How did you first discover you struggled with a mental illness?
I was a student at a Bible college in the Midwest. I was 22, struggling with some serious questions about the faith, and I had been dealing with insomnia and daily panic attacks for about nine months. I eventually could not continue with my studies. I came home to the West Coast dejected and very depressed. At that time, I went to see my first mental health practitioner, who diagnosed depression and prescribed an antidepressant. Within weeks, the severity of the depression waned, and I had a six-month respite from the insomnia and panic attacks. However, due to the combination of a less than thorough examination, and my own ignorance of family mental health history, it turned out I was misdiagnosed. Before I realized this, I had returned to the Bible college and had attempted to complete my degree. Within months, I was displaying erratic and at times outright sinful behavior patterns, often at odds with my own values and convictions as a Christian. What I did not know was that I was bipolar, and that while my depressive cycles were being held in check with antidepressants, my tendency toward manic mood swings was totally unregulated. At times I felt like Superman, and I was not making rational connections between my actions and their natural consequences.
Thankfully, God continued to show faithfulness to me. After a particularly damaging manic episode, I was despondent about my faith and was crashing into another deep depression. At that time, one of my pastors showed grace and love to me at a time of real vulnerability. He referred me to another pastor who had some background in dealing with believers who struggle with mental illness. He encouraged me to not give up on the medical side of my struggles, and he also reassured me that God's love extended to me in my bewildered state. Shortly thereafter, just before I turned 24, I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder by a psychiatrist here on the West Coast. Having the correct diagnosis definitely went a long way in helping identify my symptoms and how to deal with them, as well as gaining insight into my own natural depressive and manic cycles, and how to adjust to these while striving to live a normal life.
Where does mental illness end and personal choice begin? How are they related?
Funny question! I have come to conclude that we are all mentally ill due to our own sinfulness (in the Romans 1 sense), where we have become futile in our thinking, and that this is God's providential work to point us to our need for Christ. I know that I didn't show up at the "Plaza for Fallen Human Proclivities" and get in the bipolar line. But I also believe we are incredibly integrated beings, and how our immaterial selves (mind, spirit, soul) interact with our bodies is something of which modern medicine has very little understanding. The way I have come to understand the connection between being bipolar and my personal choices is pretty simple, and I don't think one has to have a mental illness to come to a similar conclusion. There are many contributing factors to the choices I make: family upbringing, mood, whether I am hungry, tired, or grumpy, and even the fact that I am bipolar.
However, as a Christian who believes what the Westminster Shorter Catechism teaches in its answer to Q.18 that we are not only guilty of the sin of our first father Adam, I believe we are also guilty for all of our own willful misdeeds and transgressions. Just as we cannot plead innocence before God for the fact that Adam's fall contributed directly to our own sinfulness and subsequent choices, I cannot say, "Well, since I am bipolar and my gray matter doesn't work like it is supposed to, I am absolved of all of the consequences of my choices." Life doesn't work that way’just ask my wife! My choices are my own. However my psychological tendencies might influence those choices, I have never been so incoherent or unaware of the rightness or wrongness of my actions to not know what the right thing to do was in any given situation. Yes, my mental illness is a contributing factor to the choices I make, but I am ultimately responsible for each and every one of my choices. I would much rather plead the blood of Jesus in the final judgment than try to get off on a flimsy (and ultimately fallacious) technicality like "bipolar made me do it." Talk about a lame defense! I'll take Christ and his perfect and complete work any day.
Your pilgrimage has taken you in and out of different churches throughout the course of your mental illness. What role has the church and its theology played in living with a mental disorder?
When I began to discover my struggle with mental illness, I was a member of a large, broadly evangelical church in Southern California. Thankfully, while I was a student at the Bible college, I was also attending a Lutheran congregation. While I did not understand it at the time, their emphasis on word and sacrament was probably the most important influence on how I would deal with my struggles with bipolar disorder in the years that followed. It was a bit of a surprise to hear after coming out of the evangelical world, where so much stock is placed on the application of biblical principles and following the right steps in order to keep on God's "good side," where his blessings can be accessed. Instead of being admonished to pray harder and have more faith, I was encouraged by the reminder that receiving God's grace is not at all contingent on me, my efforts, or my mental state.
I have come to appreciate two things most as a Reformed Christian. The first is that whatever can be said of my life as a Christian, it is a reflection of God's own faithful work to complete what he has started in me (Phil. 1:6). If God is true, I can trust him to complete in me what I cannot complete for myself. myself. Second, my own congregation's emphasis on weekly Communion makes a lot of sense to a guy who has to take pills every day. I cannot always be sure my pills are working, but I have confidence in Christ's body and blood offered in the bread and the wine. They are a sign and a seal of Christ's victory over sin’my sin’and death, and my own innate weaknesses. To partake of the Lord's Supper is to have a small foretaste of that final celebratory feast where sin, death, and all of life's perplexing and painful struggles are vanquished by Christ and his work on the cross. This gives me a great deal of hope that I am defined by Christ's finished work in me, not by the fact that I struggle with mental illness on this side of glory.
How have your brothers and sisters in the church comforted and encouraged you during the days when the burden was especially difficult to bear?
My brothers and sisters have been so helpful in their gracious and patient understanding that God's work takes time, sometimes lots of it, in those of us who struggle with mental illness. Prayer is important, along with the willingness to just listen to me when I need someone who can encourage me without necessarily having to identify personally with my struggle. The fact of the matter is that sin has touched us all; we all inhabit fallen bodies and live in a fallen world, regardless of whether or not someone has a mental illness. I'm very grateful for those dear brothers and sisters who have continued to point me to what Christ has accomplished for sinners like me. It's so hard to approach the battle with sin with a sound mind, especially if your mind is the physiological and psychological source of the problem. One kind word or timely note of encouragement can be a powerful instrument in God's hand to remind me of God's great love for me, and that this illness is part of his gracious work to shape me into Christ's image. The worst thing I have experienced as a Christian battling mental illness is the sense that I am alone in my struggles, so the encouragement from Christian brothers and sisters who have been willing to bear up under my burdens and speak the truth to me in love has been a great blessing. They've reminded me that in the coming kingdom, my mind will be stilled, and that I am not defined by being bipolar, but by Christ and his loving work on my behalf
