This past Sunday our topic in our small group class was anger. We were asked by our teacher if we lived in an angry city, nation, etc. I responded emphatically with a yes. My husband felt that we were not as angry of a nation as the media wanted to portray us to be and I agree with that as well. The media tends to stir the pot and usually does not share the whole story until they have already introduced both fear and anger. There where others in the class that felt that some things were more of a result of mental illness rather than anger issues, and I agree that mental illness is indeed a reality that needs addressed, but mental illness is not an excuse for actions of anger. Therefore, I still answer that question with an emphatic yes.
Last night we watched “No Man Left Behind”, the story of the men in the Battle of Mogadishu (or as we better know it as “Blackhawk Down”) on the National Geographic Channel. Mike Durant, the pilot of one of the Blackhawks that went down, was taken captive by the Somali rebels. In this special he shared how it felt to have this angry out of control mob descend upon him and how he witnessed human beings doing things he had never seen them do. Were they all mentally ill? Or were they just plainly and simply filled with anger?You might say “that was war”, well let’s bring it a little closer to home.
Let’s just bring it to the little league ball field when the umpire makes a call that the parents feel was the wrong call. Let’s bring it to the parking lot and the shopping malls during the Black Friday sales. Let’s bring it to the highways when someone has been cut off. Let’s bring it to a political rally. Let’s bring it to the streets outside an abortion clinic. Let’s bring it to the office when a practical joke goes south. Let’s bring it to the church business meeting when one group wants the pastor to resign and the other is ready to defend him to their death. Let’s bring it inside the doors of our home when things don’t go the way we think they should have gone.
In these situations is everyone mentally ill?
Or are we just as the Word of God has said…
You brood of vipers, how can you, being evil, speak what is good? For the mouth speaks out of that which fills the heart. The good man brings out of his good treasure what is good; and the evil man brings out of his evil treasure what is evil.
Matthew 12:34-35
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But the things that proceed out of the mouth come from the heart, and those defile the man. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, slanders.
Matthew 15:18-19
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You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies.
John 8:44
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Now the deeds of the flesh are evident, which are: immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, factions, envying, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these, of which I forewarn you, just as I have forewarned you, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.
Galatians 5:19-21
Personally, I think its unfair to hand out the mentally ill card so easily. Schools use it as their reasoning as to why kids (who I believe are being required to attend school at way too young of an age) can’t sit still or pay attention in class. Our President hands it out for every mass shooting and uses it as his reasoning for pushing for more gun laws. Hitler used it as his reasoning to begin to put into effect his mass extermination Euthanasia Program.
I know many people who struggle with true mental illnesses and I am not one bit concerned that they will grab a gun and run into a building or school and begin slaughtering innocent people at random. That’s anger and hate induced, it’s not mental illness. It’s the result of unchecked sin, uncrucified flesh, unrenewed minds, and unregenerated hearts and I think it is time that we start calling evil what it is… especially we in the church.
In the book of Revelation in chapter 18 we read of the destruction of Babylon. Babylon represents the kingdom of this world that is antagonistic to the Kingdom of God. In Revelation 18:23 we read, for your merchants were the great men of the earth, because all the nations were deceived by your sorcery. The word sorcery here in Revelation 18:23 and in Galatians 5:20 above is the Greek word pharmakeia and it means the use or the administering of drugs, magical arts, often found in connection with idolatry and fostered by it.
We live in a day when we want to call evil a mental illness and administer a drug for it. We want to diagnose sin as something that is treatable and fixable by our own human hands and measures. We just need more science, more studies, more laws, and we will fix the world without God. We will do it without His Law, testimonies, and precepts, and without His Spirit to guide and teach us, and without His Son to die for us and save us.
We have forgotten that we battle not against flesh and blood, but against the spiritual forces of darkness. We have forgotten that those who know Christ not, walk out the will of the devil and are wide open to his manipulations and deceptions. That’s not mental illness… that’s the nature of man apart from Christ.
When I was in Poland walking through Lodz and then standing outside a cattle car with the claw marks of trapped men, women, and children lining the inside of it, our Israeli guide told us that some want to say that “monsters” engineered and carried out these atrocious acts. He went on to say, but we must NEVER say that because it wasn’t monsters, it was human beings. It was their neighbors, their teachers, their business partners, everyday men and women that they once passed daily on the streets. It was men who were trusted by the vote of an entire nation and were backed by other highly educated men and once considered upstanding citizens. It was husbands, fathers, brothers, and sons. It was wives, mothers, sisters, and daughters.
Were they all simply mentally ill?
No, they were depraved as we all are apart from the grace of God. They were walking in the darkness and they carried out what was in their hearts. Evil is among us and evil is within us and it can only be cast out by God Himself.
It’s unfair to those who truly struggle with mental illnesses to lump those who are filled with unchecked anger and rage into the same group. It’s unfair and it’s dangerous and I refuse to do it. There are those who truly succumb to mental illness and take their own lives. There are those who are in such a dark and hopeless place, weighed down with burdens that no one has bent down to help them carry, maybe because they are afraid of being honest and real with those around them, or maybe because no one really cared enough to try and step into their mess with the hope of the Word of God and the hands and feet and heart of Christ, and they may take the lives of their children and then take their own. Yet, they are not those who kill in anger or with premeditated plans.
There is a difference between mental illness and hearts filled with hate, anger, bitterness, and rage. Mental illness is not a choice, it’s the result of a fallen world just like cancer and any other ailment that comes upon us as result of this dying and decaying world. God never commands us to put mental illness away from us. Yet hate, anger, bitterness, and rage He does… which means mental illness is not an excuse for these things.
Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you.
Ephesians 4:30-32
So please, let’s just stop using mental illness as a scapegoat.