“Swinton, chair in divinity and religious studies at King’s College, University of Aberdeen, doesn’t merely critique therapeutic culture. He gives pastors something better—the biblical category of shalom. He offers a vision of mental health that exposes the poverty of our culture’s therapeutic assumptions and gives the church genuinely different categories for human flourishing.” - TGC
“The tactic is definitional before it is theological. By establishing progressive sanctification as the exclusive and defining goal of counseling and by embedding “under the authority of the local church” as a structural requirement, Adkins has already determined the outcome of every subsequent argument.” - Worldview Matters
“While I agree with some of Gifford’s concerns, I’m grateful that counseling and medical interventions are more readily available. If humans are both body and soul, and both are broken, then we need holistic help, which sometimes isn’t available within the local church.” - TGC
“…we don’t have to grieve like those who have no hope (1 Thessalonians 4:13)! Hope and healing are possible so look for a highly trained professional who also knows Jesus to help you on your journey. Know your Bible and start now. Test all things against Scripture which is true and good and right and holy.” - The Baptist Paper
“Gen Z’s priorities are clear: Being happy tops the list (65%), followed by financial stability (53%) and having good mental and emotional health (49%)….Nearly one in three (28%) reports always feeling lonely ….Two in five Gen Z (39%) say they frequently feel anxiety” - RNS
“The study found that 87% of evangelical clergy said they would encourage their congregants to seek help from a mental health professional when suffering from depression. (85% of Black Protestants, 97% of mainline Protestants and 99% of Catholics agreed.)” - RNS
“According to a recent article in Psychology Today, those who describe themselves as ‘spiritual but not religious,’ which is over one in five Americans, are at higher risk of mental illness compared to the religious and the non-religious.” - Breakpoint
“it is not only pastors like MacArthur who embrace the medical-moral divide. Advocates and clinicians in the mental health world do also. Sometimes…advocates will state that mental illness has nothing to do with character, weakness of will, or anything else that sounds moral” - Mere Orthodoxy
“far better people than I have experienced far worse depression, including Martin Luther, John Owen, and William Cowper, to name a few. I studied the life of Charles Spurgeon who battled depression, and found comfort in the fact that godly men and women had walked the same path I was walking.” - Randy Alcorn
Problems in our behavior can be both mental health problems and “sin problems.” Part of the confusion on the topic of mental health among conservative evangelicals and fundamentalists is the assumption that a life problem has to be one or the other.
Consider a physical health analogy: Suppose I lose a leg in an accident. Because it’s a lot harder to walk now, I lay on the couch excessively, experience a lot of unhealthy weight gain, and neglect important duties.
I started with a health problem and developed a sin problem. The two are interconnected yet have distinct features.
