’s right, that’s right, here’s my point. Both of those statements are actually factually true. Okay, they’re both factually true, but the difference in the language shows what you actually it leads to very different conclusions, doesn’t it? One conclusion is, wow, that’s a great program, maybe the best ever. The other opposite conclusion, again, with other truth is, dude, they just bought their whole roster. That’s not that impressive of a program. We do this, folks. We do this in non silly ways. The language we use sets the priority of attention on one thing or another, leading to very different conclusions. That’s what I’m trying to say. And so as we sort of think through what does it mean to, what does it mean to,

Jeremy Pierre
to judge the best way, the best language to use, we have to think about both the truth content of it and the prioritization of it. So here’s another term that we’re using a lot these days, is self care. Okay? Self Care, if you’re kind of analyzing the truth content of it, there can be a false way of understanding self care that it’s sort of, it’s all of these. Uh, it’s sort of a self indulgent view that sort of sees my emotional that like I should arrange my life in such a way where I don’t experience negative emotion. That’s what it means to have self care. Well, that’s truth. Content is bogus, but, if, but, but we can mean self care, I think, in a way that squares with the Bible. If what we’re meaning by that is I need to steward the limitations that God has installed me with, and insofar as I don’t, I’m not getting the right sleep, I’m not getting the right mental rest, I’m not my diet’s all out of whack. Insofar as I am not stewarding my body and my soul, things are going to go bad, okay? So I think we can use self care to describe that. That’s true. Okay. But then the other decision we have to make is, how much of a priority does that become in the way we think about our troubles and our problems? Is lack of self care the primary cause of this person’s anxiety or that person’s anxiety, or are other explanations more central, more primary? Generally, it’s easier for people to consider true but lesser concerns when handling these problems right? So they want to focus on, hey, diet, sleep, exercise, again. Do that, guys, that’s actually right. That’s Biblical to do. But sometimes people can use that to avoid the harder, deeper things. Like, wait a second, this anxiety actually comes from a heart that’s wanting and expecting a certain version of the future that if I don’t work hard, if I don’t protect it, if I’m not vigilant enough, I won’t get that version of the future. And I don’t know if I can trust God if that doesn’t happen. You know how hard it is to submit that to God? It’s impossible for us in the flesh. We need the faith God gives us to submit it. But my point to you is not that self care is wrong, but sometimes it takes priority because it’s easier to deal with than the deeper heart stuff. Does that make sense? Okay, next next point here, actually, I’m going to skip that point. Next Next point. Okay, so I’m just gonna keep with my original numbering eight. Okay, don’t worry. I’ll put this in an article if you’re even interested. None of you probably are, but here we go. Okay, human beings have always needed the Word of God to interpret the world rightly, specifically to see the ultimate meaning of of their experience, to see the ultimate meaning behind what the pain that they’re going through. Okay, I love Isaiah, 43, seven. God says of his children, I created them for My glory when I formed and made them the ultimate meaning of creation is revealed, revealed in God’s Word. The purpose for which he made all things is to display his glory in creation. And He does this by with with us, with human beings, by us knowing and loving and adoring him. And so he did everything necessary in the gospel of Jesus Christ to restore that central relationship and folks, it has an effect on every other dimension of our existence. I’m not saying that a promise of the Gospel is that what is physiologically broken in our bodies will get restored in this life. If I were to say that, you could, I was, I’m not going to say names. You could call me a faith healer, okay, just we know that faith healers, you know, we think they’re silly for sort of casting out demons and making ridiculous promises like broken arms being healed, okay, but, but I’m also not saying that in this life, God necessarily promises, as part of the gospel package, that something, the mental duress that you tend towards, for various reasons, even physiologically, is going to snap his fingers and go away. I’m not saying that, but what I am saying is this, that as we learn to trust the Lord, as we learn to see our lives in relation to him, we are His children. We are His sheep. He is our Father. He is our shepherd. As we learn to entrust ourselves to Him, it does change the way we respond to those very difficulties. It does. It has a transformative effect, and then that should change the way we then talk about these things.

Jeremy Pierre
So here’s just an example. Do we use the word addiction? I think if, by what we say when we use the word addiction, if what we mean is a

Jeremy Pierre
physiological mechanism that someone has, that that that now identifies them as an addict in some kind of core, inescapable aspect of their identity, where in a way that doesn’t recognize that that’s a human being with a soul designed to relate to the to the unseen God. I do think it’s wrong to speak of addiction like that. Rather, if we use the word addiction to simply acknowledge that when we participate in something especially of chemical dependence, enough, our bodies become dependent upon it in a way that reduces our ability to make otherwise choices. Okay, but that that’s an aspect of the brokenness of our bodies as well as a pursuit of the soul, and we see that the main problem is ultimately, this addict needs the rescue of the Lord Jesus Christ, then I think that’s a right way to talk about addictions. So do you kind of see where I’m going, guys? That’s why I didn’t give you a list of good terms and a list of bad terms. I do think there are terms out there in mental health lingo that are probably irrecoverable. They’re just, they just, you can’t really use them in a good construal way. I do think they’re out there, but my point to you is, how do you make those decisions? That’s what I’m trying to give you a framework for. We use God’s chief design purpose of us as people, as the orientation point for all the language that we then use to say what goes wrong with us. Okay, so let me get practical in the last couple minutes here. Okay, so this is just maybe practical guidance for using language wisely as you’re speaking to someone, all right, so I’m gonna just imagine a scenario where maybe you have a wife who comes in and she’s just really overwhelmed because her husband is she keeps using the term a narcissist is narcissistic, okay? Is that legitimate terminology to use? What does it mean? How do we compare it to and weigh it against scripture, all the rest of that stuff? That’s what I just kind of want to walk you through, in terms of what I think it is to take the framework that I established and use it wisely in a real life conversation. Okay, so I think it’s step one ask a person to explain why that particular therapy word effect effectively describes her experience. So instead of assuming you know what she means when she says narcissist say, Can you help me understand what that means to you? Help me understand why that word captures what you’re experiencing from your husband. So well, because most of the time guys, they don’t know the technical definition. Narcissism is a technical term. Narcissistic personality disorder in the DSM five is defined as a mental illness characterized by pervasive pattern of grandiosity in fantasy or behavior, need for admiration, lack of empathy and the onset by early adulthood and and present in a variety of contexts. But most of the time, people are using narcissism in an as an informal term. They’re just trying to capture there’s, there’s, this is like a super villain level selfishness. That’s what they’re trying to say. This guy’s super selfish, like, in a way that, like, feels abnormal. It’s like this entrenched pattern of self centeredness that’s more extreme than, than, than the normal selfishness I see in other people. So again, they’re, they’re they’re grabbing at words, so you’re loving them and caring for them and shepherding them well by letting them talk it out. Why is that effective for you as a description, okay, here’s here’s step two, acknowledge where her explanation touches on an aspect of experience that’s acknowledged in Scripture. And you can also show how scripture acknowledges that there’s complexity there, there’s mystery there. So I think we can say to this, this woman, Scripture acknowledges the deep pain that we experience when someone else acts towards us with extreme self interest. With with absolutely no empathy towards us, with absolutely no consideration of anything but themselves when they act on that way. Scripture affirms that does hurt, and there’s a reason it hurts, actually the entire design of what God made relationships. To do is reversed in that situation. Instead of at cost to self, building you up, someone she’s calling a narcissist is at cost to her, building himself up, right? So you can say to her, this is not God’s heart. God didn’t design human relationships for this, you can take it to lots of different places. Psalm 57 Psalm 33 you could go to lots of places where David’s in this place where he has been treated just terribly, and the effect that it has on him again. So you’re trying to resonate, yeah, the Bible acknowledges what you’re saying. Step three, don’t shame her for using therapy words, but But nevertheless, try to offer better descriptions that relate their her experience to God. That’s the key there. Remember, if our chief design purpose is to know God, then where we want to be wise and how we’re helping people think through their troubles is we don’t want to just use words that don’t eventually reference them back up to and this is who God is to you amidst all this stuff. So you could say to her something like this, I think I understand why you keep using the term narcissism to describe your husband. That’s not necessarily a wrong word, but I want to be sure that we’re filling in the meaning of that word with the deeper meaning that I think Scripture gives us. Can I take you to a couple passages, and maybe you take her to James 314 and you say you talk about selfishness is a characteristic of the sinful flesh that’s so sinful that actually James, in that chapter, calls it demonic, earthly, unspiritual, demonic. It smells of hell. No wonder you feel that way, and or and our selfishness. Also in Romans, one it can take on patterns that become so entrenched in a person’s life, it seems like it shrinks their very capacity to be anything other than that. The Bible describes this with the metaphor of God handing over, someone handing over, three times, handing over. So again, you’re trying to give biblical categories that acknowledge what she’s trying to convey, but is showing more clearly from Scripture how that connects to God. Uh. Then step four, specifically explain the many ways scripture provides the ultimate meaning behind this experience, behind this suffering. So you can say to her, hey, I want to take you to Romans chapter 12, because I want to help you know. How do you respond to someone who is so self centered, to where it’s constantly harming you? And in Romans 12, we’re told to love them, but you got to understand there’s a lot of weight and complexity behind that command of love, because it says, Let love be genuine. Hate what is evil and hold fast to what’s good. So here’s something that I just want us to really talk through. Did you know that loving your husband means refusing to be manipulated by him? Because you’re supposed to hate what’s evil, you’re supposed to allow God to set the agenda for what you pursue and the purposes of your heart. And what a manipulative person is trying to do is he’s trying to bend your will to his. And that’s not that’s not seeking God first, that’s that’s being more driven by fear of upsetting him or the inconvenience of when he get mad. And so, you know, that’s not easy. I’m not saying it’s necessarily easy in the in the practice, but that’s what you’re saying to her. You You ought not be manipulated. And yet, here’s the other complex side of what it means to love, to hold fast to what’s good means you pray for the Heart of Jesus, towards your husband, and you do good to him whenever you can do good to him in ways that are God’s calling to you, not his calling to you. So guys, I hope what you’re seeing is me trying to model you’re getting past just I’ve just seen too many situations where somebody just says narcissist, and then in their mind, it’s like it’s a package that’s all tied up and ready to ship. And that’s kind of the end of it. He’s a narcissist. There’s nothing more he can do, and I just got to adjust around him. But the Bible’s view of things is more complex than that. It gives us it equips us with something deeper, because we see it in relation. Into God’s activity, even in that hard relationship and in our hearts.

Jeremy Pierre
So that’s the main thing that I would like to say to you, in terms of just, I hope I left you with something practical to just model for you guys. This is absolutely complex. But again, my point was to construct a theological case for a little mini methodology, guys, that was only a methodology. It wasn’t the methodology you might think, yeah, that makes no sense. I’ll never use that. That’s fine. Just trash it. I’m fine with that, but my point to you is that’s at least a model for you that you can do for yourself and trying to think biblically about complex issues like mental health. Guys, thank you so much for your attention. I am. I’m really grateful for you.