2/20/22 "Are your wonders known in the darkness? – God and Mental Illness"
Psalm 88 & Psalm 139
Long before COVID-19, America was suffering under another pandemic. In 2019, just prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, 19.86% of adults experienced a mental illness, equivalent to nearly 50 million Americans. 24.7% of adults with a mental illness report an unmet need for treatment. This number has not declined since 2011. More than half of adults with mental illness do not receive treatment, totaling over 27 million U.S. adults. 15.08% of youth experienced a major depressive episode in the past year. Over 60% of youth with major depression do not receive any mental health treatment. Even in states with the greatest access, nearly 1 in 3 are going without treatment. These statistics are the tip of the mental health crisis iceberg, exposing our nation’s lack of resources and the will to address mental illness.
Statistics can be hard to take in. Me standing here quoting percentages that represent unknown faces is probably not the best way to paint the picture of just how serious the mental health crisis is in our country. So let me give faces to these numbers. Pullen currently has 577 adult members and 74 children and youth. If Pullen reflected the national landscape on mental illness that would mean that 115 Pullen adults experienced mental illness this past year. 58 of those people did not receive any treatment. Of our 74 children and youth, 11 of them experienced a major depressive episode in the past year and 7 of them did not receive any mental health treatment. And all of these numbers increase in minority populations.
Maybe this is news to you, maybe not. Since COVID-19 we have not only heard and/or read about the increase in these numbers, we have experienced them in our homes, our extended families, our circles of friends, in the workplace and in our church. Toward the end of the first year of the pandemic, I was talking with a colleague here in Raleigh about the pandemic and he made the statement: “I have more people in the hospital right now struggling with mental illness than with COVID.” I haven’t been able to shake his words.
I grew up with relatives who struggled with mental illness. Long deceased now, I have shared about one them in a sermon before. Herman Petty, my father’s uncle, was a brilliant man. He excelled in his studies at Wake Forest. He was a deeply religious man. I keep his Bible on a special shelf in my office that was left at my grandmother’s home. I recall him as a handsome and distinguished gentleman. However, my lasting memories of Herman revolve around our once a year trip at Christmas to visit him in the boarding house he lived in in Charlotte. Although Herman took delight in seeing me and my sister, our visits were always awkward. The first Krispy Kreme location in Charlotte was directly across the street from the boarding house that Herman lived in. Most often, we would walk across the street and enjoy a doughnut while we visited with Herman. Even as a child, I could sense the struggle within him. After a number of years making these annual visits, one year we showed up to find that Herman was no longer living at the boarding house and no one knew where he has gone. We never heard from or saw him again. No one in the family ever talked of Herman’s struggles, and mental illness was certainly never mentioned.
I imagine that if I asked, way over half of the people sitting in this room could tell a Herman story. Each story would be unique in detail but there would be a single common thread: mental illness. And yet, we talk so little about mental illness. And when we do, we often do so in whispers. When we gather for worship, we call by name the people in our community who are physically sick or in the hospital for surgery and pray for them as an act of our care for them. We take food to them when they return home from the hospital. And sometimes we arrange transportation for follow-up doctor’s visits. But when someone goes into the hospital for mental health care, we are silent.
There are some good reasons for this silence, privacy being the main reason. It is important for anyone struggling with mental illness that they have control over telling their story. Mental health related issues are complex and not as easily diagnosed and explained as needing to have one’s gallbladder taken out or a broken bone repaired. And yet, still in 2022, one of the reasons that we are not as open about mental health care is the stigma that still surrounds mental illness.
There is the public stigma that involves the negative or discriminatory attitudes that others have about mental illness. There is self-stigma that includes internalized shame that people with mental illness have about their own condition. And there is institutional stigma that is more systemic, involving policies of government and private organizations that intentionally or unintentionally limit opportunities for people with mental illness such as: lower funding for mental illness research or fewer mental health services relative to other health care. The stigma of mental illness is universal. A 2016 study (www.EMBO.org) on stigma concluded “there is no country, society or culture where people with mental illness have the same societal value as people without mental illness.” And so, a question I bring this morning is this: Does the church, as an institution, have a role to play in de-stigmatizing mental illness? If so, what our responsibility and our role, and what strategies might we explore?
To begin thinking about that question, might we look to our sacred scriptures and the wisdom of other faith traditions, along with our own experience, to lay a foundation. I will confess that I have been reluctant to speak out directly and explicitly about mental illness in sermons. Yes, I have made references but I have held my cards close. And there are several reasons why. Primarily, it has been my experience that religion and the church have done more harm than good when addressing mental illness, and I haven’t wanted to add to that harm. Religion and the church has encouraged the sick – whether physically or mentally – to just pray away the sickness. If you pray hard enough and have enough faith, you will be healed from whatever aliment you suffer – mentally or physically. The implication is that if you are not healed, you didn’t pray in the right way or long enough or you don’t have enough faith. The institutional church has also seen mental illness as a kind of demon possession initiated by some awful sin the person is carrying. There is nothing more offensive to me when it comes to religion than this kind of spiritual abuse we heap upon people who are already suffering and vulnerable. To me, it is the ultimate sin of humanity: to victimize the victim. For centuries, this has been the church’s approach to those suffering with mental illness.
If one simply opens the Bible it is hard to understand how the institutional church came up with the approach of victimizing the victim. Even a cursory reading of the Bible one will quickly encounter the stories of men and women who struggled with mental illness – depression, anxiety, mood and personality disorders, post-traumatic stress – just to name a few. David was troubled and battled deep despair. In many of the Psalms, he writes of his anguish, loneliness, and fear. We also read of his deep grief in the loss of his sons. Elijah and Jonah showed signs of depression and anxiety often feeling weary and angry and defeated wanting to run away from it all. Sarah and Hagar, they too give us a glimpse into a kind of anxiety and depression that is more than just “feeling the blues.” And Jesus, Jesus often leaves us with the impression that he, too, was battling internal struggles of deep despair and erratic behavior.
But it is the writers of the psalms who fling open a window into the depths of depression and anxiety and of the thoughts of wanting it all to end.
In my distress I cry to the Lord…O God, how many are my foes!...I am weary with my moaning; every night I flood my bed with tears; I drench my couch with my weeping…Why, O God, do you stand far off? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?...How long, O God? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? My tears have been my food day and night, while people say to me continually, “Where is your God?”
These are not the words of someone just having a bad day or experiencing a few days of feeling down. These expressions go into the depths of one’s soul and speak to the struggles of persistent anxiety and depression and the question of continuing life when that life is filled with so much mental pain and suffering. Indeed, it is the psalmists who tap into every possible human emotion. And yet, if you read the psalms almost every one of them end with some kind of hope and affirmation of God’s goodness and steadfast love. That is with one exception: Psalm 88. The writer of this psalm has no such ending. The writer begins by laying out his or her troubled soul. For my soul is full of troubles, and my life draws near to Sheol…You have put me in the depths of the Pit, in the regions dark and deep. The writer goes on to express utter aloneness: you have caused my companions to shun me. Psalm 88 concludes with these words: You made lover and neighbor alike dump me; the only friend I have left is Darkness. No words of hope. No talk of God’s steadfast love. Just darkness.
It is a hard reality, and a hard word to hear, but I am afraid this is how so many of our friends and loved ones and strangers who walk into our church on Sunday morning or who sit in the next cubical at work or at the desk beside us in school or the widow down the hall in the retirement community who are struggling with mental illness feel day-in-and-day-out – the only friend I have is darkness. It is the lens through which they see and encounter and experience life. They feel alone. Living in darkness. Their soul and mind are full of troubles. Troubles they have no control over. Troubles that are their DNA. Troubles that are a result of trauma. Troubles that they didn’t ask for.
And the best the church has had to offer is pray harder, have more faith, confess your sin. Pray harder. Believe more. Confess your sin. Have hope. Pray. Believe. Confess. Hope. Well, it’s time to call out that lie. It is time for the church and people of faith to step up and answer the psalmists’ question that is buried in Psalm 88. The question the psalmist asks God: Are your wonders known in the darkness?
It is time for the church to see the wonders – the beauty, the value, the gift – of those who lives are filled with the darkness of mental illness. It is the responsibility of the church to say to those struggling with mental illness: we see you, we value you, you are a gift to us. We see your anxiety and we know that you are more than your anxiety. We see your depression and we know that you are more than your depression. We understand your struggle with bi-polar and we know that you are more than your mania or depression. We see your borderline personality and we know that you are not solely defined by that diagnoses. We, the church, of all places, has the responsibility to say to those living with mental illness: your wonder, your giftedness, your belovedness, your spirit and soul is known to us – and yes, in your darkness you are a wonder to us. Why is this our responsibility? Because it is what God would say and do. And as best I can tell, we, as the church, are to say and do what God would say and do. Otherwise, let us close up shop and go home!
The isolation and stress of two years of a global pandemic has only deepened the mental health crisis in our nation and world. People who have never struggled with mental illness or only rarely experienced the occasional blues are struggling now to care for their mental health. Those who were already struggling, well, they have reached new depths of pain and suffering with no more resources, possibly fewer, than before the pandemic. Pastors, ministers, teachers, social workers health care professional who most often are trying to care for those with mental illness have found themselves struggling with their own mental health care. And the lasting mental health effects of this pandemic on all of us, but particularly our children and youth, is yet to be known.
Now is the time for the church, God’s people, to act and become a national voice for those struggling with mental illness. Now is the time to demand more resources for mental health in this nation. Now is the time to dis-mantle the stigmas of mental illness and to say to all our family members, our friends, our colleagues, our fellow church mates, and to strangers who come to our door – we see you and in your darkness, in your pain and suffering, you are a wonder and gift to us.
I want to ask three things of the people of Pullen Church this morning:
We, as a church, set up a task group with lay members and mental health professionals to explore strategies for supporting our children and youth who are struggling with mental illness.
Affirm as part of our mission this year is that all our councils and committees will explore one way that they, as a small group, can advocate for person’s living with mental illness.
And finally, that we treat ourselves and others with a gentleness and kindness and compassion unlike we have ever known and experienced before. And when we encounter each other we will look into one another’s eyes and see the wonder – the beauty and belovedness – that is within each person no matter the struggles they carry.
Here is the thing I have learned. With my uncle Herman I could see and sense the darkness in him. What I have learned is that that is not true with everyone. Jennifer Niven, a New York Times and international best-selling American author writes in her book All the Bright Places, “It’s my experience that people are a lot more sympathetic if they can see you hurting, and for the millionth time in my life I wish for measles or smallpox or some other easily understood disease just to make it easier on me and also on them.”
Be gentle with yourself and one another, for the darkness some bear is not always seen on the outside. Or as Jesus said: love one another. Jesus placed no qualifiers on that commandment. He simply said: love one another. We can’t cure mental illness. But we can educate ourselves about it. We can advocate for the mentally ill. We can work to put more resources in place for those struggling with mental illness. We can work to dis-mantle the stigma of mental illness. But we can’t cure mental illness. We can’t pray it away. Having more faith won’t make it go away. Longer confession won’t fix it. But we can love one another while we work for better mental health care in this nation. And we can choose to see the wonder and beauty that each soul possesses, even in the darkness of mental illness. We can love one another even when it is hard. It is what God does for each of us; and it is what we can do for God and each other. And that, I have learned, is hope.
