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Does the Bible Support the Concept of Mental Illnesses and Conditions, or Is This a Secular Idea Originating With Psychiatry?

I know many Christians who have wondered: “Does mental illness even exist?” “Does the Bible support the concept, or does the concept of mental illness come from secular psychiatrists?”

So what does the Bible say about the nature of our humanity? Are we spirit, or are we flesh, or are we both? When we think and have consciousness, is it our brain doing this, or is it our spirit, or is it both? Are we purely composed of created matter, or do we have an immaterial spirit that can live on after we die, and override our mental handicaps that we may develop while living?

Just what are we at our core, and what is our brain?

What is the Bible truth on this important subject?

The Bible Our Source of Truth
This is always the fundamental question to ask. The Bible is the source of truth, and science and nature are God’s secondary “book”; the Bible is our authority by which we evaluate and understand the scientific world, and if we displace the Word of God with human wisdom and ideas, we will find ourselves in a state of confusion without an accurate map or trustworthy guideposts, wandering in a never-ending maze.

Christians generally reject the humanistic philosophies of secular psychology and psychiatry, and this is a good thing. We’re supposed to do that, and to take the Bible as our only authority, measuring the professionals with the Word of God, rather than the other way around. But while Christians should reject evolution and philosophies about psychiatry and psychology that stem from an evolutionary and atheistic worldview, should we reject the science of the psychiatric and medical communities too?

When neuroscientists and psychiatrists conduct studies that show brain-signaling abnormalities on brain scans (such as MRIs) in people with psychotic disorders, how should a Christian view the science, and their analysis that people with psychotic disorders have brain malfunction? Do we take that as truth? Or, is a person more than their brain, also consisting of a soul, and possessing mental processes that occur beyond the physical, and which can’t be measured or evaluated?

Can We Measure and Study the Brain?
Can we measure mental processing, can we study it? Does the Bible recognize the fields of neuroscience and psychiatry? What does God’s Word say?

Also, can we treat the physical brain and reduce or recover from mental symptoms? Or is our brain part-spirit and medical treatments won’t fully help or are out of place or out of alignment with Christian doctrine?

What is the truth on this?

One of the most common questions after a loved one displays symptoms of a psychotic break and gets diagnosed with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder is “Are the health professionals right that this is mental illness? It looks so much like demon oppression – or even demon possession. Could they be wrong in their diagnosis and I should take my kid to a pastor or a priest instead? Is the psychiatrist trying to medicate what is really a spiritual problem?”

The 3 Facets of A Person – Physical, Mental, and Spiritual
People have a strong hunger to know how all the facets of a person – physical, mental, and spiritual – interact. Christian people know that there is a spiritual realm and demons are very real. We trust God when he tells us this. We know the whole picture can’t be mental illness every time someone shows these symptoms because we’ve read the accounts of demon possession in the Bible, and some of the demoniacs had clear mental issues caused directly by demons. And so any doctor (a high percentage of psychiatrists are atheist and don’t believe in God or demons which compounds the confusion) who seems to indicate that mental illness is the whole picture we feel is missing an important part of the puzzle. We want to understand how it all intersects and fits together. This is a good and a right desire – the desire to study God’s creative works, especially our design as beings made in the image of God. In order to keep ourselves in a state of health it’s important we pay attention to all aspects of our health. Keeping our bodies in a state of health and studying how to do so is an act of worship to God. (Romans 12:1)

I believe God has much to reveal to us in His Word about this subject and that a correct understanding can be found. This doesn’t mean we’ll always be able to tell in every case whether a person is demon oppressed or mentally ill – we’re not Omniscient and we can get things wrong – but I believe the general guidelines of how the physical, mental, and spiritual intersect and react upon a person are given in the Word of God and they can be understood by all.

Majority of Christians Believe We Have an Immaterial Spirit
I’ve spent the last few years having many conversations with Christians of various denominations and backgrounds. The truth is that most Christians today believe we have a spirit and we aren’t just created matter – a physical brain and body systems – come to life by the power of God. From this belief stems the almost unconscious belief that on some level when a person enters psychosis in their physical brain, that they can still connect with God, that their spirit can commune with Him, and that a person is never fully mentally disconnected from the conviction of the Holy Spirit, and from understanding right and wrong. There are varying degrees to how much each Christian believes this, but few Christians actually believe that when our physical brain malfunctions severely that we can completely lose the ability to commune with God and understand right and wrong completely. Some do not believe the concept of psychosis exists at all, some believe it does and can compromise our brain, but that our spirit is never really unable to be convicted and that on some level they can still do so. The doctrine that we do not possess a spirit and are completely composed of created matter is rarely held in Christianity and it’s taken as a given that we have a spirit or soul by most.

The two beliefs that lead to this conclusion that people can always be convicted by God’s Spirit about right and wrong are based on the nature of God, and the nature of man.

The rationale goes like this:

Nature of God – God is Omnipotent and thus can do anything. This would include even the ability to communicate effectively with a delusional person or someone with advanced brain injury from stroke or dementia. He can find or create a way, even if it doesn’t make logical sense.

Nature of Man – Man isn’t composed solely of created matter and has an indestructible, immaterial spirit. Man thus not being completely physical has another consciousness that communes with God in the spirit realm and is not completely limited by brain handicaps and mental illness – or even physical death itself.

It’s point 2 that I want to start with first. And then I will go into point 1.

What your beliefs are on this topic actually make a huge difference in the real world. If a person diagnosed with a mental illness like schizophrenia assaults and kills someone or commits a school shooting, if you believe that person always has a spirit that can understand right and wrong and commune with God, then that person must be somewhat responsible for their actions 100% of the time. It’s hard for people to imagine that that person’s brain could be so compromised that they lost the ability to have any moral agency over themselves – and the belief that we have a spirit separate from our physical brain contributes to this line of thinking in ways that are often very subtle and can go undetected.

This topic is particularly troubling to caretakers of family members with advanced dementia, particularly if their family member was a Christian and an upstanding father and citizen, when he starts sexually assaulting nurses in the nursing home and acts completely out of character. This reality can really try the faith of family members who knew him for who he was before the illness. If they believe his spirit is always able to be convicted by God’s Holy Spirit and understand right from wrong, then that means their elderly father is falling to temptation later in life, and sealing his legacy with a departure from everything he once stood for. Leaving the faith, disappointing everyone who respected him and whom he raised in godly fear and love. Abusing a woman selfishly for personal gratification. What a horrible picture for his family to take with them for the rest of their lives as he’s dying and leaving this world!

If however, their elderly father’s brain is deteriorating (with dementia the brain atrophies and dies and that’s how death occurs), and he has no spirit to override the mental deterioration, and he’s literally lost function and no longer possesses the ability to control his most basic impulses (which can become heightened to a high level when dopamine surges as a result of brain injury), and he’s in a state of confusion and/or psychosis, and doesn’t know what he’s doing is sexual assault or that it’s wrong, then it’s no moral failure on his part. It’s merely a horrific symptom of the dying process (nothing about death is really natural since God didn’t create us to die and it’s a result of sin) and he’s a victim of dementia and is himself suffering greatly, deserving of empathy and compassion and not a criminal. Protocols still need to be implemented to protect nurses, and mentally handicapped people can be as dangerous as mentally healthy criminals, but the difference is the mentally ill person is not a criminal and that makes all the difference in the world. What a different picture this is from the previous one!

Indeed, if we do have a spirit separate from our brain that can always commune with and understand God and right and wrong, then it is always the fault of men in advanced dementia who sexually assault nurses, it is always the fault of school shooters in physical brain psychosis when they kill innocent people, it is always the fault of mothers with post-partum psychosis who drown their babies in the bathtub. These people are the horrific criminals the news likes to paint them to be. Indeed, the idea of not guilty by reason of insanity isn’t actually real, if our spirit can override our physical brain when it malfunctions. This of course changes completely how we view crimes done among the criminally insane.

But, if we are our physical brain – if all of our parts are created matter (dust as it says in Genesis) – and we do not possess a spirit that can commune with God despite losing function in our physical brain, then not guilty by reason of insanity does exist in extreme cases of loss of brain functioning. And people can do horrific things and not know what they are doing. And they aren’t all monsters. Yet, their actions are destructive and cause great harm, and we need solutions that take into account the reality of the situation and address the problem from the actual cause.

What We Believe About This Will Determine What Action We Take
Furthermore, how we go about addressing this problem in the church and in society will be completely different depending on which belief we hold. If we believe that no matter how compromised the physical brain can become, that all people can commune with God and understand right and wrong through their spirit on some level, then we’re going to see these school shootings and freak murders where mothers drown their kids in the bathtub and assaults of grown children on their parents when in a psychotic state, as chosen actions, and we’re going to address them with discipline, punishment and by preaching the gospel to them and showing them redemption through Christ. We aren’t going to be strong proponents of mental health education and resources; we’re always going to be holding back some and leaning towards disciplinary action as the real solution.

But, if these people are completely mad, they aren’t going to respond to punishment, discipline, or the gospel. It’s going to go over their heads and crime isn’t going to diminish, and those suffering from brain illnesses aren’t going to get the treatment they need; they will just be sent to prison in psychotic states where they will suffer terribly (full psychosis causes great mental distress), and may assault other prisoners and cause more harm. And whatever is causing cases of insanity to be on the rise is going to keep going strong, unless we find the underlying cause in the rise of insanity and diminish or remove it.

Whatever is true is what we want to embrace. It’s only in the truth that answers can be found, and that God and His will can be understood and followed. Untruths will not lead us to answers or to God. This is a subject many people know little about and it’s important we get educated on it. Knowledge rightly used is a force for good. God gave us the knowledge found in the Word of God for our good. He wants us to be informed and equipped to be lights in the world and to do actions of justice and mercy that glorify Him and draw others to Him.

Are these acts of extreme violence that we see in the news moral issues, or are they a health issue? The answer matters.

The Biblical Basis for Mental Illness
I believe that mental illness does exist. Let me tell you why. Let’s go all the way back to the creation of man. God in the beginning created man one being in three interconnected parts: physical, mental, and spiritual. He breathed into man and he became a living soul.

“And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul,” Genesis 2:7 .

This shows that what makes up a soul – or a person – is our physical body (which includes the brain) plus God’s life-giving power. It’s common in many Christian circles to believe that man has a soul, rather than man is a soul, but the Bible tells us plainly that the latter is true. Man is indeed a soul. Throughout the Bible you will living people are called souls. Souls are never used to refer to an immaterial consciousness that lives on after death, and this belief actually originated with paganism.

Notice how in this Bible verse in Genesis, the songs of Jacob are referred to as “souls.”

“And the sons of Joseph, which were born him in Egypt, were two souls: all the souls of the house of Jacob, which came into Egypt, were threescore and ten.”

Genesis 46:27

There are many passages in the scriptures where “souls” means living persons. Here’s another one from the New Testament when Paul was taking a voyage in a ship with a group of people and he was counting up the number of the people who sailed with him.

“And we were in all in the ship two hundred threescore and sixteen souls.”

Acts 27:37

I’m sure we’ve all heard the term “souls” used to mean living persons. A few generations back it was very common to hear someone respond to situations of poverty or hardship with the exclamation “Those poor hungry souls; we need to do something to help them.”

We Are Our Brain
What this means is that our spirit, our self, is not disconnected from our physical brain. We don’t have a physical brain and a spirit brain; we have a physical brain that God’s spirit infuses with life (and of course God created the dust our body was formed from too). We our own brains.

When a kidney malfunctions, we need dialysis. We will experience pain from the toxins not being sifted out of our bodies like they should be. If our eyes malfunction we might experience double vision. But the brain is a much more complex organ, responsible for all of our thoughts and perceptions. For the brain to malfunction can result in many different kinds of symptoms – a wide, almost limitless range of symptomology can result.

Due to the Fall, every organ in our body can malfunction and the brain is no exception. If our brains do malfunction, we don’t have a spirit that is disconnected from our physical form and untouched by our physical malfunction; we are our brains. We will start to manifest the symptoms of brain dysfunction in our mannerisms, personality, behavior, sentence structure, logical reasoning and communication skills.

We see the brain malfunction all the time when someone is drunk, or takes a drug such as LSD. Great personality changes can occur from drug use because they are substances that alter the chemicals in the physical brain, and chemicals in the brain and how they react on neurons and form neural circuitry is a big part of what gives us our personality. Not only this but the person can actively hallucinate due to changes in neurochemistry. The same can be said of mental illnesses; they involve altered brain biochemistry, and can cause personality changes, and even hallucinations at times. If you see someone drunk staggering to their car late at night, or a rich socialite high on cocaine and acting wired and bizarre, you don’t think ‘demon-possession’. It’s easy to understand that a brain on a substance is altered and recognize the symptoms. It makes sense then that a chemically imbalanced brain could show similar symptoms.

It’s God’s Mind That Is Immaterial and Infallible, Not Ours

Let’s talk a little about God’s mind…

God possesses a mind that is uncreated, indestructible, not designed or limited to the confines of a specific created design; not existing within space and time, infinite. His mind has all information and all knowledge, and His judgment is perfect. Thus He can never err, His mind can never malfunction, or have any type of limitation.

When we hold people with mental malfunction to this standard – that no matter what state their physical brain is in they ought to always be able to tell right from wrong and do the right thing, even if there’s visible brain damage to the areas of the brain responsible for moral judgment – we may not realize this, but we’re holding them to something only a divine being can be and do.

In The Bible it of course says to take every thought captive. Sometimes people with involuntary intrusive thoughts or hallucinations that are immoral or dark in nature feel guilt because they try but they can’t take these things captive. When people with mental illness feel guilt for brain processes outside of their control, they may not realize this, but they are holding themselves up to a standard of being possible only for God.

We are finite beings called to resist temptation, walk in holiness, and live moral lives.

God is an infinite holy Being.

Thus we are held responsible for things within our control, not for things outside of our control such as damage to our physical brain that causes malfunction and takes away perceptions.

Jesus however became a man, one with a fallen nature born of Mary, a fallen women, and He was subject to mental fatigue, mental limitations, and malfunction in His humanity. Due to this He understands those of us with mental illnesses, and can care for us, sympathize with our mental handicaps and the fear and frustration they may bring, guide us to health treatments, and sustain us through every kind of mental illness and symptoms we may face, even ones the doctors don’t yet know about or know how to treat. As the Great Physician Jesus can give us wisdom and help in every health emergency.

The question of the nature of man boils down to this: Is being immortal a divine trait that is intrinsic within the divine nature, or is it something God can create within the nature of a person? Can and does man have an immortal soul, or is immortality only something God Himself can possess? If it’s a divine trait then being immortal would make someone a god, and no created being could possess immortality in themselves as we are not gods. However, if it’s not an intrinsically divine trait, then God could create it into our design and even non-gods could possess it. If you really think about it, it’s incredibly important what we believe about the nature of man, because if we get this wrong and we’re giving divine properties to human beings, we’re making them into demigods in our minds and Christianity does not support human beings as being any kind of God. Does the concept of an immortal indestructible soul gives human beings divine properties? Does it make us into demigods rather than people?

God alone is God, so any belief that would challenge God’s divinity and attribute it to humanity is harmful and could potentially deprive God of the honor and worship that is due Him. “Thou shalt have no others gods before me” is the staple belief of Christianity. In breaking this commandment Satan became his own god and sinned, and tempted Adam and Eve to desire to be gods and brought sin and woe into the human race as well. Being your own god is the antithesis of Christianity and as Christians we want nothing to do with any doctrines that either outright or subtly support this false philosophy. We are to demolish all such arguments that set themselves up against the knowledge of God, by the truth found in the Word of God. (1 Corinthians 10:5)

Follow Bible Logic

a. All of God’s traits have to do with God being the source of all things and of all truth. The only One that has always existed. The standard of all truth. The Creator of all life. The only immortal, self-sustaining, self-existing One, who creates all things and brings all things into being. This is what “I Am” means – He self-sustains and looks to no other person or power to hold Him up and keep Him alive, and He has always been. Everything else then stems from Him – all truth finds its source in Him. Jesus is indeed “the truth” and there is no truth apart from Him.(John 14:6) He is also the “Life”. If a person can self-sustain, and self-exist, this makes them the “I Am”, this makes them “the Life”, this makes them divine. If God can create a soul or spirit that is immortal by its very nature and can self-sustain, this would mean He could create another god, and if you believe this, it’s not a Christian belief as Christianity supports only one God in three distinct Persons (the doctrine of the Trinity).

Therefore man cannot possess an immortal soul as man is not divine.

b. Man must also consist of completely created material – there can be nothing in man that is not created – or man would also be divine. Not only can man not be immortal, but no part of man can be immaterial, or anything other than finite, existing outside of space and time. All parts of man must be created parts – finite, physical, existing within space and time, or if there is another dimension or kind of created reality they must exist within that. To be immortal, infinite, or immaterial is to be above the laws of physics, and only a divine Being can be above and outside the laws of created reality. God is the only One who has not been created – the only Creator – and any other life form is 100% created and consists of material God brought into existence. Otherwise we’re gods.

The most well-known verse in the Bible, John 3:16, tells us the lost will perish. If there is any part of man that doesn’t perish – an immortal, immaterial soul incapable of destruction and death (invincible) – that would go against this text, and since Jesus never lies, if He says unrepentant human beings must perish, and uses that word specifically, then man perishes. If He meant man burns forever in hell, then it would be a lie to say man perishes. He would have had to select a word like “suffers” instead, rather than “perish”. (More on this in a later chapter.)

c. If people are 100% created matter, and completely finite, not possessing infinite attributes that our outside of our physicality, that are outside of created reality, this means our deep brain processes, our ability to commune with God and understand right from wrong, is an ability of our physical brain. But, not of our physical brain alone. Man’s consciousness comes about by a great mystery. God’s Holy Spirit infuses us with life. This is more than science – at least the definition atheist’s use and that has become so popular – the mystery of life and of consciousness is too deep for any human being to fully understand. How God’s Spirit gives consciousness to a group of atoms is known to God alone and no one will ever be able to do it or replicate it.

Since we have physical brains and processes, all of these processes has the potential to malfunction. Even the deepest desires of our heart and what it means to be a person can malfunction – and this is why dementia and psychosis are so painful. Having experienced severe psychosis I can tell you that it feels like the self is being split up into parts – like my very self is fragmented and I can’t get in touch with who I am or what I care about on the deepest levels, including how I feel about and perceive God. Instead of a bipolar 1 diagnosis, which is technically what I have been diagnosed with, (some of my psychiatrists say schizoaffective), I’ve often thought a better description would be Fragmented Mind Disorder or Fragmented Psyche Disorder. In Japan schizophrenia (which is an illness very similar to bipolar 1 and both involve psychotic symptoms) has been renamed Integration Disorder, and I think this name accurately fits the illness. The parts of the brain that make up the perception of the self and of the world and reality, feels dis-integrated and you feel like your self needs to be pieced back together with the pieces put in all the right places because they have become completely re-arranged and some of them feel like they are missing.. When I went through it I believe I got a taste of what Jesus may have felt like when He was on the cross and separated from God, and God used the experience (after I came out of psychosis with lithium) to give me a deep appreciation of what Christ endured for me, and to enter into his sufferings, also to appreciate in a much deeper way rationality and the ability to be a moral agent and choose benevolence and submission to God. I could not find meaning when I was in deep psychosis, and I learned how superior meaning is to comfort and feelings.

d. Being 100% created matter does not mean that we are not spiritual beings. Indeed the purpose and function of our brain is to commune with God and understand the deep truths found in His Word – salvation, forgiveness, righteousness, freedom, justice, mercy, and truth. Our physical brain is capable of understanding all of this when healthy and was created for this purpose. We are spiritual beings by nature, unlike animals. What makes us different from the animals is not that we possess a soul or spirit, but rather that God’s Holy Spirit can dwell in us and fill us because we are made in His image and capable of understanding right from wrong, and repenting and having faith in Christ.

Notice that the Bible says “Let us make man in our image”. We aren’t in God’s image from having an immaterial eternal spirit, but our physical bodies which are made by God are made in His image. Everything about us is made, the very image of God that we’re made in, is made (sorry for the redundancy but this is an important point I don’t want you to miss).

In the Bible again and again our sinful nature apart from God is described as our flesh. Why is this? Because greed, malice, selfish ambition, jealousy, hatred, etc. are how a person acts when they are not filled with God’s spirit, when we are just our flesh without the Spirit. We were not created to exist alone independent of God and outside of his perfect will, abiding by His commandments. All of that happened as a result of the fall and is out of order for human beings. Our physical bodies were created to be temples of God’s Holy Spirit – not of our own souls or spirits. (1 Corinthians 6:19-20) This is the purpose of being a physical being. It’s why we have physicality in the first place. The fact that we are physical and limited to space and time – which are created things – the fact that we need space and time in order to exist, and that our very attributes and essence comes about due to space and time – speaks to the fact that we’re created beings. God, being outside of space and time and creating both, is not a created being. If we possess a spirit that can exist outside of matter, and space, and time, again this would make us divine.

What does it mean to be in the image of God? It means we can’t possibly have his divine attributes. We can’t be immortal, all-knowing, Creator of life, Omnipotent, invincible, the Standard of Truth, anymore than a picture or image of the Grand Canyon can be the Grand Canyon and possess its grand dimensions. We are like God, but without being divine. We have His attributes of free will, moral agency, the ability to be good and righteous and benevolent by choice (through the atonement of Christ after sin entered to picture) and to love. We are free agents as God is Himself a free agent, but without divine attributes. We therefore cannot be immortal as it is a divine attribute. The Bible says to “be holy because I am holy.” (1 Peter 1:16), and to “be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). We were created to be morally perfect as God is morally perfect – to have His same character of love. And through Christ we can regain this character. The Bible doesn’t say “be omnipotent as your heavenly Father is omnipotent”, or “be immortal as your heavenly Father is immortal.” We are to be like Him in character, but we are not like Him in his divinity.

It’s interesting, but the commonly held belief that we almost don’t even think to question, that animals and people give life to their offspring, is actually not true. Jesus being “the Life” doesn’t just mean that He brought Adam and Eve into existence with His life-giving power, it also means that anything that is alive is that way because God is breathing into those animals and people the breath of life, minute-by-minute, second-by-second:

“For in him we live and move and have our being.”

Acts 17:28

“In his hand is the life of every creature and the breath of all mankind.”

Job 12:10

“This is what God the LORD says–He who created the heavens and stretched them out, who spread out the earth and its offspring, who gives breath to the people on it and life to those who walk in it”

Isaiah 42:5

“The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, 25 nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. “

Acts 17: 24-25

Everything living is held up second-by-second by the life-giving breath of God. He is indeed, the only way that any of us possess life. He is “The Life” at all times and apart from Him there is no life. We cannot self-generate it and we do not possess it apart from Him.

It’s the Holy Spirit, infusing our brain with life, that gives us consciousness. We don’t have life in and of ourselves.

God Can Do Anything

I want to take the time now to revisit argument 1:

Nature of God – God is Omnipotent and thus can do anything. This would include even the ability to communicate effectively with a delusional person or someone with advanced brain injury from stroke or dementia. He can find or create a way, even if it doesn’t make logical sense.

Let’s look at what omnipotent and almighty mean. They mean possessing limitless power, and being able to do anything. God can do anything. What does it mean to be able to do anything? What is the definition of “anything?”

“Anything” excludes nonsensical, self-contradictory ideas and concepts. For instance, God can’t be God and cease to be God. God can’t end a person’s life and sustain it at the same time; people are either dead or alive at any given time. As someone who has been in psychosis, I can tell you that God didn’t do the nonsensical things I asked Him to do when in psychosis for many years. What He did do and which I could finally appreciate when I came out of psychosis, is He did real things in the real world, logical things based in reality, the things that matter and are important.

I once prayed to Him to make me into a snow leopard when I was a kid, because they were my favorite animal, and held deep significance to me. He obviously didn’t do that for me. I didn’t understand at the time that the greatest thing to be is a person in His image, there’s nothing greater He could have designed me to be!

While God can break the laws of science, move outside of them and beyond them, because these are created things, and turning water into wine and breaking scientific law is a sign of His divinity, laws of logic work differently. They aren’t created things. They come from the nature of God Himself, and thus, like the moral law (the definition of right and wrong), they are eternal.

Before anyone or anything else was created, God existed eternally. He was good, and thus goodness and the moral law existed, and He had in His Person divine properties and attributes, thus beauty and logic, and symmetry existed eternally because they exist in God’s Person.

Jesus is the Truth. All truth originates from His very nature and Person. This is why truth is always congruent and is never contradictory. This is why it’s not possible to be both dead and alive at the same time. Such a statement is not truthful. And such a reality is not possible because it is not a true reality; it would be a delusional reality to believe such a thing.

In order for something to be true, it must by it’s definition not be contradictory. Anytime you have a statement that two contradictory things are both true, you can automatically know it is a falsehood and not a true statement. This applies to everything. Whether you’re talking about a concept in physics, the Bible and theology, psychology, or art, it is always true that a statement made where two contradictory things are said to be true at the same time and in the same way is always false.

If for instance, a person says gravity causes objects that hold mass to have weight, it can’t then be true that gravity also does not cause objects that possess mass to have weight.

Jesus said He is the only way to the Father, thus we can conclude that there is no other way to the Father alongside Christ. There are some people who believe all religions lead to salvation, but that cannot be true because Christianity claims exclusivity.

And all truth is exclusive by its very nature. In order for something to be true, it means that other contradictory things cannot also be true.

In this fact that truth is by nature exclusive and that contradictory things can’t all be true, we see what are known as the laws of logic. In the very definition of what truth is and what it must be in order to be the truth, the laws of logic are there making up what truth is.

And since truth is Christ and all truth originates with Him and stems from Him, then the laws of logic are in Christ’s character and Person, and thus since Christ exists eternally, these laws are also eternal and have always existed.

This is the reason why it’s not possible for something to both exist and not exist. It can either exist or not exist, but it can’t do both at the same time. It’s the reason our world is congruent.

These are concepts we take for granted, and don’t usually think about. If we see our sister is alive and well, we don’t even consider the possibility that maybe she’s also dead. We don’t need to go check the graveyard to make sure she didn’t die and was buried. We see her alive in one place, and we conclude she is alive, without having to check the world over to see if she’s dead somewhere else.

A person in psychosis can believe they are dead when their heart is beating. They can believe they are both dead and alive at the same time. Their brain breaks the laws of logic. But the world never will break the laws of logic. The world is always congruent even when our brain perception has malfunctioned. It’s a relief to know this!

And God does not change. He is always logical, and consistent, even when we’re suffering from a psychotic illness. God is outside of us, truth is a transcendent eternal reality. God will always be good and just and consistent and congruent, even if we’re suffering from a mental illness and can’t perceive Him to be those things. He will always do the right thing and operate in a benevolent way towards us, using His omniscient Fatherly wisdom to guide our lives in the perfect way. Knowing all things, and being able to chart the best possible course for us.

So when we’re looking at a statement that breaks the laws of logic, we’re not really looking at anything actual. For instance, a person can string together nonsensical concepts in their mind, and speak and talk about a round square, but you can never find a round square in the world around us.

And there are a lot of “round square” nonsensical statements talked about in long conversations every day online, or in college by atheist professors, or in professions where people believe in evolution and other nonsensical ideas.

As mentioned previously, there are a number of people who believe all religions lead to God, even though most of these religions state that they are the only way to God and claim exclusivity as one of their core, primary tenants.

The unfortunate truth is people do promote nonsense. But just because we can speak about nonsensical ideas and devote time and energy to them doesn’t make them real.

But many people get confused about what is real and what isn’t because of how language works. In language it’s possible to string together concepts in a way where when you first hear them they may sound feasible and real, and yet in the real world they cannot actually exist.

This happens because language is not the best tool for showing concepts. Visuals are often much better. You’ll find that with nonsensical ideas there is no corresponding visual or physical representation.

No one can ever draw a round square, neither will they ever meet a married bachelor – someone who is both married and not married at the same time. There is no corresponding thing that matches the words in the world around us, because these ideas are impossibilities.

Why is this important? Well, it shows us something about the human brain. Our brain was created not only to match up with and understand concepts and things that exist, but also to understand the difference between what makes something nonsensical and what makes something true and logical.

We can understand the nature of logic and truth. And so when someone speaks of a round square or if they point out a conclusion someone made is a nonsensical argument, what they are really doing is understanding the nature of what makes something true.

This is very fundamental and deep and shows the power God created in the human brain. We do not have a brain like the animals. We were created to understand the nature of the One who is Truth, and the nature of the truth in His eternal Word.

And in order to be able to understand truth, we have to understand what makes something true, and in order to do that we have to be able to understand the laws of logic, which also means we’ll be able to make untrue or illogical statements and understand what makes something illogical.

This understanding is only in our minds. It’s a thought experiment. It’s knowledge. There are no corresponding things in this world that match up with nonsensical statements or ideas.

Thus when someone breaks the laws of logic and speaks nonsense, it’s just wordplay. They are speaking of things that aren’t actual concepts or ideas or things. It’s a linguistic magic trick made possible only by language.

The interesting thing is that our brain was created to have logical ability and to line up with the outside world and to study it and understand it. But when people develop psychotic conditions their brain loses the capacity to use logic, and their perception and thought processes no longer line up with the external world as a result. The external world is logical, but they are not.

This is how delusions happen. They occur when a person in psychosis endeavors to relate to the world around them, but their brain is out-of-alignment with logic. So they come to nonsensical conclusions. They may believe they are both married and unmarried at the same time, or that they are dead even though their heart is beating, or that they are secretly a celebrity. They may even believe they are God and this is not an uncommon psychotic delusion.

They’ve lost their ability to draw accurate conclusions about their reality, because in order to do that a person must have a brain that is healthy and possesses the brain neural connectivity, and their brain’s connectivity has been derailed by an illness.

The statement that God can convict someone of right and wrong who’s brain has malfunctioned and lost the ability to discern right and wrong, breaks the laws of logic. This is a nonsensical statement.

And it wouldn’t make God more powerful to be able to do nonsense. Almighty is the most powerful that it’s possible to be, and the definition of almighty is being able to do anything. So not being able to do nonsensical things isn’t the opposite of almighty. It doesn’t make God weak. Rather those things aren’t things.

Asking God to do nonsense is looking at a picture of reality where there are no definitions, no things, and everything is everything else, and nothing at all. The minute you add a definition into the picture, definitions are by their very nature exclusionary. The minute you say a circle is a round shape without sides, this excludes the properties required to make a square.

So this idea that God being able to do anything must include both logical and illogical things, just paints a garbled picture of reality where there are no definitions anywhere; an impossible picture of nothingness.

You can’t have anything if there are no definitions, because definitions are what make something something.

This is magical thinking. Instead of praying and asking God to convict someone who has lost their moral perception, instead ask God to lead and guide your loved one’s doctor so he chooses the right anti-psychotic to bring them out of psychosis, and to help them regain moral perception. Then God can convict them again through His Holy Spirit once their brain is up and running again.

God can also directly heal your loved one’s brain. While God can’t do a nonsensical thing like make moral perception make sense to someone who’s brain has lost moral perception – and this is magical thinking outside of the laws of logic – God can do miracles that are outside and beyond scientific law and choose to miraculously heal your loved one.

He can also choose to bless the treatment your doctor gives your loved one and make it effective, or lead your family to natural health treatments that can make the medication more effective. These natural treatments can sometimes be strong enough to pull someone out of psychosis on their own too even without medication. (Particularly look into the work of Dr. Abram Hoffer who used high doses of niacin in an in-psychiatric hospital setting to pull psychotic people out of psychosis).

Is Satan Directly Involved In All Cases of Brain and Body Illness? Do We Have Authority As Christians to Rebuke All Illnesses Away From Us?

Now that we know mental malfunction and illness exists because people are physical beings with a physical brain, let’s ask the next logical question in the progression of this conversation: “What causes mental illness? Just because it’s physical doesn’t mean Satan isn’t behind it. Are people who are experiencing mental illness actually demon-possessed or demon-oppressed?” What is causing their physical biochemistry to malfunction; could it be a demon? I bring this up because many Christians do believe Satan is directly causing all physical and mental illnesses, and there are enough people who believe this that this question needs to be addressed.

It’s also important that as Christians we understand from the Bible how illness and death came into the world, and what God’s plan and process is for eradicating both of these things forever. Then we can do our part to cooperate with that plan, and we can spot false doctrine that is not in accordance with that plan and step away from it and guard ourselves against it.

It’s become increasingly common, especially in charismatic churches and circles, for everything to be seen as demons. It can get quite extreme. If you cough, you’re supposed to rebuke Satan away and your cold is supposed to leave you. I know people who actually believe this and I’ve spoken to many others who also do. There’s also a number of people who are extremely confused and don’t necessarily buy into the idea that everything is demons, but this-view point being so widespread and seeping into sermons everywhere in part or in full, has lead to huge amounts of confusion.

I know people with bipolar disorder who experience psychosis as a symptom, who have been told by their pastors to get off their medication because taking it is a lack of faith, and that they should be rebuking the illness directly or in some cases they say they should be rebuking the demons behind the illness and exerting their God-given authority over Satan or the illness. These people are in compromised mental states and it’s often hard for them to distinguish between Bible truth and error. Some of these people have listened to him and gone off their medication and had a complete psychotic break where they spent their whole savings, moved to another state and started a new life due to delusions that their husband wasn’t really their husband and was in fact a demon, wrecked their life, and almost lost their lives because they were a danger to themselves and others in that state.

You can see how inaccurate information surrounding this topic can be dangerous.

It turns out this view-point and this situation where pastors rebuke church members for taking medication rather than claiming their God-given authority over sickness and Satan is not an uncommon occurrence. Yes, that’s really the truth. It happens often as it’s a commonly-held belief in Pentecostal circles and in circles where the prosperity gospel and Word of Faith movement is preached.

I believe it happens because of an inaccurate understanding of the timeline of how the gospel brings an end to all sickness, poverty, and death. This doctrine isn’t false because it claims God will heal all sickness. Again and again in the scriptures the gospel is linked with and always has these core components of forgiveness of sin, freedom from death, poverty eliminated and prosperity given, and sickness being healed. In the passages in the Old Testament, God promised all these things to Israel if they would be faithful to Him. Jesus began his ministry by healing the sick and calling people to repentance and faith in His atoning sacrifice that He would give to the world. These things were all linked and connected with the ministry of Christ. It’s about the timing. It is definitely true that the gospel ends all sickness forever. But does it do it now? Well, the gospel doesn’t accomplish everything it’s promised to in this life, otherwise no Christian would ever die. So it’s clear there are some things the gospel brings about that don’t happen in this world.

Is recovery from sickness one of those things that the gospel accomplishes for us in the next life, or in this life?

Let’s dig into the scriptures. What does the Bible really say about this subject? What is the correct relationship between Satan and sickness? Does he directly cause illness every time, or is he sometimes directly involved and other times indirectly involved? Or is no sickness caused by demons and all sickness occurs naturally on its own as a result of a fallen and broken world that now has dysfunction that results in dangerous pathogens and cells mutating giving conditions like cancer?

We know that at least in one sense every sickness or illness, anything destructive, and death itself was caused by Satan. When He rebelled against God and His law Satan brought all these things into existence. When man fell due to Satan’s temptation in the garden, all of these things became a part of the human experience and existence in this world.

But is Satan directly causing all sickness today? And do Christians have authority from God to rebuke Satan and all the sicknesses he causes?

Let’s start at the beginning to get our answers.

There was no death in all of God’s created universe before sin. Not only this, but there was also no malfunction or disease. There was no break-down at all in any way in the whole of creation. Adam, though he had a finite brain that had limitations and wasn’t all-knowing like God’s mind, had a brain that functioned perfectly for a human being. The scriptures tell us Jesus though His Word holds all things together.

“He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.”

Colossians 1:17

“The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word.”

Hebrews 1:3

All of creation cannot function or exist in its own power. The laws of physics themselves, along with everything else, is held together by Jesus’ almighty power.

So Adam’s brain and body were held together and kept in a perfect state of functioning by that almighty Word of Christ.

It was sin – moral evil – that brought death – natural evil – into the world. Just to be clear here I want to point out that natural evil isn’t actually evil. Only a being with moral agency can be and do evil. Tornados and cancer do not have a motive or intelligence. The word “evil” is sometimes used to describe natural disasters and natural dysfunction like illness, even these are an entirely different concept than moral evil. But the word “evil” when referring to natural evil, is fitting in a sort of way because these natural things kill human beings, and it’s a great loss and an evil thing when people die – the result is seen as evil or wrong. God never intended for people to die and it was never supposed to happen.

Before sin Adam was not under the power of death. We need Bible evidence for this, so let’s look at some verses. The Bible speaks of this fact in many places. Paul says in Galatians 3:12 that he who keeps the law shall live by keeping it. Perfect obedience to God’s law – what Adam had in Eden before sin – results in eternal life through the God whom you are obeying. The laws are life-producing by their very nature. However, in Romans 7:10 Paul tell us that the law that was intended to bring life now brings death. After sin a person incurs God’s wrath and falls under the penalty of death. The law then has no power to forgive or redeem the person or give them a new heart. They law which is good, has no power to redeem the sinner, and is powerless to do anything about our lost state, which is why Christ came and died. (Romans 8:3-4)

This is a very key point to the discussion and I don’t want you to miss this. The law itself is life-producing. Its principles if kept perfectly cause a person to through God live forever. It brings no sadness, sickness, destruction of any kind to keep the law; in fact it does the opposite.

“My son, pay attention to what I say;

turn your ear to my words.

Do not let them out of your sight,

keep them within your heart;

for they are life to those who find them

and health to one’s whole body.”

Proverbs 4:20-22

“Do not be wise in your own eyes;

fear the Lord and shun evil.

This will bring health to your body

and nourishment to your bones.”

Proverbs 3:7-8

It’s the keeping of the law, which keeps a perfect sinless being connected with God (who is the Source of life and health) in a covenant relationship with Him (what Adam would have had had he never sinned, and what the loyal angels have), that prosperity of each type – health, eternal life, wisdom, riches/zero poverty, abundant knowledge – is secured and flows as a natural result of that relationship with God.

These things have always resulted from a relationship with God. Solomon puts it this way speaking of wisdom which is a reference to Christ Himself in Proverbs 3:16 “Long life (he means eternal life here) is in her right hand; in her left hand are riches and honor.”

These things do go together. Eternal life and perfect health does go with riches and honor and every other kind of prosperity. This is what Adam had before sin when he was the king of this world, and under God, was very prosperous, and also possessed eternal life. This is what the loyal angels have too as royalty in heaven as sons of God.

The Bible says “love does no harm to its neighbor, therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.” Romans 13:10

Thus it’s these very principles of right-doing that kept the creation in a state of harmlessness and health and prosperity before sin.

Imagine if no one ever told a lie. Imagine if no one ever verbally abused another person, never hit or killed another person. Imagine if there was only good-will one towards another through the whole earth, only actions of thoughtfulness and love. Imagine if there was no adultery or rape. Imagine if no one littered or polluted or misused the earth and its resources.

I think you can see clearly how there would not be psychological distress, STDs, and the like in such a world.

The breaking of each of these laws brings in death and malfunction of the emotions, psyche, and physical body, and if we mismanage and mistreat the world at large this directly causes damage and breakdown to the world.

While it’s true that verbal abuse tears down a person’s psyche at the physical level, and murder outright destroys their body physically, it’s also true that breaking the commandments against God – not just the commandments against people and the earth – also brings in death and disease.

Let’s keep studying this out…

Adam was told that by God if he ate from the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, that he would “surely die.” Genesis 2:17. God was telling Adam the same thing Paul says in Romans, that the law produces life, and that the breaking of it produces death. As Romans 6:23 states “The wages of sin is death.” The snake’s lie was that he would not surely die after all, and that he would in fact live in a higher state of existence as a god if he ate the fruit.

This command from God centered around his right to be worshipped and obeyed as God. Would Adam accept God’s authority in his life? The serpent’s lie challenged that authority, insinuating that Adam should disobey God and break away from His rule, because God was a selfish tyrant who hoarded good things for Himself arbitrarily. The lie painted God as unloving, as less than 100% righteousness and benevolence, and was an accusation against His character.

Eve chose to eat the fruit, doubt God’s character and come out from under His loving rule. After being tempted by Eve, Adam chose to do the same.

There were a couple other themes besides God’s authority and character…the third theme and message was that it wasn’t sinful to disobey God. This follows naturally from the serpent’s insinuation that God was selfish and evil Himself. If God is a stingy monster, with arbitrary rules just to control you and takes good things for himself and deprive you of them, then the right thing to do is to disobey Him. It can’t be wrong to disobey an arbitrary ruler and the laws of such a ruler, who is not grounded in goodness and truth and is just oppressing his subjects. These themes were implied by the serpent’s claims. Reading between the lines you can see them clearly. They also come up again and again in the scriptures as God breaks down for us who Satan is and how he is an accuser of God and the brethren.

God’s claim of course was that He is a Ruler of perfect goodness who had a right to Adam’s love and allegiance, and His intent in asking Adam to not eat from the Tree was so that Adam would not sin. God with His authority, truthfully declared that disobedience to His Word was sin.

And the fourth theme in the “Tree Test” was that of death. God’s claim wasn’t that God would arbitrarily sentence Adam with death if he ate the fruit, but that “the wages of sin is death.” Thus in intending to keep Adam from sin, God’s objective was to keep Adam from the penalty of sin, which is death.

The devil well knew that those who sin incur the death penalty. It was the devil who didn’t love or care about Adam and was trying to bring him under the power of death and destroy him.

Sadly, we of course know that Adam ate from the fruit, fell under the power of death, and only Jesus’ pledge to die in his place brought a period of mercy to the human race, where we all have time to live in this world and decide whether to believe in Christ or not and be saved. If we choose to reject Christ, judgment will fall on us on Judgment Day. This judgment is delayed so all can choose salvation (2 Peter 3:9, 2 Peter 3:15). Adam and Eve would have been instantly judged with death, and in them the potential for other human beings to be created and exist would have died out with them, had Jesus not pledged to die for the human race, as the whole human race existed in Adam.

We know that the whole human race existed in Adam – meaning God couldn’t create another two humans and start up the human race again if Adam sinned – because the Bible tells us “In Adam all die” 1 Corinthians 15:22, and in Romans 5:12 it says “Therefore just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, so also death was passed to all men because all sinned.” Then Adam is described as a “pattern of the One to come” Romans 5:14.

What the Bible is saying here is that Adam had a special role and authority as the first man that affected the whole human race. His sin brought death to us all, and captivity to Satan for the whole human race. We were no longer under God’s banner. The human race belonged to Satan and was estranged from God, and had God judged Adam with death right after his sin, God would not have the rights to make new human beings. God no longer owned our species.

By saying that Adam was a pattern of the one to come, we see the parallels involved in the role of Adam as the first man, and the role of Christ as the “Second Adam.” In Adam all die, in Christ winning back the rights to the world, the human race, and each individual person, we are made alive if we choose Him. 1 Corinthians 15:21-22

Thus we see here that the pattern referred to is this fact that Adam brought death to all and the whole human race died in Adam, thus God could not have created new human beings had God destroyed Adam for his sin, and the race not been redeemed.

Adam was a physical being, under the laws of physics. Thus for Adam to be able to die, God had to change the laws of physics themselves. And when that happened, death and malfunction entered the whole world. Plant life, animal life, even single-celled organisms and bacteria and viruses could now mutate to cause disease.

In the Bible God as the Sovereign Lawgiver and Judge of the universe, pronounces a curse on Adam and on Eve, and He also pronounces a curse on the earth as punishment for Adam’s sin.

To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’

“Cursed is the ground because of you;

through painful toil you will eat food from it

all the days of your life.

18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you,

and you will eat the plants of the field.

19 By the sweat of your brow

you will eat your food

until you return to the ground,

since from it you were taken;

for dust you are

and to dust you will return.”

Something changed with the laws of physics and our bodies to cause work of all kinds – even mental labor – to tax us and wear us out and break down our bodies. There is fatigue and pain in labor of all kinds, and it is difficult hard work.

However, there is still the original blessing in labor, for work itself was given before the fall of man and is good for our health.

So here we see a mixed bag of joy and blessing resulting from hard work, and we also see fatigue and pain happening in this world due to the curse of sin.

It’s interesting that the curse for the serpent to slither on its belly, the curse on the woman to feel pain in childbirth, the curse on Adam to experience painful toil in labor, and the curse on the earth to produce thorns and thistles all involved changes to the laws of physics themselves.

The curse on the human race and on the earth encompassed the whole worldly creation, including the laws of physics that operate life and movement and scientific processes in this world, as they apply to this planet.

Not only was death now possible and a part of life in this world, but decay and malfunction were too. Decay and malfunction are part of the death process.

The Bible makes this very clear in Romans 8:21 that there is decay in our world caused by Adam’s sin.

“the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.”

Romans 8:21

This decay and malfunction is part of the curse. This is how mental and physical illness became possible, and entered our experience.

Thus you can see that according to the Bible, it’s not possible that all illnesses are directly caused by demons. The curse rests on the whole earth and everything in it, and brings malfunction and decay to people and animals and plants and organisms. Thus mental illness from purely biological sources with no demons involved is possible and happens.

It’s not possible that every illness is caused by demons. This is an impossibility.

However, this doesn’t mean that no mental or physical illnesses are directly caused by demons. (More on how demons can cause illness coming up soon in this article.)

What Was and Is The Devil’s Role in All of This?

So, let’s think about this whole process of how this happened, with the devil’s role in mind. What was the devil’s role in all of this, and what is our role when it comes to the devil as children of God?

In studying out his role and our relation to him, we can then see whether rebuking demons in order to recover from illness is biblical.

We will also be able to see whether rebuking illness directly is biblical too.

We know from what we’ve studied so far that it was Adam’s sin that actually brought death, and illness into this world.

The breaking of God’s law is inherently life-destroying, and the keeping of His law is inherently life-producing.

This means that it is the breaking of God’s law that brought the curse of illnesses into this world, not the devil.

It’s sin that brought diseases and health conditions. This is key, and very important to understand.

The devil’s role was that of a tempter to Adam.

However, once Adam actually sinned, the whole human race came under the ownership of Satan. So he then had the role of slave master. So he’s not just a tempter now, he’s the slave master of everyone who has ever lived long enough to sin, and who hasn’t yet accepted Christ as their Savior.

Jesus came and died to buy us all back. He didn’t just buy each of us as individuals. He also died to redeem the world from its bondage to decay and death. And He died to win back the rulership of the world from Satan. The crown of thorns that Christ wore on the cross was a reference to how Jesus was defeating the curse that rested on the world due to Adam’s sin.

At the end of time, God will engulf the world in fire, to cleanse it, and he will destroy this heavens (meaning the atmosphere) and this Earth, and create brand new ones.

In this new world, the laws of physics will go back to how they were before Adam’s sin. There will be no death or malfunction or decay of any kind. No “natural evil.” No hurricanes, no psychosis, or depression, or symptoms of mental illnesses and conditions.

This same fire will also destroy the devil and the wicked.

‘He will wipe away every tear from their eyes,’ and there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the former things have passed away.”

Revelation 21:4

No longer will there be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will serve him.

Revelation 22:3

The Bible says death will be destroyed. In fact, it was to destroy death, as well as sin and the devil, that Jesus came into this world.

“Now since the children have flesh and blood, He too shared in their humanity, so that by His death He might destroy him who holds the power of death, that is, the devil…”

Hebrews 2:14

“Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. The lake of fire is the second death.”

Revelation 20:14

“And now He has revealed this grace through the appearing of our Savior, Christ Jesus, who has abolished death and illuminated the way to life and immortality through the gospel…”

1 Timothy 1:10

“The last enemy to be destroyed is death.”

1 Corinthians 15:26

Death will not be possible in heaven and in the new world, because no one will sin and bring upon themselves the penalty of sin which is death. The cross of Christ fully defeats Satan and death for all time. This is how powerful the cross is!

What They Got Right

Those who believe that physical healing is a core part of the gospel, are not wrong in connecting these two things.

They are understanding Jesus’ role correctly, that He came to abolish all illness, to forgive all sin (of those who repent), and to destroy the devil…also to buy back the world and abolish death itself.

This is a whole and complete picture of what Jesus’ work did and does.

They are right to see that the Bible verses about healing apply to the gospel, Jesus’ work.

They are only getting the timing wrong.

Notice how the Bible says “the last enemy to be destroyed is death.” This is significant. The last piece of the puzzle is to destroy death, meaning the curse that rests upon this world, and bring in a new world in which there is no death.

We know this to be true as Christians. God is active in our lives. He helps us with each day with the difficulties of life, giving wisdom and aid. He forgives us of our daily sins, and gives us moral strength to resist temptation. He teaches us from His Word. He gives His church power to take His gospel to the world and we see new people baptized into the faith and start relationships with Him.

God answers many prayers and provides much help. But if we were to pray for our 100 year old grandmother that she would never die, that prayer would not be answered in the affirmative. Likewise if we were to pray for ourselves that we would never die, the answer would be no. We watch as everyone around us gets older, and the signs of age show. We see older folks passing away and the new generation taking their place.

None of this negates Jesus’ power or His promises. He has promised forgiveness for sin right here in this world, and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. It’s here that we are adopted into His family, rescued from our slave master Satan, and given a new heart that can love and know God.

But it’s not here in this world that we’re promised death will be destroyed. It’s in the next life. The curse still rests on the world right now.

And this means also that there is going to be sickness and disease in this world too, as long as the curse exists. Because the same curse that brings death also brings malfunction and dysfunction to the physical world. They are part of the same dynamic and root cause. This means that there will be harmful viruses and bacteria in our world that can cause physical and mental symptoms. There will be cells that morph and turn cancerous.

I don’t want you to misunderstand me here. I’m not saying God doesn’t ever answer prayers for healing, even sometimes giving a person complete health – at least as complete as health can look in this world. He does heal people. I’m very much involved in helping people heal and I have a health ministry. I wouldn’t be doing this if I didn’t believe God’s Word tells us that it’s often the case that God wants to heal people. But to make the blanket conclusion that God will always heal every sick Christian, is to bypass and negate the effects of the curse itself.

We live in a world under the curse, and the curse universally will not be removed until the end of time, well it happens at the resurrection for the righteous. To say that God will grant every Christian healing is to say the curse has now been abolished for Christians by Christ’s death, and this just doesn’t fit the Bible’s timeline of when the curse will be removed.

Notice the language here in Paul’s writing:

“So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable;”

1 Corinthians 15:42

The body we have now can perish. But the body we will be given at the resurrection will not be under the curse and will not be perishable.

Some translations say corruptible and incorruptible. Our body will not be able to die and biodegrade. It won’t erode or corrupt.

But right now that is not the case. Right now we have perishable or corruptible bodies. These bodies that can perish, can also malfunction and decay.

Thus those of us with mental and physical health conditions, have a constant reminder in our flesh of our need for the next life and for glorification, which is when we are raised with that glorified body in perfect health.

We need that new body and that new world and to be in the Presence of God. This life is not enough, it is defective, it is painful, we aren’t what we need to be.

The Bible speaks of groaning for our new bodies and of groaning for the day when are characters are 100% in alignment with His will and there’s no more selfishness in us.

“We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.

Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies.”

Romans 8:23

As someone who has come out of psychosis with treatment, and who has taken brain supplements to really enhance my cognition, I can tell you that we don’t realize how much our brain, cognition, and perception are affected by the fall. It would not be enough to have a healthy working brain and body in this world. We need a higher level of intelligence. If we were much smarter, with brains that worked perfectly, we would see rich truths in the scriptures about the character of God that we couldn’t see in the same way with the kind of cognition we have now.

This happened to me after treatment. I could see so many wonderful things in God’s Word that increased my quality of life and joy in ways I’d never before experienced. I didn’t know this level of happiness was possible in this world until I treated my brain. I didn’t know this level of Bible understanding was possible until I treated my brain.

My brain had so many glitches in its processing that took away my ability to see Bible truths in their beauty.

So many of us have these kinds of symptoms. Even those without mental illness have brains affected by the fall. We don’t have the mind Adam had in Eden.

Now imagine how much more happiness would be possible if we were many times more intelligent than we are now, and our brain worked in a way that it made zero errors and was perfect in functioning.

If we could see the level of understanding and cognition that it’s possible to have with such a brain, we would spend all our time focused on furthering God’s work in our hearts and in the world around us, so Jesus could come soon and we could go home to heaven.

We would not become so fixated on wanting this world’s version of perfect health, to the point of making health an idol, even if it’s not God’s will here for us to be in health.

Satan paints life in this world as capable of meeting our deep needs and desires if we just work hard at setting goals and achieving them, but this world does not have the happiness we crave. We need the next world and the next life.

Promises to Israel

We see in God’s promises to Israel, a direct parallel to the promises in Eden before sin. Just as obedience to God’s law before sin resulted in health, life, and happiness, so God told the Israelites that if they obeyed His laws, that He would not bring on them the diseases of the Egyptians.

“11 Therefore, take care to follow the commands, decrees and laws I give you today.

12 If you pay attention to these laws and are careful to follow them, then the Lord your God will keep his covenant of love with you, as he swore to your ancestors. 13 He will love you and bless you and increase your numbers…15 The Lord will keep you free from every disease. He will not inflict on you the horrible diseases you knew in Egypt, but he will inflict them on all who hate you.”

Deuteronomy 7

Here, as in Eden, it’s clear that breaking God’s laws produces illness, and keeping them produces health.

In the case of Israel God actually did promise them that there would not be a sick one among them if they lived in obedience to Him, and the promise was fulfilled. Among something like a million people there was not even one sick person among them.

He brought them forth also with silver and gold: and there was not one feeble person among their tribes.

Psalm 105:37

Importance of Teaching obedience to God’s Law

It’s very important that God’s church teaches and promotes law-keeping through Christ, to our members, and that we preach these things to the world at large, as an important component of the gospel.

Due to Adam’s sin, we are now powerless to keep God’s law in our own strength, but the good news of the gospel is that Jesus both forgives us of our sins, and gives us a new heart that can walk in His ways. Through the righteousness of Christ, we can now begin to walk in obedience to God’s law, by the new way of faith.

This is the power of the gospel. When it’s lived out in the character and life of the forgiven one, to produce good works of love, we see the transformative power of what Christ’s death and life accomplishes in a wretch, a lost person, corrupted by sin. They are set free from the power of sin, and enabled to walk in the new law of the Spirit. The definition of love according to the Bible is law-keeping. Not keeping it outwardly in behavior only, but keeping it with the love and spirit of Christ. This is what fruit or good works are. They are works of keeping God’s law of love.

And law-keeping is not possible for someone who is unconverted. Thus when good acts that keep the law and are in accordance with its principles are done by us, we reveal the power of Christ, because such acts of love are not possible in the humanist, in the person who does not have Christ.

Thus it’s fitting and right that God’s church ought not to only point out sin and our need for a Savior, and teach that we can be forgiven by Christ, but also emphasize that we can now through Christ keep His law imperfectly, and that this is a solemn duty and great privilege.

And educate people on what that looks like. Including God’s health laws, and how the keeping of these laws produces better health and a more sound and strong mind, enabling us to see rich truths in God’s Word that we can’t see when our brain is fuzzy or our perception is distorted by mental symptoms.

Coming Under the Power of the Devil

Now we know that our bodies themselves after the Fall are corruptible, or perishable, capable of malfunction and dysfunction by their very nature, and thus physical and mental illness can result from purely natural causes like pathogens in our body, or by things like birth defects, or even just aging, let’s ask the question “Is it possible to come under the devil’s power and experience illness as a result of demon involvement?”

The answer here is “yes.” In fact we are all before conversion slaves of Satan. So people are naturally under his power to a degree, but God sets in motion forces to bring the gospel to that person and give them the option of salvation through Him.

Everyone is given this option of salvation. While unconverted people are under Satan’s power and owned by him, he can’t keep them from being convicted by God’s Holy Spirit each and every day to come to God. He can’t keep them from salvation if they reach out to God. His power has definite limits, and the sacrifice of Christ buys for each of us the opportunity and power to choose to be saved if we will.

The Bible doesn’t tell us how much power Satan has over unconverted people or the exact limitations of that power. We do know that he holds them in bondage and that Christ alone can set them free.

Can Satan give an unconverted person an illness such as cancer or schizophrenia? The Bible doesn’t explain all the details of this.

What it does explain and show though is that if one yields themselves to Satan through immorality, the more they yield to him, the more power he gains over them.

The Bible wants us to understand this principle that it is through sin that Satan gained ownership of the human race, and it is through choosing to sin to greater and greater degrees that we come more and more under his power.

It’s never safe to live a lifestyle of unrepentant sin, and to go deeper and deeper into sin.

While Jesus was careful to explain to the disciples that when someone was physically blind it wasn’t always due to sin, in all the accounts of Jesus driving out demons, there was always sin involved. To illustrate this concept Jesus made statements such as the following:

43 “When an impure spirit comes out of a person, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. 44 Then it says, ‘I will return to the house I left.’ When it arrives, it finds the house unoccupied, swept clean and put in order. 45 Then it goes and takes with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that person is worse than the first. That is how it will be with this wicked generation.”

Matthew 12:43-45

Notice how Jesus specifically says this generation is wicked, and this is the reason given for why this condition of possession by 7 times as many demons will happen to them. Even though Jesus was among them living and working to cast demons out of people and draw them to Himself, if they didn’t continue to walk in the light He’d given them, and they rejected Him and practiced wickedness, they would again become possessed by demons.

Paul speaks of this same concept, echoing Jesus:

“If indeed they have escaped the corruption of the world through the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, only to be entangled and overcome by it again, their final condition is worse than it was at first.”

2 Peter 2:20

Notice that again it is the corruption – or immorality – that causes a person to have a final condition that is worse than they used to be even before their conversion.

So the answer is yes, it is possible for Satan to gain power over a person, and that happens when a person rejects truth and lives a life of immorality.

We briefly talked about natural evil earlier in this chapter. Demon possession is not a natural evil that can come over someone without their involvement, like a sudden hurricane or a car accident. Demon possession can only occur due to moral evil – due to rejecting Christ and embracing a life of immorality. So someone who is stealing money, or sleeping around, harboring hate or jealousy in their heart until it builds and becomes great – things like this.

Many of these demons that Jesus cast out of people were afflicting them with physical illness, or muteness, or mental symptoms.

In the gospels we see Jesus rebuking sickness and physical infirmities that were caused by demons. When he cast the demon out of the mute man, the person was able to speak. Matthew 9:32-33

In Matthew 17:14-18 Jesus casts a demon out of an epileptic boy who had been falling into fire and water (probably the demon’s attempts to kill him) and the epilepsy leaves him when the demon does.

We also see Jesus rebuking illnesses directly, that were not caused by any demons that needed to be cast out, and the illness leaves them. Peter’s mother-in-law suffered from a high fever, until Jesus rebuked it and it left her and she began to wait on them. Luke 4:39 We see Jesus rebuke the storm at sea and even the wind and the waves obey Him. Matthew 8:27 It’s interesting to note that in none of these cases where demons were not directly involved in a person’s sickness or in the waves at sea, did Jesus rebuke demons. Even though Satan is the cause of all these evil things coming into the world, Jesus didn’t rebuke Satan every time someone became sick, rather he rebuked the illness itself, unless demons were directly involved as in cases of demon-possession.

Jesus gave His church the authority to heal the sick, and to cast out devils.

When Jesus had called the Twelve together, he gave them power and authority to drive out all demons and to cure diseases,

Luke 9:1

And when He had called unto Him His twelve disciples, He gave them power against unclean spirits to cast them out, and to heal all manner of sickness and all manner of disease.

Matthew 10:1

“Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons. Freely you have received; freely give.”

Matthew 10:8

This shows us that it is the role of the church both to heal diseases and to cast out devils. Some diseases are caused directly by demons, others are not attached to demons, but in either case the disciples healed people. Regardless of the underlying cause, the church has been given a mission to help in both cases.

However, there’s nothing in the scriptures that say in every case God will always heal us, and such a belief is dangerous on a number of fronts. We have examples where people prayed for healing and were denied by God the healing they sought. Elisha, a man of great faith, died of a prolonged illness.

Paul shows us the right attitude to have in praying for healing.

“because of the extraordinary character of the revelations. Therefore,[g] so that I would not become arrogant, a thorn in the flesh was given to me, a messenger of Satan to trouble[h] me—so that I would not become arrogant.[i] 8 I asked the Lord three times about this, that it would depart from me. 9 But[j] he said to me, “My grace is enough[k] for you, for my[l] power is made perfect[m] in weakness.” So then, I will boast most gladly[n] about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may reside in[o] me. 10 Therefore I am content with[p] weaknesses, with insults, with troubles, with persecutions and difficulties[q] for the sake of Christ, for whenever I am weak, then I am strong.”

2 Corinthians 12: 7-10

A humble, submissive attitude that acknowledges God’s omniscience and His authority is the only truly Christian attitude. If we are trying to command God to always heal us – rather than submitting to His will – we’re making self our god and we’ve left the Christian faith.

Paul explains that in our weaknesses God can often best be glorified and this would include things like mental and physical illness. Only God knows for sure which is best – to allow the person to remain ill or to heal them – and he will bring a blessing out of even the worst situations if He allows them to happen. I can personally testify of having a renewed appreciation for Christ and his sufferings on the cross after going into complete psychosis and feeling shut off from God and his conviction and then coming back to sanity with the aid of lithium.

Indeed we need sufferings. (more on this later)

The same Bible that testifies of the power to drive out demons and heal sickness being given to God’s church also makes us aware of our responsibility in caring for our physical temple, calling the acts of doing so our “reasonable worship.”

“Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship.”

Romans 12:1

This means that if we’re not doing everything we can to be in the best health possible and we’re mistreating our bodies, eating junk food, or willfully engaging in other types of health-destroying practices, then we’re doing the opposite of worship. We have a Christian duty to study and implement health and make it a major part of our lifestyle for the rest of our lives. And the church should be teaching and instructing people in how to eat and live healthy lives. We can have cooking schools, and nutrition classes, and mental health lectures and fulfill our health mandate this way. Indeed in instructing people there are many blessings that happen that do not happen from miraculous healings, because the person learns to worship God through healthy living and leave behind sins of unhealthy living. In teaching and instructing in this area, we aid people in surrendering their character and will to God and come out of sinful practices, and this is the most important work of all: our sanctification. 1 Thessalonians 4:3-6

It is therefore not faith to mistreat our body and then ask God to heal us. It’s disobedience. Of course, as fallen human beings (even after conversion), we’re prone to disobedience and this is a constant struggle. It takes surrender to Christ and power from Him to do the right thing when it goes against our fleshly desires, and we must commit to this battle. God’s ultimate goal is reaching the heart. He wants to heal the body fully and will give us new glorified bodies at His coming, but the big work that we need to be engaging in in this world is the heart change. We need new characters and through the sanctification process God will change us. We need to have a character that isn’t ok with mistreating our body and delights in treating it as valuable since Christ died for us.

If you’re thinking it’s not easy to deny the flesh and live as healthy as possible, to delight in the science of how our bodies work and commit to on-going learning and implementing what you learn as a way of life, when you may really want to pursue your own goals, and not take the time out to consistently study health, and especially if you’re bad at science, which I was when I first set out on this journey and it’s a real struggle for you to understand scientific concepts, you’re right. The truth is it’s not easy for anyone. But once we surrender to God’s molding we will develop a love for health and science that will add great joy and meaning to our lives. And the reason it’s not easy is because we are sinful and we need to change. We want health but we don’t want to have to put in the work and commitment it takes to be healthier. God will change you if you will let Him and submit to this process. The truth is most of us need to repent and change course in this area and we need to do so today and not wait. Counting the cost is important though. Definitely count the cost before you engage.

The Bible Supports The Concept of Purely Psychological Causes of Mental Symptoms

There are laws of right-doing and right-thinking that react on our physical being. The knowledge of doing and even speaking right, truthful words, has a healing reaction on our physical body, including our mood and mind.

The Bible teaches this truth that how we use our physical brain – what might be called purely mental health, or the closest thing to it, the thoughts we think, and whether we choose to cherish faith and hope in Christ or doubt and rebellion in our heart – influences our body and our physical brain. Hope and faith and truthfulness build up the physical brain and the physical body and create a balanced state of health. Doubt and guilt and sin and hate break us down both mentally and physically. How we use our physical brain with our agency and free to think and to will, affects us physically. The truth that the mind reacts on the body is Biblical truth, not just one doctors are becoming aware of and it did not originate with the scientific and medical professions, but with the law of cause and effect in our actual world. The scientific and medical worlds are merely discovering this same truth that God’s Word has taught His people for thousands of years.

A man hath joy by the answer of his mouth: and a word spoken in due season, how good is it!

Proverbs 15:23

A truthful and good answer actually produces joy in the heart of the person who gave it. I’ve experienced this writing this book, which has been a positive influence on my health. Conversely lying words or hateful words have a negative impact on a person’s health. Not just the one being verbally abused by the words, but also the one saying the words.

“From the fruit of their lips people are filled with good things, and the work of their hands brings them reward.”

Proverbs 12:14

“From the fruit of their mouth a person’s stomach is filled; with the harvest of their lips they are satisfied.”

Proverbs 18:20

Both the work of our hands and the fruit of our lips bring reward and health to the body.

We also see from the scriptures that refusing to repent and remain in poor standing with God results in misery.

10 As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one:

11 There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God.

12 They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one.

13 Their throat is an open sepulchre; with their tongues they have used deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips:

14 Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness:

15 Their feet are swift to shed blood:

16 Destruction and misery are in their ways:

17 And the way of peace have they not known:

18 There is no fear of God before their eyes.

The immoral person who hasn’t repented and put their faith in Christ is not just immoral and selfish – this state of their heart and these choices they make result in misery and mental unhappiness. And then things often go even further and the state of their heart not only makes them feel mental depression but affects their physical body and their health often breaks down, or they develop fatigue issues, aches and pains and things like this. Sometimes even more severe symptoms like cancer or heart disease or autoimmune disease.

Recently I spent some time in a medical library and researched trauma, and it’s very well known in the medical community that not only does physical trauma bring on mental illness, but purely psychological trauma can bring on mental illness. I read about how men who had gone to war and experienced the trauma of war – it wasn’t necessary that they be physically injured for this to happen – would sometimes snap and start friendly firing at their fellow soldiers even when they’d gotten back from the battlefield and were safe. It reminded me of school shootings. Like the school shooters, this was a rare, but well-known phenomenon. It’s also known that grief can cause mental illness.

The Bible supports this concept as well.

So, while all mental illness has physical affects on the brain, this does not mean that the origin of the mental illness is physical. Purely psychological causes can be behind mental illness.

The good news is that we have some control over this. We can choose to repent and be saved and experience peace in Christ. We can choose to think hopeful thoughts that have their foundation in God’s goodness and his many promises to us. We can choose to be convicted and moved by His Holy Spirit to do justice and mercy in the world, to speak elevating truthful words, and the true and helpful words we speak will lift our mood and react on us in physically healthy ways.

There may be things outside of our control too. If we’re a child with an abusive parent, we may not be able to do anything about that. (Though society needs to crack down on abuse and develop better ways of determining that it is occurring – I think questionnaires at school and appointments with a school therapist would help abused kids open up about what is going on at home and then the school can get CPS involved). We can’t always control everything. The early church was persecuted and many of them were killed. In cases where we can’t control the situation and we’re suffering, we can know that God will bring good from bad. He will use the experience to grow our faith and help us understand more of His love and what he went through on Calvary for our salvation.

It is a sin to doubt God. Why is this? Because God is good. He is perfect goodness, and our lives in this world testify to that fact. He causes the rain to fall and the sun to shine on both the just and the unjust, He has infinite and impartial love, dying for us while we were still enemies with God in order to forgive us and reconcile us to Himself. Hypothetically (because this scenario does not exist in real life) If God were not good, then it would not be a sin to doubt Him. It’s certainly not a sin to doubt people who have let us down such as abusers and selfish people in our lives. It’s not wrong to call people’s actions what they are, evil, if the person has done wrong and evil in their lives (but also to be aware of our own sins and not use their sin as a way to feel we are righteous on our own without Christ). So the reason these attitudes of doubt or hate or indifference towards God are wrong is because He is so just and merciful and good.

Our attitude towards God and our choices involving Him, such as not choosing to repent of sin and believe in Him and instead serving self, carrying the guilt of our past sins, can lead to mental depression, anxiety, mood swings, and even physical illnesses like cancer, heart disease, or autoimmune disorders and symptoms. How we use our mind, a concept known as mental stewardship, or management of our thought life, can bring on not only feelings of guilt and discontent and dissatisfaction, but even full mental illnesses like depression, or generalized anxiety disorder, bipolar disorder, etc. This is known in the medical world now. That the mind is very strong in its ability to affect the body. One condition that really highlights just how powerfully the mind can affect the body is something called placebo effect. Placebo affect is the reason scientific studies need to be double blind studies and have two groups of people – those who are given the medication and those who are given sugar pills- and no one is told which group they are in. The mind is so powerful that if someone thinks they have started a medication that is going to help them, their body can mimic the healing effects of the medication and make the symptoms of their illness or underlying condition lessen or disappear entirely, and this happens frequently enough that this effect has to be factored into all scientific studies or the data will be wrong and distorted if it isn’t taken into account.

There’s even a condition, pseudocyesis, where a woman perceives herself to be pregnant, and develops many or all of the signs of pregnancy, short of having an actual baby in her, but she actually isn’t pregnant. Her belief that she is pregnant causes her body to go through real physical changes that closely mimic the actual bodily changes of pregnancy.

Mrs. White speaks of this concept and says the thoughts we think send electrical signals through the whole system, and if these thoughts are negative and imbalanced, it can bring on a state of inflammation and disease to the whole system. Sometimes it’s poor mental stewardship that brings on illness, but other times the damaging effects of lies that we don’t know are lies can bring on illness, in innocent people. Mrs. White speaks of people losing their sanity because they believed hell burned people forever. These were good Christian people, but lies are damaging, especially ones about God’s character, and have very real negative effects.

A very real challenge that mentally ill Christians who are following God run into is that they may get blamed by other Christians for giving themselves depression or anxiety disorders. One big reason for this is that it’s just not as widely known that poor thought stewardship – harboring doubt and other negative attitudes – cause things like heart disease, and cancer, and autoimmune illness, as it is known that poor thought stewardship causes mental symptoms like depression and anxiety and psychological unrest.

It’s far more common for a Christian to accuse another Christian of lack of faith who has depression or anxiety than it is for that same Christian to accuse someone with diabetes of harboring doubt and disbelief in God. The diabetic is generally thought to be innocent and there’s a higher percentage of Christians who may see the person with chronic depression as guilty. But in reality doubt or rebellion against God can cause both of these conditions. And both of these conditions can also be caused by purely physical causes also. And then some people have both things going on – harboring an attitude of doubt or rebellion, and also perhaps they have a poor diet that weakens immunity, or maybe they were abused growing up which weakened their immune system and brought on sickness, or perhaps they were bit by a tick and contracted Lyme disease which tanked their immune system and brought on depression or disease. There can be multiple factors that bring on a state of mental or physical illness, some may be in the person’s control and others may not be.

The Mind Can React on the Body and the Body Can React on the Mind

The mind can react on the body and the body can react on the mind. It goes both ways. And we should never accuse anyone – this is the work of Satan and people he tempts to engage in his work. As Christians it’s important we seek God for strength to not share in Satan’s work. However, not everyone who brings up this issue is accusatory. There are many concerned Christians who endeavor to encourage one another to harbor faith and trust in God, and their counsel comes from a good place. They can still sometimes be wrong about an individual and may need to get informed about the power of the body to affect the mind, which is not as well known as the power of the thoughts to affect the mental state. They may not realize depression isn’t always purely mental in nature. It’s common for those with Lyme disease – a purely physical infection brought on by a tick bite – to have mental depression. Mrs. White is very helpful in explaining that anything that makes the blood sluggish can bring on a state of mental depression, and that even over-eating for a meal or two can push the person into a temporary depression that is relieved once they learn and practice healthier eating habits. Even things like not going outside often enough to get fresh air, and not having ones limbs adequately clothed can bring on a state of sluggish movement in the blood and bring on a state of mental depression.

It’s important we don’t make the mistake the disciples made when they asked Jesus who had sinned, the blind man, or his parents, that resulted in his blindness, the same mistake Job’s friends made when they jumped to the conclusion that Job had sinned when they saw he fell on hard times in every way, including losing his physical health. In both these cases sin wasn’t the cause of the blindness or Job’s chronic illness.

So sin may not be behind it, and jumping to conclusions based on whether the person is mentally ill, without asking them about their physical and mental health history can lead to errors. However, since we’re all prone to sinning in lifestyle habits, it is actually far more often that we do have some sin behind why we’re sick and even if we haven’t lost our health there’s usually some health-destroying lifestyle errors we’re all making that are keeping us from better health. I don’t believe we’ll be perfect in our lifestyle practices until our character is perfect, and so learning to be healthier and healthier and overcome more and more sin in the area of lifestyle and diet is a part of the sanctification process. So it’s ok to talk to people about areas they may need to improve if you are a health coach or just encouraging someone from church. Remember to include yourself too. There’s things you’re doing wrong you can improve on. Don’t let the person get the idea that you think you’re perfect and perfectly sanctified and that you have an air of self-righteousness rather than humility. You both need Christ and for Him to sanctify both of you.

What’s not ok though is to try to manage their health or their lives for them. We are to be encouragers and supporters, but not micromanagers. At the end of the day whether this person needs to make certain changes in their thought life or eating habits is between them and God, and not knowing their hearts we really can’t accurately diagnose their condition from a spiritual perspective and it’s not our place to do this. We may think we see sin in them and be wrong. God won’t tell us everything about them. He will however convict that person about their sin. So there’s huge gaps in our understanding about them, things that are known to them and God alone, and it’s important to respect those boundaries and that personal relationship they hold with God.

It’s not right for someone from church to repeatedly accuse someone of sin, and refuse to back off and let them be their own person and managers of their own lives. You can certainly share your concern with them if you think you see them doing something dangerous such as doubting God, or engaging in a health destroying lifestyle practice, but once you’ve expressed your concern and endeavored to give them support and help, it’s not your place to bring up this subject over and over again and lord things over them. After you have mentioned your concern several times, at that point it’s their choice what to do, and God respects their free will. Even God will not force them and so it’s important we don’t do it either. Force is a principle of Satan’s kingdom, not God’s. Back off at that point and witness by example. Endeavor to learn health practices yourself and abide by them and let the person see the benefits of health and getting right with God in your own life. Win them over without words by your godly witness as Paul says wives are to do with husbands who aren’t open to hearing about Christianity verbally.

What is the Difference Between Nature and Character and Why Does This Distinction Matter in Understanding Mental Conditions?

I can’t tell you how frequently it happens that I come in contact with Christians who conclude they’ve lost their relationship with God because they feel angry or jealous or depressed much or all of the time, or because they can’t feel His Presence or His peace. They also may find it difficult to focus long enough to study their Bible, and may experience very low levels of motivation to engage in the spiritual activities they once loved.

Their conclusion is often that they really don’t love God after all, or that He has left them. Some even fear they have committed the unpardonable sin.

And the opposite is also true. If they go through a period of time where they feel great joy and peace, and a feeling they determine to be the Presence of God when they are worshipping in church, they conclude God is with them, and if they feel feelings of love or holiness they conclude that they have a good heart with right desires put there by God. Why did they jump from feeling a sense of holiness to the conclusion that their heart is in the right place?

Are feelings of holiness actual holiness?

Do feelings indicate our spiritual state? Similarly atheists and unbelievers will often conclude the same. When a woman has a baby, and feels no emotions of bonding and love for that baby, and instead she feels complete emotional numbness and zero feelings of attachment, it’s common that women in such a condition conclude they are a monster, and make a character judgment about themselves. Regardless of her religious beliefs or lack of them.

But, are feelings (or the lack of them) character?

As Christians we really do have answers to these important and pertinent questions in God’s Word! Answers that are satisfying and give real clarity. We don’t need to be living as the atheist or humanist lives, and coming to their same conclusions. But unfortunately one of the biggest temptations people face and one of our strongest fallen desires, is to live for feelings, and to place an inordinate focus on emotions. These things have crept into Christian churches – not just the world – and gained traction in a big way, and are exerting an influence to lead people to embrace false doctrine and to measure our Christian experience by our feelings. The difference is that secular hedonists look to things like promiscuity and alcohol or drugs to feel good, and Christians often look to deeply spiritual feelings and experiences to feel happy, and as the indicators of our spiritual state. We may discard feelings that we would consider to be more superficial and rudimentary, and we may stay away from drugs, but we’re still measuring our spiritual state by feelings, and we’re still centering our faith around feelings when we expect to feel strong elation or feelings of holiness at church.

Can someone be a hedonist if they pursue feelings of holiness?

I believe so. What many do not know is that hedonism simply means that feelings become the focus of your life. They become the thing you value most or which you pursue the most. Any kind of feelings or emotions, if they are the focus and aim of one’s life, makes someone a hedonist. It’s not wrong to feel good feelings or emotions. It is wrong to make those feelings an end in and of themselves. And this is what hedonism is.

Hedonism is basically synonymous by living without principle. If a person doesn’t value principles or make them their aim, they end up living an unprincipled life, and all that’s left is feelings and inclinations and passions. Just going with what feels natural or good to you. What Paul describes in the Bible as being dead even while being alive.”

“But the widow who lives for pleasure is dead even while she lives.”
1 Timothy 5:6

It is exactly this state, that Christ desires to free people of. Such a person is devoid of meaning, living nihilistically.

While it may feel wonderful to have feelings of strong holiness and love for God and others while worshipping at church, there is no actual relationship with God unless one is living by principle.

And really this is what separates Christianity from false religions. Christianity is the true religion, because it’s the one built around the true principles of love, goodness, justice, mercy, and truth in all its forms. The others are founded on false principles of selfishness, inclination, passion, possessing no real truth and no real virtue.

And the whole point to what our lives in this world are for, is that this world is a training ground where God transforms our character and teaches us to live according to His truth and for His glory. We learn how to have a faith and relationship with God that is based on principle. Because in heaven, while we will see our Father face-to-face, we will be living by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God, in a state of perfect faith, obedience, and trust in God. Yes even with powerful holy emotions and feelings, we won’t be living by those feelings. We will have formed a relationship built on the principles and truths found in God’s Word.

Only such a relationship is a true relationship with God.

What the Two Adams Tell Us About Nature and Character
We ended the last chapter discussing the Fall of man, and how it was the fall that brought mental dysfunction into the world, conditions like schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, etc.

Now let’s pick back up and look at the role of Christ in our redemption, and how the roles of the two Adams show us the difference between nature and character.

It’s interesting and important to understand, that there are distinct differences between Adam’s role and Jesus’ role. Adam is referred to in the scriptures as the first Adam, and Jesus is called the Second Adam. The first Adam and Second Adam share some similarities, but they are also diametrically different in major ways that are core to Jesus’ identity and role as divine Savior of the world.

Let’s read Romans 5:12…

Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned
Romans 5:12

Notice how sin entered the world through Adam, but it wasn’t Adam’s sin that condemned each of us to the eternal death sentence. It was our own sin! The Bible is careful here to make the distinction that sin is not something someone can do to you. Just as Satan cannot force us to sin, he can only heavily tempt us, so even Adam could not directly force us to sin. Because we all sinned, we all individually came under the death penalty of the law. This happened when we committed our first sin.

Here we see what Adam’s sin did to mankind. What Adam did to us wasn’t direct; it was indirect. Adam did not enter into our minds and take hold of our agency and our will and force us to sin. Just as Adam’s sin changed the nature of the whole world so that disease and dysfunction and death were now a part of life in this world, just as Adam’s sin changed the nature of the animals so they fought with one another and ate one another, rather than existing peacefully together as they had done before the Fall, so Adam’s sin changed the nature of human beings.

Adam could not actually affect our character – no one has the power to do that – but he did change our nature. Since the seed of all mankind existed in Adam, when Adam sinned and his nature changed, the nature of his seed changed as well.

We read in chapter 1 that everything about us is physical and man does not possess an immaterial spirit. When Adam’s physicality changed in nature, his physical sperm and Eve’s physical eggs also changed in nature, and since people do not possess immaterial spirits and are 100% physical, this caused our nature to change along with Adam’s. Adam could only pass down a fallen nature now, not an unfallen one.

But nature is not exactly the same thing as character. Animals, like us, have a nature, but they do not form characters. Only human beings form characters.

Another way of saying this is that all of God’s creation is under natural law, such as the laws of physics, but only mankind is under moral law – right and wrong. The stars do not have agency and are inanimate. It is God who guides them on their courses. Animals have consciousness and personality, and a sort of agency, but they do not understand right and wrong. A dog can choose whether to bark at a squirrel or chase it. It has its favorite toy. But it can’t choose whether to believe in Christ and be saved or whether to rebel against Him and go its own way. It can’t choose whether to do a crime, or turn away from doing a crime. It can choose actions only, but it lacks the moral understanding to know which actions are morally right and which ones are morally wrong. Everyone intuitively knows this. We don’t send a dog to court and prison if he bites someone. But we do hold people accountable for their actions.

Only man in all of God’s creation understands right and wrong and can choose through Christ living in the heart to do the right, and reject the wrong, and glorify God in so doing.

And only man can become a monster. But what makes someone a monster? Is it their nature, or is it their character?

Well let’s think about this. A dog which has a nature, cannot ever become a monster. No matter how angry or dysregulated a dog gets – no matter how violent – the dog will either be rehabilitated or in extreme situations the dog will be put down to protect people. But the dog will never get sent to prison with a life sentence, even if it were to kill someone.

So it doesn’t appear to be nature that makes someone a monster.

It has to be character doesn’t it?

If having a fallen nature were synonymous with sinning, then Christ would be a sinner for having Mary’s genetic material and possessing a fallen nature in His humanity. And we know that is not true.

The beauty of Christ is that He was a man just like us with a fallen body, and yet because He was divine He had not sinned and fallen under the power of death, and thus He could resist sin and be victorious so that He could transfer His perfect life to our account and serve as the unblemished sacrifice on the cross.

“For this reason he had to be made like them, fully human in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people.

Because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.”
Hebrews 2:17-18

“For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin.”
Hebrews 4:15

When we inherited a fallen nature, it meant that all people would inevitably sin. But nature is still not the same thing as sin. While nature can cause us to sin, sin is always active.

The Bible defines sin as the active transgression of His moral law, either through omission or commission. Omission is when we know the good and right things that we ought to do – our inherent responsibilities to God and our fellow man – and we actively choose to neglect them. Commission is when we know the wrong things we ought not to think or to do, and we actively do them anyway.

“Everyone who sins breaks the law; in fact, sin is lawlessness.”
1 John 3:4 NIV

“Whosoever committeth sin transgresseth also the law: for sin is the transgression of the law.”
1 John 3:4 KJV

Notice the language here: “breaks”, “commits”, “transgresses”. These are all active verbs, showing agency.

Sin always happens with a moral agent conscious and present, and carrying out the sin either in thought, word, or deed. Sin is always active. You aren’t sinning simply by sitting there. Sin is not the same thing as your fallen state. People in comas who lack full consciousness aren’t sinning by merely existing. Sin is not synonymous with being a fallen person in a fallen world. Sin is when you’re sitting there, and you see a girl who has prettier hair than yours, and you start thinking jealous thoughts, covetous thoughts about wanting what she has. Or you know you should thank your mom for buying something for you at the store that you really needed, but you choose to harbor an attitude of indifference to her rather than love, because you’re busy engaged in activities you enjoy and your focus is on yourself, and you let these little acts of appreciation go undone.

Sin is always active.

At this point you might be asking, “But even if I’m just sitting there, aren’t I a sinful person, even without actions? It can’t only be when I’m actively sinning that I’m sinful.” Yes, and what you’re referring to here is character. Character is the state of your heart. Our characters before conversion are sinful – an adjective. Character is a state of being. It’s the moral value of your heart. Characters are not all at the same level of evil. Both the devil and people in this world are fallen beings, yet the devil has formed a fully evil character and committed the unpardonable sin, and most everyone alive today has not sinned to such an extent that they’ve committed the unpardonable sin and filled up the cup of God’s wrath towards them (though people groups in the Old Testament did accomplish this. More on the unpardonable sin later). A character can be very sinful, as we all are before we come to Christ, or if can be a lot less sinful, with a lot of good in it, as we are after conversion and after we’ve walked with God through the sanctification process over time.

Sin itself is an evil act, or thought, a transgression, something we commit and do. Being sinful is a state of being, a measurement of our character, which changes over time according to the choices we make in life.

But, It’s So Unfair What Adam Did!
This may seem unfair that Adam could bring about a condition of things where we would all inevitably sin. And I do believe Adam did a great wrong to us, and probably committed the worst sin that’s ever been committed when he ate from the fruit and gave us all a fallen nature as a result. But it makes sense that this would be possible if you ask the question “What are people? What is a person?” The answer is a person is a physical being that has a mind that can understand morality and spirituality and make a choice of loyalty or disloyalty to God.

We are physical beings made in the image of God.

Put another way, we are physical beings who can choose to be children of God, or monsters.

Thus in man there is always a purely physical element, that can experience natural dysfunction, and corruption just as the world and the animals do, and there’s always the element of moral agency, through which a person makes the decision to form a holy character through Christ, or to form an unholy one and follow down the devil’s path.

A person has moral agency through their physicality. It’s our brain and its perceptions and abilities that enables us to make moral choices, aided by the Holy Spirit of course. No one can choose a good thought, word, or action in the right spirit and with the right motives without the Holy Spirit’s influence on our minds, convicting us and prodding us towards God.

But a dog while a physical being, does not possess moral perception. A dog’s brain is very different from a person’s brain. The wonder of the human mind is truly amazing if you really think about it. How is it that a physical organ can understand abstract moral truths like justice, mercy, freedom? It’s really unfathomable that a physical brain can understand abstract, non-physical truths. But if you’re someone who has ever lost your moral perception through a mental condition such as psychosis, you’ll know from experience that it is the brain that processes these things, and we really do have these capabilities, and we can lose them if our brain is not healthy.

Unlike animals, due to our moral agency, people are both physical and moral beings. All people are both physical and moral. Animals are only physical, and not in any way moral.

Every man, always has this choice. Thus you can see that being 100% physical and existing in Adam, the very nature of being human is what makes it possible for us to inherit a fallen nature.

God couldn’t make people who weren’t physical and thus weren’t under natural law…people who couldn’t have fallen natures as a result of sin.

When the rest of the natural law, including the laws of physics were changed and warped by sin, it wasn’t possible that man as a physical race, wouldn’t be physically changed the same way the rest of the world was.

Such an idea is an impossibility.

The truth is that what it means to be a human being is that we are under both natural and moral law.

So this is a deeper truth than it first appears on the surface. We’re talking about the very nature of what makes us human, and how due to the inherent properties of that nature, a fallen nature is inherent with how sin affects us.

The Physical Came First, and Then the Spiritual

The spiritual did not come first, but the natural, and after that the spiritual.”
1 Corinthians 15:46

In the Bible, this deep eternal truth about how people are first physical beings, and then only after they have lived for some time and made a choice to follow Christ are they spiritual, is central to Christ’s mission and in showing the difference between the two Adams. The unconverted person who uses their moral agency to reject Christ is referred to as being carnal. The carnal person is not filled by the Holy Spirit and is either an empty vessel, or if this person yields more and more to Satan they can even become possessed and filled with demons. Such a person uses their moral agency to grieve the Spirit and be controlled by the carnal nature and the temptations of demons. The Bible tells us a carnal person cannot even understand God’s Word and the deep spiritual subjects in it, for “spiritual things are spiritually discerned.”

The first Adam provided the genetic material for our bodies. He is our ancestor and the father of all humanity.

But he did not provide for us a record or a character. We each form our own character and it is formed when we make choices, and we each have our own record in heaven of wrongs done and right things done like when we respond to God’s Holy Spirit.

We did not inherit Adam’s record, nor his character. We inherited only his fallen nature.

“So it is written: “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam, a life-giving spirit.”

The last Adam – Christ – became a life-giving spirit.

The first Adam was himself bound by and under natural law. The last Adam was divine, the author of natural law and in His divinity not bound by it in the slightest. Fully God, He took on human nature and flesh in order to free us from sin and the devil. His humanity was of course under natural law as Adam’s was.

Speaking of our bodies Paul says:

“it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body.”

He then goes on to say:

“The spiritual did not come first, but the natural, and after that the spiritual.”

“The first man was of the dust of the earth; the second man is of heaven.”
1 Corinthians 15:44-47

Adam was quite literally made of dust. Jesus as God is not a created being and is omnipresent, outside of space and time, and not composed of any created material.

The two Adams are not to same. One was able to bring sin into this world only. And once he brought it into our world he could do nothing to save or help us after we each sinned. Adam had zero power to help us with our sin problem. He couldn’t forgive us of sin or live a life of obedience in our stead. Only Someone who was God, the Law-Giver could die in our stead and free us from the penalty of the law. The “Second Adam” lived a perfect life in our stead, and died as our Substitute. He possesses the divine authority to forgive sins and give us daily victory over temptation. The Second Adam holds power to affect our character, not just our nature (the first Adam effects our nature only and not character). This Second Adam is more than human. Rather than depending on someone for life – as Adam did – He is the Source of all life, a life-giving spirit through being both Creator and becoming our Savior.

For All Moral Beings the Natural Comes First, and Then the Spiritual
Here in these verses we see an eternal principle at work in the universe when it comes to beings with moral understanding. For all of us, the natural comes first. We are born, and then we must be born again in order to be spiritual.

We even see this play out with the angels in heaven. They were created physical beings with moral understanding. And then they had to choose whether they would worship God eternally or side with Satan.

How Do We Know Angels Are Moral Beings?
You might be asking “How do you know angels are moral beings?” Well the Bible actually tells us directly that Satan and his evil angel followers sinned. It doesn’t leave this fact ambiguous or hazy.

“The one who practices sin is of the devil, because the devil has been sinning from the very start. This is why the Son of God was revealed, to destroy the works of the devil.”
1 John 3:8

Speaking of Satan the Bible says:

“You were anointed as a guardian cherub,
for so I ordained you.
You were on the holy mount of God;
you walked among the fiery stones.
You were blameless in your ways
from the day you were created
till wickedness was found in you.”
Ezekiel 28:14-15 NIV

Wickedness, or iniquity as some translations say, is another word for sin.

And sin is something only a moral being can do. As we discussed earlier, if a dog bites someone, it’s never a sin, but if a person physically assaults someone and injures them, it’s a sin. The opposite of sin – righteous works that glorify God – is something only a moral being can do too. Dogs cannot glorify God by their choices and actions, by their submission to His will, and by their faith. While the Bible explains that all the created universe reveals and declares the glory of God (Romans 1:20, Psalm 19:1-6), and God glorifies Himself through them, only beings with moral agency can themselves glorify God. This is a profound distinction, and this is why human beings hold the weighty value that they hold. This is also the purpose of our lives – to glorify God – and no other purpose is sufficient to give a person meaning and happiness. There is happiness in no other way of life, and living for self makes a person nihilistic and miserable, even though they do not often realize this as Satan has them in a deluded state.

While created perfect and without sin, the angels hadn’t yet formed characters. They had to decide whether to form holy and loving characters or unholy, evil ones.

And here we see how Lucifer, a holy and good angel, became the monster Satan and the devil. He chose to sin in an unrepentant way. He grieved God’s Spirit away with his sin, until all that’s awaiting him now is judgment (Jude 1:6).

And this is also how people become monsters.

The Pharisees in Jesus’ day had become monsters. They were planning the murder of Christ, that is how evil they had become. Jesus told them the truth in an endeavor to cut through Satan’s lies and reach their hearts.

“Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.”
John 8:44

Unlike us, the angels have already fully formed their characters either for good or evil. The loyal angels will live forever and have been given immortality by God, and the evil angels have committed the unpardonable sin and are reserved for punishment and death.

But human beings have not committed the unpardonable sin (except for people who have already died in a state of rejecting God), and we can choose to be saved and recreated in heart.

So this is an eternal truth that beings with moral agency are first physical and then must decide what kind of character they will form.

It’s not possible for God to create a being with moral agency that is both physical and spiritual at its creation. What I mean by this is it’s not possible for God to create a being with moral agency and not give it choice. Giving it moral agency means giving it choice.

Everyone who is on God’s side is there due to their choice. God can’t create someone to be on His side from birth.

How the Cross Solved This Monumental Problem
Through the cross, God won all hearts of every moral agent in the universe to His side. Other than the devil and his angels, and wicked men who reject God, every other being will choose Him, and any newly created beings will side with God, due to the love displayed on Calvary which revealed God to be perfect love and perfect holiness.

In this way, maintaining the free will of moral beings, God wins the universe to His side and ensures sin will never occur again after this war is over.

It is in this way that Christ destroyed he who has the power of death, the devil, and brought life and immortality to light, defeating death itself.

“This grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time, but it has now been revealed through the appearing of our Savior, Christ Jesus, who has destroyed death and has brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.”
2 Timothy 1:9-10

After Adam’s sin the law was weakened by the flesh. The law was still holy and good, but people possessing fallen natures would now all inevitably sin, and so in the flesh we were too weak to keep that perfect and holy law.

But Jesus fixed the gulf that existed between God and man and between this problem of the natural and the spiritual, where beings who were natural and were physical were choosing not to become spiritual and instead were choosing to sin and become carnal (as seen first in heaven with Lucifer, and then on earth with Adam).

Jesus bridged this gap between the natural and the spiritual, by Himself becoming a man – a physical created moral being – and living a perfect life which He could then transfer to our account, and give us a nature that through Him could choose to live in obedience. As well as paying our death penalty so He could forgive us, He also creates His own righteous character in us as we are daily sanctified and renewed in holiness. He had to live that perfect life and form that perfect character in order to be able to do that.

And this is why He is called the Second Adam, because like Adam Christ had to form a character, yes He had to in His humanity form a character of love and obedience to His Father. So He did what Adam should have done and gave the obedience Adam should have given, which would have resulted in Adam’s case in Adam fathering children with unfallen natures. But in Christ’s case He didn’t only affect the nature, He affected the character, redeeming people, revealing the love of God, and solving this whole problem of nature and character for all moral beings for all time.

This is the power of Christ and this is the way in which He is nothing like the first Adam.

“For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful man, as an offering for sin. He thus condemned sin in the flesh,”

in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.”
Romans 8:3-4

“Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil—”
Hebrews 2:14

“He will swallow up death forever.”
Isaiah 25:8

“For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive.”
1 Corinthians 15:21-22

The cross refuted Satan’s false charges about God’s character and revealed Him to be absolute perfect love and goodness.

Thus intelligent beings the universe over were won to God’s side and a rebellion will never rise up again. Since no sin will ever occur again, the penalty for sin – death – will never happen again. It will be defeated for ever.

Since there has always been two elements – the natural and the moral – with moral beings made in God’s image, Jesus defeated death and ensured all natural beings would now all become spiritual beings.

Jesus bridged the gap that was made when Satan brought sin into the universe, and Christ ensured that every natural being would become a spiritual being.

Every natural, created being, would choose Him and be loyal to Him, and not sin and fall under the penalty of the law, which is death.

What a phenomenal thing Christ did! What amazing power and love!

But Aren’t Nature and Character the Same Thing?

Before I confuse someone I want to clarify something. I know I probably have some readers who are thinking “But the Bible speaks of being given a new nature at conversion, so aren’t nature and character the same thing?”

Actually to be honest, the Bible rarely mentions nature. Speaking of the conversion experience, the Bible mentions the heart, not the nature. ‘Heart’ is referring to the part of our mind that possesses moral agency, where we make moral choices, and in doing so form character.

“I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.”
Ezekiel 36:26

Notice that ‘nature’ is not mentioned here. There are two things that are mentioned, being given a new heart, and being filled with the Holy Spirit.

David during his repentance for the sin of adultery and murder asks for these same two things:

“Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.”
Psalm 51:10

Jeremiah uses similar language, and adds another important element.

“But this is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the LORD. I will put My law in their minds and inscribe it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they will be My people
Jeremiah 31:33

In Jeremiah God speaks of the importance of having God’s law stored in our minds through the reading of the Word, and how it’s through the Word that the Spirit works to change our hearts.

Jesus described His Word as spirit and life, because the Holy Spirit works through the Word to bring a change to our character and give us holy desires and motives that align with God’s law of love.

Paul speaks of us being a new creation at conversion.

“Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away. Behold, the new has come!”
2 Corinthians 5:19

But clearly we don’t have brand new natures at conversion. There’s a lot that goes into the nature of man. The fact we are physical is a part of our nature. The fact we are finite is a part of our nature. The fact we have gender and there are male and female, that we reproduce and are sexual by nature is a part of our nature, an aspect of nature that angels do not have. The fact we have hands and eyes and ears and take in information through our senses is an aspect of our nature. The inherent majesty in the human physical form, modeled after God and being in His ‘image’ – such as our shoulders, and our head sitting on them, the fact we walk upright rather than on all fours like the animals, the noble, chiseled features of our face, and all that’s involved in the majestic bearing we possess, like the chosen ratios and math that went into our design – all these things are a part of our nature.

The fact that our bodies decay and age and die, is an aspect of our nature after the Fall.

If it were true that our whole nature were changed at conversion, we’d be given new bodies that did not age, new brains that worked perfectly and without error, and that doesn’t happen until we are given our glorified bodies at the resurrection.

It’s at the resurrection that an entire change to our nature – from fallen to unfallen – occurs. We will not see that happen to ourselves or anyone else until Jesus comes in the clouds of heaven.

Jesus explains that being born again means being born of the spirit. Meaning your nature – your body and most of your brain – are still the same fallen nature. You are born of the Spirit when the Spirit comes and lives inside your body and gives you a new heart.

Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit. Flesh is born of flesh, but spirit is born of the Spirit.
John 3:5-6

A beautiful and powerful verse in 2 Peter – one that is very essential to the faith of the Christian – is the only one I can think of that actually uses the word ‘nature’ to describe a person’s conversion and sanctification.

“His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness.

Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature, having escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.”
2 Peter 1:4

Notice here that ‘nature’ must mean specifically the part of the brain where we understand right and wrong, and make moral choices. There are many aspects of God’s divine nature which we do not participate in. We don’t become omnipotent at conversion. We don’t become all-knowing or omnipresent at conversion.

No, it’s clear that we don’t partake in God’s full nature through these promises, only His character at conversion/sanctification. We become like Him in heart.

And character isn’t something that can actually be given, it has to be formed. This is why the Bible verse says “through these precious promises” we partake of the divine nature. The promises referred to are not just the promises of conversion, and justification, but of sanctification. And sanctification is not instant, but is formed over time, because of this fact that character cannot be given, but must be formed by the choices we make over time.

Even Adam in perfect Eden, though sinless, had to form a character over time.

Now after the Fall, we must engage in the same process, although in our case we must not only form a character, but we must also perfect that character because there is sin in us. Our character must undergo a renovation, not just form solidly in place as Adam’s would have done, had he never chosen to sin.

Our choices will also form our character solidly into place too though. So we’re kind of having to do what Adam should have done for himself (our individual choices do not apply to others as his choice did), and the character renovation that becomes necessary now due to our sin.

While we can’t be given character as it must be formed, what can be given is the part of the brain involved in making character choices – this part of the nature – changed at conversion, due to our choice to repent of sin and follow Christ.

This part is referred to as the ‘heart’. Not all aspects of our nature change at conversion.

So while it’s not incorrect to say we are given a new nature at conversion – as the part of the brain involved in character is one part of our nature – I think it’s more accurate to say we are given a new heart at conversion.

You’ll see in a minute why I’m drawing this important distinction. This Bible doctrine has many practical implications with mental illnesses and conditions when it comes to things like determining whether we are sinning by feeling jealous, anger, or depression.

Character a Part of Nature, but Not the Whole Part
A new heart is not exactly synonymous with a new nature, because our nature encompasses much more than just our heart – or character. But it’s not really incorrect to say that we are given a new nature at conversion, because our character is one part of our nature.

Similarly, it’s not really incorrect as you’re assembling a bicycle to ride, to call the handlebars “my bike” as technically they are your bike, but it’s more accurate to refer to them as “handlebars”, since they are only a part of the bicycle.

That is the difference, and that is also why some people get the two confused. Because our character is a part of one nature, but it’s only one component of our nature, and there are other components. So our character is one piece of our nature, but not the whole thing.

And it’s our character specifically that God recreates at conversion; He does not recreate any other part of our nature.

What this means is that at conversion we are given a new heart, but this new heart is in a fallen body. Paul puts it this way:

“But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us.”
2 Corinthians 4:7

“That is why we never give up. Though our bodies are dying, our spirits are being renewed every day.”
2 Corinthians 4:16 NLT

The word here translated “dying” is “decaying” in the Greek. Paul is saying here that while our physical bodies are decaying and aging, our character is being renewed and sanctified day-by-day.

Our nature is not changed at conversion. We still have decaying mortal bodies, but our character is changed at conversion and we become a “new man” in Christ, filled with His Spirit.

So this specific part of our nature is changed.

Character and Its Relationship to Sin

As mentioned earlier, a person is not sinning by simply sitting there, or existing. But are they sinful? If they are old enough to have sinned their first sin, then yes they are sinful. And if they sit there long enough they will eventually start thinking some sinful thoughts and they will be actively sinning. We all sin many times every single day (James 3:2)

While Adam did not come into our brain and force us to sin, our fallen nature meant we would all inevitably sin.

So as soon as our brain is developed enough to understand right and wrong, to be tempted by our fallen nature and its inclinations, and to sin, and we commit our first sin, it’s at that point that we become slaves of Satan, and fall under the penalty of the law, condemned to die. It’s also at that point that we then have a sinful character. Sin is now in us – we are sinful – and we are not just inclined to sin because of our fallen inclinations.

From then on we have not just a fallen nature but also a sinful character. We’ve become evil. And only Jesus’ blood can forgive us of our violation of His perfect law and give us a new character of love. Christ is the only way back to innocence at that point.

So our fallen nature means we will sin, then once we sin we now have a sinful character. We are now sinful as a person, when before we were just oriented towards sin.

The Bible is very clear that desire is not sin.

“Each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own evil desire and enticed.
Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.”
James 1:14-15

Notice when the sin occurs. Not at desire.

Desire Can Come From Two Sources
Desire can come from either the fallen nature, or a sinful character. I’m not exactly sure at what point a person’s brain is developed enough to think its first sinful thought, but John the Baptist rejoiced in the womb at 6 months old. If he could rejoice and delight in being in the presence of Christ and was cognizant at that age to respond to the Holy Spirit, it seems reasonable to think that a 6 month old in the womb would also be cognizant enough to commit their first sin.

I’m going to need you to follow me closely here. We’re going to cover some very closely-related but actually different concepts, and I need for you to grasp the difference between them, because this subtle difference has implications with conditions like same-sex attraction, addictive tendencies, depression, anxiety disorders, psychosis, and many other mental health conditions.

Before we sin our first sin we are inclined towards sin because we have a fallen nature. We do not at this point have a sinful character though.

In the womb before even developing mental faculties and reason, a baby may have the generic make-up to be prone in their DNA to anger outbursts, to hate and selfishness, to disrespect parents, and to many other sins, which once their brain is formed that baby will start experiencing the temptation to do.

We are all born with genetic tendencies and inclinations to sin, and the particular sins we’re inclined towards are different for each of us. While all of us will break everyone of the 10 Commandments, we may be more inclined towards certain sins than others, and may sin in greater ways in certain areas than others.

Due to having a fallen nature, we’re all inclined to sin. We’re oriented towards sin. It feels natural to us; it is in fact natural to us.

And we do not have the power or the authority to resist sinning. Adam before sin had the power to resist sin because He was filled with the Holy Spirit and lived in right relationship with God.

But after the human race fell into the hands of the devil – really we were sold to the devil by Adam – we no longer belong to God as a race, and we’re no longer filled with the Holy Spirit. Jesus had to buy us back by His death and life, in order to gain the right to give us the power to choose to live holy lives and to give us a new character.

After we sin our first sin we now have a corrupted character, not just fallen inclinations. This is different from the inclinations that tempt us and which we’re oriented towards doing. This is the result of that inclination, when in our powerlessness to resist sin apart from Christ we carry out the desires of that fallen nature. It results in us sinning and we then have a sinful character. It’s at this point that we have become evil. Evil is now not just an inclination, but a part of us. It’s at this point that we’ve incurred guilt, and we need forgiveness, and if we do not turn to Christ, there’s nothing else in all of creation that can wash away our guilt.

So our fallen nature before we sin our first sin has sinful inclinations, but once we sin we now have a corrupt character. Evil is not just outside of us, tempting us, but it’s now within us.

But while we are now fully fallen and our character is depraved, we haven’t formed a fully evil character. Put another way, fallen people after their first sin are not pure evil. If they were they couldn’t ever be converted. Someone in such a state never again responds to the Holy Spirit’s conviction.

A fully evil character happens when a person over time repeatedly rejects the Holy Spirit and sins willfully again and again and again, forming character for evil with each of these choices, until they solidify their character in evil. This is called the unpardonable sin.

There are whole people groups in the Old Testament who committed the unpardonable sin. The whole earth at the time of the flood did this. We see this fact in the verse “every intent and thought of their hearts was only evil continually”. This verse describes a state of character that was fully formed for evil, there was no goodness left in the character. They no longer thought even a single benevolent thought. They were evil through and through.

There’s also one other way to commit the unpardonable sin and that is to die while rebelling against God, but I won’t go into that here. We’ll return to it a bit later.

Our corrupt character – not just our nature – after we sin our first sin now has desires that are sinful. These desires aren’t coming merely from our fallen nature anymore, but from the character we’ve now formed for evil. The character is now corrupted, and the conscience has now become hardened, and the person wants to do selfish things from the heart now, not just the superficial feelings, or impulses of their body.

So desire for sin can happen due to either of these things.

In both cases, whether before one has committed their first sin, or afterwards, one has not sinned simply by having sinful desires.

Neither has a person sinned if Satan outwardly tempts them with something their sinful character desires.

Temptation is also not sin.

Before our first sin (which I’m sure we do not remember as we were much too young), the body and the feelings and inclinations desire sin. After our first sin when we now possess a corrupt character, our heart and will and character now desire sin.

Before our first sin, we experience temptation, from our natural tendencies and from the devil, but after our first sin we experience temptation not only from our bodies and the devil, but also from our character.

In the first scenario we are an innocent, guilt-free person experiencing temptation, in the second instance, we are a guilty person with a corrupt character who needs forgiveness and redemption who is experiencing temptation.

In neither case is temptation sin, but in the second case the person themselves is sinful, even if they don’t give in to the particular temptation that is currently tempting them.

I’m sure that we don’t remain in our state of innocence for very long, because pretty much as soon as a being with a fallen nature develops enough of their cognition in the womb to think their first selfish thought, I’m sure they think that thought almost immediately after the development has occurred. Because we have no power in that fallen state without Christ to do right and resist the wrong.

Can The Part of the Brain Where the Character Resides Malfunction With Mental Illness?

The frontal lobe – the part where we understand right and wrong and form character – can actually experience dysfunction and become confused, or it can even experience a loss of function and fail to work at all, resulting in a person either experiencing a reduction in moral perception, or it can be completely absent. We see this in psychotic conditions, when a person due to a dysregulated immune response becomes psychotic. We see this with dementia too.

A person in psychosis may lose moral perception and conclude that anything blue is right, and anything red is evil, and so they avid wearing any red shirts or speaking to people wearing red or going into any red brick buildings. And they gravitate to anything blue, and feel that they are right with God because they have avoided red and surrounded themselves with blue.

This is an example of someone who has fully lost all knowledge of right and wrong. They no longer have any knowledge of the underlying principles behind what makes something right and what makes another thing wrong. Thus right and wrong become arbitrary concepts, colors or some other arbitrary category of information that is completely unrelated to morality.

I had this happen to me. When in psychosis I believed that vitality was synonymous with good and that lethargy was synonymous with evil. The devil was a being who wanted to sap life and energy from people and from the world. God was a Creator who wanted to give us life and vitality and save us from lethargy. (Interestingly, I eventually slipped into a completely catatonic state and couldn’t move for several days. I think this is why my brain was obsessed with vitality and lethargy; it could feel I was about to lose energy and slip into a catatonic state. I remember feeling very stiff too and having adrenal pain). I lost the ability to see that the devil wants to corrupt people in heart, by leading them into sin. I lost the ability to understand that decay and lethargy were results and effects of sin, not sin itself.

Some part of me knew something was very wrong, and I feared I’d committed the unpardonable sin. My brain couldn’t connect the dots that I had lost moral perception and was in psychosis, instead my brain thought the thing to be feared was the unpardonable sin. (This was not the only delusion I had during my hospitalization. I also believed at one point that my thoughts were causing hurricanes and killing thousands of people each year, and other terrifying things, I’m just choosing to focus in on this one delusion for now).

I kept praying and asking God to give me a second chance, so I wouldn’t be lost when He came back.

In the hospital I kept seeing hallucinations of squiggly waves and lines in the air and some had vitality and seemed to buzz with a healthy amount of electricity, and others had an artificial buzz to them that reminded me of a city abuzz with neon lights and drugs and alcohol and artificial stimulants that hurt one’s health.

I thought this was God testing me to see whether I was serious about wanting a second chance or not, by showing me the different lines, and I had to choose the one that represented health and vitality, and reject the one that had a tempting artificial excitement and which would lead to lethargy in the end.

I’d lost the ability to tell that a person needs to repent of their sins and believe in and follow Christ in keeping His commandments in order to be right with God. My idea of what sin was was an arbitrary, nonsensical one not rooted in actual morality.

I kept choosing the healthy lines, but not decidedly enough, then I would compulsively choose the artificial ones, and I couldn’t understand why I couldn’t stop myself from choosing them. I thought it was because I was weak in character.

In reality, I was experiencing hallucinations, along with impossible-to-resist-compulsions because I had lost my mind and I’d lost control of myself. It must have looked strange to the staff to see me darting from one part of the room to the next, reaching my hands out into the air, and then praying to God compulsively, but since it was a psychiatric hospital I’m sure it wasn’t their first time seeing something like this. Other people I’ve talked to who have experienced psychosis report similar experiences.

I was no longer a moral agent. As you can see from the kinds of actions I could do – moving around the room and making arbitrary choices and coming to nonsensical conclusions – and the ones I was incapable of such as repenting of sin – I could no longer glorify God with my life. Neither could I dishonor Him either though. I was in a state of innocence.

I don’t want you to miss the significance of what it’s like to lose one’s moral agency.

Eventually, I calmed down a bit from fatigue and the new meds they put me on, and I could enjoy the food. I remember the food at the mental hospital tasted amazing. Everyone thought so, it wasn’t just me. The veggie burgers in particular were so good that even people who weren’t vegetarian would order them.

I remember how even enjoying a good meal and experiencing some physical comforts was meaningless when I’d lost my perception of right and wrong. Life felt completely nihilistic, and I couldn’t pinpoint why it felt that way, but it was a horrible state to be in.

A person can never lose their benevolent character, except by choice, but the part of the brain that houses the character, and where we make moral decisions and form character can break down due to things like black mold exposure (this was the cause of my psychosis) dysregulating the immune system. My brain was heavily inflamed and my immunity was both too strong and parts of it were too weak and I was very dysregulated which affected my thoughts, perception, and cognition.

But what can never happen, is a person can never lose the record of their character. If a person made a choice to repent of sin and follow Christ before they slipped into full psychosis or late-stage dementia, that choice is recorded in heaven. One’s salvation cannot be lost by slipping into psychosis, and neither can the character that person formed over the years be lost by slipping into psychosis, because the Bible tells us the record of our good deeds is recorded in heaven, and when Jesus comes back He will distribute the reward of those deeds so accurately, that even giving a cup of cold water to a needy person will not be lost track of or go unrewarded.

“And if anyone gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones who is my disciple, truly I tell you, that person will certainly not lose their reward.”
Matthew 10:42

Not only this, but the good character, not only the deeds, can never be lost. When God re-creates His people at the time of the resurrection, and we have new bodies and brains, the character we formed in this life will be recreated into our frontal lobe. It can never be lost.

The only thing that can cause a righteous character to be lost, is if we possess moral agency, and we willfully choose to start rebelling against God and grieving the Holy Spirit and start down the path of iniquity that leads to death. That is the only way a person can lose their good character.

So you can see here how with a moral agent, there’s more to the picture than just our physical brain or our choices. Our choices form character, and then the Holy Spirit changes our frontal lobe – the part that has the character in it – to be like Christ. And then there’s also a record kept in heaven, of our sins and our righteous deeds – the moral choices we make as moral agents – as well. Christ forgives the sins of those who truly repent and walk with Him, so they are crossed out and have “forgiven” written beside them. He also has the rights to re-create that person at the resurrection with the character they formed while they had moral agency in this world. All of this is secured and watched over by Christ by His blood and with His authority.

His divine authority ensures no one’s record or character can be lost by an accident or illness that damages or dysregulates their brain, or even by death itself. Christ will come back to raise the righteous dead and give them eternal life.

Does Same-Sex Attraction Come from the Character, or From Other More Superficial Parts of the Body and Brain?
Recently I watched a Youtube video where a Christian podcaster was making the argument that if a person has same-sex attraction that this attraction is due to a character that hasn’t been fully sanctified. What she was really saying here is that this desire was not an unfortunate element of a fallen nature, but it is an element of character.

She believed that if same-sex attracted people follow Christ and repent of their sins, that over time as God changes their character that their desires will change, and they will no longer desire the same sex in a sexual way.

Her argument at its heart – which she may not realize she’s making – is that all desires come from the character, and there is no such thing as desires that stem purely from our physicality, which can become warped and changed by simply living in a fallen world capable of decay.

Her argument is really that the decay caused by the fall doesn’t affect every aspect of our physical bodies, just things like aging, but not our brain and neurochemistry, which affect our perception, and feelings of desire.

I don’t believe that the Bible teaches that the fall only causes decay and malfunction to certain parts of our body, and not all parts. I believe the Bible teaches that all parts of our body can now malfunction.

Why would it be possible for our heart to break-down and we have a heart attack, but it wouldn’t be possible for our feelings to malfunction?

If malfunction is possible in this world, then it’s possible for our feelings to malfunction also.

It is true that there are desires that are purely character desires. For instance, an atheist or unbeliever has hate in their heart towards God and His truth. They do not want to come into the light, the Bible says. They have desires to run from God, and rage if they are too long in the presence of a preacher who has love for God and speaks of His love with adoration.

This is true. If this atheist becomes converted, God gives him a new character, and he now desires what he once hated. His desires do a 180 degree turn and he enjoys speaking with the preacher who loves God and they fellowship together and delve deeply into the study of God’s character together.

But does this mean that all our desires are based in the character, and are changed by the process of conversion and sanctification?

I don’t believe the Bible teaches this.

Who as a converted Christian hasn’t experienced weird or dysregulated feelings? Who hasn’t had nights where we had a strange sense come over us that we didn’t choose or cause, that maybe was warped or wrong in some way and we knew it wasn’t a healthy feeling or desire that God created within us, we knew there was something “off” about it?

The truth is, feelings come from nerves and neurochemicals and hormones. While they interact with the part of the brain that is involved in logic, understanding truth, and forming character, feelings are by nature very rudimentary things.

Look at animals for instance. Though they do not have a character, animals have sexual feelings. Studies are showing that mercury in the water is giving ibises gay desires and behavior. Males are mating and nesting with other males rather than females.

Don’t human beings also have a rudimentary part of our nature, basic-level drives and inclinations that are not part of the higher functioning of the mind? But let’s say a person is exposed to mercury and develops the same base-level desires as the ibises to have a sexual relationship with a person of the same sex. A person can choose not to follow these basic desires. A person can see that it would be sinful and wrong to do so, and they can choose to glorify God by abstaining from such a relationship, going against their biological urges.

This is the difference between people and animals. Like them we have basic drives and feelings and biochemistry; unlike them we have the higher parts of the brain that can understand, obey, and worship God.

Let’s look more into the difference between desire and sin.

It is only when desire has conceived that sin has occurred. The Bible is using the metaphor of pregnancy here. The sperm and the egg must meet for a conception to take place. The sperm alone doesn’t cause in a pregnancy. An egg alone doesn’t result in a pregnancy. But when the two meet a pregnancy has occurred. You’ve probably heard the expression “I’m pregnant with an idea.” It’s the same concept here. That of something taking root in the heart of the person. The person agrees with and lets in this idea or this cherished thought of doubt or hate or selfishness. They let it take root in their heart. Instead of just having a desire for something, or an inclination towards something, they actively lust after it and pine after it, allow their thoughts to dwell on it, let their minds become “pregnant” with it, and cherish an unholy attitude of rebellion or doubt against God or another person.

Desire gives birth to sin. This means that if you have a sinful character that character will inevitably cause you to keep sinning, because it has sinful desires, and it will act on those sinful desires because it is itself sinful and corrupt. The only way to stop sinning is to be converted and have your heart renewed and sanctified each and everyday. The selfish character must be changed or you will keep sinning.

And if you’ve been given a new ‘heart’ and have begun to form a new character, you will not continue to sin.

No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God’s seed remains in them; they cannot go on sinning, because they have been born of God.
1 John 3:9

Here John uses the metaphor of a seed, taking root, and springing up first into a tender young plant, and then into a stronger one, until it finally grows into a strong and stately tree.

This is what God does in the heart when we have been set free from the laws that make in impossible for us to do righteousness – the law of sin and death – which requires us to perish and pay the penalty for our sins, and which can give no power to do righteous acts, and through Christ sin now no longer has dominion over us. His Spirit is implanted in us like a seed, a new heart is given, and we can do the righteous acts we could never generate on our own.

The new desires of the renewed heart produce new attitudes, new motives, and express themselves in righteous actions.

“…through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death.”
Romans 8:2

“Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.

For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death [notice here another reference to being planted like a seed], we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection:

Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin.

For he that is dead is freed from sin. Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof.

Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin: but yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God.

For sin shall not have dominion over you: for ye are not under the law, but under grace.”
Romans 6:4-7, 11-14

Desire is not sin, but the desires of a fallen heart will produce sin, and the desires of a renewed heart will produce righteous actions.

Thus the answer to our sins is to be set free from the inability to do righteous actions, which Christ won for us by His death and righteous life. We can now through repentance die to the penalty of the law – the penalty that was on our account – and rise a new person who is not under the death penalty, and who has a new heart that can do righteous actions and has the power to do so through Christ.

So as we are sanctified each day, by surrendering selfish desires and not letting them take root, not allowing yourself to become pregnant with them and entertain them, our character is changed. And we sin less and less because our character is becoming more and more holy.

So character is behind the whole process.

The book of James has some powerful key scriptures that illustrate this truth.

“What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you?

You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God.

When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.”
James 4:1-3

Once again, it’s the desires of the sinful character that produce active sins.

Jesus gives several key statements that really make this truth plain.

“No good tree bears bad fruit, nor does a bad tree bear good fruit.

Each tree is recognized by its own fruit. People do not pick figs from thornbushes, or grapes from briers.

A good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and an evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of.”
Luke 6:43-45

“There is nothing outside a person that by going into him can defile him, but the things that come out of a person are what defile him.”

And when he had entered the house and left the people, his disciples asked him about the parable.

And he said to them, “Then are you also without understanding? Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile him,

since it enters not his heart but his stomach, and is expelled?” (Thus he declared all foods clean.)

And he said, “What comes out of a person is what defiles him.

For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery,

coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness.”

Mark 7:15-23

Where “Within” Is
Notice how Jesus specifies where “within” is. “Within” is the heart or character of the person. The immoral desires of the character produce active sins.

The character is formed when we, knowing right from wrong, use our will to choose to do right. To surrender immoral attitudes to Him rather than cherish them. To give them up.

If we do choose to cherish jealous or evil attitudes in our heart, that choice grieves God’s Spirit and hardens our hearts, making our characters more selfish and evil.

Some Things That are Not the Heart
There are a lot of things that are not the ‘heart.’ If you sick with a strep infection that goes to your brain, and this causes you to have strong emotions of anger and rage, this is not your heart.

If you’re bitten by a tick and develop Lyme disease and it tanks your mood and you become severely depressed, this depression is not your heart.

If you have sexual urges that are biologically based this doesn’t make you a fornicator for having a sexual body. This also is not the heart.

There are many different feelings and experiences that are not the heart or the character.

The character, as mentioned earlier, is in the frontal lobe; it’s the higher parts of the brain that make moral choices. It’s not the involuntary processes and unconscious processes of our brain and body, what might be called the lower or animal feelings and inclinations. If your leg involuntarily twitches that wasn’t a conscious jerk you chose with your will.

If you have the urgency to go to the bathroom, this wasn’t a conscious choice of your will.

If you feel very angry all of a sudden from histamine dumping in your brain, this also wasn’t an act of the will.

If you feel depressed because you have histamine toxicity and it’s chronic, your will and character also aren’t involved in that.

Notice that it is only the desires of the character that can corrupt a person, not the feelings of the person or their emotions.

Character desires are desires that stem from the moral state of a person’s heart. These are either righteous or sinful desires, they aren’t neutral like the lower urges, such as having a sex drive is neutral. If a person has a corrupt character they will have sinful, selfish desires. It’s these desires that are in the heart that defile a person, not the feelings or inclinations of the lower, animal nature of a person.

And even desires are not sin unless the person “conceives” them, choosing to actively fantasize about immoral things, or to do behaviors that are immoral.

However, until we have perfect characters, the desires of our flawed and selfish characters will result in us doing sins. We can begin to change character and put to death these desires through Christ, and so we will have less and less of them as we engage in the sanctification process and are transformed in character.

What Implications Do These Important Concepts Have With Mental Conditions?

What implications does this have with mental conditions? Well, it means we can have mental symptoms, mental malfunction and dysfunction, even while having new characters in Christ.

Mental symptoms can affect cognition as in the case of psychosis, where the person loses the ability to think logically and believes nonsensical things.

And they can affect emotions, as is seen in the case of emotional dysregulation which is often a very core component of mental illness.

Let’s go back to the original scenarios at the start of the chapter, and answer some of those questions.

Is a person a jealous person if they feel a feeling of jealousy? Is a mother a moral monster if she feels no feelings of love for her newborn baby, just numbness?

Are feelings of jealousy jealousy? Are feelings of hate hate?

The answer is no, a person is not a jealous person if they feel feelings of jealousy. They are a jealous person if they choose to think jealous thoughts and have a jealous attitude towards others. Usually feelings will accompany these chosen thoughts and attitudes, but the feelings are not what makes the person jealous.

Remember the definition of sin is an action, thought, or attitude, not a feeling.

Feelings will accompany chosen attitudes and thoughts in a healthy brain.

But in a mentally unwell brain or even for something as simple as insomnia or stress, feelings can be dysregulated and not match up with our chosen attitudes and thoughts. Or feelings can be entirely absent.

Someone has not sinned by having a feeling sweep over them, or even one that persistently stays with them. In major depressive disorder, a person may have a feeling of hate that accompanies them for years or months, caused by their inflammatory rate. They have sinned if they are harboring an attitude or thought of jealousy or hate, not if they have a feeling of hate.

When it comes to emotional dysregulation, I’ve personally experienced the whole spectrum. I was depressed pretty much from day one as a kid, then at age 12 I developed crushing unrelenting depression that felt as sad as if my whole family had died that persisted for 8 years, along with feelings of loneliness that weren’t attached to any real situation. After that at age 20 I developed total and complete emotional numbness where I couldn’t even cry when my father passed away. I felt nothing, no sadness, or joy. I could still feel anxiety and that was it.

I’ve also experienced feelings of guilt when I hadn’t done anything wrong, feelings of strong shame caused by my inflamed physical state when I hadn’t done anything shameful. These are feelings that do usually accompany shameful and wrong actions, and they felt exactly the same as the ones I’d felt when I did actual wrong, only they were much stronger.

Than interestingly, I had an experience a couple years ago when I took a collagen supplement where I felt profound righteous indignation for minor annoyances. My mom making what I perceived to be too much noise in the kitchen, evoked a emotional response from me that felt like Moses throwing down the Ten Commandments in deep, holy anger.

I hadn’t known that righteous indignation could come about from biochemical imbalances – in this case the histamine raise that occurred from the collagen. I’m already histamine dominant and it was too much histamine for my brain.

I was used to more superficial feelings of rage and frustration and agitation coming from histamine toxicity as I had experienced this before, but I didn’t know righteous indignation, which felt so holy and serious – just as it would feel if you found out a church elder had murdered someone or did something else profoundly wrong – could be evoked by biochemical imbalance. But the more I thought about it, the more sense it made.

All of our feelings are at their root physical. And that means that anything that disrupts a person’s physicality and biochemistry could potentially stir up and dysregulate these feelings and emotions.

Don’t Reason Backwards

Rape victims sadly often reason backwards. They feel profound shame, and conclude that they must be shameful in their person. They must be guilty somehow of their rape, because they feel such strong feelings of shame and guilt.

But shame and guilt are common feelings that can be stirred up when a person has been assaulted and there’s lots of inflammation from the assault. The body goes into fight-or-flight and shoots out inflammation and this dysregulates the emotions and feelings.

What does God’s Word say? It says a rape victim is as innocent as a murder victim. Fully innocent. The rapist alone is guilty, the Bible tells us. So a rape victim who feels extreme guilt and shame can know she is actually pure and innocent. The rapist is the guilty one. He is the one who has real shame and real guilt according to God’s record book in heaven. and God has very real wrath for what he did to the victim.

I’ve often wondered if school shooters, slipping into strong feelings of anger due to inflammation from mental illness reasoned backwards and concluded that if they feel hate for everyone that they must be a hateful person and attributed it to their character and who they were as a person, and reasoning backwards that they were a hater, felt hopeless and destined to hate, and then began making plans to act out that hatred.

It can be very dangerous to reason backwards and to use feelings as one’s gauge for their character.

It’s important we reason forwards. I feel a feeling of hate, doesn’t mean I’m a hater. I can choose to love and even if feelings of hate persist, they are just biochemical things at that point. I know God will give me a character that can love so any feelings of hate left over after I’m actively choosing to love are just that, feelings, nothing more.

This is the right way to look at things.

Someone else in my family took collagen too and had the same experience. We have very similar genetics and it caused the same response in us.

A person can experience a symptom called anhedonia where they lose all feelings of love and attachment, all positive feelings and also all negative feelings and they are in a state of total numbness. I had this symptom and when my dad passed away I didn’t even cry. I had severe anhedonia.

Going back to the example in the beginning of this chapter about the woman who did not feel any love or attachment to her newborn baby. This can happen with post-partum depression. It’s also a common symptom of post-partum psychosis. It’s also a common symptom of trauma.

As explained earlier people are physical beings and can have malfunction the same way the animals do, and we are also moral beings. Dysregulated or absent emotions can occur purely as a result of physical problems, and altered physical biochemistry and can have nothing to do with character.

You’re probably asking at this point “But don’t character and emotions share a relationship?” For instance, it’s very common for someone who doesn’t want to repent to have lack of emotions towards God, or even hostile emotions towards him. The atheist may delight in sinful things like self-worship and mocking God, and aren’t emotions involved when we delight in something?

The answer I believe is that yes in a healthy brain emotions flow from and mirror chosen attitudes and the character of the person.

Let’s first look at how feelings and emotions work in a healthy body, according to the Bible, and then we will explore how they can become dysregulated as happens in mental illnesses and conditions.

How Our Emotions Were Created to Work

You will see many texts in the scriptures that say to worship God because He is good, because of his benevolent acts in history culminating on the cross. (1 Chronicles 16:34, Psalm 117:1-2). First the mind grasps the significance and love of the cross, then the emotions well up within the person, and then they give shouts of praise. This is the order God created our mind to work in. He didn’t create us to feel appreciation without understanding and blindly offer praise and then only later intellectually grasp the significance of God’s love. This would be out of order.

You will see this order in Jesus Himself and how His emotions work.

“Then God saw that the wickedness of man was great upon the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

And the Lord regretted that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart.”

Genesis 6:5-6

Notice how God grasps logically what is happening and then His emotions respond to the tragic truth He is seeing before Him. His emotions respond to truths and reality in the world around Him. His emotions are not something He seeks to stir up apart from the external world and the truth about the situations He is seeing there. He doesn’t lead with emotion and work Himself up into an emotional state, with logic and truth following second.

Responding to the rebellion of His people, and knowing if they do not repent that they will be lost forever, God responds with emotional language in the following verse. You can hear the pathos in the words.

“O that they were wise, that they understood this, that they would consider their latter end!”
Deuteronomy 32:29

In a similar verse addressing a similar situation God cries these words:

“How can I give thee up, Ephraim? How can I hand you over, Israel? How can I treat you like Admah? How can I make you like Zeboam (people groups God had to destroy due to their wickedness)? My heart is changed within me; all my compassion is aroused.”
Hosea 11:8

Jesus is an emotional God, but not in a way that is arbitrary and disconnected from truth and reality. Indeed emotions get their value from truth. There is no value in feeling joy if no significant thing has occurred, but if say a friend of yours has accepted Christ as their Savior and turned from a life of sin the joy is significant and has meaning because of the event and truth that caused the joy.

Jesus tells us there is joy and rejoicing in heaven over a sinner who repents. (Luke 15:7, Luke 15:10)

Emotions do not have value apart from truth and the world around us. They weren’t created to be disconnected things that we work up in order to get an emotional high. In fact it’s Satan who stirs up emotions devoid of reason and works our emotions according to ungodly and evil principles.

“They are the kind who worm their way into households and captivate vulnerable women who are weighed down with sins and lead astray by various passions”

2 Timothy 3:6

We are not to live for emotional pleasure (or any other kind of pleasure), or use emotions against their correct design.

“She who lives for pleasure is dead even while she is still alive.”
1 Timothy 5:6

There are many passages in the scriptures about pleasure being used for pleasure’s sake rather than being attached to truth that is meaningful and used in its proper sphere and its intended purpose

“For at one time we too were foolish, disobedient, mislead, and enslaved to all sorts of desires and pleasures, living in malice and envy, being hated and hating one another.”

Titus 3:3.

You will notice in the scriptures that God describes sinful attitudes as having emotions connected with them.

This aligns with the way attitudes and emotions work according to the verses we read above. We first grasp what’s happening outwardly with the logical part of our mind, and then our emotions respond to that reality and we experience feelings that go with that knowledge.

If we choose to harbor attitudes of jealousy, hatred, and anger, there are emptions that go with those attitudes.

If we choose to harbor attitudes of profound appreciation and gratefulness to God for the gift of His Son and His daily companionship and love, there will be holy emotions that follow those right attitudes.

This is how something like “fits of rage” can be described as one of the works of the flesh in Galatians 5:20.

It’s not the emotion of rage that is the sin. It’s the chosen attitude of unforgiveness, jealousy, or hatred, which results in the fit of rage.

I repeat, it is not the emotion that is the sin, but the chosen attitude.

So if one feels a holy emotion, does this mean the person is holy?

No. Emotions cannot be used to gauge the state of one’s heart. That is not their purpose. While in a healthy person feelings of holiness will often accompany holy choices and actions, it’s those choices and actions that make you holy, not the feelings.

If you’re worshipping in church and all of a sudden emotions of love for others sweep over you, this is not indication you have actually become more loving.

What is it that makes a person more loving? It’s when we surrender jealousy and selfish ambition to God. It’s when we stop fighting His conviction to stop being selfish and we agree to live for the good of others and not just ourselves. Such a surrender will not just manifest as a feeling in church. It will manifest in the life of the person. You will see the person join a Christian ministry and give of their time, energy, and resources to others. You will see them abandon selfish projects and dreams to spread the gospel instead.

There will be a complete change in the life from a heart that is truly surrendered to Christ. There will not be just feelings of holiness and only tiny changes or no changes in the life; there will be a transformation and a daily process of sanctification.

The longer you know the person, the more like Jesus they will be. Or if this person is you, the longer you walk with God the more like Him you will be and there will be obvious, measurable growth from year to year.

If you are having feelings of holiness but no actual change in heart and in life, then you aren’t holy no matter how holy you feel while worshipping.

Facial Expressions
What about our facial reactions, our expressions? Don’t these reveal the chosen attitude of the heart? If someone laughs when they hear someone they know has died, doesn’t this indicate they are harboring hatred in their heart?

The Bible does say the expressions of the face can reflect the character and the chosen attitudes. The Bible tells us the wicked have proud looks on their faces.

“The look on their faces testifies against them;
they parade their sin like Sodom;
they do not hide it.
Woe to them!
They have brought disaster upon themselves.”
Isaiah 3:9

The Bible also tells us the righteous have holy looks of confidence and faith in God on their faces, knowing they are forgiven of their sins. The fact their shame and guilt has been washed away is reflected in their faces.

“Those who look to him are radiant; their faces are never covered with shame.”
Psalm 34:5

The Bible speaks of haughty looks in those who are proud.

‘You save the humble but bring low those whose eyes are haughty.”
Psalm 18:27

Indeed the Bible even says God hates haughty, proud eyes, grouping this expression of the face in with sinful things like a lying tongue and hands that shed innocent blood.

“There are six things the LORD hates, seven that are detestable to him:
haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood,
a heart that devises wicked schemes, feet that are quick to rush into evil,
a false witness who pours out lies and a person who stirs up conflict in the community.”
Proverbs 6:16-19

But while the face does to an extent reflect the character and responds to the evil in the heart, the Bible is also clear that outward expressions are not a way to gauge character. Only God who reads the heart can distinguish truly proud eyes, from someone who may appear proud due to say high dopamine in the brain or some other condition or situation, but not have pride in the heart. So while our character does influence our facial expression, it does so imperfectly and there are many other things that influence our expression also. Someone can’t look at you and know your character – the face is not a measuring tool of the soul.

Also, it’s not righteous judgment to judge someone as proud who is psychotic and doesn’t understand the difference between pride and humility. Pride is a choice to harbor an attitude of self-righteousness and violence against God or others. It’s not pride if it’s not chosen. A facial expression that comes over someone due to dopamine surging too high in their brain – even if it looks exactly like a proud sneer – is not actually a proud sneer unless they know the difference between pride and humility and make the conscious choice to be proud. It’s not sin for them unless they can tell the difference, and it’s wrong to charge a psychotic person with the sin of pride when they are out of their mind. Perhaps if you know them better and have evaluated them, or they have had a thorough evaluation with a psychiatrist, one could narrow down whether that individual is capable of understanding the difference between pride and humility, and that if it’s determined they are, then a sneer is likely to be chosen pride in their case. But it’s wrong to jump to that conclusion with a psychotic person, based on outward facial expressions and demeanor alone.

In court rooms it is unfortunately all too common for the jury to give the guilty sentence to people based on superficial things like the way the person acted in the court room, whether they showed the appropriate facial expressions, etc. Jesus says to judge with righteous judgment. While the Bible is clear that our feelings and our facial expressions do reflect the state of our heart to an extent, it also tells us these things are not fool-proof and they are incomplete. The Bible is clear that the thoughts of the heart don’t show up perfectly on the expression and that only God can know the thoughts of the heart. God did create our expression and our demeanor and mannerisms to convey the Godly love that exists in our heart, but He made sure that they do this incompletely and imperfectly, so that the thoughts of the mind cannot be fully discerned on the face. This is an issue of individuality and privacy. Only God is allowed to know the inner thoughts and read them with perfect accuracy.

And the Bible says fruit is the way we are to measure and judge others, but that even this is imperfect so we shouldn’t claim to know the heart. When it comes to measuring and judging ourselves, once again facial expression and reactions, do respond to character but not in a perfect way and thus we can’t use them to fully know our heart.

But the Lord said unto Samuel, Look not on his countenance, or on the height of his stature; because I have refused him: for the Lord seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart.
1 Samuel 16:7

Only God can see what’s in our hearts. To claim that we can gauge what is in someone’s heart by looking at them, or even speaking with them, is to commit 2 big sins:

It means we’re giving ourselves divine traits. We think we have perfect judgment like God does. We aren’t leaving room for God to be the Judge of the heart, acknowledging even with our best judgment we will miss things that only God knows and sees. We’re usurping His position.
“I the LORD search the heart and examine the mind, to reward each person according to their conduct, according to what their deeds deserve.”
Jeremiah 17:10

When it comes to evaluating others, if we think we can know the state of their heart by looking at their face or reactions

It means we don’t respect or believe in right to personal privacy. We are actually charging God with being a God who doesn’t give people personal privacy in their thoughts and airs out all their inner thoughts via their face. This would be a horrible dystopia if it were true. Privacy is a fundamental right. The privacy of our own thoughts is the most important privacy of all. The reason we can’t see inside someone’s mind or judge their thoughts and character with perfect accuracy is because everyone has a right to privacy in God’s government. They have a right to answer to God alone for their secret thoughts and secret sins, and if they are thinking good things and holding good desires, it is God in the secret part of their mind that inspires them and communes with them. No other person can be involved in this communion. Just God and the individual.
How does the Bible say to gauge whether a person is a believer and walking with Christ?
“Ye shall know them by their fruits.”
Matthew 7:16

“Even a young man is known by his actions–whether his conduct is pure and upright.”
Proverbs 20:11

Only God can see into the heart. The rest of us can see only your actions. Actions aren’t a perfect gauge of character, but they are the best we have access to, until the judgment when all the secret things of the heart will be revealed. The things only God knows will be revealed on that day and this is why we are to judge nothing before the time, until those things are revealed.

“Therefore judge nothing before the appointed time; wait until the Lord comes. He will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and will expose the motives of the heart. At that time each will receive their praise from God.”

1 Corinthians 4:5

It is possible for someone to seem to have fruit, to seem to be walking with God, and to be harboring a spirit of rejecting Him in their heart, a spirit of doubt and accusation against God. So even actions aren’t a perfect way to gauge character or the status of whether someone is walking with God or rejecting Him.

There is no way for a person to know for sure who is walking with God and who isn’t. Only God knows with absolute certainty. At the same time, we can know in a general sense how to live a Christian life and be right with God. We know what kinds of fruit (actions) come from being a converted believer.

Dear children, do not let anyone lead you astray. The one who does what is right is righteous, just as he is righteous.
1 John 3:7-8

When people keep on sinning, it shows that they belong to the devil, who has been sinning since the beginning.

Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness,
idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions
and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like.
Galatians 5:19-21

What Do We Use Then?

So what are we to use to gauge character then, when it comes to ourselves?

The answer according to the Bible is our motives and attitudes and desires gauge character. As explained above, emotions naturally follow motives and desires, and our character has desires which we then act out in the form of thoughts and actions. Once again we’re looking at moral desires – whether we desire righteous things or selfish, unrighteous ones – we’re not looking at our lower-level feelings that aren’t based in morality such one’s sex drive or inflammation from their autoimmune condition giving them feelings of anger. The answer to an imperfect character that desires wrong things, is to develop a new character through Christ. A converted person rejoices in the truth. An unconverted person rejoices and delights in wickedness. Their fallen character results in them having evil desires and motives, and their emotions respond to and flow out of these evil desires, reflecting them.

But while this is true, this doesn’t mean we can use emotions as a way to gauge what kind of character we possess and our standing with God. Rather it’s the motives and desires that the emotions are flowing from that reveal our character and that we are to use to gauge the state of our heart.

What makes something right is when the motive is giving, self-sacrificial love, this is the desire, and when the actions or thoughts focus on or carry out the good desire. Not stealing and respecting other people’s property is love, for instance. Being faithful to one’s spouse is love. Desiring to cheat on one’s spouse would be an unloving or an evil desire. Coveting someone’s things is an unloving or evil desire.

“As in water face reflects face, so the heart of man reflects the man.”
Proverbs 27:19

As always what defines right is the 10 commandments. Taking a deeper look at the 10 Commandments reveals they aren’t just actions, but principles. In other words there is a motive actuating each of them. If your dog grabs a stranger’s bag and runs off with it, we don’t say the dog is stealing. Because we know the dog does not possess moral agency and therefore there is no immoral motive involved when a dog takes something that belongs to someone. But if a person does the same thing it’s stealing. Motive is present in all 10. Lying isn’t lying without a motive to deceive. Simply being incorrect about a fact and unknowingly giving someone false information isn’t lying. Lying is when the intent to deceive for personal gain at the expense of others is present in one’s actions and will. Same thing with all the other 10. If a person learning a new language intends to use a swear word to curse at their parents, but uses the wrong word and ends up saying something loving instead, this is still a violation of the 5th commandment. They intended to curse at their parents so they are disrespecting their parents. Likewise if someone intends to say something kind to their parent as they are learning a new language and they say a swear word by accident, this isn’t a violation of the 5th Commandment as the swearing was an accident. One could go on for some time with such examples about how motive is inherent within the concept of sin and of righteousness.

When we desire to fullfill these commandments and the inherent principles within them actuate us, then the desires and thoughts and motives that go in the direction or way of the commandments are holy and right desires and reveal a good character. If our thoughts and desires and motives (and actions) go in the way of breaking the commandments, then we are having sinful desires and motives and if fostered and not surrendered to God, these will make for a fallen, unconverted character.

It is possible to do the right thing with the wrong motives or to do the wrong thing innocently because of lack of knowledge. It isn’t just the thing done, but the motive behind it that makes an action sin for a person. In earlier chapters of this book we learned how someone in complete psychosis who cannot tell right from wrong is not guilty if they commit crimes while in psychosis, and how if someone has good motives but lacks Bible knowledge about a subject – say they live in a polygamous society that has had polygamy for hundreds of years, and is isolated from the rest of the world and has never had access to the Bible – then they may be innocent of breaking the 7th Commandment due to lack of knowledge.

“To him who knows to do right and does it not to him it is sin.”
James 4:17

Inclinations and Tendencies
Just to reiterate and make this very clear, when I say ‘desires’ I do not mean physical inclinations, like having a physical inclination to cheat on one’s spouse, or a physical desire to engage in a homosexual encounter or a physical desire to eat unhealthy food, or a physical desire to be famous and worship self and feel a thrill from it. Our bodies can have all kinds of faulty physical desires that can be related to things like neurotoxins and histamine and other biochemical imbalances.

Rather I’m speaking of the kinds of desires which comes from the character and are either immoral or moral. Not the basic, rudimentary drives we all have within us and which have nothing to do with the character, and which are subject to dysfunction, such as someone having same-sex attraction from mercury toxicity disrupting their hormones and their mental perception.

“Do not envy the wicked, do not desire their company; for their hearts devise violence, and their lips declare trouble.”
Proverbs 24:2

This text above shows motive. The wicked devise violence. They plan out how to harm others. Their goal is destruction and violence of that person, often due to envy or hatred.

Read the following text and note how motive is written into this entire text, in fact it’s spelled out clearly. You can see how what makes something an evil act and what makes someone a wicked, unrepentant person is when the intent and the motive is to harm another person or God in order to selfishly promote oneself above others and at their expense.

Of course even converted people will have some immoral and selfish motives. They will sometimes sin also. But the whole of their motives will be more like Christ than like Satan, and if unconverted it’s actually the other way around. If the Christian has selfish motives, they will surrender them to God, not foster and encourage or cherish them. They will hate the selfishness that still exists in their character and desire strongly for God to remove it from their character and mold them into His humble and pure character. They will make effort on their knees in prayer to gain the victory over self. They won’t celebrate the sin that still exists in their character or encourage it. The unconverted do the opposite.

“If they say, Come with us, let us lay wait for blood, let us lurk privily for the innocent without cause:
Let us swallow them up alive as the grave; and whole, as those that go down into the pit:
We shall find all precious substance, we shall fill our houses with spoil:
cast lots with us; we will all share the loot”—
my son, do not go along with them, do not set foot on their paths;”
Proverbs 1:11-15

In the above verse the wicked covet the material possessions of others and so they kill them and take their goods.

Notice in this verse how the wicked kill and steal from innocent people “without cause”. This doesn’t mean they don’t have a reason or a motive. Their motive is selfishness, and they may have a number of reasons and past history factoring into why they gave into the temptation to do this. But what they are doing is still without cause, because by this the Bible means it’s without just cause. There is no just reason for them to be killing and stealing. A just reason would be something like a group of men capturing Lot and Abraham going and fighting and killing some of those men in order to rescue Lot. Or stealing back from someone something they stole from you (which really isn’t stealing at all; it’s just protecting your property). But when someone does something for an unjust reason such as stealing in order to get that person’s goods, the Bible calls this stealing without cause, meaning without just cause.

“For among My people are wicked men; they watch like fowlers lying in wait; they set a trap to catch men.”
Jeremiah 5:26

Jeremiah 5:26 is another verse depicting that to be evil one must have evil motives and showing clear evil intent.

Notice also the clear motive shown by the sacrifice of Christ.

“Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus:
Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God:
But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men:
And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.”
Philippians 2:1-8

“The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life—only to take it up again.
No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from my Father.”
John 10:17-18

“I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down His life for the sheep.”
John 10:11

The person who biochemically desires a homosexual encounter hasn’t sinned. It only becomes sin if that person allows themselves to pine after and engage in fantasy over that desire, or if they actually go out and have a gay encounter with someone. A physical desire can be just a physical desire; it’s not sin. But if we let that physical desire become a cherished desire of the mind and heart and not just a feeling, then it’s a sin.

So when judging our heart to see if we’re right with God we’re not going to search our emotions or biochemistry to see if our body is oriented toward fornication or anger or any other sin. What we’re searching for is whether we are harboring a desire for fornication or sin that makes it an idol in the heart. Our body may desire wrong things. But our mind may be surrendered to God at the same time. But if our mind is angry at God for not letting us engage in fornication, if our mind is looking for a way to break this commandment and get away with it, if we are pining after it, then we’ve made it an idol, even if we aren’t actually engaging in it.

“For the word of God is alive and active, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.”
Hebrews 4:12

“Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account.”
v. 13

How do we determine whether our heart is right with God? By the Word, not by human reasoning. By searching our motives and intents of the hearts through lining our motives up with God’s Word and measuring them.

However, we cannot do this in our own power. Notice how the verse says the Word is alive and active. What it means by this is that the Spirit works through the Word both to teach us from God’s Word and to reveal the state of our hearts. Only the Spirit can open our understanding and make the Word clear to us. Only God truly knows our hearts. We don’t even know ourselves with 100% accuracy even when lining ourselves up with His Word, but He knows us with perfect knowledge.

“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?”
Jeremiah 17:9

Here we see a perplexing problem. Since the heart is deceptive, how can we search our own heart to accurately assess the state of our heart and our motives, if we’re so deceitful that we won’t be completely honest, even when we’re trying to be?

The answer is given in the text that follows:

“I the LORD search the heart, I try the reins, even to give every man according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings.”
verse 10

Praise the Lord, God knows our heart through and through; He can both assess and cure our sinful condition.

If we seek to engage in the process of searching our heart and measuring our motives and intents of the heart in our own mental power, we won’t be successful. We need God to try the heart, and to reveal the state of our heart to us through His Spirit working together with the Word (The Bible). This is the only way we can come to an accurate knowledge of the state of our heart. We can’t combine humanism with the Bible and seek to identify and cure our condition without Christ, using our own mental prowess and our will power. We must realize our dependency on God and ask Him to send His Spirit to teach us and reveal the true state of our heart. To see the true state of our heart will require humility. Those who are too proud will miss defects in their characters and evil desires in their hearts because they are too proud to be open to seeing the truth.

It’s necessary to magnify Christ and look to Him as the solution. It won’t be any benefit to us to get weighed down by the sins we see and there’s no reason for this because Jesus is the remedy. The purpose of revealing the evil in our hearts is for a redemptive purpose, to bring us to conversion, and also God periodically does this process with us through life as part of the sanctification process. He shows us our sins and our defects of character for the purpose of us working with Him on these specific weak points to overcome them. The goal is always redemptive, the end result is always victory. Through Christ we can overcome every one of our weak points and character defects.

“All a person’s ways seem pure to them, but motives are weighed by the LORD.”
Proverbs 16:2

What Are Emotions Good for Then?
Now that we’ve established that emotions are not a safe way to gauge character, I think it’s important that we ask the question “Well what are emotions good for then? What is their purpose?.” And also the accompanying question “What are emotions exactly?” If living by principle is what ultimately matters – living with the right motives of love and goodwill for God and man – and this choice is made by the will and the intellect, then why have emotions at all? Why would God create them?

Let’s look at what emotions are. As explained in the verses above where we looked at God’s mind and attitude and how He first intellectually grasps a subject or chain of events, and then responds emotionally, we can see the purpose of emotions.

Emotions allow us to feel in our humanity the deeply significant moral truths in the world around us.

Emotions aren’t valuable in and of themselves. It is truth that is valuable.

To illustrate this point you can ask any parent which scenario they would rather have:

In the first scenario they develop crushing depression and feel terribly sad every day of their life, but their kids are alive and well.

In the second scenario they are somehow given a substance that makes them feel deeply significant peace and joy all of the time and life feels like a profoundly wonderful and significant experience, but their child dies in a tragic car accident and they never see them again.

Parents will always choose the scenario where they feel crushing sadness but their kid is alive and well. They won’t choose the scenario where their emotions feel happy and healthy but their kid is dead and they never see them again.

Why? I think the answer is obvious. Because they want life for their kid. They want good things for the child they love so much. And they value the relationship they have with their kid. The value of the relationship and the well-being of the child is what matters.

This is true of all valuable things. It’s the thing itself that matters. People are made in the image of God, thus what happens to them and how we treat them matters because they are profoundly valuable. If we happen to have anhedonia and feel nothing for the people closest to us, this lack of feelings hasn’t negated their value, neither has it negated our responsibility to love them with actions of kindness.

But people aren’t robots or computers. A computer will just generate information and come to accurate conclusions. A computer will give us the facts. A computer can just as easily tell you it’s 70 degrees outside as it can tally up that 11 million victims died in the Holocaust. Not only does a computer not really grasp the weight of that tragic reality mentally, but it also doesn’t emotionally respond.

It makes sense for people to emotionally respond to great good or to great evil and tragedy. And that’s what emotions are – they are these weighty and important truths reacting upon a human being, a person with heart and soul.

When people do not react with emotion to important things, it definitely feels off both to them and to the people around them. Not only does it feel off, but it creates very real problems. When I had severe anhedonia and could feel no emotion except anxiety, when people I knew experienced a personal tragedy, I still cared and knew how significant it was for them, I just didn’t have an emotional reaction. And I found it much harder to act in a human way with them. I had to put expressions of concern on my face, because they didn’t just naturally form. My arm movements were kind of mechanical. I had to do a lot of acting and even then it was difficult to conjure the human response they needed. Even though I cared deeply, I hadn’t realized how much of our human reactions to console and comfort happen spontaneously as a result of neurohormones and biochemistry in reaction to sad events, and how it’s very difficult to manually create this same outward expression when your biochemistry isn’t cooperating.

When mental illness causes people to lose their emotions, you’ll see them act in a stoic way that makes it hard for them to communicate with one another and do the natural human behaviors that God programmed into our design. And if they are without emotions for too long and the people around them are without emotions also, they may even start to forget how to do these behaviors. This happen in the psychiatric hospital when people are there long-term and only interact with other mentally ill patients and do not interact with healthy individuals.

Of course many people in the psych hospital also have problems with cognition and mental perception, and their social cognition is impaired, so many of their odd behaviors and ways of interacting are stemming from cognitive issues and not from lack of emotion so that needs to be kept in mind, but definitely some of the patients have anhedonia as their only or prominent symptom and are in the hospital for that reason.

Another Reason Emotions Matter

A key reason emotions matter is because people matter. And if a person who matters is sad or troubled, both the situation that caused them to be troubled matters, and their own mental health matters.

The health of a person made in God’s image is significant and important. So the intense feelings of sadness, which cause a form of suffering, matter for that reason.

We should seek to alleviate suffering whenever we can. We shouldn’t try to do this in a vacuum, focusing only on the emotions. It’s unfortunately all too common for psychiatrists to prescribe medication to people who have had years of abuse, and then never offer any other form of help for them. There’s a psychological component when abuse has occurred, that needs to be addressed. The person also needs to be removed from the abusive home, not simply prescribed medication.

Even in cases of abuse, when the psychological element has been addressed, and the person has been removed from the abuse – even though the cause is physical or verbal abuse – supplements and health protocols can help and can be used alongside psychological interventions with great results. Abuse not only disturbs a person mentally, it actually breaks down the brain at a physical level. It causes inflammation, cell damage, dysregulated neurotransmitters, and a dysregulated immune response. Supplement protocols can rebalance these systems that have been thrown off by the abuse, and repair damaged cells. This will build the person back up at the physical level and make them feel stronger mentally and physically.

There are people who get depression and other troubling emotions from purely biochemical sources, such as Lyme disease, or mercury toxicity. Not everyone who experiences sadness is experiencing it from a psychological or situational source. It can be from pathogens in the environment or in the body. I had crushing depression starting at age 12 that felt like my whole family had died and was unrelenting for 8 years. This depression was actually greater than what people describe feeling from events, unless those events were especially tragic and severe.

I heard a testimony of a woman who had a hysterectomy at a young age, and when this surgery is done a woman goes very quickly from having normal hormone levels to having almost no estrogen or progesterone. Estrogen is involved in a happy mood, and if it plummets some women can become extremely depressed. The woman described a depression that was so severe she struggled not to commit suicide and battled constantly at an emotional level to stay alive.

Several years later she was finally put on estrogen hormones and her depression lifted and she was no longer depressed. Tragically her husband a child were killed in a car accident. She explained that the depression she feels now from the death of her husband and child, while obviously terribly painful, is not as severe as the depression she experienced from low estrogen.

That’s how much our biochemistry is involved in our feelings and emotions. And some people experiencing biochemical depression definitely do suffer terribly, and as Christians we ought to care about their mental health and inform them about treatments that can reduce or alleviate their suffering.

But in a brain hijacked by inflammation and suffering from illness, the natural emotions that follow a person’s delight or attitude, do not always exist. The person can be flat. Or they can have completely opposite emotions or feelings from their chosen attitude. For instance, you may really think it’s a tragedy that a friend passed away, and understand their value to you and to God, and yet find yourself smiling or laughing because you have a psychotic disorder and your brain gets flooded with dopamine when you’re under high levels of stress. A lot of emotions being dysregulated happens from involuntary protective measures and responses the body puts you into when it’s been under very high levels of stress for a very long time.

These protective measures actually protect your cells. It’s doing things at a cellular level that brace them against cell death, which can result from infections and stressors, and cell death is pretty much the worst thing that can happen to your body. You can handle some cells dying, but too many dying and you will break down and become severely disabled. For instance, late stage dementia involves lots of neuronal cell death, and people completely lose mental capacity and physical capacity also and have to have help even to do basic things like go to the bathroom. Thus your body must guard against cell death at all costs. Your body is trying to keep you alive at the cellular level; it’s not focused on whether you’re acting in socially appropriate ways. Involuntary processes and mechanisms don’t have that kind of intelligence.

The Conscience

What is our conscience? The conscience isn’t actually a single entity; it’s actually a union of two things. It’s us in our understanding grasping the concepts of right and wrong, and it’s the Spirit testifying to us and convicting us of right and wrong, and the deep truths in God’s Word.

Now this is our boast: Our conscience testifies that we have conducted ourselves in the world, and especially in our relations with you, with integrity and godly sincerity. We have done so, relying not on worldly wisdom but on God’s grace.
1 Corinthians 1:12

“The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God:”
Romans 8:16

“Now this is our boast: Our conscience testifies that we have conducted ourselves in the world, and especially in our relations with you, with integrity and godly sincerity. We have done so, relying not on worldly wisdom but on God’s grace.”
1 Corinthians 1:12

If someone doesn’t have the ability to understand right and wrong they are said to be without a conscience. The Holy Spirit cannot convict someone whose mind is so damaged or compromised that it’s fully malfunctioning when it comes to the concept of right and wrong. The Spirit can convict someone who has partial or full understanding of right and wrong.

There are a number of mental health conditions that can cause a blunted or absent conscience. Some of the most dangerous people in the world are people who have absent consciences but their brain is able to function in other ways effectively, so they can plan and execute, they just can’t tell right from wrong.

“Pray for us; we are convinced that we have a clear conscience and desire to live honorably in every way.”
Hebrews 13:18

“Such teachings come through hypocritical liars, whose consciences have been seared as with a hot iron.”
1 Timothy 4:2

“I speak the truth in Christ—I am not lying, my conscience confirms it through the Holy Spirit—”
Romans 9:1

“Which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another;)”
Romans 2:15

“The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God:”
Romans 8:16

“For our rejoicing is this, the testimony of our conscience, that in simplicity and godly sincerity, not with fleshly wisdom, but by the grace of God, we have had our conversation in the world, and more abundantly to you-ward.”
2 Corinthians 1:12

“Do not boast so proudly, or let arrogance come from your mouth, for the LORD is a God who knows, and by Him actions are weighed.”
1 Samuel 2:3

“But the LORD said to Samuel, “Do not consider his appearance or height, for I have rejected him; the LORD does not see as man does. For man sees the outward appearance, but the LORD sees the heart.”
1 Samuel 16:7

“If thou sayest, Behold, we knew it not; doth not he that pondereth the heart consider it? and he that keepeth thy soul, doth not he know it? and shall not he render to every man according to his works?”
Proverbs 24:12

“All a man’s ways seem right to him, but the LORD weighs the heart.”
Proverbs 21:2

“There is a generation of those who are pure in their own eyes and yet unwashed of their filth.”
Proverbs 30:12

“Turn my heart to Your testimonies and not to covetous gain.”
Psalm 119:36

“Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts.
See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.”
Psalm 139:23-24

“A crucible for silver and a furnace for gold, but the LORD is the tester of hearts.”
Proverbs 17:3

This makes the human brain a wonder in the universe. It is a physical organ, capable of processing and understanding grand moral truths like the character of God, mercy, justice, freedom, truth.

I’m not even sure how it is possible for a physical organ – for a physical being – to understand abstract, eternal moral truths. How do you make a physical brain that can comprehend moral realities? What would be required in the functioning of the brain, and the different parts and how they work together, to be able to make such perception and understanding possible?

In asking these questions we are lead to understand what the brain is, and what it was created for, and to understand its function and design.

Amazingly, we can with our own brain, study our brain. Man is truly a wonder of creation.

When I first stepped foot in a medical library I was overwhelmed with the wealth of information, and very grateful to God. I was disappointed though to learn that there are many treatments for conditions – some of them very well-documented – that are just never used by mainstream medical doctors. Such as antihistamines for depression, or IVIG and peptides for depression, which none of my mainstream doctors had ever even mentioned. They only ever recommended SSRIs and those were completely ineffective for me, an experience that is not uncommon.

Unfortunately, while the information is there in droves, the way medicine is actually practiced is in a cookie-cutter kind of way, rather than utilizing the wealth of health information that exists in the medical literature.

I highly recommend everyone spend some time in a medial library, so you can get an accurate idea of what treatments really are available, and then bring the research to your mainstream or Functional medicine doctor.

Mainstream doctors are much more likely to be willing to give a treatment a try if they can see that it’s shown to be effective in the medical literature, and functional medicine doctors will usually be grateful for the information and willing to work with you on trying it. They already think in an out-of-the-box way that is different from mainstream medicine.

The other thing I found upsetting is that in all the medical literature the brain is described either as an animal brain, no different from a more highly-evolved ape, or a processing machine no different from a supercomputer.

A supercomputer or an animal brain do not accurately convey what the human brain is, and so the way in which the data in the literature is expressed and referenced, paints a distorted picture of what human beings are.

It leaves out the most central and most important function of our brain and aspect of our humanity – our moral judgment and perception.

Reading the medical literature, and all the amazing findings, that should have glorified the Creator, and brought me into a fuller knowledge of Him and the human beings He created and giinstead ade e feel sik to y stoah

This moral perception is often referred to as cognitive empathy and affective empathy. Cognitive empathy is the ability to put yourself in someone’s shoes and understand what they are going through, and to identify with their struggle and hopefully choose to treat them with love and dignity.

Cognitive empathy is actually a part of our moral judgment and perception.

Affective empathy is defined in the medical literature as a feeling of empathy. This is categorized and defined in a way that isn’t truthful, and goes against what a human being is and what empathy is according to the Bible.

According to the Bible empathy and love are not feelings. They are principles, and a person can be actuated by these right principles if they have Christ living within, and they choose to surrender selfish attitudes to Him. So love and empathy are chosen attitudes. Thus calling a feeling ’empathy’ is not truthful.

What is truthful is to say empathy is the cognitive ability to put yourself in someone’s situation and understand what they may be going through, and this is often accompanied by feelings. Just as when we perceive and take in any painful, or difficult, or emotionally-stirring experience and we have accompanying feelings that react to what we’re seeing.

Those who are lacking feelings of empathy still have the ability to choose to give empathy and love to someone if they have the cognitive ability to put themselves in another’s shoes.

Due to the fall animals are in their nature inclined to attack one another. The same is true of people. In our nature we’re inclined to be aggressive, depressed, angry, sad, hurt, and all the negative emotions that did not exist before the Fall.

Not everything we feel and do that is negative is a sin. There is what could be called an animal part of us; the involuntary parts of our body and brain, things like the involuntary urge to go to the bathroom, or the involuntary experience of anger if we are exposed to a pathogen in the environment that causes histamine, a neurotransmitter in our brain to dump large amounts of histamine all at once.

Depression, anger, anxiety – all these can be purely biological and not involve sin and the character.

However, doubt, and hate are always sins. These things are not merely biochemical feelings. They are chosen attitudes.

Thus the difference between a feeling and an attitude needs to be understood, in order to determine if your anger is actually hate, or it’s just a feeling of anger caused by faulty biochemistry.

What is Sin, and Why Does an Accurate Definition Matter in Understanding Mental Health Conditions?

Someone with anorexia may feel intense guilt if she eats lunch and conclude she’s sinned. Someone with blunted emotion may feel little or no guilt if they bully a classmate and may conclude what they did wasn’t wrong. Someone with cognitive distortions may really think they’ve lied when they told someone inaccurate information, even though they didn’t know it was inaccurate at the time they told them. I once spoke with someone who would repent to God in prayer if she unexpectedly walked by a group of people who were cussing in conversation, because she believed she’d somehow sinned just by overhearing the cussing. I used to plug my ears on the late bus heading home from school, because the bus driver would play music that glorified sex before marriage, and I believed it was a sin to listen to it, even though there was no way to get away from it and I wasn’t the one choosing to turn on that station.

A woman in psychosis may have cheated on her husband because she really believed she was married to the neighbor and he was her husband, and her current husband was just a friend. She comes out of psychosis at the psychiatric hospital after being put on medication, and is able to now tell the truth, that she is in fact married to her husband. She’s not sure how to make sense of all of this. Did she sin and commit adultery? She had never wanted to cheat. She didn’t even know she was cheating. But her actions really hurt her husband badly. He’s also trying to make sense of all of this. Can he trust his wife and should he stay married to her? Or is she untrustworthy and her actions are grounds for divorce?

How do each of these people determine if what they are doing is actually wrong, or these are just feelings or distorted perceptions they’re experiencing?

We’ve already talked a bit about what sin is, but in this chapter I’d like to go more in-depth on the topic of sin, and bring out some key points that are really vital to the mental illness discussion.

God’s Moral Law the Crux of Everything
What is sin according to the Bible? Sin is how the fall happened, it’s the moral evil that entered the cosmos through Lucifer, and then later through Adam who brought it to this world, resulting in natural evil such as cancer and disease. It’s why Christ had to come and die to redeem us – it’s the crux of everything, or rather God’s law is, and breaking His law is the cause of disorder and destruction. What is it?

The Bible’s definition of sin never changes. It’s a core eternal truth. And the definition of righteousness or goodness (sin’s opposite) never changes either and is also an eternal core Bible truth. Whether you’re someone with depression who is trying to evaluate whether your depression is purely biochemical or whether it’s a sinful attitude of doubting God and choosing to see the glass as half empty on your part, or whether you’re a perfectly healthy person without any mental symptoms, endeavoring to evaluate your thoughts, attitudes, and behaviors to see which are sinful and need to be surrendered to God, the definition of sin never changes. It’s the same for everyone, and God is just and fair, and doesn’t altar His law, or make exceptions, and doesn’t pick favorites.

Once we know the Bible’s definition of sin, then we can plug in our unique situation and state of cognition into the equation, and see if what we’re experiencing is actually sinful in God’s eyes. The person with intrusive sexual thoughts can figure out if those thoughts are sin. The person with intense guilt from eating, can figure out if it’s actually a sin to eat lunch or if their mind and emotions are just playing tricks on them.

Because there’s an objective standard of right and wrong, we can compare ourselves and measure ourselves by that standard to see if we’re committing sin or if our mind and emotions are just out of sync.

Biblical Philosophy of Sin

What we really need is the correct Biblical philosophy of sin. It’s important that we get this right and clear up any misconceptions that we might have that aren’t Biblical.

Before going into sin though – the moral dimension – I want to first explain the connection between scientific laws and moral laws.

I’m doing this for several reasons. One big reason is that it’s important that we understand that not everything is a moral issue, and that we clearly separate the moral from the natural. If we call something a sin problem that really isn’t a sin issue at all, we end up assigning blame to people who are innocent, which is itself a wrong that God in His perfect righteousness hates. Not only this but we will end up trying to overcome something that can’t be overcome and needs to be dealt with on the natural level, as a health issue. We can spend many months or years trying to overcome something that really just needs supplements and natural healing to correct.

But God would of course also be against us calling our sin something neutral and acceptable if it is actually sin though. We should never do this. To do this is to harden one’s heart against God if it is willfully and knowingly done.

Acquitting the guilty and condemning the innocent— the LORD detests them both.
Proverbs 17:15

So we need to draw a line of clear demarcation between the kinds of things that are sins and the kinds of things aren’t sins, using the Bible definition of each. And see the connection between the moral dimension and the natural dimension.

Let’s talk about the natural world…

The Natural World
The natural world is not as natural as it first appears. It is actually governed by spiritual laws. This is how when Adam sinned – a moral wrong – the physical world experienced a change and began to decay and die – a natural effect. This is also how if a person becomes converted, and God has the legal right to recreate in them a new heart, that He carries this out in the person.

The Bible describes a law of sin and death and a law of the spirit of life.

“For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.”
Romans 8:2

Those who are not in Christ are slaves to sin and cannot do good actions of love. There is a spiritual law at work here, where they cannot love. They are actually incapable of it, and it’s an impossibility for them while in a lost state.

Paul speaking of this spiritual law says this:

“I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me.”
Romans 7:23

But those who have been forgiven by Christ are set free from sin. Sin no longer has dominion over them, and they are able to love God and their fellow man.

The answer to Paul’s question “Oh wretched man that I am, Who shall deliver me from this body of death?” (verse 24) is “Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (verse 25)

Sin does not have dominion over those who are in Christ Jesus. They can choose to think thoughts that are truly loving and carry out actions that are truly benevolent. Because a new law is now at work through the Spirit who creates in them a new heart.

So this premise that those outside of Christ cannot love, and those in Christ can love and change for the better to be more and more loving, is a spiritual law at work.

Spiritual laws are always the foundation that governs the physical world. They do not operate independently from God as some spiritual force depicted in Star Wars and pantheistic religions. God is the Governor of His creation, the Person Lawgiver who is the Source of these laws and personally enacts them.

An error that something known as the Word of Faith movement makes is it teaches that God is bound by His spiritual laws, and basically operates as a subject under them in a way that mimics a scientific process like gravity, so that when we claim something by faith then God must give us the thing we ask for.

This tempts people to pray for their wishes and wants, rather than seeking God’s will, and makes God out to be a genie who is under some kind of spiritual law that causes him to fulfil one’s wishes, a slave of these laws, and just as how a moon cannot resist the power of gravity that makes it orbit the Earth, God cannot resist the spiritual power that forces Him to respond to our faith with a “yes.”

The Bible describes God as being active through His Word, watching over it to perform it.

“And the word of the LORD came to me, asking, “Jeremiah, what do you see?” “I see a branch of an almond tree,” I replied.
You have observed correctly,” said the LORD, “for I am watching over My word to accomplish it.”
Jeremiah 1:11-12 BSB

I checked the original Hebrew and it says in the Hebrew that God is performing His Word.

This shows active agency. Rather than there being spiritual laws that bind God to perform certain actions; it’s the other way around. God performs these actions of His own divine will and volition.

God is not a slave; He is the Supreme authority. He is the Law-Giver; He is not a subject under His laws. What this means is His promises given in His Word are His supreme will for us, and represents His desires and goals. He would not promise something He didn’t want and that didn’t represent His perfect will. And He accomplishes His promises by His own active agency and divine power. The Bible says the Son “Upholds all things by the Word of His power.” (Hebrews 1:3). What this means is God accomplishes in the natural world by His power what He promises in His Word, and that He brings about what He speaks, such as when He created light with a Word. This shows active, personal agency, not a spiritual law that forces and compels Him to act.

God acts not by coercion or force, and not under the authority of these laws, but presiding over them as their King and Source.

This why when Adam sinned, God officiated as the Supreme Authority, and meted out the sentence of curses upon the world. The world didn’t just start displaying signs of decay and death through some spiritual law independent of God. God sentenced it and carried out its sentence with His divine power.

God actively and personally cursed the Earth by His divine authority, as a sentence for Adam’s sin.

Notice in Romans 8:20 how this verse is specific about telling us that God subjected the creation to futility. The curse was given directly by Him – there was a “One” who personally carried it out and subjected it to futility.

“For the creation was subjected to futility, not by its own will, but because of the One who subjected it in hope.”
Romans 8:20

God can say no to the whims and wishes of men. Our faith only has power with Him in a subordinate way where we are subject to His higher will and higher authority. If we pray for something He has promised, we are coming into alignment with His higher will and purpose.

God is the Governer over all of creation. If you think of the creation, and what aspects and attributes a Governer of such a universe a Being must have and must be in order to manage it and preside over it, you arrive at many of the attributes that God possesses.

For instance, such a Being would have to be immaterial and a spirit and beyond the physical in order to create the physical. If God were made of created matter then He wouldn’t be over this creation but rather a part of it.

And this Being must be omnipresent in order to give life to all beings across the universe and hold up and keep in working operation every aspect of nature, from the planets and their long orbits, to the laws of physics that govern matter.

God isn’t subject to physical law – He created it. And He’s not under spiritual laws either – They are a reflection of His nature and His will. They are the enacting of His divine power in spiritual ways, His personal working, and the principles by which He makes His decisions and that reveal His values and character.

It was the Word and authority of God that brought the world into existence. He commanded “Let there be light” and light was created out of nothing.

But the natural laws are not exactly the same thing as the moral law. Animals are under natural law, and in a sense they are kind of under spiritual laws too, because the whole created world is under spiritual laws. When Adam sinned animals, along with the whole created world, began to decay and die.

The animals were created by a Word from God calling them into existence. The spiritual laws that rule and govern the creation apply to them too.

Moral Law is Not the Same Thing as Natural Law

But only people of all God’s creation are under moral law.

Only people can understand right and wrong, and choose to sin or choose to obey God (through Christ).

An example of how natural laws are not the same thing as moral law is the case of self-defense vs. murder. In the natural world there is just killing; there is no distinction between self-defense and murder. Naturally, scientifically it’s the same action either way.

It’s only the moral law that makes the distinction between these two things.

Another example is fornication and married sex. In the natural world they are the same act. The only thing that distinguishes between one being impure and unholy and the other being a pure and holy expression of love and sexual union, is the moral law.

There is a moral dimension to reality. It’s very real that murder is wrong and self-defense is right. But this isn’t a scientific truth; it’s a moral truth.

And animals, not being made in God’s image in their nature and not possessing moral understanding or agency, cannot commit murder or fornication.

A lion cannot decide that killing another lion to protect itself is self-defense and is morally right, but killing a gazelle to prey upon it and eat it is an unjust killing and is murderous.

Neither does a lion have intent and motive. It’s an instinctual being. It kills because it is hungry. Or because it feels aggressive. It responds to purely biochemical processes and drives; it doesn’t have the higher dimension of having benevolent motives.

The animals do not participate in the moral dimension of life.

Is Right and Wrong a List?
Unfortunately when many people think of sin they think of it being actions only. They see a list in their mind of actions that should be done and another list of actions that should never be done.

This is of course true, there is a list of actions God says we shouldn’t do, and another list of obligations God requires of us.

But this isn’t the definition of sin. If this were the definition of sin, then lions killing gazelles would be sin, and there would be no distinction between the killing lions do and the killing human beings do. If sin were actions only, this paints a naturalistic world where there is no real moral dimension at all. It would mirror a naturalist evolutionary view where the world operates via natural laws only and there’s no moral reality.

“Thou Shalt” and “Thou Shalt Nots”

On the surface the Commandments may seem to only be about actions. But taking a closer look at the “Thou shalts” and the “Thou shalt nots” we see that actually they do not cover just the actions at all.

As mentioned above adultery is distinctly different from fornication. In the natural world – in the physical actions alone – they are the same act. What makes them different is the moral dimension.

All of the Commandments also imply motive. Every single one of them. And the 10th Commandment – that of coveting – is a whole commandment that only involves the thoughts and intents of the heart. There are no outward actions involved with coveting.

So you can see already from the very definition of the Commandments themselves, outward actions alone do not define right and wrong.

We can see also how by definition the Commandments involve the inner motives of the heart, and thus cannot apply to animals.

Jesus in explaining the law to people, brought out how sin is in the desires and motives. It’s in the intent and heart of the person.

“what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a person. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander.”
Matthew 15:18

Sin is in the heart and intent. It’s not outward actions devoid of intent and motive.

The Wonder of the Human Brain

The human brain is a wonder of creation. All of these foundational truths – scientific truth, spiritual truth, and moral truth – are understood by the human mind. Our brain, unlike the brain of animals, was created to commune with God and to glorify Him by our love and moral choices.

While this is a wonderful thing, it’s also a serious problem if our brain malfunctions, because then our understanding of moral truth can be skewed or even absent altogether. Because we are physical beings, our moral understanding is dependent on our physical brain, thus it is a sacred duty to preserve the brain in the best health possible.

Health becomes a matter of weighty responsibility as well as a great joy. In caring for and studying our physical organism – especially our brain – we see the genius work of God and come to understand Him in a way the study of no other created thing can do. We learn about the nature of man, the nature of God whom man’s image reflects.

Is it Possible to Do Wrong Outward Actions and Yet Not Be Sinning?

It’s possible for a person in psychosis to do right actions and yet not understand that what they are doing is right. To not understand the underlying principles of what makes an action good and right, and to just go along with what the people around them are telling them to do, or due to a delusion. A person might choose to get baptized during psychosis, because they believe they are Jesus and need to fulfil their mission as the Messiah. And their caretakers may not pick up on this or inquire more deeply to see whether moral understanding is present if they think of right and wrong as actions only.

Believing that outward actions are the definition of sin creates many problems, especially in regard to understanding mental conditions like dementia or psychosis. When a mother has a son who steals a painting from a gallery during psychosis, if she believes sin is the actions alone, she will conclude he has sinned against God, and attribute guilt to him. Without looking into why he stole the painting.

If asked, she may find that he says something like “The painting is possessed by a demon that has been killing people in the town, and the only way to save the town was to destroy the painting.” He may have acted under a delusion caused by his psychotic condition.

Sin and wrong actions aren’t synonymous. While sin always involves either wrong actions or thoughts, there’s more to sin than wrong actions.

If a dog bites your neighbor, we don’t conclude the dog has sinned. The dog is under natural law only, not moral law. The dog didn’t know it was immoral to bite your neighbor. The dog is not a moral agent that can make moral choices. That dimension of understanding is impossible for a dog to grasp.

How the Bible Defines Sin

Sin is anything that goes against God’s perfectly loving character. The Bible tells us “God is love” John 4:8, then it says “The commandments, do not commit adultery, do not murder, do not steal, do not covet and any other commandment, are summed up in this one decree: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no wrong to its neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.” Romans 13:9-10

God is love and his law is love. Sin is the transgression of the law (1 John 3:4); love is the fulfillment of the law. Sin then is the opposite of love.

Anything that is not Christlike, not loving, not moral and good, is sin.

The 10 commandments contain the inherent rights of God and man. God, being the true God, the Creator who brought all things into being, and who died for man to redeem him to Himself, has a right to our worship for being the Creator, for being a perfect Standard; for having a character of perfect self-sacrificial love for His children, for giving His own life to pay our debt. To worship anyone or anything else denies God the love and worship that is his by right.

People have a right to being treated with dignity because they are beings made in God’s image. It would be wrong to treat a person the way you would treat a dog; it would deny a person their inherent right to dignity. People have a right to sow and to reap what they sow. To engage in work and reap the results of that work, whether it be monetary or otherwise – and not have their work stolen from them by someone who did not do the work and who has no right to the results of their labor. To steal from them is inherently immoral as it denies the rights of an individual.

People have to life – to not be murdered. This is one of the most basic rights. Not only does a murderer violate a person’s right to life when they kill them, but it steals from God who is the Giver of all Life and the Creator of that person.

Fornication is wrong because it takes from someone privileges reserved for marriage without fulfilling the responsibilities of being that person’s husband or wife. It merges two people into one flesh in a union that is designed for marriage alone. It is not merely a physical act but a spiritual union is created when two people have sex.

So you can see how the breaking of the 1st, 8th, 6th, and 7th commandments is a violation of inherent rights of God and man. And the other commandments similarly are inherent rights of God and man, but I won’t go into all of them here.

What this means is that right and wrong exist as principles inherent within the very fabric of moral reality, coming from the character of God Himself.

Some have made the argument that it’s only the heart that matters (what they mean by this is the motive of the person) and whether they keep the letter of the law – whether they do the exact actions depicted in the 10 commandments – isn’t important. It’s common for people to say “Yes, maybe I told a lie, but God knows my heart; He knows I did it for a good reason”, and to believe that it wasn’t really sin for them because their heart was in the right place, or because God understands their predicament and unique situation. Perhaps they were in a really bad situation that was causing them a lot of pain. Lying would get them out of the bad situation. God doesn’t want them to be in pain, thus they conclude that God will make allowance for their lie, and He won’t count it is sin.

Some lovers have argued that they don’t need to be married to sleep together, and that living together for life unmarried is the same thing as getting married, that marriage is just a piece of paper. While this argument may seem to have weight to some people, some men have cheated on their wives and then claimed it didn’t matter or mean anything because their heart wasn’t in it. It was just a physical act, but their affection and their heart was with their wife.

This argument that our actions don’t matter if our heart isn’t in it has been applied to many different sins.

It’s really obvious in this second example that one cannot have love and knowingly break a commandment.

The people making this argument that their heart wasn’t in it, so it’s not sin, aren’t people in psychosis. They reveal they have a knowledge of right and wrong, because they know some kind of justification or argument for their actions is needed, because what they did was wrong. Someone in psychosis would argue something like that it wasn’t wrong to cheat on their spouse (and honestly believe it wasn’t wrong), or that they weren’t cheating by having sex with another woman, and that cheating is something else, usually a nonsensical idea.

This particular argument that it’s not sin for a person to cheat because their heart wasn’t in it, is a very typical argument seen in people who know right from wrong as a way to justify their actions. It shows a clear, logical, traceable motive, something you won’t see in people in full psychosis.

Selfish Motive Always Present When We Sin
Because each commandment has the same underlying principle of love, to break any commandment means the person has to embrace an attitude of selfishness in order to do so. The person committing sin promotes and advantages self at the expense of others, by violating their rights.

Thus motive is always present when we sin. The man who cheated on his wife, and claimed there was no selfish motive, is lying to himself. He may have become calloused, doesn’t feel like he’s done anything that wrong, and doesn’t know his own heart to see clearly the selfish motives there. His motive is clear to his wife though. He is willing to put his selfish desire for variety and pleasure, above his respect and love for his wife. He’s willing to harm her to take something that isn’t his by right. The motive is clear.

If someone steals $200 from you in a very respectful manner and with a kind expression on their face, it’s still stealing. It still wrongs you. Likewise the man who cheats on his wife, claiming to not have any feelings for the person he committed adultery with, he still becomes one flesh with the other woman, severs his union with his wife, and brings great pain and a sense of loss to his wife.

There is objective right and there is objective wrong. They are not subjective ideas and preferences in the minds of individual people – they exist outside of us. Stealing is objectively wrong. Adultery is objectively wrong. These things cause harm to other people and violate their inherent rights.

Selfish Motive Not Present if Knowledge is Not Present

The argument that “my heart was in the right place so the wrong action I did wasn’t sin for me” does apply to one kind of situation. There is a grain of truth in this statement and that is why it’s quite deceptive.

According to the Bible if a person doesn’t know something is a sin they can do that thing and not be sinning. And because they don’t know it’s a sin, their heart is in the right place.

But as soon as they become aware that the thing they’re involved in is wrong to do, their heart can no longer be in the right place for them to continue doing this wrong thing.

For instance there have been Catholics through history who prayed to Mary along with Jesus and did not know this was idolatry. During the Dark Ages the Catholic Church banned the Bible from the common person and kept it in Latin, a language the common person could not read. The person only had access to the scriptures through their priest’s teaching, and the priests taught false doctrine.

It was a time of great spiritual darkness. Such a person who did not know it is a sin to pray to Mary could still be right with God under such a circumstance. It could be said of them that they were doing the wrong thing, but their heart was in the right place. But if a Catholic today comes in contact with Protestantism, and learns this truth that praying to Mary is idolatry, and continues to pray to Mary anyway, then their heart cannot be in the right place while they pray to Mary. Rather they are hardening their heart against the Holy Spirit’s conviction to become a Protestant and to pray to Jesus alone.

Their heart is not in the right place; it is hardened.

Those Who Worship In Spirit and In Truth

Jesus said that the Father seeks those who worship in Spirit and in truth. What He’s referring to are people who know Bible truth and believe it, and allow it to change their character so they have a heart that is in conformity to that truth.

The Father isn’t looking for people who know stealing is wrong intellectually, but don’t conform to this truth, and don’t have His Holy Spirit living within them to actuate them to holy desires, motives, and actions, and steal regularly and have a selfish character.

But neither is the Father looking for people who claim to have a heart of love without truth, without the commandments, like the man who claims he didn’t really cheat on his wife because his heart wasn’t in the act. Or the couple who claim they really love one another, even though they refuse to get married.

God wants people who love His Bible truths – the commandments being one of the central truths in the Bible, the very principles behind His own character – and who live them out because they are filled with His Spirit.

Letter and Spirit both matter. What you do or think, and the spirit you do it in both matter to God. And it’s impossible for someone who knows stealing is wrong, to break the letter of the law and steal, and yet keep the spirit of the law while doing so.

“God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.”
John 4:24

Jesus explains that the 10 commandments are really 10 categories that encompass far more than just the literal breaking of the written law. For instance, hate is murder, and lust is adultery. (Matthew 5:21-22, 27-28)

The moral law – the 10 commandments – involves all of our thoughts, motives, desires, choices, and actions. This law judges and evaluates every thought and desire, and God categorizes each as either holy or unholy, moral or immoral, good or evil.

Let’s say we make plans to buy our mom a card for mother’s day. That’s a good and right desire that keeps the 5th commandment about the importance of honoring our parents.

Or let’s say we think a mean thought about a school bully and want them to get a bad grade on a test. That’s a thought that breaks the 6th commandment about hate and murder.

So this moral law is very relevant to our lives. By it we have a knowledge of sin (Romans 3:20), and can know when a thought or desire or action is one that God approves of, and is right for a Christian to have, or whether it’s immoral and wrong for a Christian to have.

The Bible says the Word of God, which contains His 10 Commandment law, is – through the power of the Holy Spirit – “alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.”
Hebrews 4:12

Thus we can use the Word of God to know right from wrong, and depending on God for help, His Spirit whose role it is to teach us all the Words of Christ, will teach us when a thought or attitude, or desire is a moral one or an immoral one.

God has given us a conscience, through the Holy Spirit convicting our hearts.

“They show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts sometimes accusing them and at other times even defending them.)”
Romans 2:15

Because we have this conscience made possible by God’s Spirit interacting with our mind and consciousness, we can judge our thoughts and motives and actions to know if they are moral or immoral. We have a compass.

“…by the law is the knowledge of sin”
Romans 3:20

“…where there is no law, there is no transgression.”
Romans 4:15

“…I had not known sin, but by the law: for I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet.”
Romans 7:7

The Bible tells us that everyone has a general knowledge of right and wrong – even those who have never had access to the Bible to know the 10 Commandments or to hear the gospel. These people have a conscience in a primitive, general sense, and can be saved by responding to the Holy Spirit’s convicting voice.

(Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law.
They show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts sometimes accusing them and at other times even defending them.)
Romans 2:14-15

Thus even pagans in ancient China had access to salvation, and some of them will be in heaven.

But those of us who know the 10 Commandments have a fuller knowledge of right and wrong, and our conscience is thus more accurate, and the Holy Spirit can more accurately convict us of sin, and help us gauge whether our thoughts, actions, and attitudes are moral or immoral.

The same way that a baby Christian may know certain things are wrong, and not know other things are wrong, because they don’t yet have a solid enough knowledge of the scriptures, or the same way that people growing up in pagan societies such as ancient China can be saved if they follow all the truth they do know, even while ignorantly engaging in error, because what they don’t know isn’t sin for them, only going against what they do know would be sin, the psychotic person who loses their judgment and doesn’t know right from wrong, cannot be said to be sinning either when they do something the Bible says is wrong, if they’ve lost the capacity to understand God’s moral law.

“Therefore to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin.”
James 4:17

To know whether a thought or attitude you’re having is in fact a sin or not, measure it against the 10 commandments.

First Commandment: Would this attitude or action place yourself, another person, or another thing before God? For instance, let’s say you really want to play hockey, but it will be time-consuming. You’ll end up spending all your energy and attention and time getting in shape and practicing hockey so you can win games. You come to the conclusion that you should only be putting that much attention, time, effort, and planning into God’s work, and recognize that playing on a hockey league would be having an idol.

You decide to skate for recreational purposes and for health reasons, on your own time, and not join a league.

2nd Commandment: Would this thought or action involve bowing down or serving someone who claims to stand in God’s place? For instance, bowing before a statue of Jesus, or confessing sins to a priest.

3rd Commandment: Would this thought or action involve doing or thinking something that would be disrespectful to God, portray Him falsely in a bad light, or result in living a hypocritical light?

4 Commandment: Would this thought or action go against God’s Sabbath and the purpose of His Sabbath? For instance, working on Sabbath or thinking thoughts about work on the Sabbath.

5 Commandment: Would this thought or action disrespect my parents and their authority? Would it fail to give them the love and attention that is theirs by right because they are my parents? Authority figures are also involved in this commandment.

Commandment 6: Would this thought or action harm someone either physically, spiritually, or mentally?

Commandment 7: Would this thought or action involve giving sexual attention to someone who is not my spouse?

Commandment 8: Would this thought or action involve taking from someone something that is theirs by right, or failing to give them something that I owe them?

Commandment 9: Would this thought or action involve distorting information, either by exaggeration, or omitting something that is central and important, or failing to give the truth in some other way?

Commandment 10: Would this thought and desire involve wanting or fantasizing about something that belongs to someone else and isn’t mine by right?

Our Conscience Not Infallible
However our conscience isn’t always perfect. One of the most important spiritual lessons I learned from psychosis and cognitive distortions, is that I could really sincerely believe something to be true, and experience what I thought was conviction, and yet be totally wrong. I really thought when I had cognitive distortions from anorexia that I was sinning by eating too much, and yet I wasn’t; I was actually under-weight.

I really thought I was not psychotic when I actually was.

I learned just how fallible our perception and judgment are as human beings. And that God’s truth is not in us; it transcends us. The whole time I was going through various cognitive distortions and delusions, God’s truth remained the same and never changed. It was my judgment and brain that changed.

I learned from this experience that while God does give us a conscience, our conscience while it is created from reading and studying God’s Word, it isn’t the same thing as the infallible Word of God. Truth is outside of us and so it is good and right to question our conscience.

I’ve heard people make the argument that they don’t need to keep a Commandment because their conscience is not convicting them that they need to keep it. In reality, if they would endeavor to search the scriptures for truth, they would most likely be convicted in their conscience to keep that commandment. If they would understand that their conscience comes about by study of the Word and The Spirit convincing them of truth through that Word, they would see the need to study before their conscience could be activated.

Our conscience is a tool God gives us and the way He makes for us to come to a knowledge of the truth. But our conscience isn’t actually truth itself, and so it’s right for us to question it, to recognize its limitations, and to seek a deeper study of the Word as the basis for truth, rather than looking to our conscience as the truth.

Inaccurate Conscience
If we have incomplete knowledge of right and wrong, our conscience will reflect our knowledge and understanding. It’s possible for a more mature Christian to have a better grasp of right and wrong than a baby Christian, for instance, and learning and growing in the Word of God is crucial for the Christian. And while our conscience is subject to error because we are fallible human beings who do not always have a perfect knowledge of God’s Word (and some people do not have access to the Bible), and only God’s judgment is infallible and perfect (1 Corinthians 4:4), God does give us guidance and knowledge to live a godly life in this world. To follow Him and obey Him and to be a faithful Christian. He gives us enough knowledge of moral truth to do that.

Recognizing the limitations of his conscience and the infallible judgment of God’s mind, Paul says:

“My conscience is clear, but that does not make me innocent. It is the Lord who judges me.”
1 Corinthians 4:4

With the knowledge He gives us from His Word and the help of His Spirit teaching us His Word and giving us a conscience that aligns with His law…we can then surrender wrong attitudes, desires, thoughts to God, and repent of wrong actions and choices, and our High Priest will forgive us and change those immoral things about us.

While God’s moral law is an objective standard of right actions and thoughts, for a person to be said to be sinning, there are a couple other dimensions to this that the Bible specifies.

It’s a Sin to Suspect Something is Wrong, But Not Know for Sure, and Go Forward and Do it Anyway, Without Checking God’s Word
In Romans 14, Paul speaks of how we should not eat or drink something that could cause a brother to stumble. This can be something that is ok and not a violation of a commandment, but because it would cause confusion and doubt to the new believer and your brother in Christ, it becomes wrong to engage in it around that person. He explains that whatever we do that is not of faith is sin.

21 It is good neither to eat flesh, nor to drink wine, nor any thing whereby thy brother stumbleth, or is offended, or is made weak.

22 Hast thou faith? have it to thyself before God. Happy is he that condemneth not himself in that thing which he alloweth.

23 And he that doubteth is damned if he eat, because he eateth not of faith: for whatsoever is not of faith is sin.

What does this mean that whatsoever is not of faith is sin? Even though objective right and wrong exists and everything is either right or wrong (there are a lot of things that are right so we have a lot of moral options as we engage in life in this world), as human beings we don’t always have perfect knowledge of the scriptures or of right and wrong, and we may not completely understand what is right or wrong. This doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist, only that we understand it imperfectly. We may for instance disagree with a brother about what is right and wrong. This scripture tells us that if there is any doubt that an action is wrong, doing it would be a sin. It’s also a sin to do something completely innocent around a brother who himself has doubts as this could cause him to engage in it before he has adequate Bible knowledge on the subject and could cause him to be tempted to go against his conscience and do something he has doubts about.

This adds another dimension to sin. It’s not merely the actions that are sinful, but also if one in their limited human knowledge isn’t sure but suspects something is sinful, then they sin by engaging in it. Tempting or encouraging someone to engage in something they have doubts about is also sin. We are each stewards of ourselves under God and we have a one-on-one relationship with Him, and an individual conscience. Therefore no person should ever assume the role of conscience for another person. To do this is to make oneself a god and to violate the human rights of another person, treating them as less than human.

It’s also true that if someone does not have enough knowledge to know something is sinful, or they are lied to, that it’s not a sin for someone to do something they really don’t think is a sin.

Mothers for instance from other time periods were told by doctors of their day that medical practices were safe that we now know to be very unsafe, such as taking mercury for colds and flues. These mothers weren’t sinning who gave their children these treatments because they didn’t know they were harmful and thought they were giving their children the best that medicine had to offer.

Now, for a mother to know mercury is a poison and hire a physician to give it to her child – would be a sin, because she knows it’s harmful and she’s giving it anyway.

It would also be a sin for a mother to worship the doctor and blindly do whatever he suggests, without doing her own research and praying to God for wisdom. Her child has been entrusted to her by God and she’s responsible for its well-being, not the doctor. Doctors are helpers not dictators. Therefore she goes against her responsibility of stewardship if she blindly listens to a doctor and obeys him like a robot.

There have doubtless then been many cases through history of people not sinning and yet causing harm without realizing it. Human knowledge is limited and we’re not omniscient. It’s also possible to do an inherently good thing with a selfish motive and sin. Giving money to help the poor so that people will praise you and like you, for instance, rather than doing it to actually alleviate suffering and caring about the sufferers. Paul talks about this when he says “if I give my body to be burned but have not love, what does it profit me?” showing that one can do inherently good acts from a selfish motive and it’s therefore not love.

So to not be sinning it’s not enough that we do inherently good things. Knowledge is also part of this, and motive is as well.

James 4:17 speaks again about this other dimension: “He who knows the good he ought to do and does it not, to him it is sin.”

The person must have knowledge that an action is wrong, or they aren’t sinning by doing that action. They also must have the ability to know and to reason, so someone who has lost the ability to reason due to a stroke or due to severe mental illness cannot choose to sin.

Jesus speaks about this concept:

“If you were blind,” Jesus replied, “you would not be guilty of sin. But since you claim you can see, your guilt remains.”
John 9:41

One must be able to “see” to do the right thing, in order for it to be a sin for them to fail to do the right thing.

Notice also in James 4:17 that the person must be able to choose to do or not to do, in order to sin.

There is not an instance in scripture where someone is declared guilty by God for something they didn’t do.

Fornication for instance is a sin, and rape is a sin, but being raped is not a sin. In the case of being raped fornication is happening and it is very sexual and it can certainly feel “wrong”, but the victim is innocent. It is only the rapist who is guilty.

25 But if a man find a betrothed damsel in the field, and the man force her, and lie with her: then the man only that lay with her shall die.

26 But unto the damsel thou shalt do nothing; there is in the damsel no sin worthy of death: for as when a man riseth against his neighbour, and slayeth him, even so is this matter:

27 For he found her in the field, and the betrothed damsel cried, and there was none to save her.

Deuteronomy 22

Like murder which is certainly not the fault of the one who is murdered, so rape is not the fault of the one who is raped, and the guilt and sin lies only with the rapist. So you can see how something sexual and even violent and impure doesn’t make it a sin. It’s only if the person does that thing. If that thing is done TO that person against their will, as in the case of rape, the victim is innocent.

The Bible definitely tells us that a person can sin in their thoughts.

Seek the LORD while he may be found; call on him while he is near.
Let the wicked forsake their ways and the unrighteous their thoughts. Let them turn to the LORD, and he will have mercy on them, and to our God, for he will freely pardon.
Isaiah 55:6-7

We can sin even in our attitudes and intents of our heart, our motives.

Repent, therefore, of your wickedness, and pray to the Lord. Perhaps He will forgive you for the intent of your heart.
Acts 8:22

21 Ye have heard that it was said of them of old time, Thou shalt not kill; and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment:

22 But I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment: and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council: but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire.

27 Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery:

28 But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.

Matthew 5:

Someone who desires to murder another – even if they never act on it – is sinning in the intents of their heart.

Anyone who hates a brother or sister is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life residing in him.
1 John 3:15

So, it is not just our outward actions that we can sin with, but also our attitudes and intents and motives in our heart. Our thoughts.

However, even in our thoughts they must be chosen in order for them to be sin. There is not a place in scripture where someone is pronounced guilty by God for something they did not choose to think or to do.

Explain how we are born with a fallen nature and so we inevitably will sin, yet sin is active.

As in the rape example, things done to you aren’t sin on your part. Biological processes happening to you also aren’t sin.

This is the Bible criteria for sin. If you know it’s wrong, and you’re choosing to do it, it’s sin. Knowing it’s wrong, doesn’t mean that you recognize that the action or thought is on a checklist of things people consider wrong. It doesn’t mean that you’re aware society doesn’t approve of a certain action, or that you’ll go to jail if you do that action. I remember being in psychosis and thinking that lying was on this arbitrary checklist determined by society for no reason. They just decided not to condone it. No, to know something is wrong means you understand the underlying selfish principle of the action or thought. You can see that stealing from someone takes something that is theirs by right because they worked for it. You didn’t work for it; it’s not yours by right, and you’re wronging them by taking it from them when you never earned it or have any right to it.

When someone knows something is wrong and can see the underlying selfish principles inherent in that action, for them to go forward and do that action or think that wrong thought always involves a selfish motive.

If you don’t know it’s wrong and don’t suspect it’s wrong and you choose to do it it’s not sin. If you aren’t doing it and it’s something that’s happening to you, then it’s not sin.

This means there’s lots of things that can go on in your brain and body that aren’t sin. Biological sexual feelings and urges, that feel very sexual, aren’t lust and aren’t sin, for instance. If they were then every kid going through puberty would be sinning merely by developing as a sexual being and having sexual urges and feelings. This of course is not the case. God would never design us with a biological process that would cause us to sin by its very nature.

However, lust is a sin. So while it’s actually not a sin for a man to become sexually aroused if a woman in scantily clad attire walks past him, because getting physically aroused is an involuntary process of his body that occurs when he sees a woman with a lot of skin showing, and this is how God created and designed men, it is a sin if he then engages in active fantasy in his mind about the woman, imaging himself having sex with her. Both of these experiences may feel just as sexual as each other. Getting aroused is a sexual experience, and yet if he’s being aroused by something involuntary and not something voluntary, then it’s not a sin.

Similarly pastors don’t tell someone with a gay attraction that they are sinning by simply being tempted by that desire. It’s only if they think gay thoughts or act on those thoughts that they have sinned. It’s also not a sin to be tempted to be violent or to be jealous. It’s only a sin if you deliberately think a jealous or violent thought.

Very sexual or violent dreams can’t be a sin because the frontal lobe – the part of the brain involved in choice – is dialed down when we sleep. The emotional centers of the brain are kicked into high gear and this is why dreams are very emotional. And because the frontal lobe is dialed down the person will dream random, nonsensical, things without a moral filter. You may dream about having sex with someone you’re not even attracted to in real life, or someone violently attacking you, or other immoral themes, that are connected with emotions you felt that day or week in your real life, and magnified and exaggerated. The emotional parts of the brain do not filter and evaluate ideas based on their morality; they are incapable of doing that. It’s not a sin to have unconscious thoughts race through your mind.

It’s not a sin for someone in psychosis to hear voices that cuss at them or shout mean things. These voices are not under their control and they happen due to stimulatory neurotransmitters and inflammation causing overactivation of the auditory centers of the brain. The thoughts are part of the unconscious processes of the brain and aren’t controlled by the frontal lobe, thus they will be about both moral and immoral things and there will be no filter. It’s only the frontal lobe that distinguishes between moral and immoral things. The other parts of the brain do not discriminate. Thus if you were to overhear someone cussing, it gets stored as a memory and processed by the unconscious parts of the brain without discrimination. These parts of the brain do not tell you cussing is wrong. They just process memories, store information, and these memories and information can be activated when there’s inflammation present, as is the case in people in psychosis.

Sin is always deliberate and chosen, even in cases where it’s a sin of omission (meaning something that you should have done that you neglected), it’s deliberately neglected.

Sin Not Exactly the Same Thing as Character
Sin is different from having a fallen character. While having a fallen character is what causes us to sin, and it makes sin inevitable for us, one has not actually sinned until they deliberately think a selfish thought or do a selfish action.

Due to the fall we’re all born with a fallen, sinful character. But a zygote in the womb hasn’t sinned, because its brain hasn’t developed enough mental functioning to have will and choice, and to choose to think a selfish immoral thought. I’m not exactly sure the point at which a person’s brain is developed enough to choose to think a selfish thought, but at whatever stage of development that becomes possible, it’s after that that each of us deliberately think our first selfish thought, and incur guilt before God, and then the only way to wash away that guilt is through Christ at that point. There’s no other solution. And then we go on to think many other selfish thoughts where that one came from.

It’s true that as long as our character is imperfect, that it will cause us to sin. But sin is still deliberate because we’re the ones doing it, and we’re choosing in what ways we sin. There’s agency going on.

For instance, you can have a selfish character that wants to steal something, and yet choose not to steal. Or you can choose to steal. There’s agency there, and the act to steal is a willful act. Unconverted people often bite their tongue and choose not to sin. I’ve noticed it’s often the case that when they go against these sinful inclinations that they consider themselves to be good people for doing so, and this is where a lot of humanists err and think they are good people. Not doing bad things isn’t all that’s entailed in goodness. They are a far cry from actively working to promote good on the earth, selflessly laying down their lives for others, but they don’t realize all that is involved in true goodness. They aren’t looking to Jesus as the Standard of love and good.

Before conversion the current and general direction of our heart is one of selfishness. We might choose to respond to the Holy Spirit in some ways, and some atheists can do some nice things for example (every time anyone does something benevolent it’s due to the influence of God, whether they realize it or not), but the general nature of the heart is bent towards selfishness.

After conversion we get a brand new character that can love. We can not only refuse to steal when we feel like stealing, but we can actively care for others, and put the glory of God first in our lives. While we still have some selfish desires and inclinations – a lot of them – left in our character, the general direction our character goes is in the direction of unselfish love.

Character is not something we form with unconscious processes, but with conscious ones. To choose to repent of sin, to resist sin, and believe and follow Christ, is done consciously. To choose to sin is also a conscious process. While our fallen nature is what predisposes us to a life of sin until we find Christ, each of our sins are consciously chosen and done using our agency. It’s not possible without Christ to choose not to sin, and yet when we sin it is consciously chosen and done. An unconverted person can often bite their tongue, or control their actions and choose not to do certain sins, but they don’t have the option of living a godly life except through Christ, and in their own power it’s not possible to be truly benevolent. Their desires and thoughts run in the channel of selfishness.

But while their thoughts and chosen desires – the ones we ruminate on and pine after and consciously think – are sin according to the Bible, desire is not sin according to the Bible.

Character Not Exactly the Same Thing as Sin
Character is not quite the same thing as sin. We form character by choosing to sin, and then we have a selfish one, but fallen people do not always choose to think the thoughts they desire to think or carry out the selfish actions their character is bent towards. They have some regulatory power over it, and some people choose to indulge in sin more than others, rapidly descending into a life of great evil, while others do not choose to go that far into evil.

The Bible says “after desire has conceived it gives birth to sin.”
James 1:15

So desire – or the fallen things our character is bent towards – is not sin. This is just the state of our character, it’s not active sin. However, if we allow desire to become pregnant – if we actively think about and lust and pine after our fallen desires – sin is birthed by this process. So what we are called to do as Christians is to put to death the desires of the flesh. Do not act on them, do not pine after them and cherish them, resist them, until our character is changed so that we are no longer tempted by them and desire holy things instead, more and more as we do this process more and more through life.

If we had perfect characters, then we would not have any fallen desires that could lead us into sinful thoughts and actions.

The Bible says temptation is not sin.

“each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their evil desires and enticed.”
verse 14

However, if our character was perfect, there would be nothing in us that was bent towards sin or enticed by it. So character plays an important role in all this, though distinctly different from sin itself.

Now that we know what sin is, we can take this knowledge of what sin is, and apply it to various mental states that individuals are in. People we are counseling with and helping, or to ourselves if our judgment is good enough to self-evaluate. This must be done on a case-by-case basis.

The five main questions to ask are:

1. Was the thought, action, or motive actually something that breaks God’s law? Compare it with the 10 Commandments to be sure.
2. Did they know it was wrong?
3. Was there a motive (there will always be a motive if they knew it was wrong and could see the way in which it violated the inherent rights of people or God, so #3 always follows if #2 is answered in the affirmative)
4. Did they do it or was it done to them?
Was it an involuntary, biological process, or a chosen thought or action?
5. Did they have the ability to control their impulses or compulsions, or were they out-of-control at the time the action was committed?
Forensic psychiatrists do this line of work, and their writings can be very helpful. If an older man does a violent crime, for instance, assault, they have to evaluate him and determine whether he has dementia, and if he has dementia, they must also evaluate what stage it’s in. Has it advanced to the point where he completely lost agency, and it was impossible for him to control his violent outburst? Or, was he in the beginning stages of dementia, and still had the ability to control himself, and just chose not to, and gave way to his anger during a heated argument?

Similarly in a young person with psychosis who say committed a murder, it has to be determined if their psychosis was severe enough that they were in complete delusion and thus not guilty by reason of insanity, or whether their psychosis was mild enough that they knew what they were doing at the time the crime was committed.

Let’s take a girl with anorexia who passes away due to starvation. Anorexia can cause cognitive distortions, and can re-wire the brain’s motivational centers and reward centers so the person doesn’t get any enjoyment from anything in life except starving themselves, and they get reward from that, but there’s also a lot of false feelings of guilt and shame and fear that they feel daily, especially centered around food. Because even anorectics eat, they just eat less than the rest of us.

So there’s certainly compelling emotions of both reward and fear giving her motivation to starve, and there’s also confusing cognitive distortions where she may actually believe if she eats she’s sinned, and that not eating is being virtuous and living a godly life.

It has to be evaluated how severe the cognitive distortions were and also how severe the compulsions were for her to starve herself. Perhaps the compulsions were so strong to starve, that she entered into a state where she wasn’t actively in control. Or perhaps it’s discovered that she had more than just cognitive distortions and had full-on delusions that if she ate she wouldn’t go to heaven because she’d be committing the unpardonable sin.

It’s not uncommon for someone to have both psychosis and anorexia. So if the girl with anorexia was starving herself due to a psychotic delusion, it may not have actually been a sin for her to starve herself to death. If she had been a Christian walking with God in obedience before developing the delusion she may go to heaven.

Others with anorexia may have cognitive distortions and not full delusions, and if they starve themselves to death it would be sin for them and they would not go to heaven.

It doesn’t matter the mental condition, or the situation, sin is always defined the same way in the scriptures. So whether the person has dementia or psychosis, the same criteria will determine whether an assault a person did is sin for them or they are innocent.

Only God fully knows the heart of a person and their mental state at the time the wrong thought or action was done, but there are questions we can ask the person to help get closer to the truth, and make a good assessment.

One of the key things you’ll want to ask the person is what is the gospel? If they have heard of it, but can’t accurately define sin, the nature of man, the need for a Savior, and the way in which sins are atoned for by His blood, this can be a really good way to figure out if they’ve lost their moral perception.

My aunt, for instance, who had schizophrenia, went to the zoo and preached to the animals because the Bible says to “preach the gospel to every creature”. She tried to teach pets to pray. It was clear she didn’t know what sin and wrongdoing were, because she couldn’t see clearly that animals do not sin, and thus have no need of a Savior, and human beings alone can sin because we’re moral agents made in God’s image. We need to be washed clean by Christ’s blood because we are capable of making moral choices, and we’ve all made sinful ones and incurred very real guilt.

My aunt never committed a violent crime or anything like that, and she was always very good-natured and kind, but she did break laws involving trespassing, and she would leave food and drinks for people she believed were trapped in storage bins.

She wanted to help these people whom she believed were suffering, and she couldn’t understand the Bible concept of respecting the law and the governing authorities, and doing things in a way that is alignment with the law. She wasn’t connected with reality, including the moral law.

I was similar when I went into full psychosis. I remember caring whether people felt pain and suffered, and wanted to take people’s pain away, but I lost the ability to understand the inherent rights people possessed, and how lying was wrong. So I would lie to people, and at one point I stole money from my dad and didn’t think it was wrong. But I would also go online and try to encourage people with mental illnesses and lots of depression not to commit suicide.

My knowledge of right and wrong was becoming more primitive, more like a golden retriever than a person. I wanted to protect people and reduce their suffering, but I didn’t understand the importance of being honest and upfront with them and not lying to them or stealing from them.

How Our Finite Nature is Behind Why We Have Unconscious, Involuntary Brain Processes. And What Happens When This Part of the Brain Malfunctions.

We are finite beings. This means that in order to have voluntary processes, processes involved in choosing to move your hand, choosing to think a thought, choosing to surrender a selfish attitude to God, or to choose to believe in Christ as one’s Savior, we must have involuntary, inaccessible areas of the brain and body that operate without our direct choice. Voluntary processes are made possible by involuntary biochemistry and physicality that is outside of our control.

Behind the decision to say “Thank you” to your mother when she buys you a nice gift, there are brain settings that enable you to choose “Thank you”, or to choose not to say thank you, or to choose to say something else. If these settings didn’t exist beneath your conscious thoughts, you couldn’t choose whether to say Thank you or not. You wouldn’t even think of it, which is what occurs when people with psychotic disorders have a symptom called poverty of thought and poverty of speech. These settings stop operating due to brain inflammation, thus conscious thoughts are no longer accessible to choose to think. The person shuts down, and when questioned as to why thy never communicate, they may eventually say during a time when thoughts are more accessible “I don’t know why but I just can’t respond.”

With every designed machine, there’s a hidden, internal part of the machinery that allows the part you manually operate to exist and to work.

Since human beings are living “machines”, creations of God, we are no different in this respect.

To choose to think a thought one must have involuntary parts of the brain that store information and store it in a way that it’s easily retrievable so you can then choose to consciously grab a thought or idea and start thinking about it.

God not being finite, has a brain that can operate without any finite constraints, and that is not dependent on anything to work.

The Holy Spirit can think without a physical brain, and is immaterial. For us to think though, we can’t do it in a vacuum of immaterial space. We don’t exist and can’t think without a brain. In giving us a brain, God is giving us the ability to think. God can think without a brain, but we cannot. God isn’t arbitrarily constraining us by giving us a brain, rather He’s making thought possible for us by giving us a brain, and thought is not possible for us (or existence) without a brain.

Malfunction is not possible with God’s divine mind.

Malfunction didn’t happen in Adam’s pre-fallen brain either, but not due to anything inherent in Adam or in his power, but due to God’s almighty power holding Adam’s brain in a state of perfect functioning.

However, after Adam’s sin the curse rested on the earth and there was a degree of separation from God. This meant that God no longer kept people’s brains in a state of perfect health. We could now experience brain dysfunction.

Jesus who took on human nature after the fall, could experience mental malfunction in His humanity. His brain could forget things or experience brain fog. I’m sure the mental changes he experienced from the horror of the cross were extreme.

Jesus knows what it is to have a finite brain capable of malfunction due to the fall. He experienced it in His person while He walked in this world, and He knows it by experience. He can sympathize with us in our mental conditions, and understand us from personal experience having a body like our own.

Unlike God’s divine mind which is dependent on nothing to operate, with us, we are dependent on our physical body in order to think. Our physical brain is what makes thinking possible for us. Thus we must have unconscious parts of our brain and body, which make the conscious parts possible to work.

With mental illnesses there can be malfunction between the two parts of ourselves – between the conscious and unconscious parts. Unconscious thoughts and memory storage can cross-over to conscious thinking, and a person can experience vivid memories from a past trauma as though they are happening right now. Auditory voices from bits and pieces of memory can be heard if the auditory centers of the brain are over-activated while unconscious parts of the brain are overlapping with conscious centers.

Many different conditions involve this specific kind of malfunction of these two types of regions cross talking with one another. From PTSD, to psychotic disorders, to depression with psychotic features, to OCD where a person doesn’t hear voices but they experience strong intrusive thoughts.

As mentioned previously, this kind of malfunction is possible because we are finite beings. We are constructed and created with a set physical design. Thus that design that has parts that are meant to be unconscious and operating under the surface, can malfunction in a way that under-the-surface processes break into conscious thought and become consciously experienced.

What’s the difference between involuntary processes and voluntary ones?

One key difference is that involuntary processes must involve physiological changes that are best controlled by the body itself without our involvement.

They must be the kinds of processes that would impede or interrupt our human experience if we had to go in and manually control them.
And when they become conscious this is exactly what they do – they impede and interrupt regular living and keep a person from experiencing life in the world as a human being in the way God designed and intended. Instead the person becomes like a living machine that is stuck repeating certain actions or assaulted with disturbing images all day long, and can’t break out of the cycle of malfunction. At least not without some help or aids.

If a process is best controlled “manually” or consciously, then God has our brain do it consciously; if it’s best controlled automatically or unconsciously then God built it into our design to operate automatically.

The other distinct difference is that conscious processes are ones that involve the higher parts of the brain. Things like study of the scriptures, communion with God, the selection of values, and goals, and plans. These things can’t be unconscious processes because if they were that would go against free will and being made in the image of God to will and to do. It would make it so people were not moral agents, just flesh robots without any agency.

What kinds of processes fit the bill? Well let’s think about something like romantic love. This is a higher-level conscious thought process. Admiring how your spouse is in the image of God and the attributes they possess, both physical and moral ones. Being drawn to them as a person, establishing that they can be trusted based on their past history of faithfulness and acts of kindness and love, and then choosing to love them and marry them and join them in the union of marriage. This is all higher-level conscious brain function.

But when it comes to readying the body to engage in the sexual act, it doesn’t make sense for people to be consciously choosing to do that. If it had to be consciously chosen they’d have to take their mind off of the deeper, more important thoughts like wanting to be one with this person, wanting to experience a deep love and connection. Or, if both were consciously experienced together, you’d have something similar to OCD where intrusive sexual impulses and loud thoughts would clutter your mind, making it hard to focus on the act itself and the bond it brings.

So instead God designed that unconscious processes bring about the fast physiological changes needed to prepare your body for the act. This is instigated when the person gets close to us, begins kissing us, or showing skin, etc.

You can see how it wouldn’t work for these changes to occur psychologically and consciously. Our conscious psychological processes are too slow. We can’t sit there for 10 minutes talking our body into readiness. There would be no passion if it worked like that. Physical passion is needed for the act, and this comes about due to unconscious processes.

And a mistake many couples make when sex dies out in their marriage is to think it’s always a psychological problem. It can sometimes be a purely physiological one. If one’s hormones are not working properly you really can’t talk your body into being ready for sex or into desire for sex. It is controlled by hormones and physiology.

There are many, many more involuntary unconscious processes the brain is responsible for. These are signals and impulses and communications that lie under the surface – underneath the consciously chosen thoughts. These signals, and information, and communications do not operate like regular thoughts, and they don’t look like regular thoughts. The reason why is because these are the signals that make those conscious thoughts possible and readily available to be accessed and chosen.

These signals are the back-end infrastructure that supports the user-facing parts. These signals aren’t fully-formed thoughts and they don’t look or sound like real thoughts. They are distinctly different in form, structure, and essence. When they come to the surface and into the conscious thinking, and since there is usually a lot of inflammation and alarm neurotransmitters involved when this happens – they are startling to the person, and often dark. Violent impulses or thoughts that are part of what should be the hidden impulses of the fight-or-flight response, when these become conscious can be frightening to the person. This is what happens with OCD – violent, intrusive thoughts of the person harming someone.

These impulses to harm someone are what the body involuntarily does when you are cornered and there’s no hope of escape except to kill your attacker and prevail over him so you can break free. These get kicked into action not by conscious thought, but when involuntary parts of your perception perceive that you’re cornered. It wouldn’t work if you had to psyche yourself up into a state strong enough to fight off an aggressor before they kill you. It’s not something you can talk yourself into. Physiological changes must occur for you to do it fast enough and strong enough to have a change at winning the fight and escaping.

These are powerful urges to “finish off” your attacker. Not just to make attempts to win the fight, but to fight with urges to “off” the aggressor so you can survive, as it’s often the only way to survive is to fully win the fight and “off” him. But those with OCD often interpret these powerful urges and involuntary thoughts as homicidal thoughts. They are not homicidal. Self-defense is not homicide.

But since involuntary thoughts have crossed over into the conscious part of the brain – the part that makes moral judgments and decides what to think about things, the person mistakenly concludes they are choosing to think the violent thoughts and that they have homicidal desires or attitudes towards others.

Things get confusing because they are not supposed to be seeing violent images in their brain, or have repetitive consciously-processed and known thoughts of violence. These are just supposed to be impulses under the surface and away from their conscious perception, but the parts of the brain have seeped into each other due to inflammation.

Ways the Fight or Flight Response is Activated
Let’s talk about why the fight-or-flight response is being activated. It can happen from an onslaught of toxic black mold exposure. day-after-day facing an attacker – in this case mycotoxins which assault the immune and nervous systems – pushes the person into fight-or-flight because fight-or-flight is not a voluntary process; it’s involuntary.

This is also why you can’t have total success addressing this response psychologically. You can to a certain extent talk yourself down from aggressive thoughts, but as long as the attacker is still there, you’re going to have some of the intrusive violent thoughts or impulses.

To get out of fight-or-flight in such situations you need to send the signals to the body and brain that you’re safe and there’s no attacker. This is not done psychologically. It’s done by removing the stressor, or physiological things like taking supplements that calm the response, or sensory things like smelling essential oils or wrapping yourself in a soft blanket that sends signals to the nervous system that all is soft and relaxed and calm.

I learned from personal experience that there isn’t one type of fight-or-flight response. There’s a response the body goes into when it gets the signal that an attacker is lurking around, trying to get to you, where you actually go into a kind of subconscious planning stage of planning out how to attack first. There’s a kind of alertness that the brain goes into that is different from the alertness needed to attack instantly someone who has fully cornered you.

This second type of fight or flight displays itself as involuntary images and thoughts of jumping someone when they expect nothing and inflicting harm, and also of having involuntary fixated thoughts about where they are and how and when to do this, that occur around-the-clock. It’s like an around-the-clock surveillance type of fight-or-flight that would actually be very helpful if you’re a soldier hiding in enemy territory and striking first can be the difference between life and death and you have to know where your enemy is at all times.

I’ve noticed that I get the overpowering urges to fight to the death when molds or pollens in the environment are especially high.

Then after treating myself and coming out of some of these intense urges, I get the other kind of fight-or-flight where I feel ok, but my body doesn’t feel safe, since I’m kind of just barely controlling symptoms, and I get break-through histamine attacks. This puts my body in the high alert state of scouting our threats 24/7 and feeling like I need to plan an attack.

Then if I continue to treat myself with supplements or medication, my body calms down even more as symptoms lower, and I enter a state where I’m no longer having urges to harm or look for threats, and I can relax into my day.

There’s not just two types of fight-or-flight either. There’s many different variations and kinds, that can morph and modify to the situation you find yourself in.

The immune system is involved in fight-or-flight. Even if you have fear from an actual physical person attacking you, or a bear or something like that, it’s still the immune and endocrine systems that rev your body up to fight. This is why a revved up immune system from an attacker like black mold, is very similar to the revved up state one experiences when there’s a physical bear attacking you. They are pretty much indistinguishable because they are the same response.

Psychosis Makes Involuntary Impulses and Compulsions Very Dangerous

I have experienced how when I lost my frontal lobe activity and it was shutting down due to entering psychosis, the strong intrusive impulses and compulsions became impossible to not do. If my frontal lobe activity and higher-level thinking were intact, then even if I had violent or suicidal images or compulsions, I wouldn’t act on them. At times my compulsions were so overpowering, they were impossible to shut off, but I found I could direct my energy to something safe. Such as going for a walk or going to the mall, where I could walk and shop and burn off energy that way. Or working compulsively on a song I was writing.

But when my frontal lobe stopped working due to psychosis, I couldn’t redirect the energy, I just started acting out the compulsions. My whole self and body was fueled and operated by involuntary impulses and no longer voluntary ones. It was a terrifying experience! Without that frontal lobe we are all like someone who is drunk and out-of-control. In that state I did things like jump out of my window (thankfully my window was on the first floor and our house was only one floor at the time), cutting myself open with scissors, started running erratically at random times, because the impulses just took over, verbally abusing other people because my brain saw everything as a threat and I would yell at people in an out-of-control way and could no longer tell that cussing was vulgar or discern that certain tones were disrespectful or rude. I lost perception of those kinds of things and thought I was just being clear and giving a sound of urgency to a serious situation. Plus I didn’t really have control anyway.

Such behaviors are common in people in psychosis. They are also common in kids with extreme ADHD, Intermittent Explosive Disorder, Personality disorders, autism, and similar conditions where the lower-level impulses can take over the brain for short periods (or longer ones in some cases), and the frontal lobe is temporarily hi-jacked and overpowered.

The person temporarily is operating basically only via involuntary impulses and compulsions, with no real voluntary ones.

Some people even fall on the floor and start seizing, and seizures are another example of an involuntary response that accompanies brain inflammation and can be seen alongside psychosis symptoms, bipolar, ADHD and many of these explosive conditions.

Infact many bipolar medications are anti-seizure medications that were found to work for mood symptoms along with stopping seizures.

I have a friend whose son would go into psychosis and he would become completely disoriented and roll around on the ground, and get into his poop and do other very strange things while going to the bathroom in this state.

He was put on antipsychotic medication and got his sanity and his life back.

Disorientation, where the frontal love becomes confused and nearly shuts off, and the involuntary processes in the brain take over, is one of the symptoms of psychotic disorders.

What We Can Learn
When you see the cases of catatonia, aggression, psychosis, and the involuntary symptoms, you get a look into the interior design of a person.

It’s as though the back-end of our design, the inner part, comes to the forefront and the person just becomes only involuntary unconscious processes. The conscious, voluntary ones take a back-seat and are immobilized when inflammation gets to severe.

Like going on a tour of the back part of a studio and seeing the lights and the sets and all the cameras involved that are not visible when you’re watching the program, or having an electrical engineer strip your house of its walls and show you the electrical infrastructure of your home, and explain how all the parts work and interact with each other, and make each other’s functions possible, these conditions where a person loses agency and is controlled by involuntary unconscious processes give us a “tour” of the infrastructure of human beings.

This can give us a view and understanding of what we are in the interior, of what parts of us make possible our conscious parts and how that works.

It gives us a view into God, the designer and His genius wisdom.

Catatonia or kleptomania show us that there’s a part of us involved in motivation. We always knew this, but it shows it in a more profound way. A person can’t even move if their dopamine receptors are hi-jacked by inflammation and aren’t working properly. With kleptomania, a person can’t stop moving and doing specific compulsive actions if the dopamine receptors are overstimulated in specific ways.

It’s in our body that motivation, agency, energy, impulses, and desires all exist. Both the deeper psychological “drives”, and the more superficial, primitive ones. We always knew this, but I think we have a tendency to think of ourselves as more psychological, and less of the raw “bare-bones” part of us, but it’s that raw part of us that is so much of what we are as a person, a living being with an operable and functional design, and that powers and controls the whole organism.

Help, I Can’t Stop Thinking Violent or Blasphemous Thoughts! Does This Mean I’m Lost or That I’ve Committed the Unpardonable Sin?

There is a symptom that many people with mental illness get of unwanted violent or highly sexualized or blasphemous thoughts or images popping into their mind. Mainstream psychiatry calls this Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. OCD also involves outward compulsions such as handwashing due to a fear of germs, or compulsively touching certain places in the house to stop one’s family from dying, an irrational fear that is common with this condition. But not everyone has the kind that involves the outward compulsions. Some people have only the disturbing intrusive thoughts, and inner compulsions, such as saying a prayer asking for forgiveness every time the violent thought comes into their mind. This is unofficially referred to as “Pure O” by therapists (pure obsessions). And it’s possible and very common for a person to have both compulsive thoughts and outer compulsions, and they often have more than one fear through their years of suffering from this condition. For instance, they may start out with a fear their family will die if they don’t touch certain places in the house, and then 5 years later have hand-washing obsessions instead, and the condition often morphs in this way.

As explained in an earlier article entitled ‘What is Schizophrenia’ mainstream psychiatry groups mental illnesses by their symptoms, not medical testing. For instance, they don’t test you for something like low serotonin, and if you’re found to have low serotonin then they give you a diagnosis of OCD. Instead you meet with a psychiatrist and are evaluated based on an interview, or you fill out a written questionnaire and you’re diagnosed with OCD based on the interview or the questionnaire (an interview is the much more common way diagnoses are given).

Due to the definition of an illness, that of being a condition of known pathology, I don’t believe mental illnesses in the DSM 5, the diagnostic book for the field of psychiatry, fit the definition of being distinct illnesses. Rather they are just symptoms people can get, that are often seen together, and it’s more accurate to call each of them syndromes. For instance, a person may be said to have schizophrenia syndrome, or obsessive compulsive syndrome.

So I will refer to these symptoms of unwanted violent, blasphemous, or sexual images or thoughts as ‘obsessive compulsive syndrome’, or ‘obsessive compulsive symptoms’, or just ‘intrusive thoughts’.

While there’s not one biochemical imbalance or pathology that causes obsessive compulsive symptoms, these symptoms have been linked in the medical literature with two well-documented imbalances…low serotonin and high histamine. Low serotonin causing obsessive thoughts and compulsions, is the imbalance that most psychiatrists treat for, and that most therapists know about, and while there is much medical literature about high histamine causing obsessive thoughts and compulsions, high histamine has not really made it’s way into public knowledge yet. Psychiatrists don’t usually treat for it, choosing to give SSRIs as treatment, and it’s not really common knowledge yet that high histamine causes obsessions and compulsions, except among Functional Medicine doctors and natural health communities, where it is becoming more commonly known.

Back when I was being treated for my obsessive thoughts and compulsions, I was put on SSRIs which can make people with mood swings and mania (which I had) worse, and that’s exactly what happened to me. When I complained about my thoughts and compulsions not lessening or going away, doctors wanted to increase my dose of the SSRIs, which made me manic and out-of-control. However, many people do see a reduction in intrusive thoughts with SSRIs. They are usually the people without mania and mood swings.

It wasn’t until I was put on antihistamine medications that I experienced relief from my obsessive and compulsive thoughts (later I switched to antihistamine supplements which are much more healthy for the body). I researched the medical literature and found that it’s well-documented that high histamine is a common cause of obsessions and compulsions, and that antihistamine medications and supplements have shown to be effective at reducing the obsessions and compulsions.

This was certainly the case with me. At one point I was having intrusive graphic images of violence and murder and sexual acts popping up into my head non-stop. This was also during my psychotic break. Nothing stopped the images except medication, and once on the right medication, the thoughts abated without effort on my part.

In the medical literature, and known to people in the natural health communities, it’s been documented that PANDAS in children has been linked to obsessive thoughts and compulsions. PANDAS is an acronym for Pediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Disorders Associated with Streptococcal Infections. It’s a strep infection that goes to the brain and affects the entire nervous system. Mothers have seen improvement in their kids with obsessive thoughts and compulsions when they treat the underlying strep infection, and some of kids are now completely free of obsessive-compulsive symptoms. Lyme disease has also been linked with obsessive-compulsive symptoms, and so has mold illness.

When there is a systemic infection of any kind, or systemic toxicity from exposure to toxins, and the cells become overloaded, the toxins or infections will get into the blood stream. A person can become septic and die if the body does not fight off the infections and keep them out of the blood stream where they can damage vital organs. So the body has a defense mechanism. That defense mechanism is to rev up a part of the immune system involved in fighting acute infection, and to quickly kill off the infection or neutralize the toxins. To do this the body uses histamine which is an immune modulator and signaler and it’s involved in “zapping” the toxins or infections and killing or neutralizing them.

When histamine is shot out in high amounts, it can bring on psychiatric symptoms in the brain, including obsessive-compulsive symptoms and psychosis (delusions, disjointed thoughts, confusion, auditory and visual hallucinations).

Toxic black mold was the major player in my obsessive-compulsive symptoms, but really any pathogen or toxin can cause a rise in histamine if the infection or toxicity goes systemic and the body needs to neutralize or kill it quickly with histamine as a protective measure.

The Typical Course The Sufferer Takes
When a person begins to really greatly suffer from distressing obsessive thoughts, it’s common that they will go to parents or pastors for help. (It’s common for this condition to begin in adolescence; but some have it as younger children). They will usually say something to the effect of “Help! I keep thinking highly sexual thoughts or very blasphemous thoughts or very violent thoughts, and I need your prayers that God will give me the self-control to stop thinking these things and get the victory over them.”

They may request to be prayed over or anointed. Usually by the time they come to you for help, they have spent months or even years of obsessively trying to stop thinking the thoughts for several hours or more every day. This isn’t the kind of thing that they want to reach out for help with, as they feel guilty and morally polluted for having these thoughts, and they had hoped to get the victory over the thoughts in their own prayer time, but haven’t been able to get control of the thoughts, and so they are coming to you in a state of desperation, often worried they have either backslidden from God or that they have committed the unpardonable sin. It doesn’t make sense to them that they could have such wicked thoughts on a consistent basis, and still be a Christian, as God calls on us in His Word to take every thought captive, and not being able to do that, they often fear or conclude that they are backslidden or have committed the unpardonable sin.

When they bring their request for help to a pastor, parent, or mentor, there are two responses that are common. 1. The parent or mentor may pray over them, and encourage them to keep trying to take their thoughts captive, and that Jesus will give them the eventual victory. It’s common for the person to think that this is a young adolescent dealing with some new sexual thoughts and temptations, that they didn’t have as a kid, and they just need encouragement and to be reminded of Christ’s promises in the Word and His faithfulness and sufficiency to give them self-control in this new area of life – sexuality – that they are awakening to. If violent thoughts are mentioned the parent may attribute these to changes in testosterone levels going up during puberty if it’s a son, or hormonal mood swings if it’s a daughter.

Usually the parent doesn’t know their kid has been praying over the thoughts for hours every day for months or even years, and they misjudge how much investment the kid has already put into overcoming these thoughts.

2. The other common response is for a parent to try to balance out the overly-dramatic response their kid is having to the thoughts, to put their fears in perspective, and push back against the excessive blame the kid is placing on themselves, and the out-of-proportion significance the kid is giving to the thoughts. The parent may say something like “Carl, they are just thoughts, don’t let them dominate your life.” Or “Every kid your age has some crazy thoughts with hormonal changes going on and you’ll grow out of this and come into your own soon.” The parent is going for a balancing effect – and honestly it’s very good for the parent to counteract and call into question the faulty reasoning, and conclusions the kid with the condition is making, – but the parent doesn’t realize their kid isn’t having the normal intrusive thoughts everyone experiences. Their kid has a condition, and is being bombarded much more frequently with distressing thoughts and also heavy and false emotions, like false guilt, and cognitive distortions like attributing blame to themselves for the thoughts. While adolescence is difficult for everyone, some people develop mental conditions in adolescence, and have an experience that is pathological and out of the norm for what is healthy and normal, which requires hey intervention and treatment. For kids with mental conditions, they may not naturally stabilize and become a well-balanced adult and left untreated may develop psychosis, or continue to have distressing intrusive thoughts in their adult life that doesn’t abate unless successfully treated. The kid may be battling through hundreds or thousands of these thoughts every day, depending on how severe their condition is. They may be highly graphic images, or very detailed accounts of murder or blasphemy or sexual acts.

This is the real reason why the kid is so distressed by them. But usually the kid will not put their situation into such words, and will mention “intrusive thoughts” or “immoral thoughts”, but will not mention the graphic nature of the thoughts or the frequency, due to guilt, and also kids just aren’t very articulate in their teens and it takes time to learn how to bring up sensitive topics like this, and so they may lack the skills and experience to articulate their suffering in a way that allows the parent to see how severe it is. I’ve had obsessive-compulsive thoughts since I was very young (as a young kid my intrusive thoughts were mostly a fear of my family dying and fear of death), and as an adolescent they became sexual, violent, and blasphemous in nature – a new turn that commonly happens – and it took me many years to be able to accurately communicate the severity and level of distress of my intrusive thoughts.

If the kid mentions violent thoughts, the adult in their life may think they are referring to the common temptations to be angry or jealous with siblings, to want to break away from the restraint of their parents, and the need to surrender those fallen desires to God so He can implant His holy desires in them.

If the kid mentions sexual thoughts, the parent may think they are just struggling with the common temptations to lust that kids their age go through, and the parent will encourage them to pray for strength and help from God. Not realizing these are intrusive thoughts are pathological, symptoms of a mental condition.

Unknown to the parent or mentor, the adolescent is not struggling with unholy thoughts. The adolescent is experiencing intrusive involuntary “wild ball” brain signals coming from the unconscious parts of the brain that are distressing in nature. The problem lies in the kid’s inability to tell that what he is experiencing is not in fact a thought, and then using the word ‘thought’ to communicate his struggle.

There is a breakdown in communication due to this, and the teenager feels his distress is dismissed and swept under the rug, or that he is a failure and a hopeless rebel, because he’s sought God in prayer for strength as recommended by mentors, and the thoughts are still as frequent and distressing as before the intense prayer sessions he’s engaged in. He thinks it’s likely he is at odds with God or has committed the unpardonable sin, that there must be some rebellious part of himself that insists on rejecting God, because he can’t seem to get the victory over the thoughts no matter how hard he tries and how committed he is.

When your typical person without obsessive compulsive syndrome has an intrusive thought, the intrusive thought looks like a “wild ball” to them. In sports a wild ball is when the ball slips from the hands of the person throwing it, and instead of going in the intended direction it misses it’s target by a “mile”, and goes in a completely random direction. It’s so erratic it’s often humorous, and when it happens, everyone knew the player didn’t mean to throw it like that and that the ball slipped.

People without obsessive compulsive syndrome can easily tell the intrusive thought is a “wild ball” thought that is a mental glitch taking place. Everything about the thought, the exaggerated content, the way it forms, how it enters the mind – everything about the nature of the thought – just looks like a complete outlier to them. The same way a series of erratic heart palpitations feel and look like a glitch from the normal steady heart pattern, they can see right away these thoughts are different.

This awareness is why they don’t give the thought significance or take blame for the thought.

But those with obsessive compulsive syndrome have compromised mental processing in the area of something self-referential processing. This causes them to lose that awareness that the intrusive thought is a “wild ball thought” coming from an unconscious part of their mind – a different part of their mind than thoughts they choose to think come from – and they see it as no different in nature from our normal thoughts. They lack this perception the way someone with autism might lack the ability to read emotions from looking at someone’s facial expression. They have a very real deficit in this area, and can’t see the thought is coming erratically from left field, and that it’s clearly an involuntary glitch.

Self-referential processing errors also occur in conditions like schizophrenia where the person may lose the ability to tell that their thoughts are coming from their own brain, and may believe a parent or a demon is inserting thoughts into their brain. This is a common symptom of psychosis called thought insertion.

Another common error in self-referential processing is when a person in psychosis believes people can see inside their mind and read their thoughts. They lose the ability to tell their thoughts are private and known by them alone and that another person’s consciousness isn’t involved in reading what goes on in their head.

These two examples are more extreme than what is seen in obsessive compulsive syndrome, but I listed them to give an idea of what self-referential processing is, and how errors in it can cause guilt or fear based on an altered sense of one’s self and their agency over their self and thoughts.

So, because the person with intrusive thoughts loses that awareness that the intrusive thought isn’t coming from their conscious brain, they group the intrusive thought in with their consciously chosen thoughts, desires, and motives, and blame themselves for the thought and identify with it as their own, rather than the brain glitch that it is.

Education can help! Once the person comes to realize they’ve lost accurate perception when it comes to self-referential processing, they’ve lost the perception that the thought is coming out of the blue from the unconscious, involuntary parts of the brain, that the thought is a wild thought, just knowing this truth, will help them recognize what is actually going on, and a brand new pathway in the brain will form, that they then have the option of strengthening by repetition. It’s when we don’t know something that we can’t train our brain to see around the deficit, because we don’t even know there’s a deficit, but once we know the truth, we can then begin working that new pathway, and coming more and more out of the false perception that all our thoughts are the same and they are all chosen, and begin to identify the “wild ball” thoughts more clearly.

Then they won’t experience as much guilt, when this fact can be clearly seen.

The human brain is neuroplastic, meaning we can form new brain pathways, and train our brain to learn new skills and perceptions in areas where there has been a deficit.

Of course, false guilt isn’t the only concern here; it’s also important they get help at the biochemical level to balance their brain and reduce inflammation, and I will talk more about that at the end of the article.

As far as what is going on in the brain of someone with this condition, brain scans show similar neural circuitry to schizophrenia, although not as pronounced or severe. And some people with obsessive compulsive symptoms do go on to develop full schizophrenia (and the medical literature shows the same biochemical imbalances can cause everything from anxiety disorders, to depression, to intrusive thoughts, to schizophrenia), but it’s not everyone, so having intrusive thoughts doesn’t automatically mean you’ll go on to develop hallucinations or delusions as are seen in schizophrenia syndrome. But in some people it does happen, so it’s important to be aware of the risk, and to take action to manage symptoms in the early stages.

But people with this condition of intrusive thoughts have dialed down frontal lobes – the part of the brain where judgment and reason take place – and the emotional centers of the brain are highly activated. This causes them to be in a dreamlike state where images and thoughts pop up involuntarily into their consciousness out of their control, and since the frontal lobe is dialed down, they do not have moral judgment and the thoughts are not being screened for their moral content. They also don’t have the ability to be logical, so the thoughts that pop up will be nonsensical, violent, or sexual thoughts, as well as some benign, morally neutral thoughts – content without moral discretion and without a filter – the intrusive thoughts are not processed by the frontal lobe and thus are not evaluated based on morals. They just flow in and out involuntarily. The person will often not respond to the morally neutral thoughts and fail to really notice them, and it’s just the immoral ones that get their attention because they find them disturbing.

There is an interconnected part of the brain called the Default Mode Network (DMN). The DMN is active when a person is daydreaming and not in a fully alert state. In normal people without mental conditions, the DMN shuts off when they get engaged in active tasks, such as writing a paper, planning, talking actively with friends, etc. But in people with obsessive compulsive syndrome the DMN does not shut off when engaged in active tasks. There’s still much “clutter” and involuntary “talk” from the DMN going on at the same time.

A person with this condition may have the DMN insert say an image of a man raping a woman into their brain – the person then responds in alarm with “That was sickening; how could I have thought that?!” The intrusive image of the man raping the woman was the unconscious thought, and the alarmed and disgusted response was the conscious part of the brain – the frontal lobe. Or the DMN may wander around and settle on the thought “I’m going to sell my soul to the devil soon”, and then the person in alarm prays “Lord, I can’t believe I thought of doing that, please forgive me.”

They have the DMN and the conscious parts of the brain going on at the same time, but they can’t see the stark difference in nature from the involuntary thought that is just a brain glitch and random signal, and their consciously chosen thought.

The medical literature also shows a link between distressing intrusive thoughts and brain inflammation. Histamine is a neurotransmitter and immune modulatory involved in pain. If it’s high you feel pain more keenly. It’s also involved in the fight-or-flight distress signaling of the body. If it’s too high the body will feel like it’s in a state of fight or flight. It’s also involved in wakefulness and contributes to insomnia. It also plays a role in paranoia and in anger. When we get angry with someone, and shout at them, or harbor thoughts of anger, there is a histamine dump that takes place in our brain.

If histamine is chronically too high in the brain thoughts will turn dark in nature, violent, in keeping with the fight or flight response, paranoid, and things of the like. While a Christian can control their conscious thoughts, even when in a state of chronic brain inflammation, and choose not to yell angrily at someone or throw something just because they feel pain and stress in their head and emotions, the unconscious thoughts that take place in the Default Mode Network are not under their control, and these thoughts will change due to the excess histamine and become darker in nature and more violent. The same way that a person with high histamine will have nightmares in their sleep that can be very violent or scary, the person with obsessive compulsive syndrome will have violent involuntary day-time “dreaming” coming from the DMN.

Likewise, high dopamine has been linked in the medical literature with an increase in sexualized thoughts. Once again, the Christian will be able to control their conscious sexual thoughts (though not perfectly as we’re still sinners this side of heaven; through Christ they can do a very good job of this), however they will find themselves unable to control the involuntary roaming of the DMN which will settle on very sexualized thinking if dopamine is too high.

Add violent thoughts and sexual thoughts together without the frontal lobe to do moral judgment and sifting, and you can end up with some pretty distressing and disturbing “clutter” thoughts from the DMN, that are in no way the fault of the adolescent suffering from them.

A pastor or mentor can help the young person reality-check, by asking them a series of questions and pointing out the reality that the young person can’t see – the deficit in their self-referential processing.

For instance, you can ask them…”Ok tell me the next time you think one of these thoughts.” And the young person may go to tell them, but find that they have already thought the thought before they can even say “I’m thinking one of those thoughts again”. You could then point out that the quick speed of the thought reveals it’s not a consciously chosen thought. If one is experiencing a temptation to think a violent thought, there’s always a period of Satan tempting you with it before you give in. The thought kind of knocks on the door of your heart and asks to be let in and chosen and cherished; it doesn’t barge in without your consent.

This is how temptation works according to the Bible. We have a chance to resist the devil, and he will flee from us if we resist him.

But with involuntary thoughts they do barge in without consent. And you could point out the difference. You can also educate them about the Default Mode Network and how the thoughts that come from there don’t involve the desires and the will. They don’t involve higher thinking where moral judgment takes place. They are just random impulses dictated by mood and neurotransmitters, not by moral judgment.

Help the young person to change the terminology to be more accurate. Have them start calling the thoughts, “brain glitches” or something similar.

Take them through situations in their life where God has helped them control their conscious thoughts, say for instance they were tempted to be jealous of their brother because he got a new bicycle and they didn’t get one, or he’s doing better in school than they are. Take them through how they were tempted to be jealous, but then they surrendered to God and resisted the temptation to be jealous, choosing to be grateful for the things God had done in their life instead, knowing He loves them personally and gave His own life for them. They chose to be happy for their brother’s school success, and to ask God to help them do their best, not out of a desire to outperform their brother, but just out of a desire to give things their all out of a desire to please God.

Take them through how God did help them, and took their jealousy away, and gave them new desires. Remind them of how the process of taking every thought captive, and surrendering sinful motives and desires works according to the Bible. Take them through this process step-by-step.

Help them see that when it comes to conscious thoughts, God always gives us the victory. But He doesn’t always stop “brain glitches” aka intrusive thoughts because these are a health condition, and there’s no promise in the Bible that God won’t allow a person to suffer from a health condition.

Explain how the Bible doctrine is different for overcoming sin and for recovering from a health condition. Jesus’ perfect life and death in this world – and the fact that He is God – gave Himself the authority to forgive all sin, and to provide Christians with moral power to overcome sin and to live holy, self-controlled lives. They won’t be perfect of course, until the sanctification process is complete, but they will exhibit real self-control and genuine godliness that will be distinctly different from people of the world who do not believe in and follow God. Victory and fruits of obedience are promised and guaranteed to the Christian.

But good mental and physical health is not a guarantee. God may permit mental conditions to bear sway in your life. There’s many different reasons why He may do this. One big reason is often to test our faith, another is to teach us to have a deeper reliance on God, and not on self. When you have faulty mental processing and cognitive distortions, it really hits directly at pride and self-sufficiency. You learn you can ve wrong – very wrong – about things. That your mind is finite, fallible, and human. That you need a God who is infinite, infallible, and divine to steer the course of your life and make the decisions reserved for God alone.

One of the big benefits I’ve seen in my own mental health journey has been gaining knowledge. If I had not had distressing obsessions and compulsions I wouldn’t have done thorough research into the condition, wouldn’t understand the brain at the level I do now, which is a huge blessing as we are made in the image of God so studying the brain allows us to see the handiwork of God in His most important creation, I wouldn’t have helpful information to share with others who suffer from the condition. It’s hard to be committed to a deep and thorough of something that isn’t personal. It’s when it’s personal that you hunger and thirst for the answers, and God promises that those who seek shall find, and those who ask moral questions and hunger and thirst after righteousness shall not only have their questions answers, but they shall be filled with His righteousness.

I have certainly found the answers in the Bible and in neuroscience involving the important questions intrusive thoughts raise, to be answered in a very satisfying way, showing God to be just and good, even when we lack important brain perceptions and really do think we are guilty, God will never hold someone guilty for something they didn’t do and that is an illness. He always does right by us, always, even when we can’t understand what is going on and are limited due to our finite human nature and the symptoms of an illness that distorts our perception.

God and His truth is not limited by our malfunction. Truth exists outside of us and beyond us, and is eternal. Truth is not under threat when we’re experiencing delusions or lacking important perceptions. Jesus defended truth by His perfect life and death in this world, defeating lies, and lawlessness and evil. Truth and goodness are held up by the very arms of God Himself, the very life of God Almighty. So even when our perception distorts the picture and we fear terrifying things like that we have committed the unpardonable sin, God is outside of our opinions, perception, and self, and His truth is indestructible, always perfect and right. This is one of the important lessons that going through mental conditions like obsessive-compulsive syndrome and psychosis have taught me.

There is a requirement for Christians to take the best care of their health that they possibly can, out of appreciation for Christ who bought them back with His own life.

It’s important to help the sufferer improve their health in any way they can, such as eating a healthier diet, starting supplements that have been proven to help with lowering histamine and thus lowering intrusive thoughts, and if they have the funds for it, encourage them to see a Functional Medicine doctor and be tested and treated for their condition, or try medication if absolutely needed with a mainstream doctor.

They will gain a sense of responsibility and of agency in learning it’s their job to take care of their health, both of which are healing and tend to balance the mind. People need purpose. They need to know God created them for a deeply significant purpose and that learning to care for their body is a core part of that purpose we have as Christians in living for the glory of God.

When they see the supplements and treatments helping, they will start to feel a sense of agency, and relief, knowing they have tools that can tip their thoughts in healthy directions and take control of the turbulent intrusive thoughts and mental clutter and mood swings (if present) going on in their brain. They have weapons to help them win the brain inflammation battle and tip things in their favor.

And of course, it’s crucial you go over what sin is from the Bible. The mental condition has caused imbalanced thinking and cognitive distortions, and so they may have lost basic Bible knowledge such as how the Bible defines sin and what it is. The Bible doesn’t call everything sin. For instance, to be blunt for the sake of clarity in this important issue, when a man has a wet dream, this is not considered sin. There are some sexual things that happen that aren’t sin. Biologically driven sexual desire can be very strong and yet is not sinful. It’s only lust that is sin. Urges aren’t sin. Involuntary sexual responses aren’t sin. And involuntary thoughts aren’t sin either.

And so people who are sexual beings and have sexual expressions that aren’t chosen such as a wet dream, or a sexual urge, when these people become mentally ill, one of the ways their body and brain malfunctions is sexually.

The sexual urges and rumination done by the unconscious part of the brain, that is just part of being a sexual being, and isn’t lust, isn’t chosen fantasizing, comes to the forefront when inflammation is present, and the frontal lobe shuts off. As explained earlier, the person is in almost a dream-like state, with lower passions and impulses dominating, and higher thoughts are dialed down and inactive.

This isn’t sin. It’s a malfunction of the sexual system. Our brain and neuro-hormones are involved in our sexuality. And these can malfunction and go haywire.

Thus the Christian with this condition, who desires to obey God and live a pure life, will find they have much control over their conscious thoughts. They won’t engage in much sexual fantasy when it comes to chosen thoughts. They won’t dehumanize people and see them as sex objects. They will treat people with dignity and value them. They will have concern and care in their motives and expression when they talk with people, their experience in having a mental illness often increases compassion and love in them. But when it comes to unconscious thoughts and impulses, these may be very out-of-control with lots of intrusive sexual or violent thoughts. Because they have a mental condition.

Biblical Philosophy of Sin

What we really need is the correct Biblical philosophy of sin. It’s important that we get this right and clear up any misconceptions that we might have that aren’t Biblical.

What is sin according to the Bible?

Sin is how the fall happened, it’s the moral evil that entered the cosmos and brought natural evil such as cancer and disease. It’s why Christ had to come and die to redeem us – it’s the crux of everything, or rather God’s law is, and breaking His law is the cause of disorder and destruction. What is it?

Sin is anything that goes against God’s perfectly loving character/nature. The Bible tells us “God is love” John 4:8, then it says “The commandments, do not commit adultery, do not murder, do not steal, do not covet and any other commandment, are summed up in this one decree: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no wrong to its neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.” Romans 13:9-10

God is love and his law is love. Sin is the transgression of the law (1 John 3:4); love is the fulfillment of the law. Sin then is the opposite of love.

Anything that is not Christlike, not loving, not moral and good, is sin.

The 10 commandments contain the inherent rights of God and man. God, being the true God, the Creator who brought all things into being, and who died for man to redeem him to Himself, has a right to our worship for being the Creator, for being a perfect Standard; for having a character of perfect self-sacrificial love for His children. To worship any other God denies God the love and worship that is his by right.

People have a right to being treated with dignity because they are beings made in God’s image. It would be wrong to treat a person the way you would treat a dog; it would deny a person their inherent right to dignity. People have a right to sow and to reap what they sow. To engage in work and reap the results of that work, whether it be monetary or otherwise – and not have their work stolen from them by someone who did not do the work and who has no right to the results of their labor. To steal from them is inherently immoral as it denies the rights of an individual.

People have to life – to not be murdered. This is one of the most basic rights. Not only does a murderer violate a person’s right to life when they kill them, but it steals from God who is the Giver of all Life and the Creator of that person.

Fornication is wrong because it takes from someone privileges reserved for marriage without fulfilling the responsibilities of being that person’s husband or wife. It merges two people into one flesh in a union that is designed for marriage alone. It is not merely a physical act but a spiritual union is created when two people have sex.

So you can see how the breaking of the 1st, 8th, 6th, and 7th commandments is a violation of inherent rights of God and man. And the other commandments similarly are inherent rights of God and man, but I won’t go into all of them here.

What this means is that right and wrong exist as principles inherent within the very fabric of moral reality, coming from the character of God Himself. There is objective right and there is objective wrong. They are not subjective ideas and preferences in the minds of individual people – they exist outside of us.

Jesus explains that the 10 commandments are really 10 categories that encompass far more than just the literal breaking of the written law. For instance, hate is murder, and lust is adultery. (Matthew 5:21-22, 27-28)

The moral law – the 10 commandments – involves all of our thoughts, motives, desires, choices, and actions. This law judges and evaluates every thought and desire, and God categorizes each as either holy or unholy, moral or immoral, good or evil.

Let’s say we make plans to buy our mom a card for mother’s day. That’s a good and right desire that keeps the 5th commandment about the importance of honoring our parents.

Or let’s say we think a mean thought about a school bully and want them to get a bad grade on a test. That’s a thought that breaks the 6th commandment about hate and murder.

So this moral law is very relevant to our lives. By it we have a knowledge of sin (Romans 3:20), and can know when a thought or desire or action is one that God approves of, and is right for a Christian to have, or whether it’s immoral and wrong for a Christian to have.

The Bible says the Word of God, which contains His 10 Commandment law, is – through the power of the Holy Spirit – “alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.”
Hebrews 4:12

Thus we can use the Word of God to know right from wrong, and depending on God for help, His Spirit whose role it is to teach us all the Words of Christ, will teach us when a thought or attitude, or desire is a moral one or an immoral one.

God has given us a conscience, through the Holy Spirit convicting our hearts.

“They show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts sometimes accusing them and at other times even defending them.)”
Romans 2:15

Because we have this conscience made possible by God’s Spirit interacting with our mind and consciousness, we can judge our thoughts and motives and actions to know if they are moral or immoral. We have a compass.

However our conscience isn’t always perfect. If we have incomplete knowledge of right and wrong, our conscience will reflect our knowledge and understanding. It’s possible for a more mature Christian to have a better grasp of right and wrong than a baby Christian, for instance, and learning and growing in the Word of God is crucial for the Christian. And while our conscience is subject to error because we are fallible human beings who do not always have a perfect knowledge of God’s Word (and some people do not have access to the Bible), and only God’s judgment is infallible and perfect (1 Corinthians 4:4), God does give us guidance and knowledge to live a godly life in this world. To follow Him and obey Him and to be a faithful Christian. He gives us enough knowledge of moral truth to do that.

With the knowledge He gives us from His Word and the help of His Spirit teaching us His Word and giving us a conscience that aligns with His law…we can then surrender wrong attitudes, desires, thoughts to God, and repent of wrong actions and choices, and our High Priest will forgive us and change those immoral things about us.

However, for a person to be said to be sinning, there are a couple other dimensions to this that the Bible specifies.

In Romans 14, Paul speaks of how we should not eat or drink something that could cause a brother to stumble. This can be something that is ok and not a violation of a commandment, but because it would cause confusion and doubt to the new believer and your brother in Christ, it becomes wrong to engage in it around that person. He explains that whatever we do that is not of faith is sin.

21 It is good neither to eat flesh, nor to drink wine, nor any thing whereby thy brother stumbleth, or is offended, or is made weak.

22 Hast thou faith? have it to thyself before God. Happy is he that condemneth not himself in that thing which he alloweth.

23 And he that doubteth is damned if he eat, because he eateth not of faith: for whatsoever is not of faith is sin.

What does this mean that whatsoever is not of faith is sin? Even though objective right and wrong exists and everything is either right or wrong (there are a lot of things that are right so we have a lot of moral options as we engage in life in this world), as human beings we don’t always have perfect knowledge of the scriptures or of right and wrong, and we may not completely understand what is right or wrong. This doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist, only that we understand it imperfectly. We may for instance disagree with a brother about what is right and wrong. This scripture tells us that if there is any doubt that an action is wrong, doing it would be a sin. It’s also a sin to do something completely innocent around a brother who himself has doubts as this could cause him to engage in it before he has adequate Bible knowledge on the subject and could cause him to be tempted to go against his conscience and do something he has doubts about.

This adds another dimension to sin. It’s not merely the actions that are sinful, but also if one in their limited human knowledge isn’t sure but suspects something is sinful, then they sin by engaging in it. Tempting or encouraging someone to engage in something they have doubts about is also sin. We are each stewards of ourselves under God and we have a one-on-one relationship with Him, and an individual conscience. Therefore no person should ever assume the role of conscience for another person. To do this is to make oneself a god and to violate the human rights of another person, treating them as less than human.

It’s also true that if someone does not have enough knowledge to know something is sinful, or they are lied to, that it’s not a sin for someone to do something they really don’t think is a sin.

Mothers for instance from other time periods were told by doctors of their day that medical practices were safe that we now know to be very unsafe, such as taking mercury for colds and flues. These mothers weren’t sinning who gave their children these treatments because they didn’t know they were harmful and thought they were giving their children the best that medicine had to offer.

Now, for a mother to know mercury is a poison and hire a physician to give it to her child – would be a sin, because she knows it’s harmful and she’s giving it anyway.

It would also be a sin for a mother to worship the doctor and blindly do whatever he suggests, without doing her own research and praying to God for wisdom. Her child has been entrusted to her by God and she’s responsible for its well-being, not the doctor. Doctors are helpers not dictators. Therefore she goes against her responsibility of stewardship if she blindly listens to a doctor and obeys him like a robot.

There have doubtless then been many cases through history of people not sinning and yet causing harm without realizing it. Human knowledge is limited and we’re not omniscient. It’s also possible to do an inherently good thing with a selfish motive and sin. Giving money to help the poor so that people will praise you and like you, for instance, rather than doing it to actually alleviate suffering and caring about the sufferers. Paul talks about this when he says “if I give my body to be burned but have not love, what does it profit me?” showing that one can do inherently good acts from a selfish motive and it’s therefore not love.

So to not be sinning it’s not enough that we do inherently good things. Knowledge is also part of this, and motive is as well.

James 4:17 speaks again about this other dimension: “He who knows the good he ought to do and does it not, to him it is sin.”

The person must have knowledge, or they aren’t sinning. They also must have the ability to know and to reason, so someone who has lost the ability to reason due to a stroke or due to severe mental illness cannot choose to sin.

Jesus speaks about this concept:

“If you were blind,” Jesus replied, “you would not be guilty of sin. But since you claim you can see, your guilt remains.”
John 9:41

One must be able to “see” to do the right thing, in order for it to be a sin for them to fail to do the right thing.

Notice also in James 4:17 that the person must be able to choose to do or not to do, in order to sin.

There is not an instance in scripture where someone is declared guilty by God for something they didn’t do.

Fornication for instance is a sin, and rape is a sin, but being raped is not a sin. In the case of being raped fornication is happening and it is very sexual and it can certainly feel “wrong”, but the victim is innocent. It is only the rapist who is guilty.

25 But if a man find a betrothed damsel in the field, and the man force her, and lie with her: then the man only that lay with her shall die.

26 But unto the damsel thou shalt do nothing; there is in the damsel no sin worthy of death: for as when a man riseth against his neighbour, and slayeth him, even so is this matter:

27 For he found her in the field, and the betrothed damsel cried, and there was none to save her.

Deuteronomy 22

Like murder which is certainly not the fault of the one who is murdered, so rape is not the fault of the one who is raped, and the guilt and sin lies only with the rapist. So you can see how something sexual and even violent and impure doesn’t make it a sin. It’s only if the person does that thing. If that thing is done TO that person against their will, as in the case of rape, the victim is innocent.

The Bible definitely tells us that a person can sin in their thoughts.

Seek the LORD while he may be found; call on him while he is near.
Let the wicked forsake their ways and the unrighteous their thoughts. Let them turn to the LORD, and he will have mercy on them, and to our God, for he will freely pardon.
Isaiah 55:6-7

We can sin even in our attitudes and intents of our heart, our motives.

Repent, therefore, of your wickedness, and pray to the Lord. Perhaps He will forgive you for the intent of your heart.
Acts 8:22

21 Ye have heard that it was said of them of old time, Thou shalt not kill; and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment:

22 But I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment: and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council: but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire.

27 Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery:

28 But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.

Matthew 5:

Someone who desires to murder another – even if they never act on it – is sinning in the intents of their heart.

Anyone who hates a brother or sister is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life residing in him.
1 John 3:15

So, it is NOT just our outward actions that we can sin with, but also our attitudes and intents and motives in our heart. Our thoughts.

However, even in our thoughts they must be chosen in order for them to be sin. There is not a place in scripture where someone is pronounced guilty by God for something they did not choose to think or to do.

Explain how we are born with a fallen nature and so we inevitably will sin, yet sin is active.

As in the rape example, the question now becomes “are these thoughts I’m experiencing more like rape, or are they more like fornication?” Are these thoughts happening to me, or am I making them happen?

The truth is from the Bible it’s clear that if you know right from wrong, and you’re still choosing to make these thoughts happen, then it’s a sin. If however, you have lost your ability to tell right from wrong and don’t know these thoughts are immoral then it wouldn’t be a sin for you (as may possibly be the case in some people with brain injury and mental illness), OR if you know they are immoral but you’re not making them happen.

This is the Bible criteria for sin. If you know it’s wrong, and you’re choosing to do it, it’s sin. If you don’t know it’s wrong and don’t suspect it’s wrong and you choose to do it it’s not sin. If you aren’t doing it and it’s something that’s happening to you, then it’s not sin.

“How could these be my own thoughts and yet I’m not the one choosing them” you might ask? Well, it turns out there are a lot of involuntary processes in the human body. And Christians have always drawn a line between involuntary processes and sin. For instance, when pastors counsel young men not to lust after young women, they don’t count physical sexual desire as a sin, even though it can be a very intense feeling, nor do they count erections as sin that happen naturally as a result of the man having a healthy nervous system and hormonal system that works that way. If he brought about the arousal by thinking lustful thoughts, then it’s a sin. If he brought about the arousal by looking at half-naked pictures of women, then it’s a sin. But if it just happened spontaneously due to hormones, it’s not a sin.

Similarly pastors don’t tell someone with a gay attraction that they are sinning by simply being tempted by that desire. It’s only if they think gay thoughts or act on those thoughts that they have sinned. It’s also not a sin to be tempted to be violent or to be jealous. It’s only a sin if you deliberately think a jealous or violent thought.

Sin is always deliberate and chosen, even in cases where it’s a sin of omission (meaning something that you should have done that you neglected), it’s deliberately neglected.

So the next question that follows is: “Are these voluntary or involuntary thoughts I’m having?” and another question that is very relevant “what even is a thought? Do these things flooding my mind even fit the definition of a thought, or are they some other phenomenon?” In order to try to get to the bottom of this I met online with neuroscience tutors and had conversations with a neurologist.

Not everything that our brain does is a thought. Our brain takes in images and interprets them – this wouldn’t be classified as a thought. Our brain makes sure we are walking upright and keeps track of our position – this isn’t a thought. Our brain stores memories – even of sins we’ve done or had done to us – and these aren’t considered thoughts. We wouldn’t consider our brain storing memories of sins we’ve done as our brain sinning. If we couldn’t remember our sins we couldn’t bring them to Christ and ask for strength to help with those specific fallen desires and inclinations. We couldn’t ask Jesus to help us make right the wrongs we’d done to others if we couldn’t remember what we’d done to them that was wrong. We do need to remember those things, but not dwell on them or delight in them of course. And it’s not a sin to have memories. It would be a sin to think in detail about the fornication we committed before our conversion. To actively engage in fantasy of past sins, to enjoy and delight in them, is definitely sin. But to know and recount the details the way a police officer might report a case is not sin. To know the details of what happened and store them in one’s memory, and then to bring them up and confess them to Christ, is certainly not sin.

What about hallucinations – are these thoughts? What about dreams? These are very important questions.

There are lots of involuntary processes in the brain and body – are these blasphemous ideas and images voluntary or involuntary? And are they even thoughts or are they something else?

Severe Mental Illness Involves Loss of Control

There are some conditions where a person has irresistible compulsions, such as during full psychosis, or when there’s been damage from a stroke or dementia. I want to talk briefly about compulsions that involve actions, rather than just compulsions in the thoughts. A compulsion in the thoughts might be something like praying “Lord forgive me” every time you see a violent intrusive image pop into your head.

But a compulsive action could be something like a person in psychosis has a hallucination that their father is an alien, along with strong compulsions to assault the alien to protect their family. They may commit a crime and assault their father in the midst of their delusion and irresistible compulsions.

Severe Mental Illness often involves loss of control and loss of function in various ways. Coming back from being treated for a severe mental illness and regaining function, but still having a loss of some function, I’ve been able to see that I really am a living machine of sorts. I’ve been able to see the perimeters of my finite nature.

God is an infinite being with moral agency.
We are finite beings with moral agency.

God’s brain is an eternal, infinite, indestructible brain, that can never err and is infallible.
Our brain is a created, finite, physical structure, that has limited knowledge, often errs, and due to sin is subject to breaking down and malfunctioning in its structure.

When my symptoms get worse I sometimes lose impulse control or I am bombarded with intrusive images. Then when I take supplements or medication the symptoms come back to a place where I can control my actions and my thoughts again.

We are held accountable for the things within our control, not the things outside of our control. This is always the Biblical rule. Everyone is finite, some have more agency and control than others and others have a lot less. But if we are faithful with what is within our control then we are still Christians in good standing and right relationship with Christ. Those of us with awareness into our condition have an obligation to seek out effective treatments to help us manage symptoms, but even as we do this, not everyone with severe mental illness will have complete control and agency over their impulses at all times. This is why they need to inform family of their condition and be supported in their illness. It’s necessary for the church and the community also to become educated and informed about how to help and provide resources for those with SMI and protection for the community.

The truth is if rest homes were not provided for the elderly we would actually see crimes being committed by older people in dementia. But thankfully we have a good system in place for those who lose control of their impulses due to dementia and the community is kept safe from them while they are cared for. But unfortunately the same services are not always provided for those who are younger who have severe mental illness, and this is why we see more crimes committed by younger people with mental symptoms.

The Question Our Illness Keeps Us From Asking

After writing this chapter I ran this question by someone I know “If you started getting intrusive violent or blasphemous thoughts, as someone with sound reasoning, what would your reaction be?” I wanted to know what a normal reaction would be for someone who doesn’t have a mental illness and who is thinking clearly, if this happened to them. And she responded “I’d be asking what’s wrong with my brain?” She went on to explain that she’d be very worried her brain was damaged and she’d developed a mental condition, and that her next step would be seeing a doctor and asking them what could be wrong with her.

This answer hit me hard. Wow, how unfortunate it is that those of us with these conditions have our reasoning and our awareness hijacked by the illness so that we can’t ask the simple question “what’s wrong with my brain?” and be concerned about our health. The illness traps us in our room for months and months trying to control the violent and blasphemous thoughts, feeling intense guilt, never addressing the real issue, that hey maybe there’s something wrong with my brain’s hardware – maybe I’m ill – and maybe I need to see a psychiatrist or Functional Medicine doctor and be treated. It is unfortunate that so many times mental illnesses hijack our cognitive function and impair our perception so we can’t see our problems for what they really are and problem solve effectively and get help sooner than we usually do. It often takes an intervention on the part of family to get the person to a doctor.

What is Schizophrenia?
I offer online and phone peer support to people with mental illnesses and their family members, and one thing that has become very clear to me as I’ve engaged with them, is that almost no one knows what schizophrenia really is. Even mothers whose adult children have been diagnosed with schizophrenia after a mental health crisis and treatment in a psychiatric hospital, do not know what it is, in particular they often do not know that their adult child experienced psychosis, or understand what psychosis is. They saw that their child said strange things and exhibited strange behaviors, but they don’t know really what it is they were seeing, and that psychosis was causing many of these strange behaviors. In not knowing about psychosis, they are failing to see and understand the core component of their child’s experience that lead to a mental health crisis and resulted in hospitalization.

They’re completely missing what actually happened.

My Gratefulness to God and to the Psychiatric Community for Restoring My Sanity
I first want to explain that my sanity and possibly my life was saved in a psychiatric hospital when a good psychiatrist put me on lithium that brought me out of a psychotic break, and gave me back the use of logic so I could understand God and His truth again.

I believe God uses doctors and hospitals as His agents. We need psychiatric hospitals the way we need ERs and they save lives.

I’m very grateful that psychiatric hospitals and involuntary hospitalization exists! In fact, I even think that involuntary hospitalization needs to be increased to 2-4 weeks from the 72 hours that is usually the law in most states.

Personally I came out of psychosis within 5 days time, but the average time one comes out of it is closer to two weeks, so I believe it should be increased as so many families have the sad story of their psychotic loved one being released too early before the meds kicked in, and racing back to the streets to a lifestyle of illogical living, hiding out in tends from the FBI or refusing to re-establish relationships with family because they believe their family is poisoning them. Some of these people are on the streets in the middle of winter, in dangerous conditions, and some die in such a state.

So we actually need longer involuntary hospitalizations for people with schizophrenia in my opinion.

Lack of Education a Major Deficit in Care
Acknowledging the importance of emergency care in psychiatric hospitals, I also want to draw attention to the deficits and areas that need to be improved. If you have a loved one with schizophrenia, it’s important you understand how the system works and what to expect, what its deficits are, and how to navigate them in order to get the best possible help for your loved one.

The truth is there is a huge lack of education in psychiatric hospitals. The most common protocol is for them to discharge you with a diagnosis, and medication, and instructions on how to take the medication, and give the sufferer and the family zero education about their mental illness.

Once Discharged, the Person is Often Treated as Though They are Not Psychotic
Thus when the family gets home, and the child continues to act different to how he acted before the mental breakdown and hospitalization, families usually deal with him as though he does not have psychosis, as they are unaware he has psychosis, or do not know enough about it to know how to interact with him. When their adult child does things like argues with them about Bible doctrines they used to believe, using nonsensical arguments, or mentions Satan and demons (because they are hearing demonic voices), the mother will tell me that she is going to pray that God will convict her child that he is believing something that goes against the Bible, and convert him back to the faith.

She asks God to appeal to his reason, not understanding that her son is in psychosis, and that the definition of delusions, one of the three core components of psychosis, is that the person’s brain malfunctions, there is reduced neural signaling between the regions of the brain, and the frontal lobe of the brain – the part responsible for reasoning – gets dialed down and disconnected from the other parts, rendering logical thought impossible.

Schizophrenia Similar to a Sleep State, With the Frontal Lobe Under-Active
Psychosis is similar to a sleep state, where there is substantially reduced activity of the frontal lobe and it nearly shuts off, and dreams are highly emotional and nonsensical because emotional centers of the brain are activated, but the frontal lobe, where reason happens, is dialed down.

Such a person needs a lot of understanding and grace, and ongoing medical treatment, but that can’t be given if the parents haven’t been educated on what their child went through and what psychosis is, and they still think his ability to tell right from wrong is fully in tact, and that he was experiencing other kinds of symptoms, but they don’t know about psychosis specifically.

Pressure to Go Off Meds too Soon
If the parents don’t understand their child has been psychotic, and often still is to a large degree after returning home, they can’t adequately support the adult child in taking medication and reducing neuroinflammation so the parts of his brain can connect again, and he can regain the use of his reason. It’s common for parents to want their child off medication, not understanding he’s psychotic and that it’s not safe for his psychosis to go untreated because he can’t reason and will make errors in judgment that can make him a danger to himself or others, and give him untold amounts of mental and psychological suffering. They also often don’t know that anti-psychotic medications are the fastest way to bring a person out of psychosis and work better than natural treatments for this (natural treatments are better for continual improvement; anti-psychotics tend to max out after a few weeks to a few months and continued improvement past that is rare, but they are good for maintaining mental stability and preventing psychotic breaks). The side effects of antipsychotics are atrocious as anyone who has ever been on them will tell you, and the kid will complain and ask to be taken off them, but they are often a necessary evil, as human beings are complex and intelligent beings, and if they lack judgment they can get into all kinds of trouble and danger.

Sometimes pastors may see it as a denial of faith to be on meds, and encourage the person to just pray and seek God. I’ve even experienced pressure from people in the natural health community to not go on medication and use natural approaches, when I was clearly at a point where supplements weren’t working to control my symptoms, and I needed something stronger to pull me out of some residual psychotic symptoms.

There’s pressure from many different sources to take the child off meds before he comes out of psychosis enough to gain awareness of his condition and can be pro-active in his ongoing treatment.

It’s not uncommon that the person goes off meds, and goes back into full-blown psychosis, and enters another crisis situation.

All due to the fact that the family wasn’t educated about psychosis. If they knew what it is, and how serious it is, they would be unlikely to let their child go off the meds and would do everything in their power to keep him on them, until his sanity returned.

Core Beliefs Return to Normal Once Sanity is Restored
Psychosis affects a person’s core beliefs, not because they suddenly believe differently or have made a willful choice to adopt new beliefs, but because losing their ability to reason they now string together information about reality in nonsensical – and often very creative – ways. They change in personality and in values due to it, and adopt strange beliefs and religious practices that aren’t like them, sometimes even holding outright contradictory beliefs. The way to get them to go back to who they were and the beliefs and values they cherished prior to psychosis – back to the real “them” – is to treat their brain. When they see the world correctly, they will return to their usual way of interacting in it and their core beliefs. If in psychosis, the person hasn’t committed sin when they adopt strange beliefs about God or when they stop going to church due to catatonia (inability to move). You can’t act normally with God or anyone else when your basic understanding of the world and of Bible doctrine has been twisted and distorted due to psychosis.

It feels like your brain and sense of self is fragmented. You can’t even adequately connect with yourself, let alone other people, or even God. You can’t even correctly conceptualize who you are, and the person often believes delusions about the self such as that they are secretly famous or have famous people as their friends, or that they are Mary and pregnant with Jesus, and other delusions.

If they were a Christian prior to developing psychosis, a person will start living a Christian life that aligns with the Bible again when their brain goes back to aligning with reality again.

If they were an atheist by choice before entering psychosis, they will return to atheism once sanity returns.

If they were Buddhist before psychosis, they will return to being Buddhist once sanity is restored.

From there they can then decide whether to stay atheist, or stay Buddhist, or to choose to believe in God. When sanity is restored moral agency is restored, they will once again be able to hear and understand the Holy Spirit’s convictions, and they can then be prayed for to become converted.

My Psychosis Taken as Rebellion When it Was Mental Confusion
In my own life, I had been in and out of psychiatric hospitals and my family was still not educated or told about psychosis. My bizarre behavior and adoption of strange beliefs was often (though not always as some did know I was suffering) seen as teenage rebellion and angst, and even many years later during my worst psychotic break I’ve ever had, when at age 32 I ran down the street at 5 am and acted impulsively and bizarrely, and my very logical mother knew something serious was wrong, she still didn’t know it was psychosis. (I had enough awareness to know if I shared my belief with her that I was called by God to open dimension portals to save the world that she would not believe me, but not enough awareness to know that my beliefs were delusional.) After coming out of psychosis in the hospital, I knew immediately I had been experiencing psychosis as the new thought patterns that aligned with reality were so obviously on-point, and my old distorted thought patterns now seemed nonsensical, but there was much I still needed to know about psychosis, and some of the other symptoms I needed to monitor and watch out for, and I didn’t know to do that or how to do that, and the doctors and staff did not educate me about my psychotic break and my mental illness (I was diagnosed with bipolar 1 at that time, and then later schizoaffective, both of which are very similar to schizophrenia). I was just discharged and sent home, and this is the norm for mental health treatment. I had to educate myself when I got home, and I found it difficult to find adequate information about my illness and other similar psychotic illnesses like schizophrenia. There’s a huge lack of education on this mental illness in society, and a huge need for it. Even when I explain to them what it is, they are so unfamiliar with it that much confusion still exists in their mind. So I decided to write a whole article on what schizophrenia is, to endeavor to make the condition more familiar and less shrouded in darkness.

What Society Thinks Schizophrenia Is
The commonly-held misconception in society is that schizophrenia is when a person has multiple personalities. When they express one personality for a while and then involuntarily switch and express another personality; it kind of comes over them. You may have heard friends tease each other, referencing the condition in a joking and inaccurate way, when their friend makes quick changes in preferences. One says “I want to go to Subway, no wait let’s go bowling instead.” Their friend jokes “You’re so schizophrenic, make up your mind!”

Multiple personalities is not schizophrenia. Multiple Personality Disorder (now called Dissociative Identity Disorder – DID), is a different condition from schizophrenia. People with schizophrenia do not have multiple personalities. Rather they experience something that feels like a fragmentation of the self, a fragmentation of their perception of reality, along with auditory hallucinations (voices), or visual hallucinations. Not everyone with schizophrenia has both hallucinations and delusions. Only one is needed to get a diagnosis of schizophrenia, or you can also get a diagnosis from having a thought disorder with no hallucinations or delusions. Word salad which is where you can’t string together a coherent sentence, and other forms of incoherent speech are usually the indicators psychiatrists use to determine the person is experiencing thought disorder, as it reveals their thoughts and not just their words are incoherent. (The reason behind why the person is speaking unintelligible words is because their thoughts are disjointed and incoherent).

Disintegrated or fragmented is a good descriptor of what it feels like to have schizophrenia. Your perception can’t integrate and you can’t see reality as one coherent picture. You don’t have a sense of self that is coherent either and may think you’re God and yourself, or that you’re famous or somehow connected with famous people and can’t see that doesn’t make sense.

Brain scans of people with the condition show the frontal lobe – the part of the brain that allows people to reason and think logically – is dialed down and not signaling properly with the other regions of the brain. The person enters a mental state that is similar to dreaming where the frontal lobe is similarly dialed down and there’s emotion and activity going on in other regions of the brain, but not in the logical center.

Schizophrenia is not an ultra-rare condition, and somewhere around 1.5-2% of the population have it. Let’s just take the number on the higher end…in a church with 100 people, you’ll have two members with schizophrenia. Bipolar 1 is a similar illness to schizophrenia, and it affects 3.5% of the population. That’s 3 people in a church of 100. So in a church of 100, there will be 5 people with a psychotic disorder in your midst.

The truth is you have probably already come in contact with someone with schizophrenia.

Homeless and Schizophrenic?
You know that homeless person on the side of the road, that you drive by on your way to work? The red head with the slight build who is very charismatic and looks like he could be an actor or a speaker? The one who looks like he’s talking to himself, or maybe speaking out loud to God, who folds his hands to pray and then shouts? If you walk by him he calls out to you to prepare for the end of the world, and people often wonder why he doesn’t try to better himself and get a job instead of being hyper-focused on the end. Doesn’t he want to eat? He looks famished. The one that when people engage with him in conversation they find out he has unconventional ideas about God and science, claims to belong to a religion that no one else is a part of. He thinks he’s somehow related to John the Baptist. At first you think this means he thinks he shares DNA with the prophet and is an ancestor, but if you talk more with him you find out he thinks he’s the successor of John the Baptist and has the prophetic gift. But his prophecies don’t make logical sense and definitely don’t line up with the scriptures.

He claims to have been a concert violinist in the past, but most people doubt that’s true, because they’ve grown used to the fact that much of what he says doesn’t add up or make sense. Then one day someone gives him a violin and you see him on the street corner playing it in beautiful tones. Clearly he’s not a novice. So what is he doing on the streets; why isn’t he still playing in the concert halls?

This man has schizophrenia.

The Word is The Source of Truth
But what is schizophrenia? Well the way to conceptualize anything is by the Word of God alone. We don’t want human opinions when it comes to truth, because human ideas of what is true outside of and apart from the Word of God, will just be error and not true at all.

As explained in an earlier article, the Bible does support that mental illnesses exist, that the brain is a physical organ that responds to psychological stress or physical stressors such as Lyme disease with dysfunction and malfunction, just as every other part of the body can do. Because we have that basis from the Word of God, we can study the human brain using MRI imaging machines and blood tests, and questionnaires to gauge mental acuity and analyze a person’s perception and processing. Because the brain is physical and people do not possess and immaterial spirit, we can study the brain, even the parts that make up the self and the personality, and our perception of the self.

When the brain malfunctions it’s much more complex than when a kidney malfunctions. Our brain is involved in all of our perceptions of the world around us. Our eyes merely take in information; they don’t conceptualize. To even look at a computer screen and know it’s a computer, involves brain processing. The eyes only take in the image; they don’t recognize it as a computer.

Every thing that we look at with our eyes in this world, has a corresponding neural circuitry in our brain that recognizes that thing and tells us what it is. Not only does it tell us what it is, but it tells us what attributes and qualities it possesses – whether it is blue or black, whether it is large or small, how many inches high it is, and how it relates to other things and what attributes it shares in common with them. For instance, our brain categorizes information and can conclude that a hammer and a wrench are both tools, categorizing them based on functionality.

Our brain tells us when we’ve said something that is an exaggeration, and sends an impulse to us, if we are a Christian, to correct our mistake, and to make a point to be accurate. It tells us also when we under-emphasize something important and need to put more emphasis on it.

Involuntary, unconscious processes in our brain tell us when we’re sitting upright and when we’re too far to the side, and the result is we never fall over or stumble out of control.

Our brain does all of this, and so much more, every day. But when someone has psychosis, all of these categorizations get misplaced and connected in the wrong ways. Incoherence and illogical thinking results. A person may see a wrench and hammer and conclude that the common denominator between the two is that they are used by a person, rather than that they are tools. The person can no longer see what things are, and the connections between ideas; can no longer categorize information into the right concepts.

A good definition for the distorted thinking that occurs in psychosis is that it is when your brain makes the wrong connections between things and ideas, and when it fails to see what things are, often combining two things or concepts into one idea. For instance, the FBI which is a purely human organization, will get conflated with a divine mind, and the person will believe the FBI is basically an omnipresent, omniscient organization with more than human power to spy on them at all times and always know where they are.

Or the person may believe something like they are God, or a famous person and themselves at the same time.

Hardware and Software Analogy
Let’s use the analogy of hardware and software with computers. Let’s say that a “hardware” problem is a brain problem – the biochemistry and neural signaling is disrupted and contorted, and this is happening at the biological level. This is causing the person to come to false beliefs.

And let’s say a “software” problem is something psychological, like an atheist who doesn’t want to believe there is a God because he has sins he wants to keep doing. So he adopts a false belief due to a spiritual and psychological reason.

Or a software problem can also be a lack of education or being taught misinformation. Someone in a Buddhist country has never had access to a Bible, therefore they lack the knowledge necessary to adopt Christian beliefs.

Psychosis a “Hardware” problem, Not a “Software” Problem
Using this analogy psychosis is not a “software” problem. The person isn’t coming to the wrong conclusions about what things are and how they are interrelated, categorized, and connected because they have been raised with falsehoods, and they need to have access to the truth in order to come to the right conclusions, or something purely psychological such as they don’t feel ready to hear the truth so they are blocking it out and choosing to believe a lie instead. Of course, this happens to people all the time. Such people are merely misinformed and need education, or they are dealing with psychological pain that needs to be addressed and they may need encouragement and to develop resolve to embrace the truth, knowing truth will eventually set us free, even if there’s pain along the way, and facing and embracing the truth is the only way to peace.

It’s even possible for a person to believe very nonsensical things due to psychological reasons. A person involved in pantheistic religions, may want to believe they are a divine being, part of the divine consciousness that permeates and lives inside all things. Or someone may reject Christianity to believe in evolution, that they are no more than a highly evolved animal and there is no God.

It’s true that people can believe very disjointed, nonsensical things for psychological reasons, perhaps a desire to be the highest authority in their life and not to submit to God’s authority and His moral law. A young man may want to sleep around in college, and he knows it’s wrong, and so he embraces evolution and secularism as a way to justify his actions and continue his immoral behaviors.

A young woman growing up in a Buddhist part of the world like Bangladesh for instance, may believe in pantheism because she hasn’t had access to knowledge of the Bible. She may be innocently ignorant.

But people in full psychosis are different. They are not choosing to believe nonsensical things. And they aren’t believing nonsensical things due to misinformation or a lack of education. These things aren’t the cause behind their nonsensical conclusions. They are dealing with a “hardware” problem, not a “software” problem. No, in their case, the brain has been rewired due to the altered neurochemistry, and electrical waves and other physical factors, and it can’t operate with the correct neural connections needed to arrive at true conclusions that allow it to rightly interpret and understand reality

This is a hardware problem. The person’s brain is malfunctioning, rendering sane, logical thought impossible.

Another term for the laws of logic, is the laws of understanding. It is the laws of logic that allow us to understand anything. When your physical brain malfunctions in such a severe way to render logical thought completely impossible, as happens during a psychotic break, understanding becomes impossible.

Thus the person can’t understand what things are and how they work and how they are connected with one another.

Thus the person wrongly concludes something like the FBI is inserting messages into their minds when they hear audible voices, because they can’t rightly conceptualize what the FBI is, giving them divine properties such as the ability to read and understand one’s thoughts, to always know where they are at all times, rather than seeing them as finite human beings in an organization limited by the current technology of the time period. They lose the ability to understand the current technology. Even if they study it, their mind forms wrong connections and conclusions, such as that the technology definitely can read our thoughts and insert thoughts into our mind, because if we can put thoughts and concepts into a computer through internet signals, then the FBI could use such signals to insert thoughts into our minds which will be picked up like a radio frequency and projected into our mind.

They can’t see that the human brain doesn’t have receptors radio signals, and has the completely wrong configuration to pick up such signals and interpret them as messages.

They also can’t rightly conceptualize what schizophrenia or mental illness is, and so they can’t make the connection that voices in your head could be mental illness.

When we’re talking about perception we’re basically talking about consciousness. And who knows all that is involved in consciousness? No one but God can understand something so complex. To be conscious involves God giving the breath of life into our body.

“For in him we live and move and have our being.”
Acts 17:28

“…He who created the heavens and stretched them out, who spread out the earth and its offspring, who gives breath to the people on it and life to those who walk in it:”
Isaiah 42:5

“In his hand is the life of every creature and the breath of all mankind.”
Job 12:10

Our bodies are made of atoms, but these atoms are not conscious on their own. It takes the power of God to make us conscious. The mystery of how the Holy Spirit infuses the body and brain with life and gives us consciousness can never be known, and is outside of the ability of a human being to understand. That is God’s domain and only a divine Being can understand it.

However, while we can’t study the Holy Spirit who gives us consciousness and life, we can study our physical brain and how it operates while alive with science.

Imagine the complexity of the thought patterns and perceptions of a human being. Now imagine that due to the fall, malfunction of this brain is introduced and becomes possible (illness and malfunction were not possible before Adam introduced sin into this world). Now imagine that a specific individual person is healthy and happy in their early years, until they experience very real personal stressors in their life, such as they get bit by a tick and develop Lyme disease, or they live in a house with copper pipes, and they become copper toxic, and this affects the epigenetic expression of their body and they develop a mental illness. As you can guess, the possible ways their brain could malfunction and their perception could become distorted, could be almost endless.

This is why when a person develops schizophrenia, their perceptions and ideas about many different topics and concepts in the world can be distorted in almost endless ways. They can be illogical in an almost endless amount of ways, and there are an almost endless about of delusions they can believe. The delusions can be things that are incorrect but make some sense as they could be possible but simply aren’t, such as believing one is famous, or they can be things even more incoherent and disjointed in logic such as believing one is literally the devil and God at the same time, or that one can open dimension portals by swiping their hand. Depending on the unique neural wiring the inflammation from the underlying illness is giving you, you will have different connections, and they may be only slightly disjointed and disconnected from reality, or they may be very disjointed and very disconnected with the logical connections we see in reality.

Grouping of Symptoms
Schizophrenia is a grouping of mental symptoms. Psychiatry has simply grouped together a set of mental malfunction and given it the name schizophrenia. In mainstream psychiatry, the mental illnesses recognized in the DSM 5 (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual which is the book Drs. use for diagnosing and treating patients), are defined by clusters of symptoms. There’s many different overlapping symptoms among diagnoses. For instance, post-traumatic stress syndrome (PTSD) has many overlapping symptoms with schizophrenia. But in order for one to be said to have schizophrenia, they must have a certain number of symptoms listed in the schizophrenia diagnosis. They can’t get a schizophrenia diagnosis from having some of the symptoms of schizophrenia; they must meet a certain base amount of the schizophrenia symptoms in order to be said to have it.

In mainstream psychiatry, medical tests are not done to determine if one has schizophrenia, and there are no physical markers that can be said to be schizophrenia. What I mean by this is that while schizophrenia has been linked to things like high dopamine, and this is known in psychiatry and can be found in the medical literature, and it’s also been linked to high glutamate. So there isn’t one biomarker that has been shown to cause schizophrenia. There’s a number of different imbalances that can be involved, and there’s evidence for different kinds of schizophrenia. Someone can get the same symptoms of schizophrenia from high dopamine, another from high glutamate.

No medical testing is done to diagnose someone with schizophrenia, however. Diagnosis is given based on an interview with a psychiatrist, and written tests. And while high dopamine is involved in schizophrenia, high dopamine is also involved in anxiety disorders and other mental illnesses. Thus there are a number of mental disorders that can be produced by high dopamine, and just which symptoms the person develops from the high dopamine will vary from person to person, due to genetics, and their unique individuality.

This is very different from say getting a diagnosis of cancer, where a biopsy is taken, and that specific form of cancer is found in your body, and you’re diagnosed based on that. But this way of diagnosing is similar to the way something like an autoimmune disease is diagnosed. Sometimes CRP (inflammation) markers are raised and a person is diagnosed with an autoimmune disease based on that, but many times there are no physical markers when a person has an autoimmune disease and they are diagnosed based on symptoms alone.

So, really schizophrenia is just a cluster of mental symptoms a person is suffering with.

Which is why it’s so common to start off with one diagnosis – say depression – and then later your low mood and lack of energy develops into seeing and hearing things that aren’t there, and you get a schizophrenia diagnosis. If depression and schizophrenia were biochemically completely different, it wouldn’t be so common that depression develops into schizophrenia. This happens because many of the same imbalances that cause depression also cause schizophrenia, such as weakened immunity, histamine toxicity, Lyme disease.

All Mental Illnesses in DSM 5 Epigenetic in Nature, Not Purely Genetic
Mainstream psychiatry as well as Functional Medicine recognizes that all the mental illnesses in the DSM 5 are epigenetic in nature. What this means is one is not born with them and they aren’t purely genetic. They come about as a result of genetic susceptibility (usually) and environmental stressors. These stressors can be purely psychological, such as verbal abuse, or physical such as Lyme disease.

What this means is if you shift the body towards health and balance, you can shift the epigenetic expression of the body, and your symptoms can become less severe and you can improve. Conversely, if you come in contact with more toxins or stressors, symptoms will worsen.

Yet unfortunately, mainstream psychiatrists often say things to their newly diagnosed patients like “You will have schizophrenia for the rest of your life.” While it is common that by the time a person has had a complete psychotic break that their body is very toxic and there’s lots of inflammation and weakened immunity, and that many of these people won’t return to how they were before developing schizophrenia, and their condition is very serious, it’s inaccurate to say they definitely won’t recover completely. Spontaneous recovery due to reduction in the stressors that brought on the condition does happen, in fact there is a study that says the spontaneous recovery rate is 50% in underdeveloped countries.

Many Functional Medicine doctors believe the toxins in industrialized countries is what contributes to us having more mental conditions and a lesser rate of spontaneous recovery from conditions like schizophrenia.

Hollywood made a movie called a Beautiful Mind about the mathematician John Nash who had schizophrenia. But they left out that he was actually one of those people who spontaneously recovered.

It does happen, and if you add in nutrient protocols, and detox protocols that get toxins out of your cells and brain and treat your condition, there’s an even higher chance you will recover.

Schizophrenia is like depression. Perhaps you’ve known someone with a life-long tendency towards depression who had decades where they were fine and happy, then when major stressors in life hit such as a death in the family, they would slip into depression again for 4 or 5 years, then come out of it and be fine again. That’s how epigenetic conditions work. The greater the stressors, the more it turns on the expression of the faulty genes and symptoms worsen; the less the stress the lighter the symptoms, and it some cases it’s possible to completely recover.

That person with depression may never experience it again in a chronic way if they are treated with nutrient therapy. I know my depression has improved greatly from amino acids and b6 which is the cofactor the body uses to make calming neurotransmitters like Gaba and serotonin.

If you do happen to mostly or fully recover from schizophrenia, mainstream psychiatrists will say you had brief psychotic disorder if your psychosis didn’t last more than 6 months and that you didn’t really have schizophrenia after all.

If your psychosis lasted longer than 6 months, but you’ve now recovered they will usually just change your diagnosis with no explanation about it, from schizophrenia to something like Borderline Personality Disorder (this happened to a friend of mine), leaving you to assume that they must have decided they got your initial diagnosis wrong.

A mistake in diagnosis does happen, but if someone gets better from their condition they weren’t simply misdiagnosed. Their condition has improved. They’ve experienced a partial or full recovery from it. This is not usually acknowledged by mainstream psychiatry, sadly, even though they definitely believe in this concept as it follows from the belief that these conditions are epigenetic in nature, and if you were to point out their epigenetic nature, they would in fact agree with you when directly questioned.

But it’s part of the mainstream psychiatry culture to be silent about this fact and not make people aware of this.

How Functional Medicine Diagnoses Mental Conditions

In Functional Medicine a person is diagnosed based on testing, but they are not diagnosed with an illness based on the testing. So you wouldn’t go to a Functional Medicine doctor and have your copper levels tested and maybe your methylation tested or get tested for mercury toxicity, have these tests come back positive, and then get a schizophrenia diagnosis. They also wouldn’t give you an MS diagnosis or anything like that either. Rather, your diagnosis would be copper toxicity, overmethylation (if you tested as overmethylating), and mercury toxicity. This would be your diagnosis, and then the mental symptoms you had – say delusions and hallucinations – would be seen as symptoms. You would then work to reduce your delusions and hallucinations by getting the heavy metals out of your body and correcting the biochemical imbalance of overmethylation with supplements that slow down the methylation cycle. You would then likely experience a reduction in delusions and hallucinations.

Seeing Functional Medicine practitioners and being tested and put on supplement protocols to balance my biochemical imbalances was a huge part of my healing, and I see continual improvement in my thinking even today. I keep getting better as I do different treatments, most recently herbs that boost something called BDNF that enables the body to heal and repair neurons.

Schizophrenia is a Syndrome, or Condition, Not an Illness
I prefer to refer to the Functional Medicine way of referring to mental conditions. I don’t think it’s accurate to conceptualize schizophrenia as an illness of its own. It’s a white lie to say it’s its own illness, because an illness requires known pathology that is unique to that illness. If you have ovarian cancer for instance, it’s diagnosed based on the actual presence of the cancer and the location. No other condition has that pathology except cancer. But with schizophrenia there are multiple known pathologies, not just one. For instance, both low and high dopamine contribute to schizophrenia symptoms, high histamine does too, as do many other things. I think it’s honest to think of schizophrenia as a condition or syndrome, or a set of symptoms. Like how Chronic Fatigue syndrome can be caused by many different things and is referred to as a syndrome, we really should be referring to schizophrenia as a syndrome as well, caused by things like heavy metal toxicity, or abuse experienced as a child, or Lyme disease, etc.

The term ‘schizophrenia’ is helpful as it allows for a person to quickly refer to a set of symptoms all at once, rather than having to list out 10-15 symptoms every time they want to mention what they are experiencing or refer to their condition. But we need to be calling this schizophrenia syndrome and conceptualize it as a syndrome. I think this is the honest way to look at it.

Symptoms of Schizophrenia

But which symptoms are we talking about here? Which symptoms make up schizophrenia?

There are a number of them, but I would say that the symptom of psychosis is the most important one. It’s the one that affects a person’s ability to tell right from wrong and function as a moral agent. As Christians we understand that this function is the most important one that God gave us, and it’s far superior to other functions such as the ability to feel emotions, that if they are compromised is not nearly as serious of an issue, though it’s still a problem. Moral perception is involved in our ability to glorify God, to make choices to repent of sin, have faith in a Savior, and walk in obedience to His commands. It’s this perception more than any other that separates us from the animals and makes us in the image of God, though every part of our design is also involved in us being in the image of God, this one is the most central.

Psychosis is the symptom that can lead to things like a suicide because a person is under the delusion that they must kill themselves in order to save the world. It’s the symptom that involves errors in judgment and in the understanding of the world and how it works.

Psychosis is three main symptoms: delusions, thought disorder, and hallucinations. Delusions are nonsensical beliefs that a person cannot see around or reason to know they are untrue. The person comes to these nonsensical conclusions and beliefs because their brain is biochemically imbalanced, and the imbalance makes it so they cannot use the laws of logic (the laws required to understand anything). Their brain malfunctions and becomes incapable of logic. Thus they deduce and add up many things wrong. The more severe the illness, the more things they get wrong and can’t add up logically.

Thought disorders are ontologically the same concept as delusions. Ontology is the study in philosophy of what things are. For instance, the definition of a square being a shape with 4 equal sides and corners at each end, is ontology. So what I mean by referring to ontology is that thought disorders (most of them; there are a few that don’t fit into the same category), and delusions are the same concept. They are when the brain breaks the laws of logic, and thus the person can’t understand things, or make sense when they speak. An example of a thought disorder is something like incoherent speech, also known as word salad. The person seems disoriented, and gives random incoherent words, like “Eat, figurines. I must solution for ever.” Another example of a thought disorder is clanging speech, where a person uses words with the same consonants and general sound, sometimes in a sing-songy poetic way. So you may ask them how they are doing, and they may reply “Cocacola clutters the counter-top, but I like a crisp sip of soda.”

There are some thought disorders that ontologically are not the same concept as delusions. One of these is poverty of speech, which is just where the brain is devoid of conscious, intentional thinking, and the person is zoning out due to inflammation that has become so strong it’s made it impossible or very hard for the person to access thoughts and retrieve information. This obviously isn’t the same thing as a delusion that involves neural wiring distorting logic. It can be from extreme stress and inflammation and parts of the brain just stop working due to fear or stress and are temporarily “paralyzed”.

But the thought disorders that are at the heart of psychotic disorders are the ones where there’s a break-down in logic. In psychiatry they break up delusions and the thought disorders that also involve a loss of logic and problems with logic, and list them as separate symptoms. This is probably done to distinguish them from each other, so a family member or a doctor can distinguish between when a person is more loosely connected with reality as is the case when a person has word salad and can’t even form a coherent sentence, and when they are more closely connected with reality, as is the case with say a persecutory delusion that the FBI is inserting thoughts into their mind, and the person can form these thoughts into sentences and talk about them. In both cases – word salad and a persecutory delusion – the person’s brain is incapable of logic, but definitely with word salad their logic is even more disjointed than with the persecutory delusion.

It’s important to understand and point out that when a person has word salad or other incoherent speech, that their brain is malfunctioning and this is why the speech isn’t coherent. This is not a problem with the mouth or the ability to speak. The person can form words fine, and they have no speech impediment. The reason nonsense is spoken is because the brain is confused and is processing ideas and concepts in a disjointed, nonsensical way.

Hallucinations are when the part of the brain involved in imagery and sound is over-activated, often due to brain inflammation. Just as your computer can have images and music pop up randomly when you haven’t clicked on anything, when you get a computer virus, then brain when inflamed can have random images and voices pop up and see and hear things that aren’t there.

Of these symptoms, the most important is delusions and thought disorder. This is not to say that auditory or visual hallucinations are not a series problem and do not need to be treated – they are definitely very serious and cause a lot of distress to a person with a psychotic disorder, and they definitely need to be treated. But the most important symptoms are delusions and thought disorders – the symptoms where there is a loss of understanding and logic. If someone sees a vision they think is from God, but it’s a delusion, and in this vision “God” tells them to kill themselves in order to save the world, if they still have the ability to be logical and they have moral understanding, they can check that message with the scriptures, and know there is no way God would actually want them to do that, and that it goes against God’s Word to take their life – the Bible sees it as self-murder and instead our admonition in the scriptures is to take care of our bodies because Christ loves us and died for us.

But if they lose judgment and moral perception, then they cannot check the hallucination with the truth in God’s Word. They may study their Bible and come to wrong conclusions, and may determine that they do need to take their life.

A delusion such as this one is known as a delusion of persecution or martyrdom, and this is a common symptom people in full psychosis experience.

Other symptoms of schizophrenia include things like intense fatigue, catatonia which is where the person is frozen in a position and cannot move, which is very debilitating as sometimes people in such a state cannot even get up to go to the bathroom or to eat or drink, cognitive symptoms which mean it’s hard for them to figure out how to do basic tasks such as how to load a CD onto a computer, or they can’t process the meaning of the words when they read a book, and they have to keep reading a sentence over-and-over, racing thoughts, anxiety, insomnia, flat affect, which is where your face does not show emotion, anhedonia which is where you can’t feel your emotions and you just feel completely numb.

Schizophrenia isn’t the only mental illness that involves psychosis (delusions, though disorder, and hallucinations). PTSD can also sometimes involve hallucinations. Bipolar 1 disorder always involves psychosis. Even anxiety disorders and depression are now known to sometimes involve psychosis, and I think psychosis is on the rise so some of this may not just be psychiatrists becoming more aware of psychosis occurring in depression and anxiety disorders, but that there’s just more people developing psychosis than in the past.

The illnesses with psychosis as a main symptom are really schizophrenia, bipolar 1, schizoaffective, and delusional disorder. But once again, I believe it’s honest to think of these as conditions or syndromes, not as individual illnesses.

Bipolar 1 and schizoaffective, are basically just schizophrenia with mood symptoms. Both involve mania – periods of elevated mood and energy – and depression – periods of reduction in mood and energy. In bipolar 1 the person only has psychotic symptoms when either in depression or mania, and not when cycling out of depression and into mania, or the reverse, cycling out of mania and into depression. In schizoaffective, the person has psychotic symptoms the entire time, whether in depression, mania, or in-between.

The Simplest Way to Explain Psychotic Disorders Medically

After seeing doctors – both mainstream psychiatrists and being put on medication – and Functional Medicine doctors and doing supplement protocols, and doing personal research about psychotic disorders over the course of about 8 years now, my conclusion is that the simplest way to explain psychotic disorders like schizophrenia from a medical standpoint is to say that a dysregulated immune system is the underlying common denominator behind all cases of psychosis.

It’s the dysregulated immunity that you will see mentioned in the medical literature as the cause of both the positive symptoms like voices and delusions, and negative symptoms like catatonia, poverty of speech, and anhedonia.

In cases of systemic inflammation it’s common for part of the immune response to be revved up too high. This is a state the body goes into when killing off infections and protecting itself against pathogens or psychological stressors. This brings on the fight-or-flight response, which is a state of heightened alertness that leads into the psychotic symptoms.

In fight-or-flight other parts of the immune response are dialed down. This brings on the negative symptoms.

If the person stays too long in fight-or-flight they can have a chronic psychotic disorder.

Not everyone who enters fight-or-flight will develop psychosis. Some people in chronic fight-or-flight will get anxiety disorders, cancer, and other illnesses and not a psychotic disorder. The specific condition you get is different, and things like genetics, your unique brain temperament and biochemistry, and the types of exposures and stressors you’re exposed to play a factor in which illnesses and which symptoms you will develop.

When the under-activated part of the immune system is balanced out and boosted by to health, negative symptoms reduce and are eliminated.

When the overactive immune response which is giving brain inflammation, is calmed back down and balanced out, the positive symptoms like delusions and voices abate.

When the immune system is dysregulated, neurotransmitters and hormones like cortisol get thrown out of whack. The exact way in which they are thrown off is different and varies person-by-person due to factors like your unique genetics, the type of brain and temperament you have, etc. Some people are naturally, even when healthy, higher in dopamine than other people. These people tend to be very creative. When in a state of chronic fight-or-flight when dopamine usually rises even higher, these people experience much higher dopamine levels than the general population and are more prone to developing psychotic disorders specifically as a result of stress, as opposed to developing cancer.

Even among people who develop psychotic disorders, there’s variation. Some of them experience histamine being too high, rather than dopamine. Besides genetic factors and brain temperament and natural biochemistry, which can be histamine-dominant even in a healthy person and predispose the person to histamine toxicity when in a chronic state of fight-or-flight (histamine-dominant people tend to be your very ambitious and highly motivated people), exposure to mold mycotoxins is another factor that tends to cause people to develop psychosis from histamine rather than other neurotransmitters. A history of allergies and sensitivities also makes a person more likely to develop psychosis from histamine.

Fun-loving, life of the party people are often naturally high in serotonin. They do very poorly on SSRIs, which can make them manic and psychotic. When in the fight-or-flight response such people tend to overproduce serotonin and can become psychotic from serotonin going too high.

You can see how there are biochemical types of psychosis, and even within each profile, there’s variation, for instance two people may both dopamine and histamine dominant psychosis, but one of them may have dopamine and histamine at the same levels, and the other may have dopamine higher than histamine. Or maybe the second person also has slightly high serotonin levels that are also contributing to their psychosis and revved up state.

No two people are exactly alike. And there’s more variation than just neurotransmitters too. One person may have lead toxicity contributing to the immune dysregulation, and the other person may have mercury toxicity. These variations will affect how the psychosis manifests and also which neurotransmitters are dysregulated and in what way.

But the common denominator between all cases of psychotic conditions, is the immune dysregulation.

I’ve found that taking herbs to boost and modulate my immune response has been one of my most effective treatments for my mental symptoms. In particular, my anhedonia, which is a state of total emotional numbness, did not respond very well to medications, which is common, but it responded excellently to supplements that boost the immune response and get blood flow into the deep regions of the brain to restore cell-signaling and neurotransmitters to those parts, which resulted in feelings coming back.

It’s well-known in the medical literature that negative symptoms don’t respond as well to anti-psychotic medications as the positive symptoms do, thus many people who have been brought out of psychosis with antipsychotics are left in a state where they aren’t delusional and their voices are greatly reduced, but they still have no emotions, and have symptoms like flat affect where they have little facial expression, and poverty of thought where they don’t have access to thoughts and their brain is very dialed down so they can’t participate in life and communicate with loved ones.

The immune-modulating supplements like bovine colostrum and ginkgo biloba can help greatly in such cases.

The Walsh protocol for mental illnesses and conditions helps greatly too. Walsh has identified 5 different biotypes that can cause everything from ADHD and depression to schizophrenia and bipolar. He focuses mainly on neurotransmitters and biological processes that affect neurotransmitters, such as methylation which if too low can cause a person to have too high levels of histamine, and if too high causes a person too have too low levels of histamine (too high or too low is not good; balance is key), and causes dopamine and norepinephrine to be too high.

I have psychosis from 3 different Walsh biotypes, and taking supplements to correct these 3 different imbalances helped me with mood swings and logic, in particular. But the immune-modulating supplements helped me most with the anhedonia.

Everyone is different in how they respond but many people have seen a moderate to great improvement from the Walsh protocol. It’s often the case that a person with a psychotic condition can greatly reduce their antipsychotic medication after getting on Walsh supplements, and some can go off meds completely and supplements are enough to control symptoms. This is me most of the time. Most of the time I don’t need medication and can control my symptoms with supplements alone, but when exposed to mold or ragweed, which I’m very sensitive to, histamine goes too high for me and brings on compulsions and psychosis, and I need to get on antihistamine antipsychotics at a low dose.

But for the most part I only take supplements and have good mental processing.

If you’re interested in learning about supplement protocols, I recommend a book called ‘Natural Healing for Schizophrenia’ by Eva Edelman. In it she includes all of the currently-known natural protocols for schizophrenia. It’s very comprehensive, and I found it very helpful in my recovery.

It is at first quite overwhelming, so don’t take it all in at once, but try a few things in it and see if they help you, and if not try a few more.

Here is a link to purchase the book:

Natural Healing for Schizophrenia & Other Common Mental Disorders | Borage Books

I also recommend William Walsh’s book called ‘Nutrient Power’. He developed the Walsh protocol, so his book includes only one protocol and is a lot less comprehensive than Eva Edelman’s book (The Walsh protocol is in Eva’s book too). However, his protocol is very helpful and his book is more intellectual and scientific, so it appeals to that kind of reader. Eva’s book is written in a way that is tailored more to the average person without a scientific background.

Nutrient Power – Walsh Research Institute

But, If My Loved One is Hearing Demon Voices, Doesn’t That Mean They are Being Harassed by Demons?

It’s common when a loved one is found to be hearing voices, especially if the loved one reports hearing demon voices, and is diagnosed with a psychotic disorder such as schizophrenia, that family members will ask the question: “How can this not be demons when my loved one is hearing demonic voices and the nature of the things they are commanding him to do are immoral things like suicide?”

They see the voices as having evil intent, however, they aren’t taking into account a couple of very important things.

Everyone Hears Demons, but In Cases of Real Demons, They Flee When We Resist Them
For one, everyone hears demons in some way and is tempted by demons and yet we aren’t all troubled over the voices to the extent that the loved one who has been hospitalized is troubled.

There are actual mediums who channel spirits every day (this is a serious sin don’t do it! I’m just bringing it up to make a point), and yet who do not experience the loud voices that people diagnosed with schizophrenia here, making it hard or impossible to sleep, troubling them 24/7.

There are over a billion Catholics in the world who practice sorcery and mediumship by praying to Mary and the saints. They are not all troubled in the way people diagnosed with schizophrenia are troubled.

I’m not making the argument here that demons can’t trouble someone mentally or insert loud voices into their minds…in fact there are accounts of people involved in witchcraft and other false religions where people report they are mentally harassed by demons…I’m just endeavoring to stimulate logical thought when it comes to this subject.

I think there’s far too much emotional thinking when it comes to the subject of demon-possession, and not enough sound logic.

The Bible says every Christian will be tempted by Satan. This is a normal part of life in this world. That’s not to say it isn’t difficult or awful to have Satan here in this world with us, but due to the fall and the situation we’re in now as a result of the fall, Christians are daily tempted by demons directly everyday. Even Jesus was tempted by Satan daily when He walked on earth as a man. The Bible doesn’t say that we’re supposed to consider temptation to mean there’s anything wrong with us or our relationship with God. We aren’t supposed to pray away the tempting voice of Satan; we are supposed to resist it, and we’re told that in resisting that voice it will flee from us. But then we’re told it will return again later to tempt us again. Nothing has gone wrong if we’re tempted and we aren’t supposed to try to pray away all temptation. Rather the answer given is to pray for strength to resist the temptations that Satan will send us throughout our lives.

Demon Voices From Psychosis Do Not Flee for a Time When Resisted
However, with the person experiencing psychosis they will tell you the demon voices do not fit this pattern where if you resist the temptation they go away for a time. During a psychotic episode I had in 2005, I heard demonic voices screaming at me 24/7, all through the night and day. They told me they were going to kill me. I tried to pray them away, called up pastors and had them pray for me, resisted anything I thought was evil, and yet the voices kept coming. I could only sleep 3 hours per night the voices were so loud and I also had extreme anxiety that made it almost impossible to sleep.

If these had been real demons, they would have fled when I resisted their temptations and prayed to God and had others pray for me. Real demons always flee when a person resists them in Christ’s strength.

Satan Doesn’t Usually Let People Know it’s Him When He Tempts People; This is Not Usually His First-Line Strategy

Another important thing to keep in mind is that usually when Satan tempts someone, he doesn’t let them know it’s him. He tries to come to people in the most deceptive way possible, introducing temptations in a way where you think it was your idea to engage in the immoral action you’re being tempted with.

In false religions, demons may appear to people in visions or communications, but they rarely claim to be demons. They usually claim to be ascended masters, or holy angels, or deceased loved ones, or gods and deities.

Satan rarely comes to people and says “Hey it’s me; I want you to kill yourself and here are my arguments as to why you should do it.”

However, this isn’t to say that demons will never disclose themselves for who they are. We know from the scriptures that demons at the time of Christ revealed themselves to be demons on more than one occasion.

“When he arrived at the other side in the region of the Gadarenes, two demon-possessed men coming from the tombs met him. They were so violent that no one could pass that way.

“What do you want with us, Son of God?” they shouted. “Have you come here to torture us before the appointed time?”

The demons begged Jesus, “If you drive us out, send us into the herd of pigs.”

He said to them, “Go!” So they came out and went into the pigs, and the whole herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake and died in the water.”
Matthew 8:28-32

“Moreover, demons came out of many people, shouting, “You are the Son of God!” But he rebuked them and would not allow them to speak, because they knew he was the Messiah.”
Luke 4:41

The demons in these accounts let everyone know they were demons. Satan will do what he perceives to be advantageous to himself. He can take on the form of a snake or he can reveal himself to be who he really is, whichever he thinks will be most advantageous.

So if a loved one is hearing voices that claim to be demons or sound obviously demonic, it’s worth asking the question why would demons be so avert? And consider the possibility that maybe it’s not demons.

The Voices Are Nonsensical
One of the most important points to this discussion is that what loved ones don’t realize is that the voices are nonsensical. This is something the psychiatrist understands however, but unfortunately doctors don’t usually teach and inform the family, even if their loved one signed for them to have access to their records and to speak with doctors. There’s a huge lack of education.

The voices that communicate with them aren’t logical voices, directly going against Bible truth, and trying to get the person to disobey God. For instance, the demon voices that screamed at me for 3 weeks in 2005, and sounded just as audible as if there were people in the room with me screaming at me, screamed “We’re going to kill you before your prayers break Eminem out of the secret society he’s in! Before this wonderful thing comes to pass we’re going to kill you and give you a tragedy instead of the wonderful happy ending the Lord wants!” But the thing is I hadn’t really been communicating with Eminem through the Holy Spirit for the past couple years like I thought I’d been, and I wasn’t really praying Eminem out of a secret society of demon worshippers in the music industry that he was trapped in. In real life, he wasn’t trapped, and was choosing of his own volition to be a musician who made music about immoral themes. He could leave the music business at any time and stop releasing new records.

Some might give the argument “Well Satan can lie, so he could have invented this whole story about Eminem to get you to believe it.” But when Satan gives us false ideas we compare these ideas with the Word of God to check for accuracy and this is how we know they are lies. Every Christian has the ability to do this and the responsibility to do this. So why didn’t I question these beliefs? Why had I believed them whole-heartedly in a steady way for over 3 years? Because I didn’t even think to question them. I thought about these beliefs all the time, but for me they added up with the scriptures, because I’d lost the ability to be logical, and so I came to wrong conclusions when I studied the Bible.

The Bible is a logical book! And I learned this in a profound way after coming out of psychosis and seeing how I couldn’t understand its truths when my brain lost the ability to use logic.

These demon voices believed the same things I did, and had the same fault in adding up logic that I had. They weren’t demons; it was my own brain generating these voices.

The auditory centers of the brain can be over-activated due to inflammation, when a person is psychotic. During this break I had nerve zaps and very painful inflammation through my whole nervous system, including my brain.

The Temptations the Voices Give Have No Clear Motive and are Nonsensical
The “temptations” the demonic voices give aren’t things like “Tell a lie that paints you in a good light so you can get hired for this job.” Or, “Life is hard, you should kill yourself to escape all this crippling responsibility.”

No, what they are experiencing are things like “You are the chosen one who must save the world, and the only way to save the world is to jump off the roof; everyone’s life depends on you”, something no one in their right mind could be tempted by because there’s no one who would actually believe that. Or things like “You are a metaphor, and God is calling you to become a physical human being and the process of transformation is done by dying.”

There’s Lots of Other Nonsensical Chatter That Doesn’t Involve Suicide or Dark Themes Going on All the Time
There’s also a whole lot of other nonsensical “chatter” from the voices that don’t involve death or dying or violence. Things like “God is going to make you into a square today, so believe with all your heart so you can change in shape into a square because this is the shape people are in heaven and it’s your ideal form.” The person may shut themselves in their room all day praying to become a square and taking on their true form.

These are nonsensical things that break the laws of logic. The person may honestly believe it’s a good thing to take their own life, and may think they are doing the right thing by taking their life, may experience false guilt if they don’t do it. They can’t be convicted by God’s Holy Spirit if they lose their moral judgment, and so they can’t respond to conviction.

This is why psychosis is such a dangerous state for a person to be in.

For Something to be a Temptation, the Person Must be Able to Understand God’s Will From the Bible and Go Against His Will
For something to be a temptation, and for one to be said to be tempted, according to how the process of temptation works in the Bible, the person must be able to understand the temptation is a sin. If a person understands the difference between right and wrong, between God’s will and Word and things that go against His will and His Word, it’s only then that a person can give their informed consent to sin. They must be able to be convicted by God’s Holy Spirit not to sin, and be tempted by the devil at the same time, and use their will to make their choice. They can either call on God for help to resist the temptation, or they can give in to the temptation and grieve the Holy Spirit by doing the sin. If they give in, it’s then the Bible defines their action as sin.

“If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them.”
James 4:17

This Bible principle is why animals are not said to have given in to temptation when they harm one another. When a lion has a strong impulse to kill and eat a gazelle, and carries out that impulse and kills the gazelle, we don’t say the devil tempted the lion to do that and the lion gave into the devil’s temptations.

We don’t call the lion ‘guilty’ and sentence him to a court hearing.

This is because the principle of what makes something a temptation and a sin is that the tempted one must have the ability to understand right from wrong, in order to consent to sin, or to consent to take hold of God’s help to resist sin.

But a person in full psychosis loses the ability to discern right from wrong. (Moral perception is not always lost if psychosis is mild.)

Our brain is responsible for all of our perceptions, including judgment and moral perception. Including our ability to understand the concept of sin, and differentiate sin from an obedient, holy action and choice.

While the eyes take in visuals, and the ears take in sound, these visuals and sound are interpreted and really “heard” and “seen” by the brain, not really the eyes and the ears. The eyes and ears are only transporters of the information, not processors or interpreters of the information, thus it’s our brain that gives us the experience of hearing and seeing, and what it feels like to exist in a certain environment and setting, and what it feels like to have a body in a physical world.

Auditory Centers of the Brain Can Generate Sounds, and Visual Centers Can Generate Moving Images On Their Own When Overstimulated
And then the memory auditory and visual files are stored in the brain. They can pop up if the brain is neuro-toxic, and a person can “hear” voices coming from their memory when no person is actually present, or “see” images of people, sometimes as realistic as if an actual person where standing in front of them, even when no other person is present.

These symptoms happen in cases of psychosis, when the auditory and visual centers of the brain are overstimulated due to inflammation.

So when family members think that because their loved one with psychosis is hearing voices, they must be real demons, they are not realizing the brain itself is capable of generating images and sounds all on its own.

The brain is a magnificent organ capable of great things. It is the handiwork of God. Our whole experience in this world is made possible by our brain, and subject to the errors and malfunctioning of our brain if our brain goes haywire. This is why people in psychosis cannot tell they are in psychosis; when our brain interprets and projects our reality a certain way, we’re limited by the interpretation. Being finite, we can’t see around our perception.

Going into psychosis can feel like having a spiritual awakening. One of the big reasons for this, is that when you’re slipping into psychosis, the science of the world and its systems changes. You look at a table, and the way you understand matter and what matter is has changed. Many of the perceptions we use to understand the world around us we can’t put into words and we aren’t even aware of. When these perceptions start getting reconnected in a different way, we suddenly become very aware of all the different perceptions and the amazing capabilities of the brain as it interprets concepts in science, both seen and unseen things like radio waves, theological concepts like the nature of God.

We see from a first-hand perspective what perception entails, and become aware of parts of our perception that are often missed or taken for granted when we’re in our right mind and don’t study or think about perception at all.

Due to how intelligent the brain is, and seeing this first-hand, and also the increase in dopamine, adrenaline, and sometimes histamine that occurs during psychosis and causes the brain to work even faster than normal and be smarter in many ways, although psychotic at the same time, it’s common for the person in psychosis to conclude they are gaining supernatural abilities, or that God Himself is communicating with them, especially if they hear a voice that claims to be God or sounds like God.

Once again, the God-voice is as nonsensical as the demon voices that some people hear. I realized this immediately after coming out of psychosis with lithium in the hospital. The grand dreams and communications I had received, which had been very vivid and looked like blue-ray definition, could no longer fool me, because they were total and complete nonsense.

For instance, I had dreams and communications that I was the chosen one to use the gift of faith to open dimension portals and let angels into our world to fight off demons who were already here, and tip the war in God’s favor and bring about the Second Coming of Christ.

Once out of psychosis, I could see clearly this isn’t the gift of faith as described by the Bible, nor how it works, that both angels and demons were already in our world according to the Bible, and that angels could protect us and had this capability, and God sent them for this purpose, they didn’t need to be let into our world.

I could tell both the science and the theology was off completely and that it was just complete nonsense.

But when in psychosis, the psychotic person can’t tell this, and with the brain inflammation accessing new parts of their brain and bringing up images and information that they didn’t have access to before, It’s a common conclusion people in psychosis make that “There’s no way I’m this smart; God must be communicating with me, or giving me a supernatural ability I didn’t have before”

They can’t tell their brain is making wrong connections though. Psychosis gives them a symptom of unawareness called anosognosia, so they can’t see that their thought patterns are nonsensical and they are believing delusions.

God created our human brain with the ability to understand every category of information and science in our world. Even immaterial things like radio waves, even deep scientific truths like matter and how it’s really energy, and how space is really another dimension connected in relationship with time.

We can also understand spiritual realities. We don’t of course, understand as much as God does, and we have finite understanding, but we were actually created to be in the very Presence of God, and to understand what it’s possible for a person to understand about God Himself, the angels He created, and the other worlds and the nature of life in those worlds and other creations. So even though we’ve never been to those other worlds and creations of God, our brain was created with the capacity to understand those beings and creations.

When a person goes into psychosis, the parts of the brain responsible for understanding all of these amazing things – both spiritual and scientific – get rewired, and the neural circuitry is changed, so they perceive things out of alignment with reality.

What can happen then, is a person can believe they are God, because their brain is contemplating spiritual themes, but doing so in an illogical way, and coming to an illogical conclusion. The person can feel like they are in another realm, because all the perceptions involved in helping them understand their experience in space and time have been disrupted and wrongly connected. You can have the wrong perception of what time is, and how time works. You can believe you are a metaphor, or that you’re a T Rex in the Triassic period and also yourself at the same time.

Due to the highly creative nature of psychosis, and the radical perceptual changes, some people have sought to induce the activation of these perceptions using hallucinogens like LSD and magic mushrooms. I don’t think this is the right route to take, and I believe this to be a sin, because they are knowingly and actively unbalancing their brain. I do think though that studying psychosis from people with psychotic illness who did not induce it or bring it onto themselves can be a way to understand perception and what the brain is capable of. It’s often the case that studying when things go wrong helps us understand what makes them go right and really understand all that is involved in accurate perception.

The Link Between Genius and Madness

Having the genes that contribute to the development of schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders is not all bad. There’s a link between psychosis and creativity that has been known for a long time. It’s also true that people with psychotic disorders have a higher than average intelligence and tend to be very smart. There’s also a link between the mood changes that come with genes associated with mania, and productivity. Some of the people with the most successful and productive companies are not in full-blown mania but live in a state of hypomania (a less severe form of mania that is between the normal energy the typical person has, and full-blown mania).

Robert Schuman, the superb classical music composer of the romantic period, had psychosis. The mathematician John Nash had a diagnosis of schizophrenia. Van Gogh was thought to be psychotic. And there are too many others to mention. Some of the greatest contributors to the fields of science and to music and art were thought to have psychotic disorders, and one of my doctors told me that his patients who had the genes associated with bipolar and psychotic disorders, were among the movers and shakers of society.

The connection between genius and madness is not just a stereotype made up by society; it’s real and has been known in the medical and psychiatric communities for a long time.

I’m in schizoaffective and schizophrenia support groups online, and the creativity in there is amazing. Many of the people there draw strikingly gorgeous paintings and drawings. Many of them are gifted musically too. The typical schizophrenic is very skilled at something, if not multiple things.

Abram Hoffer, one of the first psychiatrists, and the founder of Orthomolecular psychiatry, who treated schizophrenics with high dose niacin and vitamin C, and brought many of them out of psychosis, loved his schizophrenic patients. He was continually impressed by them, and he helped many of them balance their bodies in a way that allowed them to function normally in society. I recommend reading his books for positive statements about the minds and personalities of people diagnosed with schizophrenia. I also recommend learning about the natural treatments he presents in his books.

Functional Medicine doctors often take the view that no set of genes are bad or good. They all have their weaknesses and strengths. The key is to balance your epigenetic expression so that you maximize the advantages of your genetics, and diminish and control the disadvantages. If you can do that, then the person can live a life where they aren’t out-of-control or completely disabled by their illness, and they can utilize their talents and skills to contribute to their families and communities and churches, and some people with treatments have recovered completely, especially when natural treatments and protocols are used, as natural protocols cause continued improvement over the months and years. Medication tends to reach its maximum effectiveness within weeks, sometimes months, but rarely continues to improve a person’s symptoms after that. Usually you reach a kind of controlled baseline and stay at that baseline after that without further improvement.

It’s very important that when you support a family member with schizophrenia or related syndromes, that you emphasize that they aren’t flawed biochemically beyond repair, and that their genetics aren’t just negative and bad, but that there are advantages to their unique genetics that can be maximized and will give them abilities that are unique and that not everyone else has.

It’s really important that the person suffering from a psychotic condition sees themselves as a whole person and not just their illness, and has avenues and outlets to use their giftings and abilities, and that their whole life doesn’t center around their condition. This builds morale, which is necessary for health and which helps provide the motivation to fight through health obstacles and commit to seeing doctors and doing treatments, and gives over-arching purpose to their life.

Logic and Faith The Basis of Christianity

It’s deeply upsetting when care takers of people in full psychosis ask me to pray God will sent the Holy Spirit to convict their psychotic family member of doing wrong by having wrong beliefs about God, or by sitting in the corner all day and neglecting Bible study and church attendance, and get them back on track with their relationship with God.

While a person going through other kinds of serious problems – say cancer – can pray and seek God, psychosis affects a person’s ability to understand God and the Bible, so you may see them praying to angels or praying to trees, or believing God doesn’t exist when prior to psychosis they had great faith, or cussing and not thinking it’s wrong, or engaging in promiscuity and thinking God’s Word supports it and allows it.

I finally found a way to explain in a short sentence why it’s so troubling when care takers and family members pray God will speak to and convict their family member in psychosis to return to Him. It’s because their request implies that Christianity and one’s relationship with God is based on something other than reason and faith.

Their Request Implies Christianity and One’s Relationship With God is Based on Something Other Than Reason and Faith

The truth is that reason and faith serve as the whole basis of the Christian faith. This what makes Christianity different from false religions; it is the truth, and the only kind of worship God accepts is willing worship, given out of an understanding and appreciation of His love for us. Reason is the core component of our humanity that makes us in God’s image. This isn’t to say other aspects of us aren’t in His image – our whole body and person is in His image – but this function of the human brain, this design built into our brain to reason is the most important part of our humanity.

He doesn’t want robots. He doesn’t want people who think He’s evil but worship Him anyway due to fear of Him. He doesn’t want people who worship Him to get favors and to be flattered by Him, and not out of love and reverence for His character. It’s Satan that wants those other kinds of worship, and these are principles on which his kingdom of darkness and evil is based.

An Even More Serious Problem
So I think there’s a huge lack of education and understanding about what schizophrenia is, and what psychosis is specifically, but sadly there’s an even more serious problem going on in society:

Sane people – people without mental conditions, the general populace – have not studied logic and reason, aren’t aware of what it is, aren’t making decisions and forming their beliefs based on it. It’s common for Christians, especially in charismatic Christian circles to think they have lost the Holy Spirit because they go through periods of time where they don’t feel God’s presence. Some of them conclude they must be lost and hopeless. The whole basis of their relationship was not truth and faith, but feelings. This is not Christianity. It’s building on sand, not on the eternal truths of God’s Word that can never be shaken or destroyed. (Hebrews 12:27-28, Matthew 24:34)

Sadly, logic courses were taken out of public schools a long time ago and never brought back. Logic is how you understand every other subject. It’s the basis for how to understand the scriptures. Indeed ‘understanding’ and ‘logic’ are basically synonymous when we’re talking about a human person and not a computer (a computer can be logical and not be said to understand, but in a being when we are logical it’s synonymous with us understanding something). And without a good grasp of the laws of logic, students will not be quick to see error and can fall for many fallacies, and swayed one way or the other, and their beliefs won’t be formed based on evidence and reason, but on quicksand.

(To read an excellent introductory book on Logic I recommend Jason Lisle’s – a Christian astrophysicist’s book – Introduction to Logic.)

What are the Laws of Logic?

When I say God is logical and all His Bible truths are based on the laws of logic, I’m not talking about human logic. I don’t mean human reasoning where because we aren’t familiar with something some people may lack faith in God and don’t believe it could have happened.

Some people have a very hard time believing God created the world in six literal days. It logically does follow that if God is omnipotent He could easily create the world in six days, in fact He could have created the world instantly, so the question that really arises is why did God create the world in six days and not instantly? But since some people lack the faith to believe God is that powerful, belief in evolution has been adopted by some people who take on the name Christian. They believe God started things in motion and then animals and humanity evolved from there over a period of millions of years.

They may then claim that it doesn’t make sense to their human reasoning that God could create the world in six days.

Or let’s say a hurricane blows through and devastates a city. A person may be unlikely to believe it was a judgment from God, and had a supernatural cause, because they’ve never seen God send an angel to stir up a hurricane. In their experience they’ve only seen natural causes – the laws of thermodynamics and physics create hurricanes.

This kind of reasoning where you assume the things that are most common in your every day experience are the likely cause or answer to why something happened, is called inductive reasoning. It’s an important skill to have, but it can be a lack of faith to use inductive reasoning in accounts the Bible tells us were actually miraculous. To not believe in that is clearly a lack of faith in God’s power, and desire to give us eternal life. For instance, to not believe Jesus became a man and was born of Mary, or that He resurrected and is in heaven, is to have a lack of faith. Someone may claim rationality and science as the basis for their conclusion that these events couldn’t have happened; but they aren’t being scientific at all; they are just doubting, and this is an issue of faith.

For the same omnipotent God of which the whole created world stands as a kind of footprint of evidence of Him, testifying to His omnipotent power and divinity, could certainly create a human body for Himself and come as our Savior and be resurrected after His victory on the cross.

Inductive reasoning is a skill but it’s not a law of logic. It’s not an absolute law, and can be factually wrong or show a lack of faith at times to use it. Rather inductive reasoning is really just a broad strokes way to make an educated guess, and is all about probability.

So what are the laws of logic?

The laws of logic are really two things, which are very closely related to one another:

1. They are the laws that govern reality and explain and make up truth.
2. They are the laws that govern thought and cause us to arrive at truth when we think.

The reason a cat in the real world around us is only a cat and not also a dog at the same time, is logic. The set-in-stone laws of logic, not just any kind of reasoning.

When you deduce that a cat is only a cat and can’t also be a dog, it’s because your brain is capable of understanding the laws of logic and using them to understand truth. Your brain can arrive at truth.

The laws of logic could also be called the laws of understanding. They are what we use when we understand. When we look at a cat and see it has different attributes from a dog, and thus can’t be a dog, or we read that Jesus is the only way to the Father, and conclude that since this is true there can’t be multiple ways to the Father, such as Jesus or pantheism, or Jesus and Buddhism, we are using the laws of logic – or understanding – and coming to truth by using them. We are understanding reality, both tangible concepts in the world around us that we can see and touch like the cat, and intangible, spiritual concepts like salvation, and how salvation works.

The laws of logic are what makes something true.

It would not be possible for truth to exist if there were no laws of logic, thus every time ‘truth’ is mentioned in the scriptures, the laws of logic are being referenced too as they are a core component of truth itself.

The 3 Laws of Logic

There are 3 main laws of logic.

The first is the law of non-contradiction, which states that if something is true, its opposite can’t also be true.

The second is the law of identity which states that a thing or concept is only itself.

And the third is the law of the excluded middle which states that for any given proposition or thing or truth, either the proposition (or thing or concept) is true, or its negation is true. There’s no middle ground or third possibility. For instance, I’m either dead or alive; I can’t be both alive and dead at the same time.

Logic is a component of truth. Because truth by nature is exclusionary, and by nature it has a set of definable attributes and properties. The 3 main laws of logic are what make something true. It isn’t just created things that have definable set properties, like the cat. But Bible truth – eternal abstract concepts – have a clear definition and set of properties that distinguish them from other things. For instance, even with abstract concepts such as right and wrong, stealing has a set definition. We can know when we’ve done the immoral action of stealing, and when we haven’t. An employer can know that when he purposefully withholds a paycheck to an employee who worked for that money, and puts it in his own pocket instead, that he’s stolen from the employee. Jealousy has a set definition and specific attributes. We can know when we’re being jealous and then we can surrender the jealous attitude to God to be changed by Him.

When I went into psychosis I lost the ability to understand any core Bible doctrine. I came to nonsensical conclusions about all of them. I learned first-hand that logic and truth is the foundation of every Bible doctrine. You can’t arrive at truth when your brain can’t make true connections.

Jesus calls Himself “The Truth.” The devil, His accuser and war enemy, is “a liar from the beginning.” If truth wasn’t exclusionary, didn’t have certain definable qualities, then it wouldn’t be possible to lie. What is lying? It’s when a person intentionally distorts the truth, adds in falsehoods that aren’t qualities of the truth, or leaves out vital components of truth and distorts it by omission. (It’s important to note that there’s always a selfish motive behind lying. To give incorrect information unknowingly doesn’t make someone a liar. To be in psychosis and tell people stealing is ok, because you can’t see that it’s wrong isn’t lying.)

If truth wasn’t logical, then anything could be truth, and it wouldn’t be possible to lie and distort the truth.

So the Bible gives us the basis for logic and it being a core component of truth.

What happens to someone in psychosis is that they lose the ability to tell a cat isn’t also a dog. They think a cat can be a cat and a dog at the same time. Or, maybe they believe they can be God and themselves at the same time. They lose their sense of self, their ability to correctly deduce the world around them, their ability to understand the scriptures, and their ability to arrive at truth.

It goes without saying that the laws of logic will always govern the created world and all of reality. So even if a psychotic person loses the ability to tell they aren’t God and themselves at once, clearly it’s true that they are just themselves and not God, no matter what they think or how confused they become. The world is logically coherent, even if people suffering with mental conditions aren’t.

However, while the laws of logic are always in tact, and God Himself will never break them, the scientific laws God does break and go beyond. God can walk on water and break the laws of gravity and physics.

When God does this, it shows His divinity and gives Him glory.

Some people in their hatred for God have mocked Him saying “Can God create a rock too heavy for Him to lift? or Can God create a round square or a married bachelor?”

This is asking the question “Can God do things that break the laws of logic?”

I like C.S. Lewis’ response to this. He said miracles can be attributed to God but never nonsense. A married bachelor is just word play. It’s a logical impossibility. Because the definition and requirements to be a bachelor contradict the ones required to be married. The minute a bachelor gets married, he is no longer a bachelor and is instead a husband. He cannot be a husband and a bachelor at once.

I think you’ll be able to see here that the laws of logic are deeper than the laws of science. Jesus can walk on water and turn water into wine, breaking the laws of science, but He can’t make a round square or a married bachelor. Jesus could make a bush burn and not be consumed, breaking the laws of science and going beyond and outside of them, but He could not make a bush that was both burning and not burning at the same time.

The laws of logic are part of the Word of God. The Word that created the world and everything that exists. They are part of the eternal truth that goes deeper than mere created reality.

Why do we live in a universe that keeps the laws of logic – where a cat can’t be a dog and a cat at the same time, and married bachelors are an impossibility.

Because God is logical and the laws of logic come from His own nature. Before anything existed or was created, including the laws of science that govern our own bodies and every living thing in the world, God existed, and He is logical, both in thought, and in nature. For instance, Jesus is not also the Father. He is Jesus only. This is a law of logic stemming from the nature of God and the Godhead.

Like the moral law – the ten commandments – that are eternal because they exist in God, and God existed before any created thing came into being and He was good, the laws of logic are also eternal, existing in the nature of God.

His moral law is His character.
The laws of logic are His nature.

God, is infinite, does not exist in space and time, and thus laws of physics do not apply to Him or stem directly from His nature. Rather the laws of physics are created things. But the laws of logic do apply to God, and like the moral law He always keeps them and they are a part of Him, originating in Him.

While the Holy Spirit is omnipresent and does not exist in time and place and the laws of science do not apply to Him, laws of logic do apply to Him. For instance, the Holy Spirit is omnipotent, and has definable attributes and qualities in His nature. It can’t be said that the Holy Spirit is both omnipotent and finite possessing limited power. When we say He’s omnipotent, this excludes the possibility that He is also finite. The exclusive nature of the Holy Spirit’s attributes are part of the laws of logic, particularly the law of non-contradiction.

If the laws of logic did not apply to the Holy Spirit, then it could true that He’s both omnipotent and He’s not omnipotent and has only finite power. And that doesn’t make any sense and it doesn’t align with scripture at all. It strips the Holy Spirit of His divinity.

So even with an infinite God who is not limited to space, time, tangibility, or material matter, the laws of logic apply to Him and He’s never outside of the laws of logic, because these laws stem from His own nature and make up His own person.

So the reason it’s so upsetting when care takers ask for this is they are, probably unknowingly, asking God to operate on the principles of Satan’s kingdom; that God wants to make their kid believe in Him mindlessly, without understanding, as a dog obeys its master. God will not answer prayers like this. God is good and just.

To be clear, I don’t think they’re really meaning to ask this of God; they just aren’t reasoning through the belief they hold to its logical conclusion. But this is the logical conclusion of the belief, and it paints a tyrannical God who wants to force people to worship Him mindlessly.

But what does the Bible say about God?

I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you with my loving eye on you.

Do not be like the horse or the mule, which have no understanding but must be controlled by bit and bridle or they will not come to you.
Psalm 32:8-9

His way of dealing with us is instructing and teaching, functions that require reason and logic. The obedience and worship we offer Him must be given with logic and reason, because this is what love is. Love is a principle; and principles are understood with logic. This is why a dog’s love for its master is not the same as our love for God. The same dog will love and serve a criminal if a criminal happens to be its master, or it will love and serve a police officer who arrests criminals if a police officer happens to be its master.

The dog has only one goal: to obey and serve. It’s not discerning about the character of the master, and can just as readily be trained to steal and commit crimes as it can be trained to sniff out drugs and aid a police officer in catching criminals.

God asks us to be discerning, and love Him because He is good, from an intelligent knowledge of His character and His just law. This is what true faith and worship is. It’s done in spirit and in truth. With the heart and also with the understanding.

The Real Prayer That’s Needed

The prayer that is needed when you’re family member enters psychosis, is not for God to convict their conscience, as they do not have an operating conscious, but for God to restore sanity and the ability to reason to the psychotic family member. To heal their brain, and then cooperate with Him by giving the psychotic person care and medical treatments to reduce inflammation and help the brain regions to signal in a connected way, rather than the disconnected way that occurs in psychosis. This is an excellent prayer to pray, and the only one that really makes sense.

When care takers ask me to pray God will convict their family member of sin, I start to think that their own Christian faith and experience is not founded on reason and is founded on something less sure, something like emotions or inclination, and I become concerned for them, because a walk with God that is not founded on the truth of His Word can be shaken, and I know Satan will send them deceptions and temptations that will beat against their “house” as the parable says, and will be able to knock it down. It’s only “houses” built on the foundation of God’s Word that won’t be able to fall down when the storms of life get severe.

I wouldn’t want that kind of experience for anyone, where their religion and walk with God is based on emotions or inclination or suppositions and not on reason, and their faith falls apart when tested because it wasn’t on the only sure foundation.

Let’s really break this down…

Jesus is the truth. The Bible is His authoritative written Word, the source of truth. Truth is logical and reasonable. That’s how we know it’s truth. Logic is a core component of truth, so much so that if something is not logical it by definition cannot be and is not true.

When I lost the ability to be logical after I had a full psychotic break, I couldn’t understand the doctrines of the Bible. I learned after coming out of psychosis, why I couldn’t understand them and what was going on. It takes logic to understand every doctrine in the Bible. All of the Bible’s doctrines are logical and logic is the basis of them.

Faith is a choice we make based on reason, based on truth. Blind faith that is not based on reason is presumption, one of the principles of Satan’s kingdom and at odds with God’s principles.

Faith is not logic. Logic is the ability to understand God and His Word. Faith is the choice we make with our will when we decide to believe in Him and surrender our lives to Him.

As many intelligent atheists have unfortunately shown us, a person can have the ability to be very logical, and yet choose not to surrender their lives to God.

Logic is not surrender and faith. But it is needed in order to have a will and a choice. If someone’s brain has lost the capacity to understand logic, they can’t see and understand the goodness of God, the plan of salvation, and surrender their lives to Him. This is one of the biggest reasons why if we have a loved one who has slipped into psychosis – especially if we have reason to believe that loved one had not surrendered their lives to God prior to slipping into psychosis and was living in a state of rebellion towards God – we need to do everything in their power to get them effective treatment, so they can come out of psychosis, regain their understanding and the ability to have a working will, so they can have the opportunity to choose Christ.

If your loved one thinks Jesus is the Queen of England, how can they believe in Him? They can’t. If your loved one thinks evil is blue, and good is red, and has lost use of the neural pathways needed to understand the concept of sin and righteousness, how can they repent of their sins and trust in a Savior? They can’t.

Bringing them out of the psychosis is thus crucial to their salvation.

Faith and Presumption

“And that’s the way it was with us before Christ came. We were like children; we were slaves to the basic spiritual principles of this world.”
Galatians 4:3

Galatians 4:3 is often translated elemental spiritual forces’, or ‘elements of the world’, but if you go to the original Greek you’ll see the word here is actually ‘principles’. It’s saying before conversion you were held in bondage to be actuated by the principles of the world (world here means Satan’s kingdom), rather than the principles of God’s kingdom that actuate Him.

It’s principles that are the dividing line between God’s kingdom and Satan’s kingdom. God’s kingdom has the principle of love and self-sacrifice as its foundation; Satan’s kingdom has the principle of selfishness as its foundation and core make-up.

“If you have died with Christ, away from the principles of the world, why as if living in the world do you submit to decrees:
Colossians 2:20
Berean Literal Bible translation

This verse here in Colossians is often translated ‘rudiments of the world’ in the KJV, or ‘elemental spirits of the world’ in the ESV, but if you go to the original Greek, the word is ‘principles of the world’.

Once again, the Bible is telling us that when we are converted, we die to the principles that actuate Satan and his kingdom, and we are given a new heart that is actuated by the principles of love.

Love is a principle. It’s not a mindless choice. Let me explain…

Love and worship is a choice made with understanding. That’s the principle behind what makes something love. If you make a choice that is not based on understanding, it’s not love.

Faith works the same way. God’s principles – the ones at the foundation of His character, law, and kingdom – involve faith; Satan’s principles involve presumption. Just as a person with advanced dementia signing away their inheritance cannot sign a contract that holds up in court, because a just court would never accept such a contract and would punish the one who took advantage of the elderly person with dementia, so God’s court will not accept faith and worship that isn’t given from intelligent knowledge, with the person’s understanding. For God to accept such faith would be for God’s kingdom to be unjust; for His court to be corrupt.

But since Satan is corrupt, this is the kind of worship Satan desires and he will accept mindless, forced worship.

For instance, if someone were to believe in God without ever hearing anything about Him or reading His Word, knowing nothing about Him and His character of love, the Bible says this isn’t faith. Faith is a choice we make based on truth, based on God’s existence and His goodness. We choose to love and serve Him because He is a good and just God; the opposite of evil and selfishness; because He loved us enough to lay down His life for us, truths that require reason in order to be able to understand. We may not see Jesus in front of us, but we see the evidence of His creative works, which the Bible says is sufficient logical evidence of His existence, so much so that those who choose not to believe in the face of such overwhelming evidence are without excuse.

“For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.”

Romans 1:20

We also have the witness of the Holy Spirit convicting our hearts of right and wrong. If we go to lie to our boss, the Holy Spirit convicts us lying is wrong and that we shouldn’t do it. This is as powerful a witness – if not more so – than God’s created works.

“They show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts sometimes accusing them and at other times even defending them.)”
Romans 2:15

But a person in full psychosis often loses the ability to tell right from wrong. Their brain loses moral perception, because moral perception is based on logic. And the person due to inflammation and neurotransmitter dysregulation and connectivity issues between important brain regions that can no longer effectively signal one another due to the psychosis, cannot understand logic, cannot understand truth. Cannot see the difference between the principles of selfishness and those of love, cannot choose to worship God.

Of course, they also can’t choose to rebel against God either or to be evil, since they can no longer discern the difference between good and evil. They exist in a morally innocent state, similar to a baby forming in the womb or someone in late state dementia who has lost the capacity to reason. Such a person isn’t evil and has done no wrong; they are innocent.

Whatever choice they made – whether for or against God – when they had their reasoning powers, is the choice God takes as their final choice. But of course if their brain can be treated and they regain their sanity, then their agency and choice can resume.

If a fully psychotic person were to choose to believe in God when they can’t reason that this choice wouldn’t count. This is also true of someone in late stage dementia. God is not unjust to count those choices as legitimate.

Human beings are made in God’s image, possessing reason and it’s through reason that they are able to make choices. Reason is not the will. The will – what we use to have faith – is when we choose to believe the truth that our mind already knows to be true because it’s added things up logically and sees Jesus is the Son of God, the Savior of the world. We use our will to repent of our sins and surrender to His Lordship in our lives.

But there is no use of the will possible – no ability to have choice – without reasoning ability.

People in this condition are like little children or the elderly and need to be cared for and, if possible brought back into sanity with treatment, and it’s the job of the sane people in their families and in society to give them that treatment. God will give the families and the communities wisdom if they will recognize their important role and responsibility, and pray for His divine wisdom and help and depend on Him.

Mental Congruence Affected by the Fall

While our mind was created to be logical and to be congruent with the world around us, and there is a normal, healthy design and proper functioning of the brain, due to the fall we’ve seen a break-down of the human mind. I don’t believe this is only true of people with diagnosable mental illnesses. ‘Normal’ – the original mental normal that Adam and Eve had, doesn’t today fully exist in anyone, though some people are closer to it than others.

There are times when a person in a good state of mental health becomes irrational and resorts to emotion to deduce truth rather than logic. I believe that our tendency – even in mentally healthy individuals – to be irrational and emotion-oriented over logic is probably due to the fall affecting our brain function and our characters. However, people do this knowing what the rational truth is.

I believe irrationality and logical inconsistency actually has it’s basis within the fundamental nature of sin. Satan, knowing he was a created being, refers to himself as a god and seeks worship that only makes sense for God to have. It isn’t rationality driving his beliefs here, it’s selfish ambition. So there is an element of delusion within selfishness. Anyone who is selfish treats others as less-than and adopts a superiority that really makes no sense. They know they are equal to others, yet they choose to see themselves as superior.

This is a kind of chosen delusion.

The Difference Between Spiritual and Mental Delusion

But sin leads to a chosen delusion, not a mental delusion. This is unlike delusion created by an inability to tell what things are from mental illness. That’s mental delusion and it’s not a moral failure on the part of the person suffering from this symptom.

Sin is moral wrongdoing; it’s not a mental illness.

An example of a chosen delusion is the pope. It’s blasphemy for the pope to declare to be God on earth; it’s not blasphemy when someone with schizophrenia really believes they are God. The pope needs humility and a good Bible study and to be brought to repentance; the person with schizophrenia needs medical treatment to bring them out of the delusion. If you try to do a Bible study with them they won’t be able to deduce the logic from the scriptures and it won’t be helpful, since their mind is breaking the laws of logic due to mental illness.

Spiritual delusion is different from mental delusion, and it happens when the person knows right from wrong and chooses the lie and the sin anyway, and God then gives them over to be controlled and confused by a strong delusion. Knowledge of right and wrong must be present, or the person cannot choose the sin and God will not give them over to the delusion.

“They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie and so that all will be condemned who have not believed the truth but have delighted in wickedness.”

2 Thessalonians 2:10-12

“They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen. Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done.”

Romans 1:25-28

Those who choose sin do unnatural and logically inconsistent things (such as Satan a created angel accepting and demanding worship) that go against God’s created design. They also reach a point where they actually believe the delusion. Initially it’s a chosen delusion and they can tell right from wrong when they make their choice to embrace the lie, but once God gives them over to be deceived by the delusion, they lose their bearings on what is truth and become lost in the thick forest of deception.

It’s interesting that atheist scientists made great claims in America that they were the logical and rational ones, the ones who loved science and that Christianity was inconsistent with science. This lie has been unmasked in a marked way with the transgender movement. We now see that atheists are willing to deny and sacrifice even the most basic scientific knowledge for a purely philosophical belief that has no basis in science. They claimed to love science, but we can see they love their own human ideas more. It’s the Christians who love truth and worship their Creator who acknowledge science and truly love science and are scientifically and logically consistent. Here we see that love for God produces a proper respect and love for science and logic. This is because “All things were created for Him and by Him”, the “Him” being Christ. All things – and this includes science – are for Christ and find their proper bearings and place in relation to the worship of Christ, and if you take Christ out of the equation, then a person cannot truly love science or be honest about it or do it correctly for its intended purpose. There is an abuse of science that takes place when Christ is taken out of the picture. It is twisted to serve worship of self above God. Atheists may claim to love science, but they have become science deniers!

Human beings have motives and a will. We can use our will to choose illogical ideologies if we believe they will serve some selfish purpose. An example of how our character can make us choose ideas that are illogical, is when Christians lack faith in God’s divinity and it causes them to embrace evolution, that I mentioned earlier in the book. Even though it’s nonsensical to believe a process that relies on death could be set in motion by God in a perfect world, if a person lacks the faith to believe God truly is omnipotent and can create a world in 6 days, they may default to the illogical belief due to lack of faith.

Satan fell from heaven for cherishing an immoral, and a completely illogical belief – that he was god. He knew he was a created being. He knew he couldn’t do the divine things God did. He knew God was in the right and He was in the wrong, that God was immortal and he was mortal. But he wanted to be a god so badly that he embraced a nonsensical philosophy and waged an entire war of evil vs. good against the true God. He knew he could never win the war, didn’t have truth on his side, but his love for being his own god was so strong he was stubbornly willing to wage it anyway.

Satan didn’t have a mental illness; he had a moral one – sin, particularly pride. So we can see that sin can lead people to believe and support things they know can’t be true.

It’s actually the will that is the governing force in man. The will is the choice. And if our character is weak, it can be hard to make the choice to fall on our knees and pray for the moral strength to believe God is divine and omnipotent and that His Word is true about the creation of the world happening in 6 days. Satan will tempt the person to disbelief, and the person’s weak moral character will prove a temptation in itself, and the person must then make a choice.

The will is the choice and the individual decides whether to have faith in God or not; really he chooses whether to call God to His side to infuse him with strength or not (without God we can do nothing on our own). No one can make that choice for that person except the individual themselves.

Those in full psychosis cannot use the will, because logic is needed in order to discern morality. I believe it was C.S. Lewis who said without logic a person would just as willingly serve a tyrant as a benevolent God. To love and worship we need the ability to be logical, otherwise we’d just as easily worship a tyrant as we would a benevolent God and we can’t discern the difference and thus the worship given isn’t genuine or real.

Is My Loved One Psychotic or Demon-Possessed? How Do I Tell the Difference?

Mental Illness is a Real Thing, and So Is Demon-Possession!

Ok, so now that we’ve seen from the Bible truths detailed in the previous article entitled ‘Does Mental Illness Even Exist or Is This a Concept Invented By Secular Psychiatry’ that our brain is a physical organ that can malfunction due to the fall of man bringing in all kinds of decay and malfunction into the physical world (see Genesis 3 to read about the fall), let’s look at demon-possession. Mental illness is very real, but so is demon-possession! If we hear voices of demons or feel like an entity is controlling our body, how do we tell the difference to know which condition it is that we’re experiencing?

When I was in my late teenage years, I started displaying odd symptoms of altered personality and mania. My church family prayed for me and laid hands on me, and they weren’t sure if I was demon possessed. Then, several years later, another young woman at our church displayed similar symptoms. She was also prayed over with laying on of hands, multiple times (in fact it became a regular thing that was done at every prayer retreat and camp meeting), and her symptoms like mine did not go away with prayer.

At one point during a really bad mania I heard demon voices screaming at me and I thought I was possessed. In fact, I was convinced of it. (The voices turned out to be auditory hallucinations, but I didn’t know that at the time). I contacted pastors and had them pray for me, yet the symptoms did not go away. This sent me into a panic. Why wasn’t the name of God working to get rid of the demons? I knew Jesus was stronger than Satan, but the demons wouldn’t leave. This led to my faith being severely tried and several years of confusion. What was the key I wasn’t understanding that was preventing me from getting deliverance from this demon? I kept searching for this knowledge that seemed so hidden from view and from my understanding. I did unhealthy things like shut myself in my room and isolate from everyone for days while I prayed to God and sought deliverance in strange ways that made sense to me at the time.

But, If My Loved One is Hearing Demon Voices, Doesn’t That Mean They are Being Harassed by Demons?

It’s common when a loved one is found to be hearing voices, especially if the loved one reports hearing demon voices, and is diagnosed with a psychotic disorder such as schizophrenia, that family members will ask the question: “How can this not be demons when my loved one is hearing demonic voices and the nature of the things they are commanding him to do are immoral things like suicide?”

They see the voices as having evil intent, however, they aren’t taking into account a couple of very important things.

For one, everyone hears demons in some way and is tempted by demons (except people who have lost moral perception and thus can’t be tempted. More on this later), and yet we aren’t all troubled over the voices to the extent that the loved one who has been hospitalized is troubled.

When people with psychosis hear demon voices, the voices are often loud, and sound like an audible voice. These voices are different from the normal demon voices we all hear when we are tempted, that usually sound more like suggestions and arguments than audible voices.

The demon voices people with psychosis hear can make it hard or impossible to sleep, that’s how loud they can be. The demon voices we all hear, usually do not prevent sleep.

This isn’t to say Satan could never harass someone with demons to the point where they couldn’t sleep. We don’t want to make conclusions that aren’t in the Bible, or set criteria or adopt ideas that aren’t set by the Bible. And the Bible has never said that demons can’t harass people mentally with demon voices that are audible and loud, so we don’t want to say that would never happen if the Bible hasn’t said that.

The Bible says every Christian will be tempted by Satan. This is a normal part of life in this world. That’s not to say it isn’t difficult or awful to have Satan here in this world with us, but due to the fall and the situation we’re in now as a result of the fall, Christians are daily tempted by demons directly everyday. Even Jesus was tempted by Satan daily when He walked on earth as a man. The Bible doesn’t say that we’re supposed to consider temptation to mean there’s anything wrong with us or our relationship with God. We aren’t supposed to pray away the tempting voice of Satan; we are supposed to resist it, and we’re told that in resisting that voice it will flee from us. But then we’re told it will return again later to tempt us again. Nothing has gone wrong if we’re tempted and we aren’t supposed to try to pray away all temptation. Rather the answer given is to pray for strength to resist the temptations that Satan will send us throughout our lives.

The Demon Voices Don’t Flee When Resisted and Thus Don’t Fit the Pattern of How Real Demons Act According to the Bible, and Thus Can’t be Real Demons
However, with the person experiencing psychosis they will tell you the demon voices do not fit this pattern where if you resist the temptation they go away for a time. Real demons may tempt someone to commit suicide, for instance, but when you resist their temptations in God’s strength, they flee for a time before they come back and hit you again with more temptations.

Voices from schizophrenia do not flee when you resist them. People in psychosis often hear voices 24/7 all through the hours of the day and night for years telling them to commit suicide or that they are worthless, or other negative things.

Also, feelings of depression when one is chronically depressed, do not flee when you resist Satan’s temptations to commit suicide.

Satan and his demons flee when you resist his temptations to commit suicide, feelings of depression, and the feeling of living being very hard or feeling unbearable, and of wanting a way out of the pain – this doesn’t leave when someone resists Satan and may stay chronically, until the point where their stress reduces and these symptoms lift, or they get medical attention and nutrient protocols that can lift their depression and anxiety.

Demons will always behave in the way the Bible spells out. While Satan himself can lie to us, and he does lie, pretending to be ascended masters in Buddhism when people channel him, or pretending to be dead loved ones when mediums and spiritualists contact demon spirits, he can’t operate contrary to the rules of the Bible. The Bible tells us Satan can lie, and give visions and manifestations that make his lies appear to be true. But the Bible tells us Satan can’t do certain things. He can’t for instance, force someone to sin. He can only tempt. He can’t actually be god, and do the almighty things God alone can do such as omniscience (being all knowing), he can only desire to be god. Satan can’t read our thoughts. These are some of the things the Bible spells out plainly that Satan is incapable of doing.

And another one of those things Satan can’t do is he can’t not flee from you for a time if you resist him in the moral strength the Lord gives you. God banishes him for a time, and doesn’t permit him to constantly tempt us 24/7. As finite beings who tire and need time to re-charge, we need time to re-charge before it would be right to allow Satan to tempt us again.

So if you’re having voices that do not flee when you resist them, they can’t be real demons.

During a psychotic episode I had in 2005, I heard demonic voices screaming at me 24/7, all through the night and day. They told me they were going to kill me. I tried to pray them away, called up pastors and had them pray for me, resisted anything I thought was evil, and yet the voices kept coming. I could only sleep 3 hours per night the voices were so loud and I also had extreme anxiety that made it almost impossible to sleep.

If these had been real demons, they would have fled when I resisted their temptations and prayed to God and had others pray for me. Real demons always flee when a person resists them in Christ’s strength.

Another important thing to keep in mind is that usually when Satan tempts someone, he doesn’t let them know it’s him. He tries to come to people in the most deceptive way possible, introducing temptations in a way where you think it was your idea to engage in the immoral action you’re being tempted with.

In false religions, demons may appear to people in visions or communications, but they rarely claim to be demons. They usually claim to be ascended masters, or holy angels, or deceased loved ones, or gods and deities.

Satan rarely comes to people and says “Hey it’s me; I want you to kill yourself and here are my arguments as to why you should do it.”

However, this isn’t to say that demons will never disclose themselves for who they are. We know from the scriptures that demons at the time of Christ revealed themselves to be demons on more than one occasion.

“When he arrived at the other side in the region of the Gadarenes, two demon-possessed men coming from the tombs met him. They were so violent that no one could pass that way.

“What do you want with us, Son of God?” they shouted. “Have you come here to torture us before the appointed time?”

The demons begged Jesus, “If you drive us out, send us into the herd of pigs.”

He said to them, “Go!” So they came out and went into the pigs, and the whole herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake and died in the water.”
Matthew 8:28-32

“Moreover, demons came out of many people, shouting, “You are the Son of God!” But he rebuked them and would not allow them to speak, because they knew he was the Messiah.”
Luke 4:41

The demons in these accounts let everyone know they were demons. Satan will do what he perceives to be advantageous to himself. He can take on the form of a snake or he can reveal himself to be who he really is, whichever he thinks will be most advantageous.

So if a loved one is hearing voices that claim to be demons or sound obviously demonic, it’s worth asking the question why would demons be so avert? And consider the possibility that maybe it’s not demons.

The Voices are Nonsensical

An important point many don’t realize is that the voices are nonsensical. This is something the psychiatrist understands however, but unfortunately doctors don’t usually teach and inform the family, even if their loved one signed for them to have access to their records and to speak with doctors. There’s a huge lack of education.

The voices that communicate with them aren’t logical voices, directly going against Bible truth, and trying to get the person to disobey God. For instance, the demon voices that screamed at me for 3 weeks in 2005, and sounded just as audible as if there were people in the room with me screaming at me, screamed “We’re going to kill you before your prayers break Eminem out of the secret society he’s in! Before this wonderful thing comes to pass we’re going to kill you and give you a tragedy instead of the ending the Lord wants!” But the thing is I hadn’t really been communicating with Eminem through the Holy Spirit for the past couple years like I thought I’d been, and I wasn’t really praying Eminem out of a secret society of demon worshippers in the music industry that he was trapped in. In real life, he wasn’t trapped, and was choosing of his own volition to be a musician who made music about immoral themes. He could leave the music business at any time and stop releasing new records.

These demon voices believed the same things I did, and had the same fault in adding up logic that I had. They weren’t demons; it was my own brain generating these voices.

The auditory centers of the brain can be over-activated due to inflammation, when a person is psychotic. During this break I had nerve zaps and very painful inflammation through my whole nervous system, including my brain.

The Voices Do Not Have an Immoral Motive
The “temptations” the demonic voices give aren’t things like “Tell a lie that paints you in a good light so you can get hired for this job.” Or, “Life is hard, you should kill yourself to escape all this crippling responsibility.” These are real temptations, and we can plainly see they are real temptations because there is a clear selfish motive there.

But with nonsensical voices when a person is in full psychosis and can’t understand morality, their brain doesn’t generate clear, selfish motives.

For someone to be said to be tempted by Satan, according to the Bible, there must be an underlying motive of selfishness present. Satan always appeals to what the Bible calls the “flesh” – the selfish part of our character. Satan encourages that selfish part of us, and gives justifications for why we should indulge it.

But the voices generated by an inflamed brain in psychosis do not have a clear selfish motive. They are about nonsensical things, with no real motive present.

No, what they are experiencing are things like “You are the chosen one who must save the world, and the only way to save the world is to jump off the roof; everyone’s life depends on you”, something no one in their right mind could be tempted by because there’s no one who would actually believe that. Or things like “You are a metaphor, and God is calling you to become a physical human being and the process of transformation is done by dying.”

The voices are usually about saving people from destruction, saving yourself, but knowledge of God’s law of right and wrong aren’t present. For instance, I remember feeling strong emotions to save other people when in psychosis, but I couldn’t tell that lying and stealing wronged people. I lost that knowledge about principles. So if I needed to lie to someone to save them, I saw no problem with that. I didn’t really even understand what lying was and couldn’t see it denied someone their basic human right to factual information in which to base their choices, and violated the trust between us. I thought lying and telling the truth were both equal, and just different ways of going about things. Like the preference of liking the color blue better than red.

There’s also a whole lot of other nonsensical “chatter” from the voices that don’t involve death or dying or violence. Things like “God is going to make you into a square today, so believe with all your heart so you can change in shape into a square because this is the shape people are in heaven and it’s your ideal form.”

These are nonsensical things that break the laws of logic. The person may honestly believe it’s a good thing to take their own life, and may think they are doing the right thing by taking their life. They may even experience overwhelming feelings of false guilt if they don’t do it, because the emotional centers of the brain get re-wired and dysregulated when a person is in psychosis, creating emotions that are not based in reality or logic, and mood swings and intense emotions sweeping over a person are not uncommon. “Moral emotions” like guilt can be spontaneously generated, and these powerful emotions together with flawed logic can be a very dangerous combination. The person can’t be convicted by God’s Holy Spirit about right and wrong if they lose their moral judgment, and so they can’t respond to conviction.

This is why psychosis is such a dangerous state for a person to be in.

They enter into a state that is “without law”.

The Bible tells us that “by the law is the knowledge of sin”, and that even people without access to the Bible have a basic understanding of right and wrong, because their brain is created to understand morality, and the Holy Spirit convicts their conscience.

But in someone who is fully psychotic, their brain cannot understand morality, and thus cannot be convicted by God’s Holy Spirit, as it’s our brain that God communes with when He convicts us.

Thus the fully psychotic person enters into a state where it could be said that they are “without law”, and thus without a knowledge of sin.

They enter a neutral, innocent state where they are no longer a moral agent. This can sometimes be a very dangerous state to be in for the individual and for society.

For something to be a temptation, and for one to be said to be tempted, according to how the process of temptation works in the Bible, the person must be able to understand the temptation is a sin. If a person understands the difference between right and wrong, between God’s will and Word and things that go against His will and His Word, it’s only then that a person can give their informed consent to sin. They must be able to be convicted by God’s Holy Spirit not to sin, and be tempted by the devil at the same time, and use their will to make their choice. They can either call on God for help to resist the temptation, or they can give in to the temptation and grieve the Holy Spirit by doing the sin. If they give in, it’s then the Bible defines their action as sin.

James 4:17

This Bible principle is why animals are not said to have given in to temptation when they harm one another. When a lion has a strong impulse to kill and eat a gazelle, and carries out that impulse and kills the gazelle, we don’t say the devil tempted the lion to do that and the lion gave into the devil’s temptations.

We don’t call the lion ‘guilty’ and sentence him to a court hearing.

This is because the principle of what makes something a temptation and a sin is that the tempted one must have the ability to understand right from wrong, in order to consent to sin, or to consent to take hold of God’s help to resist sin.

But a person in full psychosis loses the ability to discern right from wrong. (Moral perception is not always lost if psychosis is mild.)

Our brain is responsible for all of our perceptions, including judgment and moral perception. Including our ability to understand the concept of sin, and differentiate sin from an obedient, holy action and choice.

While the eyes take in visuals, and the ears take in sound, these visuals and sound are interpreted and really “heard” and “seen” by the brain, not really the eyes and the ears. The eyes and ears are only transporters of the information, not processors or interpreters of the information, thus it’s our brain that gives us the experience of hearing and seeing, and what it feels like to exist in a certain environment and setting, and what it feels like to have a body in a physical world.

And then the memory auditory and visual files are stored in the brain. They can pop up if the brain is neuro-toxic, and a person can “hear” voices coming from their memory when no person is actually present, or “see” images of people, sometimes as realistic as if an actual person where standing in front of them, even when no other person is present.

These symptoms happen in cases of psychosis, when the auditory and visual centers of the brain are overstimulated due to inflammation.

So when family members think that because their loved one with psychosis is hearing voices, they must be real demons, they are not realizing the brain itself is capable of generating images and sounds all on its own.

The brain is a magnificent organ capable of great things. It is the handiwork of God. Our whole experience in this world is made possible by our brain, and subject to the errors and malfunctioning of our brain if our brain goes haywire. This is why people in psychosis cannot tell they are in psychosis; when our brain interprets and projects our reality a certain way, we’re limited by the interpretation. Being finite, we can’t see around our perception.

Going into psychosis can feel like having a spiritual awakening. One of the big reasons for this, is that when you’re slipping into psychosis, the science of the world and its systems changes. You look at a table, and the way you understand matter and what matter is has changed. Many of the perceptions we use to understand the world around us we can’t put into words and we aren’t even aware of. When these perceptions start getting reconnected in a different way, we suddenly become very aware of all the different perceptions and the amazing capabilities of the brain as it interprets concepts in science, both seen and unseen things like radio waves, theological concepts like the nature of God.

We see from a first-hand perspective what perception entails, and become aware of parts of our perception that are often missed or taken for granted when we’re in our right mind and don’t study or think about perception at all.

Due to how intelligent the brain is, and seeing this first-hand, and also the increase in dopamine, adrenaline, and sometimes histamine that occurs during psychosis and causes the brain to work even faster than normal and be smarter in many ways, although psychotic at the same time, it’s common for the person in psychosis to conclude they are gaining supernatural abilities, or that God Himself is communicating with them, especially if they hear a voice that claims to be God or sounds like God.

Once again, the God-voice is as nonsensical as the demon voices that some people hear. I realized this immediately after coming out of psychosis with lithium in the hospital. The grand dreams and communications I had received, which had been very vivid and looked like blue-ray definition, could no longer fool me, because they were total and complete nonsense.

For instance, I had dreams and communications that I was the chosen one to use the gift of faith to open dimension portals and let angels into our world to fight off demons who were already here, and tip the war in God’s favor and bring about the Second Coming of Christ.

I could see clearly this isn’t the gift of faith as described by the Bible, nor how it works, that both angels and demons were already in our world in the same dimension according to the Bible, and that angels could protect us and God sent them for this purpose, they didn’t need to be let into our world.

I could tell both the science and the theology was off completely and that it was just complete nonsense.

But when in psychosis, the psychotic person can’t tell this, and with the brain inflammation accessing new parts of their brain and bringing up images and information that they didn’t have access to before, It’s a common conclusion people in psychosis make that “There’s no way I’m this smart; God must be communicating with me, or giving me a supernatural ability I didn’t have before”

They can’t tell their brain is making wrong connections though. Psychosis gives them a symptom of unawareness called anosognosia, so they can’t see that their thought patterns are nonsensical and they are believing delusions.

God created our human brain with the ability to understand every category of information and science in our world. Even immaterial things like radio waves, even deep scientific truths like matter and how it’s really energy, and how space is really another dimension connected in relationship with time.

We can also understand spiritual realities. We don’t of course, understand as much as God does, and we have finite understanding, but we were actually created to be in the very Presence of God, and to understand what it’s possible for a person to understand about God Himself, the angels He created, and the other worlds and the nature of life in those worlds and other creations. So even though we’ve never been to those other worlds and creations of God, our brain was created with the capacity to understand those beings and creations.

When a person goes into psychosis, the parts of the brain responsible for understanding all of these amazing things – both spiritual and scientific – get rewired, and the neural circuitry is changed, so they perceive things out of alignment with reality.

What can happen then, is a person can believe they are God, or that they are a prophet receiving prophecies from God, because their brain is contemplating spiritual themes, but doing so in an illogical way, and coming to an illogical conclusion. The person can feel like they are in another realm, because all the perceptions involved in helping them understand their experience in space and time have been disrupted and wrongly connected. You can have the wrong perception of what time is, and how time works. You can believe you are a metaphor, or that you’re a T Rex in the Triassic period and also yourself at the same time.

The psychotic person, not realizing their voices are nonsensical, will often simply communicate “Demons are screaming at me.” Or “God is talking to me.” The family may then believe their loved one is harassed by demons or possessed by them, without ever knowing the voices their loved one hears are nonsensical.

Demon Possession is Very Real
Let’s talk about demon-possession. According to the Bible, demon-possession is very real, and it wasn’t uncommon in Jesus’ day.

How does a person get demon-possessed anyway? How does it happen? I think this is a very important question to ask .

We want the Bible to explain the process of becoming demon-possessed to us, and not get our information from human opinion or speculation. What does the Bible say?

The Bible shows us many accounts of demons gaining control over people. The story of King Saul is one of the best examples. Saul after his anointing as king was given the Holy Spirit; he was the farthest thing from demon possessed. But then he experienced a life test. The prophet and priest Samuel told him to wait until he arrived to offer a sacrifice to God. Kings were never to offer sacrifices, only priests as was written in the Levitical law. Saul went ahead and offered sacrifice, showing that he didn’t take the holy things of God seriously. He had a careless attitude. The result was that God rejected him as king. He should have repented and accepted that the throne would go to another, submit to God’s will and find peace in God. Who knows perhaps had he done this God may have restored to him the kingdom. But instead he grew bitter and resentful and an evil spirit troubled him.

But the Spirit of the LORD departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the LORD troubled him, 1 Samuel 16:14 . The Scriptures sometimes represent God as doing that which He does not specifically prevent. In giving Satan an opportunity to demonstrate his principles, God, in effect, would limit His own power. Of course, there were limits beyond which Satan could not go (see Job 1:12 ; 2:6 ), but within his limited sphere he did have divine permission to act.

Notice that the Spirit of God first departed from Saul and then an evil spirit came and troubled him. This is significant. It’s also true that the opposite actions to what Saul did when he harbored a spirit of pride and resisted the Holy Spirit more and more fully, cause a person to progress in their sanctification and to be more and more filled with God’s Spirit. When we surrender more and more sin and come into closer and closer relationship with God we become more and more filled with His Spirit. This isn’t random. People don’t just become possessed without warning and without cause. It’s not like falling sick with the flu. When Saul was surrendered to God when he first became king, he was filled with the Spirit of God, and when he became unrepentant, resentful and jealous demons gained control over him.

David was sent to play the harp for Saul and the demon left Saul when David played his harp. But while the demon would leave briefly, it always returned. What was causing it to return? Prayer is powerful. The Word of God tells us that “the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much,” James 5:16 Matthew 15:22-28 Tells us that a woman’s faith healed her daughter of demon possession. (It’s also important to note that children can be demon-possessed, not just adults and we should pray for our kids). We can pray for another and we can sing songs that glorify God and His love, and encourage a person to let go of their pride and jealousy or doubt in God, but if that person keeps turning to sin and inviting Satan into their life, we can’t save that person from Satan taking control. They have to choose to resist Satan personally.

Saul initially loved and respected David, but one day after a day of battle the Israelite women danced and sang this song “Saul has killed his thousands, but David his ten thousands.” This aroused Saul’s jealousy and he tried to murder David by throwing a javelin at him. Murder was now in the heart of the king.

And Saul was afraid of David, because the Lord was with him, and had departed from Saul, 1 Samuel 18:12 .

David was a man after God’s own heart. Humble and submissive to God’s will. Saul was a jealous man with murder in his heart. This jealousy and murderous desire caused God’s spirit to flee from him, and allowed the evil spirit to enter.

Throughout the rest of Saul’s life, David and Saul’s son Jonathon tried to win Saul’s heart back to God. Saul began to start hunting David, but once in a cave when Saul found David, his heart softened and he determined not to kill him. He hugged him, apologized, and wept. Clearly Saul was struggling with the sin of jealousy as there were times he went back and forth between love and hatred toward David. He seemed like two different men.

But at the end of his life he allowed jealousy to take over. It says that he inquired of God, but that God answered him not.

And when Saul inquired of the LORD, the LORD did not answer him, either by dreams or by Urim or by the prophets, 1 Samuel 28:6 .

He had grieved God’s spirit away, but what did he do? He didn’t repent and turn from his sin, instead he went to the witch of Endor, a forbidden act. God had forbidden consulting mediums and seeing spiritists, calling these things an abomination.

Regard not them that have familiar spirits, neither seek after wizards, to be defiled by them: I am the Lord your God, Leviticus 19:31.

He ended up dying in battle by suicide, still not repenting or turning from his murderous jealousy and now adding self-murder to his evil choices.

Saul’s story shows us how to lose the spirit of God. Being filled with his spirit involves doing the opposite – repent of your sin and believe in Christ, surrender your wrong heart attitudes, turn from your sins, do what you know to be right in Christ’s strength.

The story of Judas is similar. Like Saul he was once a follower of Jesus. Like Saul he had sins to overcome. And like Saul he gave in to those sins and let them overcome him. In the scriptures it says that Satan possessed Judas. How did it happen?

And supper being ended, the devil having now put into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon’s son, to betray him; John 13:2.

He allowed Satan to put it into his heart to betray Jesus.

Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you. Cleanse your hands, ye sinners; and purify your hearts, ye double minded.

James 4:7-8 .

Judas was not submitting to God and resisting the devil, he was cherishing the thoughts Satan gave him and making plans to betray his Lord. Jesus answered, he it is, to whom I shall give a sop, when I have dipped it. And when he had dipped the sop, he gave it to Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon.

And after the sop Satan entered into him. Then said Jesus unto him, That thou doest, do quickly, John 13:26-27.

Demon-possession is a spiritual illness, a moral illness. You can’t catch it like a cold. It’s not random. A person becomes demon-possessed by resisting the Holy Spirit and living a life of sin. The more you yield to Satan the more control he gets over you. The world will tell you that the choices you make in life are all equal and that there is no distinction. It’s common these days to live with your boyfriend or girlfriend before marriage for instance, and the world will tell you this is no different than marrying them and then living together. But it’s very different because one choice is a moral choice, and the other choice is an immoral one. One obeys God and the other grieves his Spirit. It’s our choices that can cause us to be filled with God’s Spirit or to become a habitation of demons.

So when determining if a person is demon-possessed or if it’s mental illness, ask them (with permission) about their history. Were they living in unrepentant sin before the symptoms started? If the person was a devoted Christian and living a godly life and then bam, the symptoms emerged, it’s unlikely to be demon-possession, no matter what it looks like on the outside. And we want to make sure we’re trusting God’s Word above our experience, and that we use God’s Word as the authority that interprets our experience, rather than trying to decipher what we’re seeing based on our very limited and fallible human analysis. It’s very common in our day and age to live a life of willful sin, so there could be a lot of people who are demon-possessed. And it’s possible for for someone to be both demon-possessed and have mental illness! Jesus healed a man who was both blind and mute and demon-possessed.

Then was brought unto him one possessed with a devil, blind, and dumb: and he healed him, insomuch that the blind and dumb both spake and saw, Matthew 12:22 .

We see Jesus healing people in the scriptures who had both physical ailments and demon-possession. The brain is a physical organ and when it malfunctions physically this is when we see the symptoms of mental illness emerge. It’s also possible for illness to start the other way – with sadness or severe psychological trauma (things outside of our control), or bad thought habits and worshipping self rather than trusting in God (things within out control), which causes the thoughts to react upon the body and bring about physical malfunction this way. (I’ve written another article that deals specifically with this subject and I won’t go into it in detail here).

In Jesus’ day many people were demon possessed.

When the even was come, they brought unto him many that were possessed with devils: and he cast out the spirits with his word, and healed all that were sick: Matthew 8:16

I don’t believe it’s any less common today. Our world is even more wicked today than it was in Jesus’ day, and if demon-possession was not uncommon back then, it’s probably even more common now. But whatever the person’s illness was – physical, mental, or spiritual – Jesus healed them. And Jesus is still the Great Physician today. He has commissioned his church today with authority to “Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils: freely ye have received, freely give.” Matthew 10:8. Demons will flee when God’s people meet and pray. And, unlike physical healing, which God may say no to, or may sometimes give only a partial healing, God will always cast out a demon. The answer is never no if you pray over someone who is demon-possessed. This subject is like salvation; God’s will is always say yes, and only the person themselves can stop the blessing from happening. (God wants all to be saved, 1 Tim. 2:4 and 2 Pet 3:9 )

With mental illnesses like bipolar and schizophrenia, there can be psychosis which can complicate things and make them much more confusing. Psychosis involves a loss of reason. It’s similar to being fully drunk on alcohol and then there is usually anxiety and irritability from adrenaline levels spiking (and sometimes dopamine also). So the person is like a drunk on caffeine. It’s common for the person to run around and do many immoral things during psychosis. Add to this the symptom of religiosity and fascination, with the occult that is so common with schizophrenia and bipolar (I believe this happens because when the frontal lobe is compromised there is nothing to keep in check the fleshly desires and also because when the body is in an inflamed state there is an increased desire for sins of the flesh, I won’t go into all of this in this article though), and you can be very confused as to whether the person has demon possession from getting into the occult, or whether they became psychotic and got into the occult because of a lapse in judgment.

This is something I had to sift through in my own life. During bipolar psychosis I had consulted mediums thinking that Jesus could speak to me through them. I lost my ability to understand the Bible so the passages where God forbids seeking mediums I could not understand. I thought the Bible was a coded book and wasn’t speaking outright about these things. I thought I had special ability to understand deep things in the Bible that others didn’t have; that I could interpret more of the code than other people could. ‘Grandiose’ delusions like this are common with bipolar disorder.

This created confusion later when I thought I might be demon-possessed. Was I demon-possessed from going into the occult? Yes, a person can certainly become demon-possessed by getting into the occult.

And it came to pass, as we went to prayer, a certain damsel possessed with a spirit of divination met us, which brought her masters much gain by soothsaying: Acts 16:16 .

Consulting mediums and engaging in occult rituals of any kind breaks the first commandment. Thou shalt have no other gods before me, Exodus 20:3 It is idolatry and it is worship of demon spirits. Any false worship practices are done to demons, as Satan is the author and the subject of all false worship.

No, but the sacrifices of pagans are offered to demons, not to God. And I do not want you to be participants with demons. 1 Corinthians 10:20

But the Bible makes a distinction between sins done without knowledge and sins done with knowledge. Therefore, to him who knows to do good and does not do it, to him it is sin, James 4:17 .

This verse defines sin as knowing to do right and not doing it. Showing that you must have a knowledge of right and wrong in order to sin.

The Bible also tells us that all rational human beings do have a knowledge of right and wrong, even those who have never heard the gospel or the 10 Commandments.

Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law, since they show that the work of the Law is written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts either accusing or defending them, Romans 2:14-15 .

To be saved and forgiven of our sins, a person must also be rational. God appeals to our reasoning powers to make a decision for Christ. If we can’t reason we can’t choose Christ. Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool, Isaiah 1:18 .

Even our earthly courts have something called innocent by reason of insanity.

Taking these things into account, and knowing that “true and just are God’s judgments” ( Rev. 16:7 ). We can conclude that God will not allow a person to become demon-possessed who does immoral things during complete psychosis; neither will he allow that person to be lost if they were saved prior to falling into psychosis. You don’t have to worry that the things you did while insane will lead to Satan gaining control over you. Satan can only gain control if you know to do right and choose to do wrong instead and thereby grieve God’s spirit.

But people with mental illness are often not in complete psychosis. Many have some symptoms of psychosis, but not enough to have lost their reasoning powers completely. It’s here that I believe constitutes the most dangerous situation for a mentally ill Christian. If you still have enough sanity to know right from wrong, but your brain is compromised, then Satan will try to tempt you to do wrong, and you have an increased desire for lusts of the flesh due to the inflamed state your body and physical brain is in, and blunted perception of right and wrong and it takes extra effort to control your impulses due to your brain being compromised. You’re in a vulnerable position and he will try to take advantage of it. This is the state many find themselves in, and if you are in that state, I recommend praying daily and hourly and relying on God for strength, and pay special attention to your health. Do anything that you can do to build your physical brain up will help you in this conflict. (consider diet, exercise, and something called the Walsh protocol for mental illness that really helped me, etc.) If you haven’t learned to pray I recommend a book called ‘With Christ in the School of Prayer ‘ by Andrew Murray.

What does demon-possession look like anyway? We know from the scriptures, as stated earlier, that Judas when he betrayed Christ was demon-possessed. Here we see a man appearing logical, composed, and in his right mind making a profoundly immoral business deal with the Pharisees. This tells us that demon-possession doesn’t always involve foaming at the mouth, and that people can be demon-possessed and not appear to be. The only trust-worthy sign of demon possession is in the degree of evil. Judas was a sinner and he had done evil things before this, but the Bible doesn’t tell us he was possessed by Satan until he made the decision to betray his Lord. It seems much more likely then, that oppressive dictators, abusers, and people who do great evil are possessed, rather than someone who looks to be out of their mind and is out-of-control. Immorality and evil is how someone becomes possessed. A child with full psychosis who flings themselves around the house and can’t understand right from wrong can’t do evil and can’t become demon-possessed.

If you know two people – one who looks demon-possessed but is living a godly life in alignment with God’s Word, and another who looks perfectly fine, but is living a life of sin, it’s much more likely that the person living in sin is demon-possessed than it is that the person who simply acts bizarre and has personality changes is demon-possessed.

Demons are intelligent fallen angels, and if they are possessing someone, they can make it look like whatever they desire it to look like; whatever will suit their deceptive purposes. They’ve made it appear to be epilepsy, muteness, and many other manifestations. So demon-possession can mimic actual physical illness, or it can not even be visible as was the case with Judas.

“And one of the multitude answered and said, Master, I have brought unto thee my son, which hath a dumb spirit; And wheresoever he taketh him, he teareth him: and he foameth, and gnasheth with his teeth, and pineth away: and I spake to thy disciples that they should cast him out; and they could not,” Mark 9:17 , 18 .

It’s important that when a person repents and leaves their life of sin, that they leave it for good, not just temporarily. Jesus explained what would happen if a person who was demon-possessed yielded to Satan a second time:

“When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry places, seeking rest, and findeth none. Then he saith, I will return into my house from whence I came out; and when he is come, he findeth it empty, swept, and garnished. Then goeth he, and taketh with himself seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter in and dwell there: and the last state of that man is worse than the first,”

Matthew 12:43 .

Only in Christ’s strength can we part with sin. It’s a work he has to do in us. “For it is God who works in you to will and to do of his good pleasure,” Philippians 2:13 .

Jesus is the Great Physician and our Savior from sin. He’s the healer, not us. We depend on him for every healing and every victory. He is “among us as a God who serves,” Luke 22:27 . Like a doctor or a paramedic, he ministers to us and we are the patient. What a wonderful thought! It may take some time to get the victory over sin, but he will never abandon us to Satan or fail to give us the victory.

A light bulb finally went off in my mind after I saw a natural doctor and was given high dose vitamins for a physical illness, that what I had wasn’t demon-possession. I think the vitamins I was taking caused my brain to think more logically and I was able to decipher better what was going on. I had been having bad brain fog, delusions, and other mental symptoms. And it just hit me that I had had pastors pray over me and recently had had a prayer warrior who was studying at the seminary fast and pray for me and I had prayed too – and I was still having symptoms. I just knew it wasn’t demon-possession at that point.

And later as I pursued mental health treatments and started to improve, this was only confirmed more and more.

Very recently I’ve been studying more into the biochemistry and neurology of psychosis and altered perception and I’ve learned some important things. As we all know, our brain is responsible for all our perceptions, even the very basic ones that we don’t consciously think about, like our ability to gauge when we are in an upright position and when we are tilted to the right or left or turned upside down. Our brain is also responsible for perceptions of the self such as when we look at our arm we know it’s ours and not someone else’s. It turns out that with dissociative symptoms (which I had along with my bipolar disorder and which often co-occur with psychotic disorders), a person can lose their sense that their body is there’s and is being controlled by their own brain, and that their thoughts are their own. This can cause a person to feel like another entity is controlling their thoughts or their body movements. Below, at the end of this article is a link to a scientific study that talks about this symptom.

Once again, this just shows how important it is that we filter all our experiences through the Word of God and that we use the Word of God as our authority and not our experience! There are conditions out there that are beyond the current knowledge of modern medicine and neuroscience. Not only this but the full knowledge of how demons and the supernatural world works is beyond our current understanding also. There’s much we don’t know. God tells us what we need to know in the scriptures, and we don’t need speculation or human opinion, or to desire knowledge hidden from us for our own good, but to obey and believe these scriptures. We will be safe and right with God if we do this. The nervous system and the brain are very complex. Our brain gives us our perception of the world around us. At the time I came down with what I thought was demon-possession dissociation and its symptoms were outside of my knowledge and understanding. But what I needed to do was trust God’s Word that Jesus was stronger than Satan and that if I was seeking Him with all my heart, and turning from sin that He would receive me and I could not be demon-possessed. No matter what it felt like or seemed like was happening. God’s Word is truth, always.

Of course in my particular case I believe my psychosis prevented me from being able to understand God’s Word so I couldn’t do that at the time. But God is always just and always good and even when we don’t understand what is going on and even though we may lack the ability to be logical due to a mental illness, He is always infinite and omniscient and almighty, able to help us, and the answer to all problems, even though we are completely finite and limited by our illness. He knew I needed vitamin therapy and He made sure I got it at the right time and in the right way, according to His plan. I was willing to pursue vitamin therapy because I could decipher I had physical symptoms even though I had the symptom of anosognosia which is a cognitive symptom that prevents a person from being able to tell they are psychotic. I had chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia and I could tell I had these problems, and so I was willing to seek the help of natural doctors for these symptoms, and as I did so the vitamins also helped my brain and my thinking become more logical.

It was in 2009 that I came out of the delusion that I was demon-possessed. I had this delusion from about 2005-2009.

I actually ended up going off the vitamins and getting discouraged because one of the big reasons I was taking them was for chronic fatigue, and my fatigue didn’t budge on them which felt psychologically defeating and lowered my morale. So for several years I went off them. At the time I didn’t realize just how much they were helping my brain and how much I needed them. Lots of black mold grew in our house starting in 2012, and it was then that my mental health began to take a downward spiral again (and also my physical health).

I got back on vitamins after a 3 week crisis of intense anxiety, nerve pain and tingling, and insomnia. Nothing the doctors could do could help, but I took lecithin, which is needed for the body to make bile and which coats the nerves and which acts as a mold binder and removes mold from the body, brought me out of the crisis.

I was then on-board to keep taking vitamins and saw the necessity of them.

But I still didn’t know I had a psychotic disorder and delusional thinking.

In 2016 I was put on lithium for the worst psychotic break I’ve ever had in 2016 (this time I believed I had the ability to open dimension portals and was chosen to open them to let angels into our world to fight off demons and bring about the second coming – a very grandiose, and very illogical delusion), and it was then that I came out of the symptom of anosognosia. I was diagnosed with bipolar 1 at this time. I then knew I had a psychotic disorder and had been experiencing psychosis in varying degrees for all those years, and I was able to connect the dots in my mind. After coming out of psychosis, I saw Functional Medicine doctors again, this time for the purpose of improving the symptoms of logic and perception specifically, as I now knew I had a psychotic disorder.

I went on something called the Walsh protocol for mental illness, which you can find information about online (Dr. William Walsh’s book is called Nutrient Power and it’s available on Amazon), and the zinc in it particularly helped me in the area of logic and further brought me out of some of the milder delusional thinking I was still experiencing even after being put on antipsychotics. The rest of the nutrients in the Walsh protocol calmed and balanced my mood. I also went on supplements to treat mold illness because I’d been exposed to toxic black mold which raised my histamine and caused my immune system to be dysregulated, bringing on a condition called CIRS (Chronic Inflammatory Response Syndrome). I took herbs to restore blood flow to the deep regions of the brain and to boost something called BDNF (Brain Derived Neurotropic Factor) that repairs and regrows neurons. Ginkgo biloba, an herb that gets blood flow to the deep regions of the brain, really reduced my derealization symptoms, and calcium really helped too with that in a big way. I was low in Vitamin D and boosting immunity with vitamin D helped in a big way to get blood flow going too, and vitamin D brought me out of more of the mild delusions and made me think in an even more logical way. When vitamin D is too low, immunity is not robust and it weakens. When immunity weakens blood flow becomes sluggish. And when blood flow becomes sluggish nerve tone is affected, and nerve signaling is impeded, including the nerve signals in the brain. You then get connectivity issues in your brain, where parts of the brain that should be connected and signaling one another are disconnected, and wrong connections are made instead, and when wrong signaling occurs the brain experiences illogical, delusional thinking. Because the frontal lobe where logic occurs becomes disconnected from the other parts of the brain. MRI scans show connectivity issues in the brains of people with psychotic disorders, and also OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder).

Altered Sense of Body Ownership and Agency in Posttraumatic Stress Disorder and Its Dissociative Subtype: A Rubber Hand Illusion Study – PubMed (nih.gov)

Help! I Think I’m Being Harassed by Demons. How Do I Make it Stop For Good?

‘Demon harassment’, sometimes called ‘demon-oppression’ or ‘demonization’ is the subject of this chapter. What I’m referring to is when a demon does not possess a person, but it troubles them in some way, whether revealing itself visually and refusing to leave, or by speaking to the person and refusing to be quiet, or by harassing them through inserting thoughts into their mind, or by afflicting them with physical or mental illness.

I get asked this question routinely: “I am a Christian and I don’t believe I can be demon-possessed, but I believe I’m being harassed by demons. We’ve tried everything but we can’t get the harassment to stop. How do I make the harassment stop for good?” Sometimes it will be a parent with a child who they think is either harassed by demons or mentally ill, and they aren’t sure which it is that the child is suffering from.

I’ve asked this question many times myself, which is what lead to me doing a thorough study on it. And so have many people that I know and come in contact with. One of the most common questions after a loved one has symptoms of a psychotic break and gets diagnosed with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder is “Are the health professionals right that this is mental illness? It looks so much like demon oppression – or even demon possession. Could they be wrong in their diagnosis and I should take my kid to a pastor instead? Is the psychiatrist trying to medicate what is really a spiritual problem?”

There is no question that demons are involved in what goes on in this world. They are a constant part of life in this world. From Genesis to Revelation the Bible speaks of their involvement and they don’t stop being involved until Jesus comes back to earth a second time. Until then Satan is the acting god of this world. Though defeated through the cross he is still temporarily on the earth’s throne until the war between Christ and Satan finally ends.

Demons make up earth’s economy just as people do. They are behind the scenes tempting nations to go to war. They appear in false visions and manifestations to people as gods and people take these beliefs and form false religions. They want our worship, to take our hearts away from the true God. Satan tempted Peter while he was in the very presence of Jesus. Jesus said “get thee behind me Satan” (Matthew 16:23) showing that Satan plays an active role even in believer’s lives to tempt them and try to hinder God’s work. None of us live one day without the presence and temptations of demons. This is the sober reality.

Any theological belief that doesn’t incorporate the very real presence of demons into the equation isn’t Biblically accurate. Often Satan is much more involved in people’s lives than they’d like to admit. When we come under the power of a besetting sin, it did not happen by accident. Satan set a trap for us. He goes around like a roaring lion seeing whom he may devour. (1 Peter 5:8) A person who chooses to live a selfish and ungodly lifestyle may boast that they are free and happy, but if the unseen world could be shown to us we’d see them like a puppet being controlled by Satan’s demons. Satan enslaves his people. He isn’t good or kind. Those who make self their god and fall under his power really do experience spiritual slavery. The book of Romans is clear about this. It’s a hard, dissatisfying life living in sin and under Satan’s power. Thankfully through Christ we are offered freedom and each must individually make our choice whether we wish to be freed or not.

If a person does not believe they are affected by demons, this is just not Biblical or true. They aren’t far removed from us. Thankfully neither is God or his loyal angels. Planet earth is a battlefield.

So the question isn’t ‘Am I being affected by demons’, but rather ‘To what extent am I being affected by demons?’ ‘Am I Doing Something Biblically unlawful that is letting them into my life more than they normally and legally would be?” “Am I coming under their power and joining their side, rather than being faithful and loyal to God?” We know from the scriptures that all of us are tempted daily by demons. And we know also that these temptations do not end until Jesus comes the second time, or at death if we die before his second coming. So any belief system that says God will completely remove all demonic contact from you in this life just is not Biblically accurate. God does allow some demonic contact, even if you are a converted Christian.

What this means is if your goal is to remove all demonic contact from your life – if this is what you consider to be “cured” of your demon problem, and what you’re trying to bring about, it’s not a Biblical goal. It’s not something that happens in this world according to scriptures and it’s not something we can ask God for. We can only ask and receive things which are God’s will, and it’s not his will right now to completely remove all demonic activity. This is because God always does things the lawful and right way. It’s the reason God had to send Jesus to die for our sins and couldn’t just forgive us without the divine sacrifice; he only does things the lawful and righteous way. He won’t do anything that is wrong or evil.

There is a spiritual battle to fight in this world and it’s God’s will for us to fight and win that battle. He has a process of removing Satan’s power. There are steps that this world is going through to be freed from Satan and sin forever. Jesus began these steps immediately after Adam and Eve’s sin; He wasn’t distant or apathetic. I’m writing an article about the whole process and what the steps are and why each step is needed, so I won’t go into these details in this article. Suffice it to say that Jesus is coming soon (though we don’t know exactly when) and all the steps will soon be completed and Satan will be judged and removed from his position as god of this world forever. Until that happens we have a Christian warfare to fight.

It’s important then to reframe your goal. What you’re really wanting is not to never hear from Satan again, but to be safe from demons, to make sure they aren’t passing the designated barriers depicted in the scriptures for converted Christians. There’s definitely a point where they can get a foothold and go too far and you find yourself on ground a Christian should never be on and harassed by them because you went too far in sin, and what you’re wanting is to make sure that doesn’t happen. You’re wondering “What line did I cross to bring this demonic activity into my life in such a way that it passes the normal designated boundaries?” “And how do I get Satan back over the boundary lines into his own designated place for good?”

You’ve probably heard dozens of theories and ideas. You’re confused and you don’t know which one to believe, so you may have done each thing people in your life told you to do, out of your desire to just be rid of these demons for good, and better to be safe than sorry. I went through this. I heard that having gifts or anything that someone who was into the occult gave you could allow demons into your home. I was vigilant about not letting this happen. Then I heard that having rock music albums and other secular things could let Satan in. I wasn’t listening to rock music, but the fact that items like this were said to let Satan in scared me and I went through all of my belongings and ended up throwing many things out, including drawings from when I was younger, pictures, and many of my art work and writings. The guidelines weren’t crystal clear about which items let Satan in and which didn’t and I figured it was better to be safe than sorry, and acting out of fear (and admittedly mental illness at the time) I threw out trashbags full of my belongings, much of it my creative work thru the years, in an attempt to finally be free of demons, which ended up being my mental illness and not actually demonic activity. I would not learn I had psychosis and get this cleared up, for many years. Then I realized I had another problem. I was living with a father who had secular music CDs and I couldn’t throw away all of his CDs. I began to wonder if I was stuck and couldn’t get rid of the demons because of something someone else was doing which I had no control over.

A very common belief is that someone in the occult can cast a spell on you and that this spell can cause demons to attach to you. Great. Now some stranger you maybe talked to for a few minutes online can send demons your way by doing a spell from thousands of miles away. And there’s nothing you can do about it. Well there is something you can do right? If you just pray long enough and hard enough and fast often and call for the elders of the church to pray and anoint you that will make the demon go away right? But the problem with this line of thinking is that the person can just cast another spell on you and send more demons your way. What if they’re as vigilant as you are? What if they do spells daily to send demons to harass you and never give up. Does this mean you can never be free of demons? Are you stuck with never-ending demon harassment because of someone else’s choices and actions?

You’ll go mad with all the theories out there. Because with demonic and occult stuff, there is no way to tell how things work except by the Word of God. We don’t get behind the scenes views of Satan’s activity like our guardian angels do. We can’t study the spiritual world like we might study biochemistry or physics. The laws of how the spiritual world works are found only in the Word of God. Think of it like doing blind physics. The spiritual laws are very real and we can align ourselves with them – we can be forgiven by Jesus, filled with the Holy Spirit and free of demon possession and unlawful demonic activity – but we can’t know this by looking at the effects of the laws the way we can look at the laws of gravity working in our world by watching things fall, airplanes fly when lift is created, and things like that. Because we walk by faith, not by sight. (2 Corinthians 5:7) We see through a glass darkly (1 Corinthians 13:12). And even during the times when we can see spiritual manifestations much of the time it is Satan lying. He is a master deceiver who uses his spiritual power to do things like convince people reincarnation is real because they see their dead relative in vision who tells them this is the case. Or convince them Buddhism is real because they see a vision of an ascended master. Satan has created thousands of false religions through giving people lying spiritual manifestations. He muddies the waters and interferes with any spiritual experiment we may try to do. This is why you can’t study the spiritual world like we do the physical world. It’s just not safe to trust what we’ve seen when it comes to supernatural activity. But we can know the laws of the spiritual world – how to be right with God and free of spirits – and then trust God that his Word is true. The Word of God alone is our light.

So no matter what we have heard or how many times we’ve heard it, let’s start from scratch and go to the Word of God and see what actually is Biblical.

There are some very informative and key texts in the Old Testament that show the laws and dynamics of how the spiritual world works. They take us behind the scenes to the throne room of God.

Miacaiah a prophet of the Lord saw a vision and described it:

“I saw the Lord sitting on his throne with all the multitude of heaven standing on his right and on his left.

And the Lord said “Who will entice Ahab king of Israel into attacking Ramoth Gilead and going to his death there? One suggested this and another that.

Finally a spirit came forward, stood before the Lord and said “I will entice him”. By what means? The Lord asked.

“I will go and be a deceiving spirit in the mouths of all his prophets. he said. “You will succeed in enticing him, said the Lord. ‘Go and do it.’

So now the Lord has put a deceiving spirit in the mouths of those prophets of yours. The Lord has decreed disaster for you.”

2 Chronicles 18:18-22

At first it seems like the Lord arbitrarily sent a deceiving spirit to them just to trouble them and you might think he is evil if you don’t study this out, so I need you to turn with me to another passage that will explain how deceiving spirits gain a foothold on a person. This next text will fill in some key details that will lead to a fuller picture.

“The coming of the lawless one will be in accordance with how Satan works –

Notice now how Satan works –

He will use all sorts of displays of power through signs and wonders that serve the lie, and all the ways that wickedness deceives those who are perishing. They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved.

For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie and so that they will all be condemned who have not believed the truth, but have delighted in wickedness.

2 Thessalonians 2:9-12

These two passages explain one another. What at first appears to be an arbitrary, cruel decree on God’s part is revealed to be a choice the person makes. A person can only fall prey to a delusion of Satan if they refuse to love truth and choose to delight in wickedness, then God gives them over to the delusion and ratifies their choice by giving them over to Satan, the god they have chosen. Satan thus gains control over a person. Satan unlike God is not honest but deceptive. This is his immoral manner of working.

Notice that the person does not accidentally come under Satan’s power. The choice must be a deliberate one in order for God to give the person over to the delusion and the power of Satan.

God is the highest source of authority. He’s Sovereign over the Universe. What Satan is doing is warring with God – Satan is not under God as a subject of God in these passages. He’s an enemy. But even an enemy is under God in the sense that all things must be approved by the highest authority before they can be done.

But notice the spiritual law at work here. Satan when he makes his request is really warring against God and getting permission to make his move on the chess board. This isn’t permission in the sense that God approves of what Satan is doing; Satan has free will. He has the legal right to war against God and make his moves. He is as much a free agent as we are. The war is being conducted under the supervision of God because He’s Sovereign, but God has no power to stop Satan’s rebellion as God himself believes in and upholds free will as a staple belief in his government.

It’s a chess board with God acting as an overseer of the moves, making sure everything that is done is legal according to the rules of warfare.

God will not allow someone to be deceived who loves the truth. The person must side with truth and with God in order to be under his protection. Satan can only gain his subjects legally by them choosing to align themselves with him through loving evil and cleaving to it. Satan can’t overpower or force someone onto his side.

We see this dynamic again on earth, no longer behind the scenes but in frontal view, when Jesus casts demons out of two demon-possessed men. The demons that left the men ask Jesus if they can have permission to possess a herd of swine. This is the same scenario that we see in the vision of Michaiah in heaven. Since Jesus is on earth now, the demons make their request to make their move on the chess board to Jesus on earth. He is the ultimate authority and they can’t make a move on the board without Him officiating and giving permission.

Jesus grants them permission, because like us they have free will and that free will is respected and they are allowed to do acts of destruction just as we as free agents are allowed to do acts of rebellion and destruction, and the demons plummet the swine off of a cliff. Their goal is to cause the people to hate and distrust God, and to focus on material wealth which was found in the swine, rather than in the deliverance of the demon-possessed men. Satan always appeals to our flesh, the fallen desires within us.

The people react badly and instead of being grateful for the deliverance of the demon-possessed men, they lament the money that was lost by the swine being killed. The people choose to side with Satan and they made Jesus leave.

But the testimony of the two demoniacs over time wins that whole region to Christ. The people choose to delight in truth and side with God and Satan loses them.

Luke 8:27-39

Let’s look at a passage in the time of David. David was not supposed to take a census of the people. He was directly instructed by God not to do so and it was forbidden of him. This is because David was supposed to trust in God for his victories and have faith, not trust in the strength of his army and look away from the Lord for deliverance and become proud and self-reliant.

Israel was in rebellion at the time against God and truth, and God was justly angry with them.

“The anger of the Lord burned against Israel, and he stirred up David against them saying “go and take a census of Israel and Judah.”

2 Samuel 24:1

God’s anger burned against David and Israel because of their rebellion. Again it was their choice which put them in this position where God had to give them over to Satan and judgment in order for the rules of the warefare to be in effect.

David took a census and God punished him and all of Israel by offering David three choices of judgment: 3 years of famine, 3 months of fleeing from enemies, or 3 days of plague. David chose the plague and 70,000 people were killed by a destroying angel who carried out the Lord’s judgment orders.

2 Chronicles, describing the same incident words it this way:

“Then Satan rose up against Israel and incited David to take a census of Israel.”

2 Chronicles 21:1

So did God make David number Israel, or did Satan? Satan tempted David, and because David’s heart wasn’t in the right place (God’s anger burned against David and Israel, showing they weren’t right with Him at the time this happened) David accepted the delusion, and God gave him over to it. God then used the event to bring judgment on Israel, which they really needed, to punish those who had given themselves over to unfaithfulness with death, and to wake the others up to the fact their hearts weren’t right with him, and to repent of their sins.

What was David’s response to the judgment? When he saw the destroying angel going through Israel and slaying people he exclaimed “I have sinned!” He then asked for God’s judgment to fall on him and his family and off the “sheep” of Israel. The people themselves were far from innocent, but David’s words show he acknowledged his responsibility over them as their leader.

You can see that this judgment resulted in repentence. Prior to the judgment, David was proudly and unrepentantly ordering a census of the people.

Paul in the New Testament talks about the concept of “handing someone over to Satan (1 Cornthians 5:5) in order that they may be converted and saved. In other passages it’s explained what this means. In 2 Thess. 3:14-15 it’s described as cutting an unrepentant person in the church off from fellowship with the church, in order that they might be “ashamed”, come to their senses and be reconverted. Jesus first introduces this teaching in Matthew 18:16-17.

Jesus as God does this same kind of thing that Paul in his authority as apostle was directed to do by God. Give people over to what they choose that they may see their wrong, come to their senses, and repent.

There’s also a passage in Exodus 9:12 that says “God hardened Pharoah’s heart.”

Then Exodus 7:13 says “Still, Pharoah’s heart was hardened, and he would not listen to them, just as the Lord had said.”Which was it that hardened Pharaoh’s heart, Pharaoh or God?

Pharaoh hardened his own heart.

It’s the same dynamic described in the vision of Micaiah in 2 Chronicles. It’s described as God doing these things, or Satan doing those things, but then you look closer and you see that God merely ordered the move on the chess board to be made. He allowed for it. God is the acting overseer of the board to make sure no one cheats and everything is conducted legally, he’s the referee to keep the game within its own rules, but people are choosing whether they will side with God or with Satan.

But it’s not just people who are in rebellion to God who can be harassed by demons. There’s a difference between being given over to the power of Satan due to loving wickedness and forsaking God’s moral law, and what happened to Job. Let’s read on. Turn with me to Job 1:2-13

The story of Job answers the question “Can a converted Christian be demon-harassed” with a clear “yes.”

“One day the angels came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came with them.

The Lord said to Satan “Where have you come from?” Satan answered the Lord “From roaming throughout the earth, going back and forth on it,”

Then the Lord said to Satan “Have you considered my servant Job. There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil.”

“Does Job fear God for nothing? Satan replied.

“Have you not put a hedge around him and his household and everything he has? You have blessed the works of his hands, so that his flocks and herds are spread throughout the land.

But now stretch out your hand and strike everything he has, and he will surely curse you to your face.

The Lord said to Satan, “Very well, then, everything he has is in your power, but on the man himself do not lay a finger.”

Job 1:2-13

The devil proceeds to kill Job’s children, his servants, and his flocks. When Job is still faithful to God despite his grief and loss Satan then asks for permission to afflict Job’s body with illness.

God grants Satan’s request and Satan personally afflicts Job with painful sores. “The Lord said to Satan, Very well, then, he is in your hands, but you must spare his life.” Job 2:6 So Satan went out from the presence of the Lord and afflicted Job with painful sores from the soles of his feet to the crown of his head.” Job 2:7 This was a physical illness that is caused by demonic oppression. Even then Job did not turn from God but proved loyal.

Job was a righteous man – in good standing with God! It wasn’t because he broke some rule that he was oppressed. He didn’t bring it on himself. It happened because his faith needed to be tried and tested and proved true, and Satan’s accusations needed to be proved false in the sight of the universe.

So here we can see that there are three, possibly four reasons or root causes that cause demonic oppression to occur :

1. You’ve sinned and loved something immoral rather than loved the truth and you refuse to part from the evil thing and embrace the truth. (this includes occult activity as it’s a violation of the first commandment)
2. You’re a righteous person (through Christ) who is being tested as Job was, or even a non-righteous person who is given a trial as we are all given in life, that if passed by choosing Christ and turning from sin will result in revealing to the universe that you’re on God’s side and will result in being numbered with those who go to heaven.
3. (Number three we don’t know for sure; I will go into more detail below) You need a thorn in your flesh to keep you humble and reliant on God and not self, as Paul did.

Let’s look at root cause number 3.

The Apostle Paul, also a righteous man in good standing with God, was afflicted with what he called a “messenger of Satan” (2 Corinthians 12:7 in his flesh. It was a physical problem of some kind that appears to be caused by a demon. I use the word ‘appeared’ because we don’t know for sure that it was caused by a demon, but the wording ” a messenger from Satan” certainly makes it appear to be demon-oppression. ‘Angel’ in the greek actually means ‘messenger’, so a ‘messenger of Satan’ certainly seems like it’s talking about an evil angel. And we do know for sure that Job was afflicted by a demon. What we do know for sure about Paul’s thorn is that Satan was somehow involved. Perhaps Paul is merely referencing that all illnesses and “thorns” originated with Satan – I’m not sure. It was given him to keep him from becoming conceited from the amazing visions he had received. Pride is the natural tendency of the human heart and he was especially vulnerable since he had had such impressive visions, so God gave him help to stay humble and close to God. And God used Satan to bring it about. God can bring good out of bad and overcome evil with good.

Paul prayed and asked God to take away this thorn in his flesh but God said no. “My grace is sufficient for you.” Which caused Paul to boast in his weaknesses that the power of God may rest on him, showing those of us today who find ourselves with sicknesses and weaknesses the right attitude to have when God says “no’ to our request to be healed. Paul couldn’t pray away this messenger of Satan, neither could Job. If they had called for the elders and been anointed with oil, they still would not have been healed and the demonic oppression would not have been lifted, because God was using it for a purpose. A needed, necessary, important purpose.

Job isn’t the only person tested. The Bible actually tells us that all of God’s children are tested in this life and must rely on Christ’s strength to pass the test and go to heaven. Adam’s first test of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil he failed. The test was necessary for mankind to choose their side – whether God’s or satan’s – and so when Jesus died for us on the Cross we still had free will and still needed to choose whose side we are on. Thus the situation where we are tempted through life in this world came about. I can’t go into all the details of this subject here but I’ve written another article about why we need to be tested and what it accomplishes; why God can’t just take us all to heaven the moment we are converted. Suffice it to say that we are all being tempted like Job – every Christian – and so we will have similar situations to his, probably even facing physical illness as a way to test and grow our faith. In some cases God may allow Satan to afflict us directly with illness and it may not stem from natural causes.

This shows us that physical affliction is something demons can oppress us with. But if God is allowing it for one of his purposes, then we won’t be able to pray it away or get well. So if your goal is to pray away a demon that God is allowing to afflict you to grow your faith, you won’t be able to pray it away. What we all need to pray instead is “Lord accomplish your will through this affliction”

In Luke 13:11 We see a woman who had a spirit of infirmity. The NIV says she had been crippled by a spirit for 18 years. And the original greek says she had a spirit of infirmity. Her infirmity manifested as being bent over and unable to straighten. Jesus commanded the sickness to leave her and she was instantly healed. The Pharisees were angry he healed her on the Sabbath.

Jesus responded: “Should not this woman whom Satan has kept bound for eighteen long years be set free on the Sabbath day from what bound her?” vs 16

Notice the language again. It could be that there was a demon spirit oppressing this woman with a physical ailment (hunched back), but we don’t know for sure. It could be that Jesus was referencing that Satan is the originator of all disease.

If it was demon-oppression, we aren’t told whether she had sinned and given the demon power over her, or whether God had allowed the demon to oppress her like the case of Job with his boils.

In the case of this woman God chose to heal her. It was God’s will for her to be healed. If a demon is doing this to us and it’s God’s will for us to be healed, we can fast and pray, have the elders anoint us with oil, and ask God to heal us, and he will do it.

But if it’s not his will for us to be healed then like Job we can have a demon afflicting us and still know we are right with God. Being afflicted by a demon with physical illness (and if physical illness is possible by demon oppression then since the brain is a physical organ we know mental illness would also be possible by demon oppression. If the devil inflicts the brain mental symptoms will result), is not always an indicator that someone is not right with God or doing something wrong.

Now let’s look at another facet of this. Let’s say your wiccan sister is doing spells in her room. You’re naturally scared you might come in contact with these demon spirits since you live in such close proximity to her. The question to be asked here is ‘Is it Biblical that demons can interact with converted Christians by sight, sound, and movement? Could your wiccan sister living in the same house as you expose you to demons from the spells and rituals she is doing? Are you safe from her choices or in danger because of them?’ We’ve determined from my previous article that a converted Christian cannot become demon possessed as long as they are surrendered to Christ and not living a lifestyle of sin but are progressing heavenward in their walk with God. But demon oppression does work differently.

Let’s look at the story of Paul in the book of Acts casting out a demon from a fortune teller (please note that she could not really tell the future as we know from the Word of God that God alone knows the future and it’s a divine trait. But she pretended to, aided by deceiving spirits, whom the Word of God tells us plainly possessed her). She followed him for many days, possessed and mocking him and the gospel. Note that this went on for many days. Acts 16:17-18

Finally Paul commanded the demon to leave her and it left! She stopped harassing him when this happened and she stopped making money for the people who owned her (she was a slave). They reported Paul to the authorities who beat him severely as punishment. While Paul had power over the demon thru Christ, the rulers of the world who worshiped Satan the God of this world still had power to beat him. The enmity of the world to Christianity is very real. God allowed Paul to suffer for Christ’s and the gospel’s sake while making it very clear that Christ has power over demons and all kingdoms as the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

This story brings out some important points. Notice that yes the demon was in the presence of Paul via the woman,but notice who had the power – God did. God had invested his church with power to cast out spirits, to heal the sick, and to preach the gospel. (Matthew 10:8) This power is no less the church’s today than it was then. Because of Christ, even if demonic activity is going on around us because of pagans and those who practice witchcraft, we are safe. The spirit that is with us is greater than the spirit that is in the world. (1 John 4:4)

This story does not encourage a spirit of fear and worrying over every little book our atheist brother may have in his room who lives with us. Instead it encourages faith in Christ. God is able to protect us and has equipped his church with the help it needs to stay protected as we fulfill the gospel commission to the world.

So where is the line? It’s not with seeing demonic activity around us. We live in a spiritual world and we know people who are involved in paganism and false religions. Yes they may bring demonic activity into their sphere and we may witness it, it may even harass us for many days, but this doesn’t mean we’ve crossed any lines ourselves. Daniel was a Christian statesman in pagan Babylon. The Babylonian King had magicians and sorcerers and they regularly consulted their false gods for wisdom and communications. Daniel was protected and served the true God.

Moses had the same experience in Egypt. At the time that God was sending the true plagues to free his people and testify to the whole world that He was the true God and call out people from pagan worship to worship the Christ who was to come (represented by the lamb that was slain in the daily temple sacrifices), Pharoah’s magicians performed many counterfeit signs in the presence of Moses and Aaron through their false gods. So Moses was right there watching these spiritual manifestations transpire. And God kept him safe. Moses did not become demon possessed by the experience. Now I don’t think it’s a good idea to be present there if your wiccan sister is doing a ritual. If you can get away, get away from it. Do your part to get away from it. But if it’s not something you can get away from as in the case of Moses, then you do have assurance that God will protect you. If your pagan sister is living in the same house as you and doing spells and you can’t get away, you can know God will protect you. Even if you see or hear demonic activity, the demons won’t possess you.

Where is the line that we’re told as Christians not to cross? There may be more than one (this is an on-going study I’m doing) but I’ll share with you what I’ve found so far: We are forbidden to engage in any occult or pagan activity ourselves. If we do this we’re told it’s worship of another god and breaks the first commandment. (Deuteronomy 18:9-13). We are not to consult the dead, talk to spirits of the dead, do the pagan practices or rituals of false religions.

Now this is a line that unfortunately many Christians have actually crossed and there is actually danger here. The good news is that this is something we can do something about. We can repent and turn from this. And God will forgive us and free us from any demons who may have been possessing us due to occult involvement. In America it’s very popular that when a loved one dies, vulnerable people of all faiths, including Christians, will see mediums and spiritualists to communicate with the deceased loved one. Sometimes they even talk to the deceased loved one out loud or watch for communications from the loved one through signs. This is spiritualism and forbidden in the scriptures. This definitely can result in the same condition as the pagan fortune teller in Acts who the Bible shows us was possessed.

God tells us “When someone tells you to consult spiritists and mediums…should not a people inquire of their God? Why consult the dead on behalf of the living?” Isaiah 8:19

In Leviticus 20:6-7 God says he will turn his face away from those who consult spirits and mediums. What he’s saying here is that turning to them grieves the Spirit of God away from you. The opposite of what you want to do as a Christian!

God considers it spiritual adultery – spiritual unfaithfulness to him – to go to false gods rather than directly to Him. He’s personally hurt if we do this. He wants us to seek him instead. He’s pledged to care for us at every stage in life and through every experience we face, telling us he will never leave us nor forsake us (Deuteronomy 31:6). He’s told us in the book of Proverbs that true wisdom and guidance is found in His Word.

Leviticus 19:31 Tells us that if we consult them we will be defiled by them. Here we see why it’s a sin, why it’s wrong. It degrades human beings. It also deprives God of his right to our hearts and our worship. (first Commandment). People made in the image of God become like the idols they worship. Psalm 135:18

Another thing people of all faiths often do, including Christians, is read horoscopes. Do you know what a horoscope is? It claims the future can be told through the alignment of the stars. The creation can predict the future. This is worship of the creation and not the Creator, attributing a divine trait (that of knowing the future, which God alone can do) to mere objects in nature which can only exist because of the Creator’s power. (Romans 1:25) This is an occult practice and Satan can get control of a person this way.

Romans 1:23-28 shows what happens to those who worship the creation rather than the Creator. They become depraved. This is the same principle as in Psalm 135:18 – that we become like the gods we worship. God is the only just and right God. The only holy God. All other gods sin and break his law. This is the key reason God does not want us worshiping false gods. It’s out of his love for us. Because we become like the gods we worship, human beings can only be good, holy, pure. righteous, loving, and at peace if they worship the true God.

The Bible shows us that the worship of false deities – including the stars – is worship of demons. When a person worships any other god other than our Creator, they unknowingly worship demons.

“They sacrificed to demons who were no gods, to gods they had never known, to new gods that had come recently, whom your fathers had never dreaded.” Deuteronomy 32:17

What gods were they sacrificing their children to that the Word of God calls demons? Baal, Molech. The gods of the Philistines and the Hittites and the surrounding heathen nations. These gods were really demons in disguise.

“They sacrificed their sons and their daughters to demons.” Psalms 106:37

“They shall no more offer their sacrifices to demons, after whom they have played the harlot.”

Leviticus 17:7

Here it is again. The gods they offered sacrifices to were demons. Paul reiterates this truth in the New Testament too in 1 Corinthians 10:20.

Jesus prayed “I pray not that you take them out of the world but that you keep them from the evil one.” John 17:15

Another thing deliverance ministries often do, particularly in the Charismatic movement is talk and communicate with the demons. This should never be done! It’s practicing spiritualism. We are forbidden in the scriptures from holding conversations with demons. You may wonder how Jesus could do it when he spoke to the demons that fled into the pigs. Jesus is God. He’s the creator of the fallen angels and he’s basically acting as a judge and overseer of the chess board as explained earlier. He’s not practicing witchcraft by talking to them anymore than he would be practicing sorcery by talking to demons when they appear on judgment day before his throne. But for man to communicate with demons is sorcery and it’s forbidden.

Another line that is often crossed by Christians unknowingly is occult practices in natural medicine. Unfortunately Satan has been combining healthy and good things like herbs with pagan worship practices like witchcraft for thousands of years. And it can often be hard to know what’s safe and what isn’t. Some things to watch out for are DNRS because it uses neurolingistic programming which is similar to hypnotism, muscle testing, because it channels universal divine energy (pantheism) that is believed to possess your body to determine whether a supplement or treatment is right for you and will help you. It takes more than human wisdom to avoid all the devils deceptions, especially in natural medicine as they are so prevalent. We need God or this can’t be done. It’s important to maintain an attitude of humility and dependence on God, or a person will be overcome. Satan is more intelligent than us and in these last days he has so many lies and temptations that are very subtle that on our own we can’t avoid these land mines.

Satan is pure evil to give a person a mental or physical illness through inciting and tempting their family member to abuse them, and then when the person in adulthood starts searching for psychological and physical healing Satan has interwoven spiritualistic practices into natural healing that he entraps them with.

It’s common for people who have suffered abuse to be offered meditation or mindfulness as a solution. In fact in psychology mindfulness is the standard treatment protocol these days. I even had a Christian therapist want to do mindfulness exercises with me, and this is not uncommon. Both of these practices come from Buddhism and are spiritualism. Satan can get control over someone who does them. To meditate means to think and contemplate. This is what we should be doing as we read the scriptures according to the Bible. Clearing one’s mind and their logical, higher thoughts, and listening for the inner self, a universal divine energy that exists in all things, is not meditating, but channeling. It’s a religion known as pantheism that teaches all things are divine and there is a divine energy that connects them. The word meditation is used because it’s deceptive and makes the practice sound safe.

I feel for people who are thrice abused – first by their abusive parents, then by psychologists who tempt them with mindfulness and meditation, and then by the demon spirits that pretend to be their higher self and lead them astray and possibly possess them, never telling them the truth about their need for a Savior and that healing from sin is found in Christ alone, but deceive them with smooth-sounding and fatal lies.

No matter our background, God will help us, and we have a positive duty to seek His help, to search for and embrace only what is true, and to be wise and discerning and reject lies. We are adjourned to “Let no man take your crown”. This includes therapists, doctors, pastors, and even our own selves as our flesh is attracted to lies and smooth sayings. We can trust God’s Word alone, and the counsel of those who counsel us according to His divine Word and do not go against its teachings.

We are told to “Resist the devil and he will flee from you.” James 4:7 and are shown Jesus’ temptations in the wilderness to illustrate this truth. We can have victory over Satan and his temptations, and he will flee. But just as he came back into Jesus’ life later with more temptations, so he is permitted to tempt us again and have future involvement in our lives. There is no way to completely ban him from contact with us as long as we’re living in this world.

We are told to “put on the full armor of God” and to “demolish arguments and cast down every high thing that exalts itself above the knowledge of God.” and even to take captive every thought through the divine power of God working through the “weapons of our warfare” (2 Corinthians 10:4-5), the promises of God found in the scriptures; the Words which are Spirit and life. The Spirit works through the power of God’s word to impart to us God’s divine aid and give us the victory. Indeed, we are not told to pray away demonic activity completely, but to fight it.

For a long time the armor of God did not make sense to me as a Christian because it seemed too focused on me and my abilities. How could I have swordmanship good enough to fight off Satan? Not only did this not make sense, but it seemed very self-reliant, works-based and out of alignment with faith. Thinking about honing my swordmanship, or practicing increasing my faith (my shield) to protect myself put the focus on me and made me feel just like people in the world feel when they depend on themselves to win an argument or a swordfight. Not very spiritual, not like the childlike trust Jesus asks us to have. Yet I could not deny that we are instructed to fight manfully the battles of the Lord, it’s right there in the Word of God.

This confusion was resolved when I studied how the Spirit and the Word work together. When I understood that God’s Word is really God himself working on our behalf through his Spirit. It’s not a tool; it’s a living Person fighting for us. The weapons of our warfare is really one weapon – the Holy Spirit Himself. This is how they have divine power. Us wielding the word of God on our own would not have divine power; indeed even Satan quotes scripture but he lacks God’s power. The power is God Himself making his promises come to fruition. Jesus said his “words are spirit and they are life”. By the Word of God the world was formed (Hebrews 11:3). These are not empty dead words. Since it’s God Himself who gave us his word – his promises – when we present them to Him He acts on our behalf according to His promises. So when Satan lies to us and tempts us, and we respond by reciting a Bible verse to fortify us to walk in the truth rather than give in to the temptation, it’s not that we’re using the sword; it’s that Christ’s Spirit is empowering us and keeping us in the truth. The Spirit works through the Word to do this, because Christ is the Word and the role of the Holy Spirit is to magnify Christ (John 16:14). It is their relationship dynamic in the Godhead. Christ magnifies God and the Spirit magnifies Christ.

All the parts of the armor are glued to us and held together by the one who is our keeper, our defender, and our savior. It’s living armor, being hemmed in and protected by the Holy Spirit Himself working through the Word of God. Our job then is to “put on the Lord Jesus Christ” Romans 13:14 and then we will have strength to resist the strong desires of the flesh. To daily choose Christ and daily spend time in prayer and Bible study with him.

To Summarize:

Demons can oppress both converted Christians and unconverted Christians. So the fact you’re experiencing harassment doesn’t mean you aren’t right with God. Go to God in prayer, repent of any sins you need to repent of, turn away from them in His strength, then call for the elders of the church to anoint you and pray over you. You may want to fast also as Jesus said there is a certain kind of demon that only comes out after fasting and prayer combined. (Matthew 17:21). This may apply to demon oppression as well as demon possession, I’m not sure, and it seems like a good idea to implement some fasting and prayer if you have a particularly difficult demonic situation on your hands. Put faith in Christ and believe his promises to you that he will protect you from demonic activity and remove any demons that may have crossed a boundary line due to sin on your part.

If the demonic activity persists it’s either demons that God is allowing to harass or afflict you for some purpose (remember Job), in which case it’s no longer your job to stress or worry; it’s something God will take care of. Or you may have a mental illness, as many mental illness symptoms can mirror demonic activity, particularly hearing voices, seeing hallucinations and a symptom called disociation where you are so disconnected from yourself that your brain no longer recognizes your thoughts as your own, and it feels like another entity is thinking the thoughts and projecting them into your brain. There is a common symptom of psychosis called thought insertion, where the person in psychosis believes someone is inserting thoughts into their mind. Often they believe it is a family member doing it, but another common belief is that a demon is inserting the thoughts. I encourage you to google ‘thought insertion, psychosis’ for a more thorough explanation of this common psychosis symptom.

I’m sure Satan could mimick mental illness so you can never really know if it’s mental illness or demonic activity except by fasting and praying, turning from sin and calling the elders. If that doesn’t help, but medication and seeing doctors for a mental illness does help and the manifestations or voices go away or reduce, then you probably have a mental illness on your hands and not demonic activity.

I think it’s possible for a person to be lost and unconverted and also be demon possessed or harassed, and be mentally ill on top of their spiritual problems, in which case it takes real wisdom to address the person’s condition. No matter which sickness a person suffers from, or what combination of sicknesses, demonic harassment or even possession, physical illness, or mental illness, God has given his church authority to heal it. This may happen instantaneously and miraculously, or God may choose to heal the person is a more natural way with doctors, medications, and supplements. The church can support and aid the person in their recovery, regardless of whether it’s demons or mental health. We have the health ministry and the gospel ministry as our mandate from God, to move forward together.

There are added benefits to God not doing instantaneous healings. It causes us to have to cooperate to get well, to study our bodies and how to keep them in health, and our character is refined by this process as we learn to give up unhealthy lifestyle practices, which is far from easy, but necessary and essential to the Christian. Keeping our bodies in health is an act of worship to God. It’s not something we can ignore or live without doing. (Romans 12:1) We are fearfully and wonderfully made and in studying our body’s design we view the handiwork of God. This is something we need to see; we need this living object lesson of the Creator’s power and wisdom.

Another thing that natural healings do is they guard us against false miracles. If we’re grounded in natural healing we won’t as susceptible to believing and being influences by the counterfeit miracles that Satan performs. God can protect us from the spurious knowledge of Satan by keeping us focused on natural healings.

I remember a while back when I was seeing doctors and pursuing health treatments and it was a long difficult road to get better. A Facebook pastor friend of mine had just been healed by Benny Hinn, a popular charismatic preacher. People were being slain in the spirit and speaking in tongues and all of that. When Benny Hinn put his hands on my pastor friend, my friend’s high blood pressure and pain around his chest went away. He had been having debilitating chest pain.

My friend tried to get me to also see Benny Hinn and he couldn’t understand why I’d go such a long and difficult road to regain my health with seeing doctors and doing health treatments, some of which take 2-3 years to complete. But I received benefits from my longer more natural healing that he did not experience with an instantaneous healing (please note that I don’t believe his healing from from God; I think it was from the enemy masquerading as God.) I had many times where I could say like Jacob “I have seen the Lord face-to-face and my life is preserved.” Genesis 32:30 I had precious experiences of learning to trust God more fully. I learned about health and the human body and can share and teach this information to others. I know how to heal and also how to preserve health, which is vital to prevent relapse of symptoms. I’m about to begin health coach training. My pastor friend did not believe that keeping our bodies in a state of health is a part of worship. He ate pizza and fast food and lived an unhealthy lifestyle.

So you can see the fruits of a true healing vs. a false one. In most cases if people are healed instantaneously they will continue their unhealthy practices and a healing would amount to God being an enabler of their destructive lifestyles. Prolonged natural healings gaurd against this happening.

If you’ve parted with sin, been prayed over and fasted, put on the whole armor of God – Christ himself – and remained in the Word, then you’ve done what is asked of you from the scriptures. Resist the temptation to go to cultural beliefs superstition or human opinion to find out things that the Word of God has not told us about the spiritual realm. You’ll never know if these things are true or not and it will just cause confusion and lead to more chaos. It isn’t acting in faith to do that. God does leave gaps in our knowledge but he gives us all the information that we do need to know.

You can rest assured that Jesus will fight for you; he will do his part. He is our keeper; we don’t keep ourselves. He will protect you from demons.

How Do I Tell The Difference Between Hallucinations from My Psychosis, God’s Communications, and Satan’s Deceptive Communications?

True vs. False Spiritual Gifts and Communications

One of the reasons I’m so motivated to rightly understand the spiritual gifts found in the scriptures like visions, miracles, and faith, is that during a psychotic break I had vivid dreams and communications that I thought were from God. I thought I was a prophet “fanning into flame” a powerful and important spiritual gift. In one of my dreams I was in Joseph’s sarcophagus in Egypt and it was as if God was telling me I was his chosen one for this generation. I was then told that being the chosen one involved decoding a series of dreams which conveyed important messages for God’s people, and eventually I was told that being the chosen one meant I had to piece together the spiritual and physical world that had been separated when Adam sinned and this is why we could not see or interact with the angels, and that doing so would result in bringing about the Second Coming of Christ. I was to piece together these two worlds by using the spiritual gift of faith, where I would believe, and then swipe my hand to the left, and the spiritual dimension would open up and let angels into our world and begin to connect the two worlds. During psychosis my brain stopped following the laws of logic and it was impossible to correctly deduce anything, even Bible truth. I was reading the Bible, but coming to strange conclusions that did not follow my denomination’s tenants of faith, or any denomination’s tenants of faith – a big red flag that I was in psychosis. Bizarre beliefs that don’t line up with any religion that is known in the world are one of the biggest ways that psychologists can tell a person is displaying a symptom known as religiosity which occurs during psychosis. The beliefs are bizarre because the person’s logical and cognitive abilities have been compromised. After coming out of psychosis with lithium it took me a while to process what had happened. I had many questions and much confusion. I looked back through my life and wondered how I could tell the true experiences I had had with God as a Christian apart from the psychosis I had developed.

When visions, and dreams, and voices are nonsensical, we can be sure they aren’t from God, because God is always rational, self-controlled, holy, and dignified, not irrational, out of control, confusing, unholy, and undignified. (More on this later).

Did I Have a Healing from God at Pathfinder’s?
When I was 12 years old I went to a Pathfinder camporee. Pathfinders is a club like boy scouts or girl scouts where you earn honors and learn skills, and it’s Christian so you also learn Bible texts and study the Word of God. In the middle of the night I developed a painful ear infection and my ear ached badly. In the past when I had ear aches I would take a very hot bath and the pressure created by the hot water would often cause the ear to release the fluid in it, and the pain would abate. But they only had showers here at the camporee and I didn’t think it would work, plus I didn’t want to wake everyone up by searching through my belongings to find a towel and clothes. I had grown up praying to God throughout the day, and also whenever I had a need, and I had a very close relationship with Him. I didn’t want to wake everyone up and disturb their sleep so I asked God what to do.

As I was laying there in the dark this text came to my mind: “Be still and know that I am God”, (Psalm 46:10) along with the impression that I should lie perfectly still and reflect on God’s greatness rather than on my predicament and the pain I was experiencing. In order to lie perfectly still I had to stop breathing, so I held my breath while I contemplated the greatness of God. This lifted my mood and brought me out of a state of panic to lose sight of myself and my problem and instead think about how Omnipotent and good God is. It did something else also, it created pressure in my ear and caused the liquid to drain from my ear, stopping the painful ear ache. I was able to sleep without pain and get up the next day and engage in camporee activities with everyone else.

This experience and a few others like it I’d experienced at different times in my life certainly seemed like God speaking to me. But since I had experienced a psychotic break and had had communications I knew didn’t align with God’s Word, I now began to question all of my past experiences and it was a time of much confusion.

Looking back I can now see how my brain, knowing pressure helped the problem, could have figured out that air pressure could do the same thing. I must have heard of people popping their ears on planes as I had traveled several times on planes and so this knowledge may have been in the back of my thoughts and I put two and two together and figured it out. The sense of God impressing me with the Bible text could have also come from my own mind. It’s not uncommon for people who later develop psychotic disorders to have some auditory hallucinations and impressions/messages leading up to the illness and getting much worse when they finally develop the illness.

So, it could have been my own brain, but it also could have been God, and it seems much more like God than the sarcophagus dream which didn’t follow correct Bible doctrine and was clearly not from God.

I needed to know how to stay away from false visions and dreams, and have a solid relationship with God. And I also needed to know how to recognize symptoms of my mental illness and work with doctors to stay sane and keep symptoms at bay.

Three Things Can Happen At The Same Time

Since I could now think logically, I could now study the scriptures and find many of my answers. I did an in depth and ongoing study on the spiritual gifts and the ways that God communicates, and how to tell true communications from God apart from false signs and wonders produced by Satan to deceive, and how to tell both of these apart from mental illness. So really there are three categories here, and I believe that demons and mental illness could potentially overlap at times as could God and mental illness. i.e.. One could have a very real experience reading God’s word and be convicted of sin and a need for a Savior (when we experience conviction and become aware of our need for God, it’s always the Holy Spirit doing this convicting), while simultaneously having a hallucination or hearing voices because of having schizophrenia. In my own experience, still having whispers and quiet voices and nudges from my psychotic disorder, even after treatment (which is very common), my voices will often repeat whatever Bible study I’ve had, and the doctrine I learned in the Bible study, and the conclusions I’ve come to, and sound like the voice of God, assuring me I’ve found truth. I know this voice is not always God, because there’s been times I’ve been incorrect about doctrine and came to a wrong conclusion, and figured this out later from talking with a pastor or having a small group Bible study, and the voice had told me my initial conclusion was correct. The voice follows my thoughts, and if I learn I was incorrect, the voice will just align and repeat the new conclusion I’ve learned and made. It just shifts with my thoughts and my conclusions, and errs when I do, something which God definitely would not do as He is infallible. So this is one big way I know this voice isn’t God’s voice, even though it claims to be God and sounds and feels like it’s divine.

I’ve spoken with people who have schizophrenia who were treated for their schizophrenia and are now mostly logical, who decided to become mediums and communicate with spirits. People with schizophrenia who have been successfully treated, and come back into reality, are just like anyone else – they have a choice to make about what religion they will follow, and some of them choose to follow religions like New Age, paganism, spiritualism, and channel spirits. They then hear actual demon voices and get demonic communications, and they have the voices from their mental illness going on at the same time.

The voices from psychotic illnesses, are like dreaming, and tend to be incoherent and not to make sense. They are usually constant, and can be loud (although medication and treatment often helps make them quieter), and they make it hard to sleep.

The voices from the demons are not nonsensical, and go directly against the scriptures and encourage the person in embracing sin and false religions. These voices are often comforting, and masquerade as an angel of light, pretending to have higher truth and to be friends from the other side who have your best interest in mind. If you google mediums in big cities in the USA, these people usually make a lot of money and lead what people in our country would consider to be successful and prosperous lives. The voices they hear often encourage them in greed and worldly success, and make crass jokes, but do not harass them personally, instead spurring them on to see more clients and do more communications between their clients and spirits, to lead people astray.

In Africa the demonic influence seems to be a lot more hostile, with demons harassing people and frightening them, and requiring them to do rituals to appease them.

I think Satan has different strategies for different parts of the world. In America there’s a huge atheist element that Satan is ensnaring a lot of people with. If every American who went to a medium was harassed by demons, the atheists in America would be convinced some kind of supernatural power existed, and wouldn’t be ensnared as easily in atheism.

Satan can lie in a myriad of ways, and he will choose the lie that he thinks has the highest chance of ensnaring a person or influencing a country in a wrong direction. Which is why it’s important we trust God’s Word above personal experience. We need to believe God’s Word that it’s dangerous to consult mediums, even if we don’t see that happening in an obvious or distressing way in America.

Not everyone with schizophrenia or a psychotic illness loses their ability to understand logic; some people with schizophrenia are logical and rational but also hear voices or have visual hallucinations, especially among those who have been medicated for their condition they may still have some auditory and visual hallucinations but can understand right and wrong, the Bible at the same time, while others who are deeper into psychosis lose rational thought. All three of these things: mental illness, the Holy Spirit, and demons are a part of life in this world. So it’s possible to have activity happening from all three sources at once, as was seen during Christ’s life when demons gave people mental symptoms, and Jesus cast the demons out, and sent the demons into swine. All three things were present here: mental symptoms (in this case caused directly by the demons possessing the demoniacs, causing them to be out of their mind and do violent and erratic things like attack people, so people tried to chain them), demonic activity as in the case of the possession of the men and later the swine, and Jesus’ power and His Holy Spirit casting the demons out and setting the men free.

I have seen cases where someone is successfully treated for a psychotic disorder, say schizophrenia, and mostly comes out of the psychosis, and has enough logic to understand right and wrong, and the tenants of the Christian faith and the difference between Christianity and paganism, but still hears some auditory voices and has some visual hallucinations (it’s very common after treatment for the voices to not be as loud or as frequent, but to still be there, and it’s very rare for the medication to completely take away the voices and visual hallucinations), but chooses to become a medium and a spiritualist and rejects Christianity, and then begins hearing from demon spirits impersonating loved ones and benevolent angelic entities or ascended masters who claim to be people who lived on earth and were great teachers, and have passed on to the other side.

I believe these people are experiencing hallucinations and real demons at the same time. You can often see a very real difference between the hallucinations and the actual demons. Their hallucinations and voices from their schizophrenia are usually about random things, or symbolic of life events that are occurring in their lives at the time, and tend to be mood congruent, so for instance, if they are having a lot of depression the voices will tend to be more negative and sad, and if they are having an elated mood the voices will tend to be hopeful and grandiose.

But the demon communications they get from their mediumship strike directly against Bible truth. They aren’t random things; they show a clear goal. For instance, the demons impersonating the person’s deceased father will have the father tell crass jokes like he did on earth, giving them the message that someone who was crass and unconverted on earth is alive and well on the other side, so that the medium will believe she doesn’t need to part with sin and believe in Jesus to be saved; everyone goes to heaven, or at least everyone except very immoral people like murderers and rapists.

The longer the person channels the spirits, the more entrenched she becomes in the false beliefs, and the more she hardens her heart against the Holy Spirit’s convicting voice. You may see the person for instance, receive messages from spirits that abortion is ok, and have an abortion, or that God approves of divorce if there’s tension in their marriage, and you see them get a divorce. The medium will then become an advocate for these false doctrines, spreading these lies to others, and the demons will assure the medium she’s making a positive difference in the world, spurring her on to continue this work that strikes directly against the law of God and the authority of God.

The demons lead away from the law of God, and the Word of God, giving the person a false hope that she can live in unrepentant sin, and get a free pass into the next life and live forever.

But God’s Word declares that the wages of sin is death. And that if we refuse to repent and hold onto any sin and make it an idol, there is no more sacrifice left for the sins of such people, because they refused to bring those sins to Jesus to be forgiven and for the strength to part with them.

When it comes to voices and hallucinations from a mental illness, it’s not the case that the person becomes more entrenched in false doctrine simply by hearing voices coming from their own brain. It’s more like dreaming where you get random, and often distressing symbols and emotions, as your brain tries to process the emotions of real-life events you’re going through. The brain is in a dreamlike state when in psychosis, and it’s very similar to dreaming while awake. For instance, the person may hear voices from their abuser from their past, because their brain is processing that memory, or they may see a monster running towards them that takes on many of the same properties as their mental illness, and which is a symbolic representation of their mental illness that their mind generated. They may also see demons or angels, but these demons and angels are often symbolic representations of people or events in their life that they perceive to be good or evil. In the case of my psychosis, demon voices were symbols my brain generated when I thought I was harboring an inner attitude or “spirit” of jealousy or unjust anger. When I thought I had a benevolent inner attitude or desire, my brain would generate voices of the Holy Spirit or angels, which were symbolic of the fact I had a good desire. So I had these “voices” which in my case were usually not loud and were more impressions and signals and whispers, all the time, whenever my attitudes shifted throughout the day. Thus I felt I was being harassed and attacked by demons, or loved and comforted by angels or the Holy Spirit, but it was just my mental illness doing this. The way these voices acted and the things they did and said did not fit in with the Bible’s accounts of what demons and angels and the Holy Spirit can do and what they are and how they operate in the world.

My experience didn’t line up with the Word, and this is how I can be sure they couldn’t have been actual demons and angels, as the Word is truth.

However, since coming out of psychosis, and regaining the ability to understand right and wrong, I’ve definitely been tempted by Satan and I’ve been convicted by the real Holy Spirit. And these temptations and convictions do align with what the Bible says about how Satan and the Holy Spirit operate. But the voices did not.

See my articled titled ‘What is Schizophrenia’ for more information about psychotic disorders.

Complete Clarity Not Always Possible This Side of Heaven
I don’t believe we can say with certainty which is which in every case. In heaven I expect to have God tell me that certain times I thought he was speaking to me it wasn’t actually him, and other times I got it right and it was him speaking to me like I thought it was. This side of heaven we can’t always know for sure.

There is much we do not know regarding demons, angels and the Holy Spirit, and the human mind. All of these things are far beyond our current human understanding. The Holy Spirit is a mystery we will never be able to fully comprehend. Therefore, all that we can know is what is actually revealed in the Word of God, and we can trust that our Heavenly Father revealed everything that it is vital for us to know. Whatever He did not reveal is something that it’s not necessary for us to know. Trust in God and reliance on Him is the foundation we need to work from. He will help us understand the scriptures and come to the knowledge we need to know. We can’t trust our experiences, feelings, or even our sight or hearing to be infallible; our only sure anchor is God’s word.

A common error that many people make is to interject tradition or cultural beliefs onto their understanding of demons, mental illness, and the ways the Holy Spirit communicates. This can lead to many variations of belief which are not found in the scriptures and cause confusion. There is no safety or enlightenment in purely human ideas. What we need is a better understanding of the Word of God, and sound doctrine on this difficult and complicated subject. Unlike angels we don’t get a behind the scenes look at what’s happening and it’s easy for Satan to deceive us. We’re not supernatural beings capable of doing the things Satan can do and we can’t do the science of healing like he can. He can easily give us a magic show that looks legitimate to us and is completely false and we can’t tell the difference from the real thing. Satan has been in heaven, knew God face-to-face and knew what it was like to be fully righteous and without sin. He can transform into an angel of light, give impressions or voices that sound loving and kind like God, and mimic much of what he saw and heard, with just enough error to deceive us. The love of God for one human soul is so great, and Satan hates God so much, that I don’t doubt Satan would do whatever it would take to keep one person out of heaven.

While false spiritual gifts pose extreme danger, true spiritual gifts are a vital part of growing up the church to the full measure of Jesus Christ, in preparation for his soon coming. Ephesians 4:11-13 The truth is, we need the spiritual gifts. They are God’s way of spreading the gospel, organizing the church, and teaching us the sound doctrine Christ gave the first apostles.

How then do we tell the difference? The Bible gives us the answers.

Let’s first look at the primary way the Holy Spirit speaks. To know this, let’s look at texts that tell us his office and role in the Godhead.

But first, I want to explain two key realizations I’ve had the more time I spend in the Word of God and in prayer and reflection about this subject.

Key Realization:
The Truth About the Dynamic of the Word and The Spirit and How They Work Together is Eternal, and Never Changes

One thing I’ve really come to realize is that the relationship dynamic between the Holy Spirit and Christ is one of the Bible’s eternal truths. While the exact things they choose to do through human history may change, the nature of Jesus and the Holy Spirit, and the dynamic between them never changes.

Just as the exact choices a married couple may make when they raise children or engage in philanthropy in their community may change through the years, the nature of the institution of marriage and of what it means to be a husband or a wife and what each of these roles entails, and what their union is never changes, so the truth about the dynamic of the Godhead never changes.

One core thing I’ve realized that goes along with this is that anytime you engage with spiritual things or supernatural experiences in a way that goes against the biblical truth about the dynamic of how the Holy Spirit and Jesus, the Word interact, or goes against the truth of who they each are, you end up with a different religion that isn’t Christianity and you’re in danger of engaging with evil spirits, demons. You won’t get the Holy Spirit if you go against Bible truth about who the Holy Spirit is, what He does, and how He works with Jesus and their eternal dynamic.

In psychosis you’re not intentionally getting these truths wrong, and I believe God protects you, but you still won’t be getting supernatural manifestations that are the Holy Spirit if you aren’t relating to God in a way that aligns with the Bible.

There are many, many species of errors that the devil has created – countless counterfeits of the truth – to deceive not only people in the world but also Christians, and to bring in paganism and false religions into the Christian church.

Another example of this is like centering prayer, which goes against the Bible’s definition of prayer and its instruction on how we are to pray, and brings in eastern meditation into prayer, where you use repetitions or visualizations to work to get your mind into a state of no thoughts occurring in your brain. Jesus speaks out against vain repetitions and tells us that we are to fully engage our minds when in prayer, intelligently bringing to our Father our cares and concerns.

The counterfeits are too numerous to list; it’s impossible. Satan can create any false doctrine, and insert some elements of truth into it to deceive. So the potential here is great, and in order to avoid error and serve God in truth, it takes the help of God Himself. We need His wisdom and watch-care, and dependence on Him, and we need His Word, not our own ideas about things.

What is This Dynamic?

It was through the Word that God created the world. It’s also through the Word that God recreates our hearts and sanctifies us. It’s also through Christ’s sacrifice, and the promises in His Word that Christ forgives us.

“Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear. “
Hebrews 11:3

“Sanctify them by the truth; Your word is truth.”
John 17:17

“Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her
and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. “
Ephesians 5:26-27

“You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. “
John 15:3

According as his divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and virtue:
Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.
2 Peter 1:3-4

You can see here with these Bible verses that the supernatural almighty power of the Holy Spirit does not do anything apart from the Word, the Bible, and Christ who is the living Word.

The world was created by the word of Christ, the Spirit then went and made the light, divided the day and night, created the animals, and everything Jesus’ Word brought into being.

Similarly, Christ lived a perfect life for us, then laid down His life to pay our debt, and now it’s through His Word – the Bible – that we claim His forgiveness and believe unto salvation.

We are forgiven because He’s given us His Word – Bible promises that declare us forgiven.

Similarly we are sanctified by claiming these promises and meeting the conditions of obedience laid out in them.

You can see that Christianity centers in the Word of God, not in the Spirit of God.

This is very unlike many other religions (and lies Satan seeks to infiltrate Christianity with) where the center of the religion is in the spiritualism, or supernatural manifestations.

Satan seeks to divorce the Spirit from the Word, to make the focus on supernatural manifestations that go against Bible principles and doctrine on how the Holy Spirit behaves and the kinds of things He does and how He operates in the world.

One of the biggest differences between Christianity and false religions is the focus on the Word and the authority of the scriptures.

And if you put the emphasis on the Spirit and begin to divorce the Spirit from the Word, you will end up with demon spirits and not the Holy Spirit. You will end up with a false religion that is not Christianity.

And it’s fallen human nature to want to do that. It appeals to the flesh and our fallen passions.

It’s the Word that should be the delight of every Christian, and the focus of the Christian experience and Christian faith. The Holy Spirit magnifies the Word, always; the Holy Spirit does not draw attention to Himself or magnify Himself. His role and proper place in the Godhead is the magnify Christ and the Bible, thus the focus must always be on the scriptures and they serve as the basis of the Christian faith.

Even our supernatural experiences as Christians are rooted in the Word and the Word is the focus. For instance, we claim those promises and this is how we know that we are being changed by the supernatural power of the Holy Spirit, to be recreated into the image of Christ. This is a deeply spiritual and fully supernatural experience that occurs in our hearts, but the whole focus is on the change that occurs in the character, a core Bible truth, not on superficial things like the way it feels or on visions of the Holy Spirit or anything that is not foundation to the Word of God.

One of Humanity’s Biggest Temptations
It’s important to understand that the temptation to take partial Bible truth when it comes to the Holy Spirit and what He does for us and how He operates, and add error to it appeals to our fallen flesh in a major way.

God is omnipotent. So false doctrines that make Him out to use His omnipotence to serve us and give us what our flesh wants constitutes some of humanity’s greatest temptations.

One need not have psychotic symptoms to begin seeing God in a false way where He will use His omnipotence to give them what they desire.

After I came out of psychosis, I could not tell that my prior experiences doing spells and rituals when I was out of my mind were wrong, and I stopped doing them. But I remember still having a strong fleshly desire to get into the occult again. Because I could see it was wrong, I now prayed to Jesus for strength and resisted this temptation and haven’t gotten back into the occult again since regaining sanity.

One thing that helped me was to understand that just as fornication or gluttony may be something we experience temptation with, but can say no to and do not have to give into these things, so the temptation of sorcery is a common human temptation.

I had been seeing the temptation to engage in spells and sorcery as something that was rare and only very rebellious people do it, but God’s word actually lists it under the common works of the flesh, that sinful people are tempted with.

“Now the works of the flesh are evident, which are: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness,
Idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies,
Envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.”
Galatians 5:19-21

The King James version uses the word “witchcraft” and other versions use “sorcery”.

I love how God’s Word gives us the truth and corrects our human preconceptions and opinions. The truth is, the desire to get involved in witchcraft and sorcery, is a common human temptation, it’s not rare, and looking around at all the devil’s false religions through history, and lying supernatural manifestations in the Christian church, and the millions of people who seek these things out and engage in meditation, yoga, witchcraft, praying to the saints, confessing to priests, the Word of Faith movement, and all these other acts of sorcery, it’s really clear just how big of a temptation this is to human beings and just how much it appeals to our selfish hearts.

The truth is we are sitting ducks for all these lies. Even converted people have some selfishness in us, and the desire to use supernatural power for our own ends is an almost overpowering one. We need Jesus or there is no hope for us. But He has pledged to give us the victory, and He is faithful and will do so. But let’s face it, this will not be easy and will require many battles on our knees.

Witchcraft and every species of sorcery is more common in our day and age than it was in the pagan nations of Bible times. There’s more mediums in the United States alone than have ever existed in the times of the Amorites or Hittites. The population of the whole earth is much larger, and Satan’s species of error are more numerous. He has increased in power since that time.

Not only do people attempt to summon pagan gods and goddesses, or their higher selves via meditation (which is a concept that doesn’t exist – we have no higher selves that are divine – and allows demons to gain control of them), but people even try to get God to answer prayers that are selfish.

Jesus addressed this issue and told the people plainly that He would not give them things to serve selfish and lustful purposes.

“Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts.”
James 4:3

“If I had cherished iniquity in my heart, the Lord would not have listened. “
Psalm 66:18

“Then they will call on me, but I will not answer; they will earnestly seek me, but will not find me. “
Proverbs 1:28

God’s Word makes it clear that God will say no to such prayers. He makes the conditions of answered prayer that we keep His commandments and walk in obedience to Him and pray for such things that are right and good and further His Name and His work on the earth.

“And this is the confidence that we have before Him: If we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. “
1 John 5:14

“and we will receive from Him whatever we ask, because we keep His commandments and do what is pleasing in His sight.”
1 John 3:22

We must ask according to His will in order to receive. This requires a knowledge of His will as revealed in the scriptures, and a submission to His Omniscience; like a child trusts a loving Father who knows better than the child does what is right and what that child needs.

What Satan does then is he creates false doctrines that foster greed and pride and all these fallen passions that God has said no to, telling people God will really say yes. The Word of Faith movement is one such false movement where people have experienced supernatural manifestations of healing, communications, dreams, seeming answers to prayer such as meeting someone who would become their spouse their an encounter that seemed to be orchestrated by God, getting a new job through a way that seemed almost miraculous.

Word of Faith at first seems like a subtle lie, and many of its beliefs have been mixed with true Christianity and its tentacles are everywhere even in churches with sincere believers who are subtly and usually unknowingly influenced by it.

But when you break it down at its root Word of Faith teaches that we can command God to do things using our words. That our words hold creative power. This makes people out to be divine, blurring the lines between us and God.

This is only one such false belief that can cause supernatural manifestations in your life that are demonic in origin and not from God. This false belief system sees greed as a virtue, teaching people God wants them to have success in every area of life in this world – monetarily, spiritually, and good physical health.

But in this world the Bible counsels us to use our money and talents to spread the gospel, care for the poor and widow, and build up the church. We are not supposed to hoard our wealth for ourselves, calling it the blessing of God.

This false movement appeals to people’s greed and pride. Telling them they are divine; that their words and prayers manifest what they desire, rather than that God alone is divine and He does His will; He doesn’t do ours.

Word of Faith teachings do not acknowledge that the Christian must carry their cross in this life, live simply and humbly, and the discipline of God that must occur here in order to sanctify us. These are core Bible doctrines they do not teach or believe in or acknowledge.

Rather they usually teach that the only suffering God won’t take away from His children is persecution. But that health is always a guarantee, money is always a guarantee.

How convenient to teach that persecution is the only suffering God allows at a time when there is little persecution of Christians in developed countries (though that is changing now and rapidly, I admit), and they know there is no chance of real persecution in their lifetime. Or at least there wasn’t until very recently when things have taken a decided shift.

The Role of the Holy Spirit and the Main Way He Communicates Daily

But when he, the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come.
He will glorify me because it is from me that he will receive what he will make known to you.
John 16:13-14

And when he is come he will reprove the world of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment.
John 16:8 KJV

The Holy Spirit doesn’t speak his own words and neither does Christ. Christ came speaking the doctrine of the Father, and the Spirit glorifies Christ by making Christ’s teaching understood by human beings. He teaches us from God’s word.

I’ve thought a lot about this and studied the Word, and I believe that there is a foolproof way we can know the Holy Spirit is speaking to us. Did you know that? There is one tried and true foolproof way. But it’s not flashy or over the top exciting. It is however deeply important and deeply intimate. We can know the Holy Spirit is communing with us when we are convicted of wrongdoing, and when we are convicted of our need of a Savior, convicted to repent, to make wrongs right, and convinced of the divinity and sufficiency of Christ to meet our need.

We have examples of this in the scriptures. When Peter was convicted that Jesus was the Messiah Jesus said to him: Flesh and blood has not revealed this to you but my Father which is in heaven.
Matthew 16:17 KJV

The truth is the Holy Spirit speaks to us every day. Any time we need to make a moral decision and choose between right and wrong, the Holy Spirit is right there convicting us of truth and appealing to us to do the right thing. Conviction isn’t something that comes by human

study alone. It is the very voice of God speaking to the spirit; when we are convicted; it is God Himself. He never ceases speaking to us unless we completely grieve him away, which some have done, though it is not easy to do. Entire Old Testament groups of people have done so and we’re told that at the time of the end the whole world will wonder after the beast except a small remnant. There will come a time when everyone’s choice will be fixed and decided and Christ will say “Let he who is unjust be unjust still…let he who is holy be holy still.” Revelation 22:11 Solemn realities here. It’s important that we begin right now to make a practice of heeding the convicting voice of the Holy Spirit. The good news is that it’s completely up to us whether we will heed conviction or harden our hearts. If we choose to heed, Christ will give us strength through his Holy Spirit to do the right thing. We must come to him in prayer daily and rely on his strength.

When Jesus was alive on earth he often referred to object lessons, common things in nature which taught the people important truths. This is one way the Holy Spirit speaks also.

We see the same thing happening in the book of Jeremiah and even in Proverbs where Solomon observes the ant and other common things found in nature and learns wisdom.

“This is the Word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord: Go down to the potter’s house, and there I will give you my message.” So I went down to the potter’s house, and I saw him working at the wheel. But the pot he was shaping from the clay was marred in his hands; so the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him.

The Word of the Lord came to me. He said “Can I not do with you, Israel, as this potter does?” Like clay in the hand of the potter so are you in my hand Israel. Of at any time I announce that a nation or kingdom is to be uprooted, torn down and destroyed, and if that nation that I warned repents of its evil, then I will relent and not inflict on it the disaster I had planned. And if at another time I annunce that a nation or kingdom is to be built up and planted, and if it does evil in my sight and does not obey me, then I will reconsider the good I had intended to do for it.”

Jeremiah 18:1-10

Can’t you hear Christ in these words? It is the pre-incarnate Christ, referring to object lessons in nature just as he did when he walked among the earth later on.

“Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.”
James 1:17

God has done many different kinds of manifestations through his Spirit in both the Old and New Testaments. In fact, these manifestations are so varied that no one could guess what he would do next. Who could have guessed that the Holy Spirit would endow a man with superhuman strength in the case of Samson for instance? Or that God would part the Red Sea? When God created the world who could have guessed at all the different marine life, or the different microbiomes he would speak into existence? The world baffles us and we aren’t even close to fully understanding the handiwork of God; it’s beyond our capacity as human beings.

When I first started studying the gift of prophecy, I had the belief that the gift only came to those who had the office of prophet, but I quickly learned that this was not the case, and that the Holy Spirit gave the gift in a much more varied way than I had at first thought. Saul, the first king, prophesied, David prophesied through the psalms though he was a king and not in the office of prophet, Miriam was a prophetess but wrote no books of the Bible as the other prophets did, though she wrote a song that is recorded in scripture. Even Nebuchadnezzar, a non-Christian king at the time had a dream prophecy given by the Holy Spirit, and Pilate’s wife was given a dream.

I began to see that God could really do anything good. He could give any good gift and give it in any good way. And Satan could do anything bad, or a mixture of good and bad to deceive. God’s manifestations are always given righteously and in righteous ways; Satan’s false manifestations are always given deceptively and for evil purposes and in ways that cheapen God or make Him look bad.

The Holy Spirit’s Integrity

Unfortunately it’s often the case, even among Christians, that we have a tendency to see the Holy Spirit as a force, or supernatural powers and gifts we can be given from God, rather than as a Person.

It’s vital that we know from the scriptures who the Holy Spirit is. God hasn’t revealed everything about the Holy Spirit, and a complete knowledge of Him is beyond our ability as finite created beings to understand, but what God has revealed in His Word is vital to our Christian faith.

He is a Person.

The Bible calls God the “God of truth”.

so that he who blesses himself in the land shall bless himself by the God of truth, and he who takes an oath in the land shall swear by the God of truth; because the former troubles are forgotten and are hidden from my eyes.
Isaiah 65:16 ESV

He is the Rock, his work is perfect: for all his ways are judgment: a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is he.
Deuteronomy 32:4

Into Your hands I commit my spirit; You have redeemed me, O LORD, God of truth.
Psalm 31:5

Jesus calls Himself “The Truth”.

Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
John 14:5

Jesus even goes so far as to say that His life work is to testify of the truth. Those who love and embrace the truth are called Christians, followers of Christ. Truth is the dividing line between Christians and non-Christians. All those who love the truth hear the voice of Christ and follow Him. The unrepentant, refuse to follow Him because they love not the truth.

“You are a king, then!” said Pilate. Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. In fact, the reason I was born and came into the world is to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.”
John 18:37 NIV

The Man of Evil will use every kind of evil to fool those who are lost. They are lost because they refused to love the truth and be saved.
1 Thessalonians 2:10 ERV

And then, the Holy Spirit is called the “Spirit of Truth.”

But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come.
John 16:13

So you can see here from these passages, that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are all the divine Source of truth. All truth stems from them, and because they are all The Truth, they are all united with one another in truth.

What does this mean? It means everything we call truth originates from them. It also means they can’t do anything that is not a truthful way of doing things. They can’t speak anything that is not true. They can’t deal with people in a way that is not truthful and right. They can’t act or behave in a way that goes against Bible truth. All of their choices, behaviors, words, and conduct are always in the truth 100% of the time.

But…are we holding the Holy Spirit up to this standard? Or, is it far too common that people accept cheap signs and communications that are not fitting for the holy God to do, and conclude God sent us those cheap messages?

This happens far too often. Since the Holy Spirit is a Person, we need to hold Him to a standard of integrity that we’d hold the Father to, or the Son. This standard is one of perfection. If you can’t imagine a perfect God giving you the sign or communication you’re wondering about, then it definitely wasn’t God who gave it. The Holy Spirit is held to the same standard as the Father and Jesus are.

If you look at the miracles of Jesus, they were always wonder-provoking. He healed people of leprosy, He gave sight to the blind. Even the miracle of the fish holding the coin Jesus needed to pay taxes to Ceasar taught an important doctrinal lesson about how we are to respect the secular governments God has put in place, and drew people back to this important Bible truth.

All His miracles inspired awe in God and reverence for His Word, and never painted God and His Word in a false light.

Through the Old Testament there’s miracles and wonders that are very out-of-the-box according to our human understanding, such as giving one man – Samson – super-human physical strength. But even with these very unique wonders, they were always wonder-provoking, and gave people a sense of awe in God. It was a marvel to see one man take on a rebellious and heathen army, and everyone knew no one could do that except by God’s power. Samson carried out God’s judgments in the earth, and this sent a holy fear into the hearts of the heathen, drawing people back to God. Of course, Samson wasn’t faithful to his trust as he should have been, and that’s unfortunate. But I won’t go into the whole story here. We’re discussing the gift itself and the different ways in which God worked by His Spirit.

Similarly the natural world invokes a sense of awe and wonder. When we study astrophysics or the laws of thermodynamics and how they affect the weather and create thunderstorms, the science is amazing and wonderful. It gives a sense of reverent joy towards the omnipotent God who made such wonders.

God’s Holy Spirit working through Jesus’ Word is what holds up the universe, all the laws of physics, and each day gives life to people and animals. God didn’t set these things in motion and now they operate on their own. They can’t do that. God’s power is what makes them hold up, and operate each and every second.

The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word.
Hebrews 1:3

in Him all things hold together.
Colossians 1:17

For in him we live and move and have our being.’
Acts 17:28

Both miracles and the scientific world reveal an awe-inspiring God of love, worthy of our worship and respect. Similarly any communications we were to receive from Him would paint Him in a dignified way and inspire reverence. So if we think God is trying to communicate by making a picture of Jesus appear in our cereal, or by giving us random letters that we see whenever we look at a clock, such as 12:34 and we believe this means we are to read Luke 12:34 as there is an important message from God in the verse for us – any of these types of communications cheapen God, and go against a right and truthful way of doing things.

Since the Holy Spirit is the God of truth, and not just the Father and the Son, the Holy Spirit cannot use cheap, false ways of communicating with you either, just as the Father and Son cannot.

So, when evaluating whether a communication is from God or not, really ask the question about the Holy Spirit’s integrity. Does this communication match up with divine integrity, or is it impure, cheap, or false in some way? If it’s impure, cheap, or false, then a 100% holy God couldn’t be communicating in such a way.

His Name and His integrity matter, and He would never do something that goes against that holy Name or against the truth.

True vs. False Spiritual Gifts

“Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.”
James 1:17

It’s in our Father’s heart to give us gifts. Our Father only gives us perfect gifts, he does not give us defective or unholy or sinful gifts. Let’s say you’re a young Christian woman who is praying for a spouse. An attractive, intelligent, and deeply spiritual man comes into your life. At first you may wonder if he’s the man God intends for you, but then you find out he’s married. Your knowledge of the scriptures and your willingness to follow God’s will will make it clear at this point whether you’re going to believe he is the one for you or not. Those who know the Word of God will conclude that no matter how spiritual and kind he is, he’s married, and God recognizes the vow this man made before heaven to his wife, and so he cannot be the one God intends for you. He is not a perfect gift. Being with him would be sin.

Or let’s say you’re a young single Christian woman who meets a man who is interesting and attractive and whom you share many common interests with. But he’s not a Christian and is convinced and committed to atheist beliefs and lives an atheist lifestyle. He’s not a perfect gift either; being with him will cause you to compromise your faith. It would be sin to be unequally yoked, 2 Cor 6:14. It can’t be in the mind or heart of God for you to be with this person.

Anything that deviates from one man and one woman who are believers in Christ can’t be God’s will for the Christian.

You can see that there a variety of ways that a gift can be a bad, imperfect gift. There are as many variations as there are ways God’s law can be broken. And Satan, being the author of sin – or breaking God’s law – can and does break every category of the law of God, though he may not break every category at the same time. Because mixing truth with error is so effective, often he mixes good traits with evil traits. It’s not just the physically abusive boyfriend – the person that is obviously not God’s plan for you – that isn’t a perfect gift. It’s also the kind atheist, or the deeply spiritual married man.

False spiritual gifts work the same way. Satan invented both the fortune cookie, and the bright vivid vision of an angel with love in its eyes appearing to you but speaking contrary to the Bible. Cheap, confusing spiritual manifestations are just as much his domain as the visions that look real and feel loving but do not point to the Bible and the Bible only.

And I wouldn’t put it past Satan to give confusing manifestations to people who have a mental illness in order to take advantage of them. People do this exact thing, so why wouldn’t Satan?

You’ve probably heard of the Nigerian scam. It’s basically a chain-mail email that is sent to millions of people every year. It’s a numbers game for the people initiating the scam. They know there are a certain percentage of wealthy Americans who are in the middle stages of dimentia; still managing their own finances, not at a nursing home or anything, but their judgment is rapidly waning. They know that it’s these people who will get confused and respond to the scam and they form their business model around the numbers.

I saw a tv program recently where a mentally ill woman had a delusion that she was in a relationship with two famous rock stars. Scammers online picked up on her delusion and pretended to be the two rock stars, and wrote loving messages to her and then asked her for money. She sent them thousands of dollars. The poor woman had a delusion which is a fixed belief that your brain has lost the cognitive ability to analyze logically and see that it can’t be true, and these sharks took advantage of her. Schizophrenics make up 2% of the population and those with delusional disorders make up another 1% or so. These scammers are aware of the numbers and they even know more about how schizophrenia works than the average person does. They know if they write enough people 2 in 100 will be schizophrenic and they can scam them out of lots of money.

My Perfect Horse Gift

When I was a month away from turning twelve years old I received a perfect gift. I had been wanting a horse since I was very young, and one Sabbath at church we had a new member who worked at a horse farm join our church family. My mom and I went up to her and welcomed her and she asked if I wanted to visit the horse farm where she worked with her. Long story short she ended up arranging for me to be given a retired quarter horse broodmare as my very own horse. She had been a show horse in her day, winning medals in competitions called Western Pleasure. She was such a well-bred high quality horse that even at age 22 she still looked like a show horse in many ways. I remember brushing her mane and being awstruck by the many variety of gorgeous colors – blonde, red, dark brown, light brown. She was beautiful.

Her previous owners asked me to not go above a canter with her. A horse’s fastest gate is the gallop and I had wanted a younger horse that I could gallop around and jump over hedges. Despite my horse being wonderful, I caught myself wishing I could have had a younger horse. Looking back as an adult now who is old enough to have kids of her own, I can see the wisdom in giving me an older mare. I definitely could have gotten hurt galloping a younger horse. I was also hypomanic due to my developing mental illness and didn’t have the best judgment. Even with the older mare several times we had a couple injuries that in hindsight happened because of my lack of judgment.

My horse was in every way a perfect gift, even the things I wished I could have changed about the gift. Because we as human beings don’t know what’s best for us, and often want things which aren’t good for us, there is a tendency to be attracted to and desire imperfect gifts, things which are wrong for us. My desire to basically steeplechase a young fiery horse could have cost me my life had I gotten what I wanted. In the same way, Satan often supplies what our flesh wants in the form of false spiritual gifts which appeal to our fallen hearts, and which can be just as dangerous as my childhood horse dreams if we accept the counterfeit gift rather than humbling ourselves and taking the perfect gift.

Official vs. Counterfeit

If you received an official letter from the President of the United States, you would expect it to be free of errors in punctuation, to look impeccable. You’d also expect that nothing would be written in that letter which did not represent the exact views of the President. The letter would come with an official seal. There are high standards that the letter must meet, standards which distinguish it from a letter from a friend or a family member. If you were to receive a letter in the mail that claimed to be an official letter from the President, but it was written – not typed – with crayons, or it had multiple spelling errors and incorrect grammar, you’d know it couldn’t actually be a letter from the President after all. You’d conclude some kid must be playing a prank on you.

Successful companies work hard to build a brand that instills confidence in its customers. They want us to associated their brand with quality products made from the best substances and constituents, excellent customer service experiences, and fast delivery. So that when they stamp their brand on a product, it means something. We go out and buy it. We trust it. They are careful not to stamp their brand symbol onto defective or low quality products. This kind of mistake will lose customers and tank their company’s reputation.

Can we expect the Sovereign, holy God of the universe to be less careful with His Name, His image, and His reputation than the US President or a successful company?

Furthermore, as Christians, Christ tells us to put God, His Name, and His kingdom first, before ourselves. This is what it means to be a Christian. We are caught up in our Father’s work, his reputation and his cause, living for a higher purpose than just ourselves. This higher purpose gives us meaning and joy; without it we become nihilistic. Jesus told us to pray “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” before we pray “give us this day our daily bread,. And he says again, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things [food, shelter, clothing] shall be added unto you.” (Matthew 6:33) Christians are called witnesses that He is God (Isaiah 43:10) living epistles that testify of Him in a world of false gods and false ideologies (1 Corinthians 3:3). Lights in the world bearing the only true doctrine of salvation (Matthew 5:14-16). Early Christians willingly suffered and laid down their lives for the Name (Acts 5:41), the same Name of God (his character) which Satan had accused and slandered in heaven. Being a Christian means not taking God’s name in vain (Commandment 3), but being a true and not a lying witness. Those who lie and blaspheme the Name of God serve on Satan’s side, working to tear down God’s reputation and warring against him.

The Devil Always Has a Motive
The devil always has a motive behind what he does, even if this can’t always clearly be seen. His goal is to steal, kill, and destroy (John 10:10). The biggest way he wants to steal, kill, and destroy isn’t physical or mental, but spiritually. He wants to lead people into sin and harden their hearts in unrepentance, so they will forfeit the redemption Jesus died to give them, causing great grief and suffering to God, and keep their characters selfish and at war with God, so he can use them in his army to war with God. While the devil delights in physical suffering, mental suffering, and emotional suffering, his major aim is to get us to live in unrepentant sin. If there seems to be a motive behind the communications to lead a person away from Bible truth, and to tempt them to sin and establish them in error, this is the best indicator that the dreams and visions and communications are probably Satan, definitely not God, and probably not a mental illness.

If you look at the voices and communications that mediums hear and contrast them with the voices and communications that someone diagnosed with schizophrenia hears, you will see major differences. I once read a story of a medium who thought she was communicating with a man who had died who was a murderer. Everything about her interaction with this “man” was debased and sinful. He would cuss, had evil motives, and yet claimed to have passed on peacefully to the other side. It’s not uncommon for mediums to report that their voices cuss, are crude, and wicked like the people who live in our world are. What is the goal of all of this? The motive behind all of this is for Satan to convince the medium, and the people who hire the medium to contact dead loved ones, that everyone on earth when they die passes on peacefully to the other side. That you can live your life anyway you want in this life – live a very immoral life – and you will not die, but pass over to the next life. It’s the same lie he gave to Eve in Eden, that sinning and disobeying God, she would not surely die.

But God’s Word declares that the wages of sin is death.

When people see a medium, they leave thinking they were communicating with their dead loved one, who joked with them in a crass manner, and yet is alive and well in the spirit realm. This emboldens them in their own sin. If uncle Richard is alive and happy on the other side, and he was a womanizer, a drunk, and a gambler, well then my lies aren’t so bad, my greed and selfishness isn’t such of a big deal.

The very act of going to a medium is idolatry, according to the Bible, and is never safe, and will place someone under Satan’s power. The Bible tells us that the communications of gods and beings that occurs in false religions is really done with demons lying to you and masquerading as these deities or dead loved ones who have passed over.

“No, but the sacrifices of pagans are offered to demons, not to God, and I do not want you to be participants with demons.”
1 Corinthians 10:20

“They sacrificed to demons, not to God, to gods they had not known, to newly arrived gods, which your fathers did not fear.”
Deuteronomy 32:17

“They sacrificed their sons and their daughters to demons.”
Psalm 106:37

Galatians explains it this way…that demons are by nature not gods. Because they are created beings, angels who have fallen. They do not possess any attributes of divinity. So the false gods of Egypt, Greece, wicca, paganism, etc. were demons and their whole religion was created by Satan.

“Formerly, when you did not know God, you were slaves to those who by nature are not gods.”
Galatians 4:8

These verses are really profound. Paganism and spiritualism is not another religion. Rather Paganism is a facade Satan hides behind, an elaborate lie like the snake in the garden, where he steals people’s worship away from God and gets us to worship him instead. There’s only one true religion and that’s the religion of the Bible, worshipping the Creator and Savior. Everything else is false. But when the devil wants to steal our worship away from God, he doesn’t usually come out and say “worship me”, rather he lies and presents a facade to deceive us. If you look at the temptations of Jesus in the wilderness, Satan did not tell Jesus he was Satan, until the very last temptation. He disclosed his true identity only when it was advantageous for his evil schemes and aims for him to do so. For that last temptation he needed Jesus to know it was Satan tempting him so he could offer him the kingdoms of the world. Even this was deceptive though as if Jesus had bowed down and worshipped Satan it would not have resulted in Jesus gaining the kingdoms of the world, but rather Jesus would have lost the war and Satan would have won everything. But of course we know that didn’t happen and couldn’t happen because God and the principles of His kingdom by nature win out in a war of good vs. evil. But by disclosing his true identity Satan made the temptation stronger for Jesus and that’s why he did it. Not to be honest or for pure motives.

Now let’s contrast the clear motive behind the communications mediums receive and the false communications I received when in psychosis…

My psychotic delusions seem confusing, irrational, illogical, not cohesive, and they don’t have a clear path that leads to a life of immorality. There isn’t a motive behind them to sin and get caught up in temptations. Rather they just seem incoherent.

But the motive behind the communication mediums receive is very different. The communications are all given to lead a person to worship false gods and to stop looking to the Bible as their authority, to embrace sinful lifestyles and think one’s spirit will go to heaven and they won’t die. The aim is to get the person to live a life of rebellion against God, while believing they are saved in doing so.

Psychotic Delusions Not Safe
Now while psychotic delusions are from a brain malfunctioning and they aren’t from Satan, this doesn’t mean they are safe. While a person in psychosis who was a saved Christian prior to falling into psychosis cannot become demon-possessed or lose their soul from the psychotic things they may do when they have a complete loss of reason, this doesn’t mean their delusions won’t lead to behaviors and choices that are mentally and physically dangerous.

Someone in psychosis may believe they can fly, and they may jump off the roof. This could result in death or severe injury, even if they are saved and right with God because they served Him sincerely before their psychotic break occurred.

This is a key reason why it’s important delusional people aren’t just passed by as being different and unique, and are given the help they need.

Sometimes a person hasn’t completely lost their reason and logic, but they have some delusions and hallucinations. This sometimes happens, and psychotic symptoms are on a spectrum. At the far end to the left, with the most mild cases, you have people who are eccentric and think outside of the box. They have very mild delusional thinking and are more creative than delusional, and then at the opposite end you have people in full-blown psychosis who never think a sane thought ever, until they are treated, and two thirds of people treated with anti-psychotic medication who are in this state will respond to medication and come out of the psychosis enough to know they have a psychotic illness and gain awareness. With nutrient therapy treatments (see links in back of book about Dr. Walsh, Dr. Hoffer and Dr. Pfeiffer for more information) recovery rates are even higher.

Usually after treatment a psychotic person still has some delusional thinking left, but the delusions aren’t as severe and they don’t have as many as before treatment. There’s a window of awareness where they can understand their condition, and interact in sane ways with family and friends and the world at large.

With nutrient therapy there’s usually even more improvement than this. And some people do recover completely and either no longer need medication or need just a small amount. Because psychotic disorders are epigenetic in nature and not purely genetic (you are not born with them; they develop over time) people can sometimes spontaneously recover when the stressors in their lives have been reduced, and treatments effect the epigenetic expression and there’s ways to reduce the stress load and lessen symptoms or bring the person back to full health using nutrients. For more information on this read the chapter titled What is Schizophrenia?

So there’s a lot of people on the psychotic spectrum, and for people who have some knowledge of right and wrong, that person remains right with God only if they do what they know to be right and resist what is wrong. Satan can still tempt them in areas where they can discern right from wrong. An example of this is someone who may hear a voice that says they need to jump off the balcony in order to prove they really have faith in God, but even though they are hearing voices, they have enough sanity and cognition to check the voice with the scriptures and realize it wouldn’t be genuine faith to jump; it would be presumption and would bring dishonor to God, not honor. They have a duty to take care of their body, out of love and reverence to Christ (1 Corinthians 6:19-20, 1 Corinthians 3:17).

The person must resist the voice and not jump. If they do jump it’s presumption and rebellion against God, and they will not be right with God if they jump. If they were to die from the impact of the jump, they would not die saved, but lost, the same way Jesus would have been in rebellion to have thrown himself off the temple as Satan suggested.

However, for people in full psychosis, who no longer have knowledge of right and wrong, and no longer have a conscience, and genuinely believe that they must jump off the roof in order to save the world or to please God or some other delusion, it’s not a sin for them to jump as they have no knowledge of right and wrong, and without knowledge of the moral law there is no sin. Such people may die and yet be innocent. Like a small baby who cannot reason to know not to eat deadly things and put them in their mouths, it’s the job of their families and of society to protect them from themselves. This is why it’s key that families and communities become educated about psychosis.

“…by the law is the knowledge of sin”
Romans 3:20

“…where there is no law, there is no transgression.”
Romans 4:15

“…I had not known sin, but by the law: for I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet.”
Romans 7:7

The same way that a baby Christian may know certain things are wrong, and not know other things are wrong, because they don’t yet have a solid enough knowledge of the scriptures, or the same way that people growing up in pagan societies such as ancient China can be saved if they follow all the truth they do know, even while ignorantly engaging in error, because what they don’t know isn’t sin for them, only going against what they do know would be sin, the psychotic person who loses their judgment and doesn’t know right from wrong, cannot be said to be sinning either when they do something the Bible says is wrong, if they’ve lost the capacity to understand God’s moral law.

“Therefore to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin.”
James 4:17

How can the person growing up in a pagan society who has never heard the gospel be saved? How can the baby Christian who is still sinning in key ways be saved? Because they do not know they are in error. They lack that knowledge. They are living out all the truth they do know. In the same way, a psychotic person who went into psychosis and lost their reason and now no longer knows right from wrong, cannot be said to be sinning according to the Bible when they do wrong things without knowledge they are wrong.

It’s when we go against our conscience that we sin – the voice of the Holy Spirit speaking to the soul. A person in full psychosis does not have a conscience.

“…for whatsoever is not of faith is sin.”
Romans 14:23

Looking back, I think the reason I was so obsessed with faith while in psychosis, and kept trying to will myself to have faith and sweep my hands to the left to open dimension portals, was that I had lost my ability to tell what true faith is. I’d lost my conscience. And I was trying to find it again, but it was buried deep beneath the toxins and inflammation in my brain, and the inflammation was rewiring my neural pathways so they were all off and I was not logical. I couldn’t understand Bible faith, faith as defined by the scriptures and what that is. The simple faith of believing in the authority of the scriptures and in walking in obedience to Christ with a clear conscience. I couldn’t grasp that concept as I no longer had a conscience. I was of course innocent. I was no longer a moral agent and this was painful to me.

“And this is our boast: Our conscience testifies that we have conducted ourselves in the world, and especially in relation to you, in the holiness and sincerity that are from God–not in worldly wisdom, but in the grace of God.”
2 Corinthians 1:12

And coming out of psychosis and regaining the ability to tell right from wrong was so wonderful! I could again understand the great principles of righteousness of God’s government. I could again discern the beauty in His character and His truth. I realized in a new way how God and His truth is the most important thing in the universe, and could understand why the martyrs would rather lay down their lives than give up points of truth. All of God’s truth is one cohesive whole, operating by the same underlying principles of justice and mercy.

The Bible explains that it makes no sense to not commit adultery and yet to murder. The same God gave them both! The character of God is clearly seen in both. It’s clearly loving both to not commit adultery, and to not murder. The same underlying principle of benevolence and honoring the inherent human rights of people, inherent within their design as beings made in God’s image, and which God makes clear in His law as the right treatment for such beings, underlies both the commandment not to kill and not to commit adultery.

“For he who said, “You shall not commit adultery,” also said, “You shall not murder.” If you do not commit adultery but do commit murder, you have become a lawbreaker.”
James 2:11

There is a cohesiveness in the law of God, the same principles of righteousness in all 10 points. The same motives, and attitudes, and goals. The same God with an unchanging character of benevolence who gave them all.

The Bible speaks of how strange it is that God’s people both bless and curse. That we do good actions and evil ones. The actions of human beings in this world is truly an anomaly in the universe. We have become like the tree of good and evil, doing good sometimes, and evil other times. It’s out of order in the cosmos. And God will solve the problem by sanctifying us and changing us into His image; we are not supposed to be this way.

“But the tongue can no man tame; it is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison.

Therewith bless we God, even the Father; and therewith curse we men, which are made after the similitude of God.

Out of the same mouth proceedeth blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not so to be.

Doth a fountain send forth at the same place sweet water and bitter?

Can the fig tree, my brethren, bear olive berries? either a vine, figs? so can no fountain both yield salt water and fresh.”
James 3:10-12

Another similar verse tells us that “No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God’s seed remains in them; they cannot go on sinning, because they have been born of God.”
1 John 3:9

We will not continue producing both figs and olives. We will not continue to both curse and bless out of the same mouth. The life and death of Christ bought for us power to have dominion over sin so that it does not rule us, power to overcome. And the Holy Spirit living within us will give us daily victories over sin, if we will submit to the process of sanctification and commit to do our part, so that our fountain will spew sweet water and not bitter. It will be less and less bitter the longer we walk with God and a higher percentage of the water will be sweet.

Because sin can’t dwell with God and can’t hold a candle to His power. So God living in us and changing us will cast the sin out of our hearts and recreate us to be holy like Him.

“For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under the Law but under grace. “
Romans 6:14

“But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you.
Therefore, brothers, we have an obligation, but it is not to the flesh, to live according to it. For if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. ”
Romans 8:11-14

Through Christ we now have the power to put to death the deeds of the flesh.

Verses about the principles of this world, and how we have been set free from them to follow principles of goodness and love.

Truth – the simple and foundational and eternal truth of God’s Word – is more beautiful and wonderful than any fancy dream or vision. I had a lot of those when in psychosis. For many years I’ve never been a visual person, but the year I experienced my full psychotic break, and the months leading up to it I suddenly became very visual. My dreams were as vivid as blue-ray definition and were very visually stunning and elaborate. But none of it really meant anything without my reason, and my ability to discern truth.

When I came out of psychosis the simple and profound beauty of God’s moral truth was like taking a breath of air after being under water for far too long, or eating bread after being given cardboard for months. It was the thing that met my soul’s hunger, the only thing that makes life meaningful. Nothing else can do it.

True joy in life isn’t a nice meal or a beautiful sunset, or warm affection; it’s the beauty of knowing God and His truth, and walking in that truth. We are not dogs that can be satisfied with warmth and affection and comfort or play. We are moral beings who are utterly miserable without our moral perception as I was when in psychosis, or if we live in opposition to truth as the unsaved do. The quality of such a life is poor indeed. I love how God offers such a high quality of life! A high quality of life can only be made possible by exalting God’s law and never abrogating or diminishing it or taking away even one jot or one tittle. The cross magnifies the law. It shows it is wonderful, binding, indestructible, and eternal. To do away with the law would be to allow sin and take away from man the high quality of life that he needs as a moral agent. It wouldn’t be loving to people for God to do that.

Can Converted Christians Experience False Miracles and Communications?
It’s really important to understand that Satanic communications can come to those who aren’t involved in false religious practices. It’s not necessary to be channeling supposed dead loved ones in order for Satan to give someone a false dream or false miracle or communication. While it’s a sin to knowingly communicate with supposed dead loved ones and Satan will gain control over people who do so, and it’s not a sin on your part for Satan to give you a lying dream or false miracle that you didn’t seek out and weren’t involved in, it does happen to God’s people sometimes even though they are innocent and no wrong has been done on their part.

Jesus rebuked Peter who was at that time a faithful disciple and following Christ, telling him “get thee behind me Satan” (Matthew 16:23), and we’re told in the scriptures to test every spirit, and that many false signs and false miracles will be done, not only by the unsaved and wicked, but for the purpose of deceiving the very elect, meaning the elect – God’s children who are following Him – will come in contact with these false miracles and signs on some level.

It’s not the case that once you area Christian everything that looks like a miracle that happens to you is a true miracle, or every communication you think is from God is actually from God, or that every sign you could receive is always from God, and that you will never come in contact with false ones, otherwise the Bible would not have said to test every spirit.

“Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.”
1 John 4:1

It’s clear that even Christians need to test the spirits. That everything that happens to us – including supernatural manifestations – isn’t automatically or necessarily God, and that we are in danger if we do not test all of these things.

How do we test them?

“To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.”
Isaiah 8:20

The law referred to here is God’s 10 Commandment moral law, the one that is bunding upon people of every age, whether Adam and Eve in the garden, Israelites at the time of Moses, or the people living today.

And the testimony referred to here is the Old Testament, which would later expand into the New Testament as God gave more of His Word. It’s the Bible, the Word of God.

So the test for every communication, every thought and idea, every ideology, to know whether it’s in alignment with God or definitely not of God, is the 10 commandments and the Bible.

God’s Word alone is the only way we can know if a spirit is of God or not of God.

The following verse shows just how thoroughly God’s Word is capable of penetrating through the maze of lies Satan has created, to illuminate the truth to God’s people. God’s Word can bring someone out of the dark and confusing depths of paganism into the truth. It can point out which ideologies are of the world and which are biblical, keeping a Christian from the errors of their culture such as feminism and the black lives matter movement. Not only does God’s Word show the Christian which philosophies and ideologies are biblical and which ones aren’t and teach us Bible philosophy, but it also judges our own heart and unmasks our motives and attitudes to us. Through the Word (and the Spirit working through the Word as they always work together), God points out our sin and sanctifies us – giving us knowledge of which thoughts and motives are holy and right, and which are unholy and selfish and need to be surrendered. We can then surrender the selfish ones each day and resolutely not live them out, and God will make a change in us.

“We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.”
2 Corinthians 10:5

“For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.”
Hebrews 4:12

But when he, the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come.
He will glorify me because it is from me that he will receive what he will make known to you.
John 16:13-14

And when he is come he will reprove the world of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment.
John 16:8 KJV

The Holy Spirit doesn’t speak his own words and neither does Christ. Christ came speaking the doctrine of the Father, and the Spirit glorifies Christ by making Christ’s teaching understood by human beings. He teaches us from God’s word.

I’ve thought a lot about this and studied the Word, and I believe that there is a foolproof way we can know the Holy Spirit is speaking to us. Did you know that? There is one tried and true foolproof way. But it’s not flashy or over the top exciting. It is however deeply important and deeply intimate. We can know the Holy Spirit is communing with us when we are convicted of wrongdoing, and when we are convicted of our need of a Savior, convicted to repent, to make wrongs right, and convinced of the divinity and sufficiency of Christ to meet our need.

We have examples of this in the scriptures. When Peter was convicted that Jesus was the Messiah Jesus said to him: Flesh and blood has not revealed this to you but my Father which is in heaven.
Matthew 16:17 KJV

The truth is the Holy Spirit speaks to us every day. Any time we need to make a moral decision and choose between right and wrong, the Holy Spirit is right there convicting us of truth and appealing to us to do the right thing. Conviction isn’t something that comes by human

study alone. It is the very voice of God speaking to the soul (spirit; the Holy Spirit speaks Spirit to spirit, John 3:6: the soul is just a

human being) when we are convicted; it is God Himself. He never ceases speaking to us unless we completely grieve him away, which some have done, though it is not easy to do. Entire Old Testament groups of people have done so and we’re told that at the time of the end the whole world will wonder after the beast except a small remnant. There will come a time when everyone’s choice will be fixed and decided and Christ will say “Let he who is unjust be unjust still…let he who is holy be holy still.” Revelation 22:11 Solemn realities here. It’s important that we begin right now to make a practice of heeding the convicting voice of the Holy Spirit. The good news is that it’s completely up to us whether we will heed conviction or harden our hearts. If we choose to heed, Christ will give us strength through his Holy Spirit to do the right thing. We must come to him in prayer daily and rely on his strength.

When Jesus was alive on earth he often referred to object lessons, common things in nature which taught the people important truths. This is one way the Holy Spirit speaks also.

We see the same thing happening in the book of Jeremiah and even in Proverbs where Solomon observes the ant and other common things found in nature and learns wisdom.

“This is the Word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord: Go down to the potter’s house, and there I will give you my message.” So I went down to the potter’s house, and I saw him working at the wheel. But the pot he was shaping from the clay was marred in his hands; so the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him.

The Word of the Lord came to me. He said “Can I not do with you, Israel, as this potter does?” Like clay in the hand of the potter so are you in my hand Israel. Of at any time I announce that a nation or kingdom is to be uprooted, torn down and destroyed, and if that nation that I warned repents of its evil, then I will relent and not inflict on it the disaster I had planned. And if at another time I annunce that a nation or kingdom is to be built up and planted, and if it does evil in my sight and does not obey me, then I will reconsider the good I had intended to do for it.”

Jeremiah 18:1-10

Can’t you hear Christ in these words? It is the pre-incarnate Christ, referring to object lessons in nature just as he did when he walked among the earth later on.

“Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.”
James 1:17

God has done many different kinds of manifestations through his Spirit in both the Old and New Testaments. In fact, these manifestations are so varied that no one could guess what he would do next. Who could have guessed that the Holy Spirit would endow a man with superhuman strength in the case of Samson for instance? Or that God would part the Red Sea? When God created the world who could have guessed at all the different marine life, or the different microbiomes he would speak into existence? The world baffles us and we aren’t even close to fully understanding the handiwork of God; it’s beyond our capacity as human beings.

When I first started studying the gift of prophecy, I had the belief that the gift only came to those who had the office of prophet, but I quickly learned that this was not the case, and that the Holy Spirit gave the gift in a much more varied way than I had at first thought. Saul, the first king, prophesied, David prophesied through the psalms though he was a king and not in the office of prophet, Miriam was a prophetess but wrote no books of the Bible as the other prophets did, though she wrote a song that is recorded in scripture. Even Nebuchadnezzar, a non-Christian king at the time had a dream prophecy given by the Holy Spirit, and Pilate’s wife was given a dream.

I began to see that God could really do anything good. He could give any good gift and give it in any good way. And Satan could do anything bad, or a mixture of good and bad to deceive. God’s manifestations are always given righteously and in righteous ways; Satan’s false manifestations are always given deceptively and for evil purposes and in ways that cheapen God or make Him look bad.

True vs. False Spiritual Gifts

“Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.”
James 1:17

It’s in our Father’s heart to give us gifts. Our Father only gives us perfect gifts, he does not give us defective or unholy or sinful gifts. Let’s say you’re a young Christian woman who is praying for a spouse. An attractive, intelligent, and deeply spiritual man comes into your life. At first you may wonder if he’s the man God intends for you, but then you find out he’s married. Your knowledge of the scriptures and your willingness to follow God’s will will make it clear at this point whether you’re going to believe he is the one for you or not. Those who know the Word of God will conclude that no matter how spiritual and kind he is, he’s married, and God recognizes the vow this man made before heaven to his wife, and so he cannot be the one God intends for you. He is not a perfect gift. Being with him would be sin.

Or let’s say you’re a young single Christian woman who meets a man who is interesting and attractive and whom you share many common interests with. But he’s not a Christian and is convinced and committed to atheist beliefs and lives an atheist lifestyle. He’s not a perfect gift either; being with him will cause you to compromise your faith. It would be sin to be unequally yoked, 2 Cor 6:14. It can’t be in the mind or heart of God for you to be with this person.

Anything that deviates from one man and one woman who are believers in Christ can’t be God’s will for the Christian.

You can see that there a variety of ways that a gift can be a bad, imperfect gift. There are as many variations as there are ways God’s law can be broken. And Satan, being the author of sin – or breaking God’s law – can and does break every category of the law of God, though he may not break every category at the same time. Because mixing truth with error is so effective, often he mixes good traits with evil traits. It’s not just the physically abusive boyfriend – the person that is obviously not God’s plan for you – that isn’t a perfect gift. It’s also the kind atheist, or the deeply spiritual married man.

False spiritual gifts work the same way. Satan invented both the fortune cookie, and the bright vivid vision of an angel with love in its eyes appearing to you but speaking contrary to the Bible. Cheap, confusing spiritual manifestations are just as much his domain as the visions that look real and feel loving but do not point to the Bible and the Bible only.

And I wouldn’t put it past Satan to give confusing manifestations to people who have a mental illness in order to take advantage of them. People do this exact thing, so why wouldn’t Satan?

You’ve probably heard of the Nigerian scam. It’s basically a chain-mail email that is sent to millions of people every year. It’s a numbers game for the people initiating the scam. They know there are a certain percentage of wealthy Americans who are in the middle stages of dimentia; still managing their own finances, not at a nursing home or anything, but their judgment is rapidly waning. They know that it’s these people who will get confused and respond to the scam and they form their business model around the numbers.

I saw a tv program recently where a mentally ill woman had a delusion that she was in a relationship with two famous rock stars. Scammers online picked up on her delusion and pretended to be the two rock stars, and wrote loving messages to her and then asked her for money. She sent them thousands of dollars. The poor woman had a delusion which is a fixed belief that your brain has lost the cognitive ability to analyze logically and see that it can’t be true. and these sharks took advantage of her. Schizophrenics make up 2% of the population and those with delusional disorders make up another 1% or so. These scammers are aware of the numbers and they even know more about how schizophrenia works than the average person does. They know if they write enough people 2 in 100 will be schizophrenic and they can scam them out of lots of money.

My Perfect Horse Gift

When I was a month away from turning twelve years old I received a perfect gift. I had been wanting a horse since I was very young, and one Sabbath at church we had a new member who worked at a horse farm join our church family. My mom and I went up to her and welcomed her and she asked if I wanted to visit the horse farm where she worked with her. Long story short she ended up arranging for me to be given a retired quarter horse broodmare as my very own horse. She had been a show horse in her day, winning medals in competitions called Western Pleasure. She was such a well-bred high quality horse that even at age 22 she still looked like a show horse in many ways. I remember brushing her mane and being awstruck by the many variety of gorgeous colors – blonde, red, dark brown, light brown. She was beautiful.

Her previous owners asked me to not go above a canter with her. A horse’s fastest gate is the gallop and I had wanted a younger horse that I could gallop around and jump over hedges. Despite my horse being wonderful, I caught myself wishing I could have had a younger horse. Looking back as an adult now who is old enough to have kids of her own, I can see the wisdom in giving me an older mare. I definitely could have gotten hurt galloping a younger horse. I was also hypomanic due to my developing mental illness and didn’t have the best judgment. Even with the older mare several times we had a couple injuries that in hindsight happened because of my lack of judgment.

My horse was in every way a perfect gift, even the things I wished I could have changed about the gift. Because we as human beings don’t know what’s best for us, and often want things which aren’t good for us, there is a tendency to be attracted to and desire imperfect gifts, things which are wrong for us. My desire to basically steeplechase a young fiery horse could have cost me my life had I gotten what I wanted. In the same way, Satan often supplies what our flesh wants in the form of false spiritual gifts which appeal to our fallen hearts, and which can be just as dangerous as my childhood horse dreams if we accept the counterfeit gift rather than humbling ourselves and taking the perfect gift.

Official vs. Counterfeit

If you received an official letter from the President of the United States, you would expect it to be free of errors in punctuation, to look impeccable. You’d also expect that nothing would be written in that letter which did not represent the exact views of the President. The letter would come with an official seal. There are high standards that the letter must meet, standards which distinguish it from a letter from a friend or a family member. If you were to receive a letter in the mail that claimed to be an official letter from the President, but it was written – not typed – with crayons, or it had multiple spelling errors and incorrect grammar, you’d know it couldn’t actually be a letter from the President after all. You’d conclude some kid must be playing a prank on you.

Successful companies work hard to build a brand that instills confidence in its customers. They want us to associated their brand with quality products made from the best substances and constituents, excellent customer service experiences, and fast delivery. So that when they stamp their brand on a product, it means something. We go out and buy it. We trust it. They are careful not to stamp their brand symbol onto defective or low quality products. This kind of mistake will lose customers and tank their company’s reputation.

Can we expect the Sovereign, holy God of the universe to be less careful with His Name, His image, and His reputation than the US President or a successful company?

Furthermore, as Christians, Christ tells us to put God, His Name, and His kingdom first, before ourselves. This is what it means to be a Christian. We are caught up in our Father’s work, his reputation and his cause, living for a higher purpose than just ourselves. This higher purpose gives us meaning and joy; without it we become nihilistic. Jesus told us to pray “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” before we pray “give us this day our daily bread,. And he says again, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things [food, shelter, clothing] shall be added unto you.” (Matthew 6:33) Christians are called witnesses that He is God (Isaiah 43:10) living epistles that testify of Him in a world of false gods and false ideologies (1 Corinthians 3:3). Lights in the world bearing the only true doctrine of salvation (Matthew 5:14-16). Early Christians willingly suffered and laid down their lives for the Name (Acts 5:41), the same Name of God (his character) which Satan had accused and slandered in heaven. Being a Christian means not taking God’s name in vain (Commandment 3), but being a true and not a lying witness. Those who lie and blaspheme the Name of God serve on Satan’s side, working to tear down God’s reputation and warring against him.

I have noticed that false spiritual gifts and manifestations serve the person, and true spiritual gifts serve God.

Someone who believes in the Name it and Claim it false doctrine – that a person can pray things into existence, is using God to bring about their will, rather than surrendering themselves – their will and all they are – to Christ to serve Him. More on this later.

In short, as Christians how Christ is represented to the world should matter to us. How we present Christ to the world should matter to us and be something we’re very careful about. We must endeavor to show his holiness and his great self-sacrificial love accurately and not falsely. So spiritual manifestations which are common, which cheapen the name of God and mix the sacred with the uncommon or profane, we should care about steering away from, lest we embrace something that makes God look unholy.

Notice in Ezekiel, just before Jesus says he will give us a new heart and put a new spirit in us, notice the greater cause here, the underlying reason he will do this:

22 “Therefore say to the Israelites, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: It is not for your sake, people of Israel, that I am going to do these things, but for the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations where you have gone. 23 I will show the holiness of my great name, which has been profaned among the nations, the name you have profaned among them. Then the nations will know that I am the Lord, declares the Sovereign Lord, when I am proved holy through you before their eyes.

24 “‘For I will take you out of the nations; I will gather you from all the countries and bring you back into your own land. 25 I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. 26 I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. 27 And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.

Ezekiel 36:22-27

WOW. Notice the relationship here. God’s people can make his name appear holy in the eyes of the nations, or they can profane it. What we do as Christians matters. Like a wife whose conduct can bring respect to her husband, or cause suspicion and disrespect, so we as Christ’s bride affect his image in the world, and not just in the world but before the universe, because Satan first slandered God’s name before angels in heaven. We have a great and noble work that we are called to, and it’s important we understand the seriousness of this work. A truly converted Christian brings honor to God and brings others into the kingdom. We have a duty to remain connected to the Vine, Jesus, so that our light can shine. Notice also how when we have God’s spirit it moves us to keep God’s laws. No true Christian will walk against the moral law of God. ALSO NO TRUE CHRISTIAN WILL SIN INTENTIONALLY (BUT IF THEY DO THEY WILL IMMEDIATELY REPENT, CONFESS AND CLAIM THE FORGIVENESS OF Jesus.)

When God gave signs and wonders at the time of Christ and through the Apostles after Jesus had risen, these signs and wonders put the stamp on Christ’s ministry. They showed the Jewish leaders and the pagans and Greeks and the whole world even down to our time that Jesus had come and died, that he was the Christ, and the nature of his ministry was healing and restoration; they conveyed his character to us.

Paul says it this way:

I persevered in demonstrating among you the marks of a true apostle, including signs, wonders and miracles.
2 Corinthians 12:12 NIV

From his text we can see that it’s important that true apostles produce these marks, or signs (the Greek word is actually signs). God wanted to let the world know Jesus is real. Christianity is real, and salvation is open to all who will repent of their sins and follow Him.

The truth is, anything that does not paint an accurate picture of God, that does not glorify him, takes his name in vain, and is not from God. This includes not just the message of a dream or a vision, but the method or way in which the communication is given. God’s methods along with his message, do not give an appearance of evil. They reveal that God is good.

Ask yourself: Could God put his stamp on this spiritual gift? Or is the gift something he can’t endorse because it would make him look unholy or unloving?

The Bible gives us some general guidelines of criteria which reveal something is not godly.

Let all things be done decently and in order.
1 Corinthians 14:40

For God is not a God of disorder, but of peace, as in all the churches of the saints.
1 Corinthians 14:33

Anything that is disorderly and causes confusion – not just the message but also the method – is not of God.

For I am afraid that when I come, I may not find you as I wish, and you may not find me as you wish. I fear that there may be quarreling, jealousy, rage, rivalry, slander, gossip, arrogance, and disorder.

2 Corinthians 12:20

Notice how disorder is in this text alongside jealousy, rage, and slander. Disorder is ungodly just as these other things are. Disorder is not a morally-neutral concept; it’s bad.

Again and again Paul tells us when referring to the spiritual gifts, let them be done in an orderly way, and to edify and build up the church.

But he who prophesies speaks to men for their edification, encouragement, and comfort.
1 Corinthians 14:3

What then shall we say, brothers? When you come together, everyone has a psalm or a teaching, a revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation. All of these must be done to build up the church.
1 Corinthians 14:26

Let us walk honestly, as in the day; not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying.

But if the unbeliever leaves, let it be so. The brother or the sister is not bound in such circumstances; God has called us to live in peace.
1 Corinthians 7:15

Any spiritual gift that is chaotic, displays itself like drunkenness or irrationality (for God has given us a Spirit of power, of love, and a sound mind 2 Timothy 1:7), and which does not build up or edify the church is a false spiritual gift. How do we know this? Because God’s Word is clear about what the purpose of the spiritual gifts are – the reason they are given. It’s to build up the church, to bring people into a knowledge of sound doctrine and receive salvation from Christ and develop holy characters.

You must distinguish between the holy and the common, between the clean and the unclean.
Leviticus 10:10

Anything that mixes sacred things with common things is a false spiritual gift. Seeing the picture of Jesus on the cross form in your bowl of cereal, for instance, would be an example of this. Anything that takes a sacred truth and cheapens it down to the common level breaks this Biblical rule. Satan breaks this rule often. He is always inventing things like telling the future – a divine ability that only God can do – through fortune cookies and stars and other created things which are far from divine.

Why would these things be the criteria? The criteria is not arbitrary. I think you can see why Satan is ok with mixing the common with the sacred and why God would never do it. Satan is impure and evil; God is righteous and good. Therefore the methods and inventions of Satan will often be impure and cheap. But God who never changes will never use those methods or invent those things. He always stands for what is right. And the Holy Spirit can only do moral things, loving things, and use moral, loving methods. The Holy Spirit can’t make a person a puppet and take away their free will for instance, or do anything else disrespectful. God who created man in the image of God, respects him as a rational being, a child of God. God will not do anything disrespectful to us.

The real key to understanding what gifts the Spirit will give and how he will give them, lies in understanding God Himself. He will not go against His own nature of love (see my other article called ‘Can God Do Anything Because He’s Sovereign?)

God who says “reject every kind of evil” 1 Thessalonians 5:22 will certainly reject all forms of evil himself.

I had to ask myself this question with the dreams and visions I thought I received. Did they edify me? Were they confusing? Did they make God look good as he really is? Or would I be ashamed to share them with unbelievers? The truth was that they were cryptic, coded dreams with hidden messages I had to decipher, a symptom common in bipolar disorder. They were confusing. And the biggest way I knew they weren’t from God is that when I did finally get back my sanity with lithium, they made no logical sense. The Holy Spirit is not nonsensical. Mental illness is.

It’s interesting to note that after Jesus did many signs and wonders, the Pharisees still asked him for a sign.

Jesus first sign was turning water into wine. His second sign was healing the royal official’s son. Read below:

46 Once more he visited Cana in Galilee, where he had turned the water into wine. And there was a certain royal official whose son lay sick at Capernaum. 47 When this man heard that Jesus had arrived in Galilee from Judea, he went to him and begged him to come and heal his son, who was close to death.

48 “Unless you people see signs and wonders,” Jesus told him, “you will never believe.”

49 The royal official said, “Sir, come down before my child dies.”

50 “Go,” Jesus replied, “your son will live.”

The man took Jesus at his word and departed. 51 While he was still on the way, his servants met him with the news that his boy was living. 52 When he inquired as to the time when his son got better, they said to him, “Yesterday, at one in the afternoon, the fever left him.”

53 Then the father realized that this was the exact time at which Jesus had said to him, “Your son will live.” So he and his whole household believed.

54 This was the second sign Jesus performed after coming from Judea to Galilee.

John 4:46-54

Jesus was performing signs and doing miracles. Yet after Jesus had done many signs, the Pharisees asked Jesus for a sign.

Then some of the Pharisees and teachers of the law said to him, “Teacher, we want to see a sign from you.”
Matthew 12:38

Why were they asking Jesus for a sign when he was already performing signs and miracles?

He answered, “A wicked and adulterous generation asks for a sign! But none will be given it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.
Matthew 12:39-40

The key to the answer here is in the words “a wicked and adulterous generation asks for a sign” and then in the following line “NO SIGN will be given it except the sign of Jonah.” Let’s break this down…It’s clear they were asking for a sign that was different from the sign of Jonah. They didn’t want the sign of Jonah.

It’s important that Jesus’ motives are correctly represented here. Jesus wasn’t withholding from his people signs and wonders, believe it or not. If we think that Jesus withholds and scolds us for wanting good things, this is not his nature at all. In fact the first lie Satan gave Eve in Eden was that Christ was withholding something good from her for selfish and arbitrary reasons. Any position or belief that tells us God is arbitrary or selfish and withholds from us is of Satan and a lie. God loves us enough to give us his own Son; he has withheld nothing from us. Except when it’s in our best interest to do so and with the motive of protecting us and loving us, like a kind Father does for their young inexperienced child who needs his protective care.

However the scriptures do seem to indicate that Jesus prefers people to have faith even without any signs or wonders. Jesus told Thomas “Because though hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they who have not seen and yet believe.” John 20:29 KJV

The apostle Paul tells us that all people have evidence of God through his created works. (Romans 1:20) So all men have what they need to believe. Yet there is the human tendency to ask for signs even on top of already having evidence, and it seems to sadden Jesus when people do this and disappoint Him, and there is a special blessing for those who have not seen and yet believe. It makes me wonder: Shouldn’t we aim for being those who take the evidence we’ve already been given and believe? Wouldn’t this please the heart of Jesus more than praying for signs and spiritual manifestations would? But in many Christian circles signs and spiritual gifts are seen as evidence that the person’s faith is strong. Do we have it backwards? I believe this is incorrect theology.

What is the sign of Jonah? It’s the only real sign that distinguishes Christ as God. It’s the sign on which all other signs like healings and raising people from the dead are based. The sign of Jonah is Jesus being crucified, laid in the grave for 3 days and then being resurrected – the sign of Jonah is God’s self-sacrificial character. It’s this character that distinguishes Him as the Son of God.

The Pharisees were not content with signs and wonders like healings and raising the dead – powerful and wonderful manifestations of love. They didn’t want love or a God of love. They were wicked, as Jesus tells us, proud, and elitist. They wanted a Messiah who had a character like theirs which is why they rejected the true Messiah – and they wanted signs that bore a proud, elitist sign, one that fed into their lust for power and prestige in the world.

Ye ask and receive not, because ye ask amiss, the ye may consume it upon your lusts.
James 4:3

What sign was God willing to give us? The sign of the death of his own son. Jesus gave us HIMSELF. There is no greater gift that can be given to us. God Himself? Isn’t that unfathomable? Jesus did not say no sign would be given this generation. He doesn’t withhold things from us. His death on the cross shows his attitude for us, that no good thing will he withhold; even to the point of his own life. No sign shall be given them – except the sign of Jonah, the only one that really matters. Jesus himself. Jesus was giving himself yet because the Jewish leaders were adulterous, God’s church, did not want her own husband.

He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all–how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?
Romans 8:32

No good thing will he withhold from them that walk uprightly.
Psalm 84:11

So then, no more boasting about human leaders! All things are yours,
Whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come; all are yours;

1 Corinthians 3:21-22

Look at this text! The world is yours, things present are yours, things to come are yours – God does not withhold giving us dominion of the new earth, making us kings and priests who reign forever possessing eternal youth. This is a weighty reality. But this kingdom will only be given to those who have characters of self-sacrifice. Who love the sign of Jonah, and who take up their own cross and practice self-sacrifice in this life. Christ will not give the kingdom to those who are selfish and proud.

Notice the cost. Notice what the Bridegroom asks of his bride.

“Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.
Whoever does not take up their cross and follow me is not worthy of me.”
Matthew 10:37-38

The Bridegroom asks for “no other gods before me” for spiritual faithfulness as opposed to adultery. Even our own family members cannot be made into gods. Did they die the second death for us on the cross? No, but God possesses infinite love for us and simply asks we give our whole hearts to him.

When Abraham was willing to offer Isaac on the altar for God, notice the language God uses:

Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou any thing unto him; for now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son from me.
Genesis 22:12

This is the voice of a lover to his bride; it’s the voice of someone who is moved by the one they love. It shows we have power over God’ that what we choose to do affects him. Our faithfulness brings him great joy like when a man proposes and the woman he loves says “yes”. “No” has the power to cause God great personal pain. He is caught up in his desire and love for us. This is deeper language than you see with family or even a spouse. It’s a deeper relationship which is why it is good and right for God to ask for our affections first, above our love for anyone or anything else.

The song of Solomon depicts this love that is deeper than a husband’s love for his wife. For it’s Christ saying these words to us, in metaphor.

Turn your eyes from me; they overwhelm me.
Song of Solomon 6:5

You have stolen my heart, my sister my bride; you have stolen my heart with one glance of your eyes, with one jewel of your necklace.
Song of Solomon 4:9

When he saw the multitudes he was moved with compassion on them, because they fainted and were scattered abroad, as sheep having no shepherd.
Matthew 9:36

In all their affliction he was afflicted…
Isaiah 63:9

He was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed.
Isaiah 53:5

The verdict is in: we can move the heart of God and he wants this faithfulness on our part. To give up all idols and be a faithful bride to our husband.

A love like this calls on us to love him back with our whole heart, soul, strength, and mind. Matthew 22:37 No other person is worthy of all our heart, soul, or mind but Christ. And is we won’t give him such love, we aren’t worthy of him.

It is possible to desire spiritual things with a proud, selfish desire. The Pharisees show us this fact. Even Satan himself desired something that is technically spiritual – to be god – and yet wholly selfish and immoral. False religions are spiritual, but not true or edifying. So the fact that spiritual manifestations are going on, or are desired by an individual is no evidence that God is present or that Godly desires are present in an individual. Satan can cause fire to come down out of heaven and there are false signs and false wonders. These false signs and false wonders are characterized by a spirit of selfishness.

Indeed, as people with fallen natures who have not yet “arrived” we’re capable of wanting to use spiritual things for our own glory rather than God’s glory. Paul was given a thorn in his flesh to keep him from becoming conceited when he received great visions from God. (2 Corinthians 12:17).

And the Bible calls witchcraft (or sorcery) one of the works of the flesh, showing that it’s a common temptation, a pull human beings often feel.

The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity, and debauchery;
idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissentions, factions
and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.
Galatians 5:19-21

False miracles, false signs and wonders are performed by Satan, especially during the end times of this earth’s history.

Who can read the text ” For verily I say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith.” Note: Mountain(s) are symbolic for trials and tribulations
Marl 11:23

With a completely pure heart; an eye single to the glory of God? We have fallen natures and when we see opportunities for glorifying ourselves our flesh is severely tempted. We look at that text with both good and evil in our hearts; love and selfishness. And therein lies the danger. It’s a danger we’re all prone to, a common temptation of the flesh. And one of the strongest pulls that exists – to want to use God’s power for our own glory or selfish interest.

It’s spiritual adultery to do so. But adultery is something many are tempted with and one can be tempted with adultery and yet love their spouse. Being tempted is not itself a sin. Acting on the temptation is sin.

It’s interesting that of all the things Paul could have chosen in 1 Corinthians 13 he picked the spiritual gifts as his illustration. “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels…” “If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge…” “If I have a faith that can move mountains…but have not love, I am nothing.” All three of these things – tongues, prophecy and faith – are spiritual gifts which the Bible mentions in multiple places. Could it be the he chose the spiritual gifts here because there is such temptation with these gifts to try to use them for selfish purposes? What does Paul say? Love is greater than all these things. The sign of Jonah is the true sign.

But, if spiritual gifts are conducted out of love, and in accordance with the spirit of the sign of Jonah, they can be powerful signs that bring unbelievers into the church and which edify the body of Christ. Indeed through history God has endowed his church with wonderful spiritual gifts. God is not saying no to us when it comes to spiritual gifts. Yet there is always a danger in seeking to use the gift for self. Solomon had one of the most powerful and wonderful spiritual gifts of the Old Testament – the gift of wisdom. And he rebelled hard against God as a result of his prosperity and many wives leading his heart astray. He rebelled so badly that he was offering Israelite children as sacrifices to heathen gods. And this was a man who in his youth had such a good heart that he unselfishly asked for wisdom to rule when God asked him what he wanted.

Solomon was given the great desire of basically every person alive. God himself came to him and asked him “what should I give you?” But rather than seeing God like a genie which is the temptation of the flesh that many of us face, Solomon asked for something unselfish, wanting what was best for his people. And yet even he eventually became proud and murdered Israelite children.

If it could happen to him, it could happen to us. Our motives we need to always check with the Bible and surrender to Christ if we discover they are not pure. This is an ongoing thing, something that must be done daily.

Solomon showed us that God is not a genie, and he desires to answer prayers that stem from love, not selfish desire. Also that he honors and often grants such requests. Yet a Christian is never to assume God will grant his exact request in the way we specify it. We know that God will hear our prayer and we know he will answer it, but If we believe that if we have faith that God will do the exact thing we ask, we’re making ourselves out to be God, failing to submit to Him, and are no longer practicing Christianity. Because Christianity teaches the Sovereignty and worship of God, not us. His will be done, his kingdom come, not our will or our kingdom. And while he gives us a kingdom – it’s one under Him. We are kings and priests under God and his rule and his law. When Eve sought to be her own god this is what caused the fall of man. We aren’t Sovereign and we can’t serve our own wills; even worse to try to make God obey us.

Look at how deception takes place. The Bible shows us the science of deception, how it occurs.

“The coming of the lawless one will be in accordance with how Satan works.” How does Satan work? Let’s read the next text and find out. “He will use all sorts of displays of power through signs and wonders that serve the lie, and all the ways that wickedness deceives those who are perishing. They perished because they refused to love the truth and be saved.”For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie and so that all will be condemned who have not believed the truth but have delighted in wickedness.”
2 Thessalonians 2:8-12

This text tells us how to avoid falling for false signs and wonders produced by Satan. If we have some fleshly desire in us, Satan’s false miracles will appeal to this fleshly desire. We then have a choice. If we surrender the selfish desire to Christ, he will change our heart and give us a love of the truth. This love of the truth will bring us out of the deception because by choosing truth Jesus will guard us against delusion. If however we really want to believe the lie and we refuse to surrender our selfish desire, Jesus will allow us to be deceived by Satan because we’re using our free will to love evil rather than righteousness.

We all have selfish desires, so we’re all capable of being deluded if we do not surrender to Christ daily. We cannot stand in our own strength, only Christ’s strength can make us overcomers. Any hope in self is futile but hope in God is our safety. We must desire the behavior and character of Jesus as found in Galatians 5:22-23, which is the Fruit of the Spirit.

We all want to feel God’s love and we long to be in his presence. During our loneliest or most physically or mentally painful life experiences we feel this desire even more keenly, and Satan often preys upon this natural and good desire, turning it into an idol by offering feelings of comfort or ecstasy through false spiritual manifestations. It’s common for people who have experienced a phenomenon known as being slain in the spirit to feel great peace or even euphoria. Remember that Satan has been in the presence of God, and he knows the brain waves produced by being in God’s presence. He knows the physical changes that a person experiences when being truly at peace, and he could through his power work on the body to bring it to those same patterns and give the person a feeling of deep peace.

I know someone with bipolar who has constant stress and anxiety. She really suffers from her mental illness daily. And she has gotten involved in the charismatic movement. It’s unclear exactly why – whether her impaired judgment is behind it or whether the fascination with the occult, a very common symptom of bipolar is behind it, or both, or something else. I’m not sure and I don’t want to judge her motives as I’m not God. What I do know is that recently she experienced being slain in the spirit and she told me that she felt more peace than she has ever felt in her entire life. This is someone who needs to feel calm. She is overly inflamed and in ill health. Satan is taking advantage of her need for health like he often does with drug addicts who have unhealthy biochemistries and use drugs to numb the pain or give them feelings of ecstasy that their brains can’t create on their own.

It pains me to see Satan take advantage of her in such a way. I know it will be hard for her to do the right thing, because, unless she has a complete cognitive delusion in this area (this is not uncommon in people with bipolar so it could be the case) Satan is hooking her through her flesh. He’s offering an easy way to self-medicate. The natural tendency in most of us would be to go this easy way and accept the delusion. Rather than surrender to Christ and tell him “If this is not of you, then even if it makes me feel good feelings that I can’t feel at all otherwise, I’m willing to give it up. Just show me the truth, Jesus and give me the strength to align myself with the truth.” This is the prayer she needs to pray, and which will result in Christ breaking the delusion off from her, but the natural tendency is to keep believing the delusion.

And then only use methods God can approve of to feel better and balance brain biochemistry. Such as seeing a mental health care professional. Nutrient therapy for mental illness, something I’ve been on since 2013 and which was a game changer for me. You might want to direct for help in this regard?

You can see how spiritual delusions are different from cognitive delusions brought on by mental illness. A spiritual delusion is something one must be rational in order to fall into because the person uses their rational mind to make a choice to believe a lie because the lie appeals to a wrong, selfish desire in them. A cognitive delusion is when the brain is unable to see the truth; even if the person fully surrenders to God and asks for the truth they are unable to see it because their brain is malfunctioning.

Which would you rather have – a feeling of peace, or actual peace? Christ’s peace is not a feeling, but a living reality. It is actually having your sins canceled out in the books of heaven, actually being in right standing with God, actually being filled with his Holy Spirit, actually walking with him day-by-day and having a real experience with him, whether you can feel it or perceive it or not. Your character is changed, you experience healing and being restored. As guilty criminals under the death penalty, feeling forgiven won’t do us any good. We need to actually be forgiven. Jesus is our Great Physician who restores our soul. If we had terminal cancer would we thank a doctor who made us feel at peace with our terminal illness but didn’t treat us? Wouldn’t we think he was the worst doctor in the world? The doctor who puts us through the necessary treatments, though often painful, and restores us to health is the one that represents Jesus’ attitude, objective, and character towards us.

It’s important to keep in mind why we are not in God’s presence. The answer is sin. The separation from God and the longing for him is a constant testament to our need to part with sin in our life, so that we can be holy and stand once again in his presence. It’s meant to remind us every day to continue the upward path of sanctification, to be pilgrims on earth and commit to the hard process of becoming more like Christ. This being the case, spiritual manifestations that make you feel like you’re in the presence of God already and do not point you to the need for surrendering and overcoming your sins, not only are dangerous because a person could become possessed by invoking such spirits, but also feed into our natural tendency towards complacency and not progressing in our walk with God.

When Bible prophets stood before God in vision they declared “woe is me for I am a man of unclean lips and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.” Isaiah 6:5

It was not a pleasant experience to be taken into vision to see the Lord, because of the prophet’s sinfulness. The truth is the same for us. We have a very real sin problem that separates us from being in the presence of God, and God is asking us to part with more and more sin each day, until we are made holy and ready to stand in his presence. False visions and dreams can lie to us and make us feel that we are ready when we still have a long way to go. They preach peace and safety often at the very time when we most need repentance and humility of heart.

Some in Charismatic churches teach that if you haven’t spoken in the gift of tongues, you aren’t saved. If we believe that unless we manifest a spiritual gift our salvation or our relationship with God is lacking in some way, we’re going to be compelled to seek out that spiritual gift, and devastated if we don’t receive it. There is nothing more important than having a relationship with God. The Bible does not teach that any spiritual gift is linked to salvation. In fact, John the Baptist whom Jesus called the greatest man who ever lived because he was most like Christ in character, did no miracles and lived a simple life. We’re also told that he was filled with the Holy Spirit in great measure his entire life, starting before he was even born when he was in the womb. This shows us that being filled with the Holy Spirit is not connected with manifesting any specific spiritual gift. The most important thing for us to pray for, is to be like Christ in character. The Bible over and over again emphasizes character as being superior to any spiritual gift, and as being what we are to seek after. It’s also the sign that we’re saved. Our good works which stem from a changed heart are the sign someone is a converted Christian. God of course is ultimately the only one who can read the heart to know for sure.

The truth is, it’s a bigger deal to have Christ’s character than it is to do miracles or to see visions. And it wasn’t always the people with the characters most like Christ who received the greatest spiritual gifts. Samson had a powerful spiritual gift, but his heart was worldly and selfish. King Saul was given the office of King of Israel, but he turned jealous and murderous a short time after becoming king. We can’t look to rank or gifts to determine our character or standing with God. If we are daily surrendering our hearts and lives to Jesus and believing in Him as the only atonement for our sins, then we can have assurance that we are right with God and filled with His Holy Spirit.

The spiritual gifts are not really for the individual. They don’t bring a person closer to God, although the right management and use of them could bring a person closer to God, because exercising good stewardship always results in this. The gifts are for the upbuilding of the church.

1 Corinthians 12:7 tells us that each gift is given for the “common good”. Not for the individual. After my in-depth study of the spiritual gifts, I now conclude that I likely have the spiritual gift of teaching. I don’t have the spiritual gift of prophecy as I believed when I was in psychosis. I’m able to explain the things that I know and break them down in an easy to understand manner. I didn’t used to understand why I could explain spiritual things much better than my mother could, and I always prayed for her to get to the point where she could explain things clearly because I thought it was something everyone eventually learned. My study of the spiritual gifts revealed that she has very different gifts from me and since I have the gift of teaching, she’s actually been given complementary gifts so that we minister together effectively. We’re both writing a book together about my experiences with bipolar disorder and the treatments that helped me regain my mind, and I teach and explain in the book and she is a researcher who lists the treatments and gives background on which doctors developed them and how they came to their findings. These gifts together are much more effective and meet practical needs better than my gifts alone, or her gifts alone. This is the way the gifts are meant to work, with the body for the common good of preparing the saints for Christ’s second coming. The gifts are not meant to be personal markers that show you you have reached a certain level of spirituality. It’s not like when you become very spiritual or righteous you will be given the gift of prophecy or the office of prophet. The office of prophet would be given if the church needs it, for the common good. If it’s not given, it’s because the church does not need it at this time. God has given the gift of prophecy and there have been true prophets throughout history, but not constantly. I believe God gave his church a true prophet in the year 1844 in the ministry of Ellen G. White. She was given the office of prophet. A man named Hiram Edson who briefly saw a vision of Christ entering the Most Holy Place in heaven, was given the gift of prophecy also, but he was not given the office of prophet. More on this later. What the individual should seek is character. To be made into Christ’s loving image. This is the greatest thing the individual can have and the mark of a true Christian.

The Holy Spirit is Rational

For God hath not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, love, and a sound mind.
2 Timothy 1:7

One of the ways God brought good out of evil in my life is that I have a special appreciation for rationality. I understand it’s importance in a deeper way than I ever did before my psychosis, and how it’s extremely important that we use it as God’s witnesses and don’t deviate from it and make God look bad. I lost my rationality and lived apart from God’s law for quite some time. This symptom is by far the worst mental illness symptom of them all. I’d rather have any other symptom than this, I’d even rather have every other possible symptom combined than have this one. I say this from principle. According to the Word of God the worst thing that can happen to a human being is to be a sinner and lost, and the second worst thing is to be as if you were an animal, without rational thought. I experienced what it was like to no longer be a morally autonomous being. It was not an enjoyable experience to live without knowledge of God’s law. It felt like being an animal or a plant or something – alive, but without higher brain function. Some who are unconverted might think that it meant I could do whatever I wanted without being morally responsible and think it would be a ticket to happiness. It wasn’t. It was a ticket to nihilism. Life seemed meaningless – I searched everywhere for meaning, looking for signs and visions, and all kinds of things because I could no longer experience the joy of truths like that we are made in the image of God and what that means, and the joy of choosing to do right eluded me. Nothing met my most basic need to see the wonderful moral law of God and have joy in living right. There is no substitute. No flashy vision or feeling of euphoria (both of which I experienced and are common symptoms of bipolar) came anywhere close to meeting my deep need for the law of God and the cross. I had odd beliefs such as that lying was nor immoral and I lied frequently during that time. There was no evil motive behind my lying. I’ve always been interested in psychology and I would lie online when I talked to people anonymously in order to gather information about people in various scenarios. I couldn’t experience the peace of choosing to live uprightly and knowing I was living in a way that pleased God, and I couldn’t experience the guilt of sin. I also could not be convicted. I would pray and try to study the Word of God, but no conviction about my lying or other sins ever came. Instead I thought God supported me in it. That’s how out of it I was.

After I came out of psychosis with lithium, conviction resumed. I suddenly could understand right from wrong, stopped lying, talked to people openly on Facebook and not anonymously on message boards, so I could encourage myself to be transparent, and apologized to those I had lied to during my psychosis and made things right as best I could. It’s been a joy to find the parts of me that aren’t in alignment with God and surrender them to him, and to have the conviction that today I am right with God. The sanctification process brings true peace, though it is difficult, and due to my experience of living without the law I find myself extra appreciative of this difficult process and eager to keep advancing to be more like Christ in character and have my sinful nature hewed away. It’s deeply satisfying. It’s the purpose of being human, to walk with God uprightly and according to his commands. All of that I lost when I was no longer a morally autonomous being.

You can imagine how upsetting it is for me now when I hear of movements and spiritual manifestations that basically claim the Holy Spirit can do irrational things. I’ve been irrational, and it’s definitely the work of Satan. Satan is the originator of all illness, including psychosis. How could a God who created people to be rational be Himself irrational? It’s disrespectful to say such things about him or to imply that he uses such methods. Definitely the people who say such things are being deluded by Satan. and he is an evil slave master; he treats us like animals and degrades human beings and blasphemes God.

Let me share some examples. I’ve heard people claim to have the gift of discernment. When asked what the gift looks like and how it works they say that when they have a dream or vision that they will get a feeling indicating whether it is of God or of Satan. I’ve also heard that they say God will open their eyes so that they can see into the spiritual realm and they will see demons and angels and will be able to tell which influence is exerting itself over a person. But the word ‘discernment’ means judgment and judgment is a rational function of the mind, it’s not a feeling, it’s not a button lighting up. For Christ to give us a gift that is a button lighting up or a feeling coming over us is basically the opposite of what discernment means. It treats us like animals – like how I felt when I was in psychosis – and doesn’t call on us to study the Word of God to show ourselves approved. 1 Timothy 2:15

I don’t claim to be an expert but I can tell you that the true gift of discernment would have to be something that enables the person to judge by the Word of God which spirit is in operation. Because the Word of God is the only true standard.

When Solomon received a spiritual gift of good judgment to rule God’s people it manifested as an increased ability to understand the principles in God’s Word and to execute fairness that resembled Christ. He didn’t see a button light up or receive a feeling that indicated how to judge. This would treat him like he was a machine and not a king.

God has done many different kinds of manifestations through his Spirit in both the Old and New Testaments.

Though each of these things are very different they share some traits in common. All of these manifestations awaken awe and worship. They testify that God is the Creator. They reveal genius, not chaos. They are true miracles, truly good, they awaken true wonder. They tell us something about God’s character of love.

There are different gifts, but the same Spirit.
1 Corinthians 12:4

Read through some of these texts below.

For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.
2 Timothy 1:7

The Spirit of the LORD will rest on Him–the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and strength, the Spirit of knowledge and fear of the LORD.
Isiah 11:2 – This text speaks of Christ.

But truly I am filled with power by the spirit of the Lord, and of judgment, and of might, to declare unto Jacob his transgression, and to Israel his sin.
Micah 3:8

Counsel is mine, and sound wisdom: I am understanding, I have strength.
Proverbs 8:14

Now Joshua son of Nun was filled with the spirit of wisdom because Moses had laid his hands on him. So the Israelites obeyed him and did as the LORD had commanded Moses.
Deuteronomy 34:9

The Spirit of the Lord GOD is on Me, because the LORD has anointed Me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent Me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and freedom to the prisoners,
Isaiah 61:1

The Spirit of the LORD will rest on Him–the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and strength, the Spirit of knowledge and fear of the LORD.
Isaiah 11:2

And I have filled him with the spirit of God, in wisdom, and in understanding, and in knowledge, and in all manner of workmanship,
Exodus 31:3

Give therefore thy servant an understanding heart to judge thy people, that I may discern between good and bad: for who is able to judge this thy so great a people?
1 Kings 3:9

The Spirit of the LORD came upon him, and he became Israel’s judge and went out to war. And the LORD delivered Cushan-rishathaim king of Aram into the hand of Othniel, who prevailed against him.
Judges 3:10

So the Spirit of the LORD came upon Gideon, who blew the ram’s horn and rallied the Abiezrites behind him.
Judges 6:34

So Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him in the presence of his brothers, and the Spirit of the LORD rushed upon David from that day forward. Then Samuel set out and went to Ramah.
1 Samuel 16:13

These texts tell us what kind of Spirit the Holy Spirit is. They show what the Holy Spirit moves people to do when he comes upon them. He moves them to do justice in the world, to stand up for what’s right, to keep God’s law both to God and man.

The Heart of the Matter: The Law of God

Jeremiah 23 is an entire chapter rebuking and pointing out the dangers of false prophesies. It contains gems of crucial information.

Notice the purpose of the false prophecies. There is an intent, an objective, and a motive. False prophecies are not neutral, except perhaps in the case of someone with mental illness who sees hallucinations and vivid dreams and thinks they are from God, and has no ulterior motive; it’s just a symptom of their illness. However, even in this case, it’s possible to see dreams stemming from one’s own mind and one’s own fallen desires. Believing the false vision can lead to real problems, and Satan could take advantage of the situation and get the person to place dreams and visions above the word of God and lead them away from truth.

The motive behind false prophecies is to “make my people forget my Name.” (seen in verse 27) and to strengthen the hands of evil-doers, so that the people will not turn away from sin.

God’s name in the Bible means character. When Moses said “show me your glory” God said I will cause all my goodness to pass before you and I will declare my Name.

And he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, “The LORD, the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness,
maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation.”
Exodus 34:6-7

Notice how God’s Name is his character of love, think of it like a coin consisting of two sides – mercy and justice. Love is not love without mercy – it becomes vindictive rather than loving without mercy being present, the person is looking for a chance to catch you in sin and punish you, and it’s not love without justice – it becomes permissive of sin, accepting of wrongdoing and an ennabler of evil without justice being present.

The false prophets were strengthening the carnal, fallen desires in the people, and making them forget and cease to pursue love and truth as it is found in God.
They told people they could sin and have peace and favor with God while sinning, and much evil resulted.

To put it succintly. the false prophecies told the people they could throw out God’s law. These prophecies are an attack on the 10 Commandment eternal moral law of God, which is a transcript of his own character of love. These prophets, like Lucifer, were warring against God.

Notice that they prophesied from their evil hearts and imaginations. This tells us that it is possible to conjure up dreams and visions to some extent simply by the power of the mind. This is something we need to be aware of and always check our desires and motives with the Bible,

“Search me and try me and see if there be any wicked way in me and lead me in the way everlasting” must be our prayer.
Psalm 139:23-24

Notice that true prophecies turn people from their evil fallen ways towards repentance and truth. This is perhaps the one main, crucial difference between true prophecies and false prophecies. True prophecies aren’t easy to hear. They cut to the heart and expose our sin. If you’re having prophecies that always feel good and are always easy to hear I can tell you right now you’re not getting true prophecies from God. True prophecies always address the sin problem. I’ve seen a rise in charismatic circles of what they call the gift of prophecy. I used to live in South West Florida and the prophecies these prophets speak is always things like “I saw in vision that God is going to move powerfully to convert people in South West Florida.” Or “This is the year of increase. The Lord showed me plants springing up ready for the harvest. 2021 is the year of increase.”

Do you notice a problem with the prophecies above? They do not include sin. They don’t point out the areas we need to surrender to God. They leave out God’s law entirely. The whole reason Christ came to die was to uphold the Father’s law and pay our fine so that we could once again be in right relation to the law if we repent and forsake sin. Without a doctrine of the law of God and sin the transgression of the law, there is no Christian religion. There is no need for a Savior and there is no final end of sin.

These false prophesies mirror the Pharisees who thought that were entitled to prominence in this world, and to eternal life simply because they were descendants of Abraham. They didn’t understand that they must repent from and turn from sin and it’s then that they would be given the new heart and be followers of Christ, heirs of heaven.

These charismatic churches teach that all we need do is take on the name of Christian and then all these uplifting prophecies apply to us – we will have success and be accepted of our Father in heaven, without the need of repentance of sin, and continuing the sanctification process throughout life. Many of these churches believe Christ’s law has been nailed to the cross and that we are no longer under any obligation to obey it.

In throwing out the law, they end up encouraging people to live in sin, and they open themselves up to receive dangerous false prophecies that lull them to sleep thinking they are safe when really they are lost.

Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine.
2 Timothy 4:2 KJV

Notice how this text tells us that God’s Word encourages us, or exhorts as some translations say, but it also rebukes us, and it does so with sound doctrine. When we encourage others it must be done with truth and the truth is encouraging, but it’s only encouraging through repentance. We have to part with sin in order to partake of Christ’s salvation. False prophecies encourage a person with a lie – they give false encouragement that a person can remain in sin and be saved and blessed of God – and they do not rebuke.

Read the texts below and note the truths I’ve pointed out above:

And among the prophets of Jerusalem
I have seen something horrible:
They commit adultery and live a lie.

They strengthen the hands of evildoers,
so that not one of them turns from their wickedness.

because from the prophets of Jerusalem
ungodliness has spread throughout the land.”

16 This is what the Lord Almighty says:

“Do not listen to what the prophets are prophesying to you;
they fill you with false hopes.
They speak visions from their own minds,

not from the mouth of the Lord.

They keep saying to those who despise me,
‘The Lord says: You will have peace.’
And to all who follow the stubbornness of their hearts
they say, ‘No harm will come to you.’

I did not send these prophets,
yet they have run with their message;
I did not speak to them,
yet they have prophesied.
22 But if they had stood in my council,
they would have proclaimed my words to my people
and would have turned them from their evil ways
and from their evil deeds.

25 “I have heard what the prophets say who prophesy lies in my name. They say, ‘I had a dream! I had a dream!’ 26 How long will this continue in the hearts of these lying prophets, who prophesy the delusions of their own minds?

27 They think the dreams they tell one another will make my people forget my name, just as their ancestors forgot my name, just as their ancestors forgot my name through Baal worship. 28 Let the prophet who has a dream recount the dream, but let the one who has my word speak it faithfully. For what has straw to do with grain?” declares the Lord. 29 “Is not my word like fire,” declares the Lord, “and like a hammer that breaks a rock in pieces?

30 “Therefore,” declares the Lord, “I am against the prophets who steal from one another words supposedly from me. 31 Yes,” declares the Lord, “I am against the prophets who wag their own tongues and yet declare, ‘The Lord declares.’ 32 Indeed, I am against those who prophesy false dreams,” declares the Lord. “They tell them and lead my people astray with their reckless lies, yet I did not send or appoint them. They do not benefit these people in the least,” declares the Lord.

Notice what the Lord says in the following text:

28 Let the prophet who has a dream recount the dream, but let the one who has my word speak it faithfully. For what has straw to do with grain?” declares the Lord.

The Lord here is comparing false prophecies to His Word. And he calls the false prophecies chaff or straw, and he calls his Word grain. In other passages throughout scripture the Lord refers to chaff as worthless and grain as valuable and able to feed the flock and meet the needs of the soul.

These false prophecies do NOT meet the true needs of a person. They don’t solve our very human crisis of being sinners in need of forgiveness.

But each one should build with care. 11 For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ. 12 If anyone builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw, 13 their work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each person’s work.
1 Corinthians 9:13

Notice this text in 1 Corinthians. Notice how Paul tells us that no one can lay any other foundation than Jesus Christ. Anything else is straw, wood, and hay. The person who is receiving prophecies that throw out God’s law and therefore throw out the whole concept and need for a Savior – Jesus Christ Himself – is buillding with wood, hay, and straw.

Those who exalt and uphold the Bible are building with gold, silver, and costly stones. Let the “prophets” and pastors who focus on prophecies and visions take heed to remember that there is no other foundation other than Jesus Christ and God’s Word the Bible and turn away from seeking after flashy displays and visions and cleave to the Word of God instead, lest they work against Jesus himself.

2 Corinthians 11:4 is a powerful, eye-opening text that I believe is crucial to understanding this issue:

4 For if someone comes to you and preaches a Jesus other than the Jesus we preached, or if you receive a different spirit from the Spirit you received, or a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it easily enough.

Notice that a different gospel means a different Christ than the Bible Christ, and if a person accepts a different Christ than the Bible Christ what accompanies this is a different Spirit than the Holy Spirit.
As pointed out above, many churches have thrown out God’s moral law, declaring it was abolished at the cross, and the result is that they have a different gospel – one that does not believe in sin and where there is no need for a Savior. This “Christ” merely saves a person from eternal death, not from sin and wrongdoing, and the Spirit that accompanies this false teaching – the Spirit that is giving these false prophecies is a false, lying Spirit.

The Word is clear that some of these prophecies and manifestations originate in our stubborn hearts and imaginations, and some of them come from Satan who is seeking to deceive us.

4 There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called; 5 one Lord, one faith, one baptism; 6 one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.
Ephesians 4:4-6

The Christian faith is congruent. There is only one doctrine of belief and we all become Christ’s children born into his body, receiving the same Holy Spirit. We all have one Father. It’s a congruent faith where all parts make sense and fit together and there is harmony. If you see another belief added to our foundational doctrine, or you see confusing manifestations and dreams – anything of this nature is not of our faith or from our God. Anything that contradicts or confuses or causes us to look away from the Bible to flashy manifestations and tempts and lures the fallen nature is not of God.

7 But to each one of us grace has been given as Christ apportioned it. 8 This is why it

says:

“When he ascended on high,
he took many captives
and gave gifts to his people.”

It’s clear that this faith, this gospel, this Father, this doctrine, involves spiritual gifts. God speaks clearly that he gave us spiritual gifts.
The question and focus is “of what nature will these spiritual gifts be?”
They will be of the same nature as our doctrine, our God, and his character. They will harmonize with our one faith.
Any spirit or prophecy that does not harmonize with our God’s character or our doctrine, is a false spirit and false prophecy.

Our faith has a form, if you want to call it that, a profile. Just as you can recognize the face of a friend because of their unique features. so you can recognize the features of our faith and the features that come from the enemy. The character traits that are out of alignment with truth.

One very key feature of our faith is that it’s healthy and rooted in grain that feeds the flock. It’s humble. It requires faith and a relationship with God to maintain , as one would maintain a garden. Our faith doesn’t puff up or have flashy display, though sometimes through history God has done awe-inspiring things, the glory goes to him alone. People involved in his work are honored, but never worshiped. The flesh naturally desires these artificial things, but we must surrender the wrong desires of our flesh and only do what is healthy and right.

I think prophecies, miracles, and communications can be likened to a marriage relationship. God is always comparing his relationship with his church to a bride and her husband so this is a good analogy. Within a marriage relationship there is sexual intimacy, but this sexual intimacy while pleasurable and exciting is for a very real purpose rooted in an important truth: it bonds the husband and wife as one flesh which is an expression of love, but it also causes them to be united not just when they are alone together but as they fullfil their rles together in the world at large, and in the church. They are a team doing justice and mercy on the earth, representing Christ to the world. They become a unit, two parts welded together. Sexual intimacy is also for procreation and so the couple can understand something of the love of Christ for his church as he is our bridegroom.

There are some people though for whom the sex act is the focus of the relationship, not just the glue of the relationship but the whole purpose, until they reach a point where they don’t really care about the other aspects and they just want to have their “fix”. These people are drawn out after other partners and they commit adultery in their pursuit of pleasure.

This is similar to the person who craves visions, dreams, and miracles and isn’t satisfied with these things being given in context of our relationship with God. This type of person can’t read about the wonderful miracles of Christ on the earth and understand that they are written in the Word of God for us to be convinced he is the Messiah and to believe in Him today. They can’t appreciate the history of God’s dealings with men and rejoice that they have inherited that history and all those wonderful dealings of God with man. No, they have to see a miracle themseleves or receive a vision or Christianity is not exciting enough for them.

John the Baptist was declared to be the greatest man on earth – meaning he was the most like Christ in character, but these people wouldn’t be content to be like him, choosing to focus instead on Elijah and Jabez, a little known character who God blessed with material wealth and possessions and influence, because they want a flashy Christian experience.

This naturally leads them to other gods because this character flaw of emphasizing excitement and miracles is not a trait the true God possesses. They combine gods, following false prophecies and also going to church and hearing the Word of God. They are spiritual adulterers.

The only way back for them is to learn to love God, not displays or visions. They have to love his character, his truth, and what he did for them on Calvary – and really delve into all that it means. His love is an infinite ocean. But they can’t see how vast and how fullfilling and wonderful his love is, until they surrender the part of themselves that is shallow and superficial to God and allow him to recreate their heart.

19 Quench not the Spirit.

20 Despise not prophesyings.

21 Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.

22 Abstain from all appearance of evil.
1 Thessalonians 5:19-22

If there is mental illness present, particularly psychosis, the person will be drawn to grandiose spiritual manifestations, and will be unable to appreciate the true grandeur of the love of God found on Calvary. I remember when I was in this state I could not understand the scriptures. I had lost my ability to reason and therefore could not “Come and reason” with God. But strangely I was still drawn to spiritual things, a symptom called religiosity that occurs with psychosis and mental illness.

Not everyone with mental illness will lose their ability to understand logic. They may still be logical, but drawn to superficial visions and prophecies, almost like a drug. By seeing a Functional Medicine doctor and bringing their body and brain biochemistry closer to the normal alignment that it was created to have, they can give themselves the advantage in this spiritual war and make it easier to resist addictive flashy visions and have a wholesome and healthy desire for the Word of God instead.

I will mention in other articles about which imbalances in particular can cause this symptom. Copper toxicity is a common cause. High dopamine is another. There’s even imbalances that cause people to be drawn to the controversial and to conspiracy theories and to have paranoia in various amounts. They make a religion out of conspiracy, rather than out of the good, solid, sound truths of the Bible with point to the love of God, and when they meet with others in church their subject matter is always something paranoid or worrisome or negative and they rarely discuss the deep love of God.

Sometimes people can over-spiritualize a problem. Many of these people simply need medical attention and to be put on a protocol to balance their brain biochemistry and the subject matter they discuss will completely change. Their brain is agitated with inflammation and they are in low-level pain and agitation 24/7. They may not have enough gaba or serotonin to access certain regions of their brain. Some are completely in psychosis, but there is a spectrum and many are at various points in this spectrum.

These people can gain the advantage in their spiritual warfare if they will correct certain key imbalances which I will go over in future articles. The truth is, we are limited by our physical brains; we are not outside of our physical brain and we don’t have a spirit that can override our faulty brain chemistry when it’s not healthy.

The last thing I want to say in this article is that true prophets are not met with great acceptance. true prophets are hated because there is enmity between the world and God. (Genesis 3:15, James 4:4)

Matthew 5:10 tells us “blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness.”

Like Cain who killed his brother Abel because he was righteous (1 John 3:12), true prophets are not received well because they preach the law of God.

I’ve experienced this in my own interactions with people. If I say things like “God is good!” atheists will argue with me and lash out, but many Christians will say “Amen”. But if I say something like “our body is the temple of God and we must take care of it out of respect for Christ who died for us body, soul, and mind.” People’s attitudes change. You can feel the tension, like they are about to speak up in anger. They will tell me I can’t voice my beliefs on this issue, and try to get me to close my mouth. If it’s a website or an article the truth is being spoken through they will try to get the website taken down, or “warn” people and direct them away from the website. People aren’t neutral about the law of God and rebuke for breaking his law, nor are they neutral about Jesus Christ as the remedy for sin.

They like statements like once saved always saved. But if you start combining Christ with the law of God and showing the complete picture anger comes up quickly in their hearts. They do not want to part with their sins – even though Christ has given them a way to do so through Him.

The prophets that preach “2021 is the year of increase. God is going to bring many souls into the kingdom this year.” Or preach the prosperity gospel and tell people they will be rich and successful, obviously do not meet with enmity. But prophets that point to the law of God and the gospel together people have so much hate for. Really it’s unreasonable for true prophets to have that level of hate. It only happens because humanity has idols and doesn’t want to part with them. Because true prophets point to Christ as our answer, our sufficiency, and provide the remedy. We can walk with God through the sanctification process. It’s a difficult process for sure, but God has provided our cure. And gratefulness to Him is the only right response.

Prophets in the Old Testament and even John the Baptist in the New, were killed. People don’t want to be told the details of what idols they have and sins they are committing. They don’t want to hear how to be cured of their sin malady. They try to shut out the truth, not gravitate towards it or embrace it. Throughout history there has always only been a small number of people who have been willing to accept the truth and live by it.

“Small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and few there be that find it.”
Matthew 7:14

True prophets are not loved and accepted by very many people at all. And even those who appreciate them and heed their words experience difficulty in following their instruction. They have to crucify their flesh to do so, and take up their cross to follow Christ.

If the natural enmity of the world – and even many in the church because the majority of those in any church are unconverted – does not exist when people hear the prophet’s message – this is a huge indicator the prophet is a false prophet.

The type of enmity that needs to exist in order to indicate a true prophet, is enmity against the law of God, and it’s remedy, the cross of Christ and taking up our own cross in this life. Hate is natural in this world of fallen human beings. So hate alone is not an indicator. War has been the norm throughout human history. This is a specific type of hate. It’s hatred of righteousness. God’s righteous law.

Tips For Communicating With a Loved One Who is Delusional, or Whom You Suspect May be Delusional
Some people who slip into psychosis have a rapid decline. I’ve heard accounts and read books about young men graduating from high school completely healthy and fine, and after the stress of moving and starting college, and the intense school load, a couple months into college life, descending rapidly into psychosis. This is a common time for psychotic disorders to develop in men. But many people go through something called the prodromal phase, which is a period of several years or more of less-intense symptoms such as derealization where the world doesn’t seem real and may seem robotic or like they are in a dream-state, cognitive distortions, which are like mild delusions – errors in logic, that are not as extreme as the delusions and thought disorders seen in a fully developed psychotic illness, anxiety or panic attacks, racing thoughts, fatigue beginning but being relatively mild, when the person was not fatigued before, brain fog entering the picture, but again being mild or moderate and not severe.

For many families their kid’s psychotic break hits them out of the blue, when he starts acting bizarre or incoherently, and terrifies them, even though it was actually building for quite some time, but they weren’t aware this was happening.

It’s usually at this point that they call the police because their kid is doing things like word salad which is where he strings together a series of words that don’t make any sense. Like “Fame, go forever, pizza, suspicious” or some other very strange combinations of words. Or perhaps their kid is on the roof declaring he has the ability to fly, and about to jump off. Or he may compulsively go on lots of trips and max out his credit cards, and find himself unable to problem solve to get enough money to get home, and you get a call from a concerned friend who says he’s acting bizarrely and to come pick him up. When before this he was always responsible and on top of things.

The police arrive and take him to the psychiatric hospital, or you take him. He is treated, usually comes out of psychosis with high dose anti-psychotics enough to be stabilized and to gain some awareness that he had a psychotic break, and released with medication with some very difficult side effects, and no education from the doctors and nurses about what he went through or how to manage his symptoms except for telling him what amount of the medication he is to take daily.

He may feel scared, defeated, may still be clueless about what really happened to him, and not know he experienced psychosis. Or he may know something about psychosis and adopt the view that his future is dismal and he will have this illness for the rest of his life, and that his life is over. Not knowing that for many people they can be high functioning with the right treatment and continue schooling and have a career and a family life and a normal life. Some people even recover completely (there’s a study that shows 50% of people in underdeveloped countries spontaneously recover from schizophrenia, a psychotic disorder. The rates are less in developed countries, but with medication and supplement protocols such as the Walsh protocol for psychotic disorders the rates are improved), but unfortunately he’s not told any of these things.

Your loved one may isolate and be depressed, and due to the delusions, and also the negative symptoms, have a very hard time with communication, at a time when communication may actually be crucial to him getting effective treatment, and you as the parent being able to help him monitor which meds are helping him and which meds make him worse or aren’t effective.

I will share some ways I’ve discovered to communicate effectively with someone in delusion.

Ask The ‘Whats’, ‘Hows’, and ‘Whys‘

One of the ways to effectively communicate with a loved one who is delusional, or who you suspect may be delusional, that I have discovered is to ask the ‘whats’, ‘hows’, and ‘whys’.

These questions lead to deeper communication that allows you to gauge the amount of contact with reality your kid is experiencing, and what their mental state is like. If you begin this in their teen years and beyond, it can help you to see if prodromal symptoms are present.

As people descend into psychosis, and even for some people who are fully in a delusion, the delusional thinking is often missed because it’s common for psychotic people to use the same words everyone else uses, but mean a different definition, one that isn’t grounded in reality.

Like philosophy writers who always preface their essays by giving their definition of the terms they are using, since words are often used to mean different things in philosophy, remember to ask for definitions and explanations.

Rather than seeming like you’re prying, this attention to detail often makes people feel heard and like you value their opinion. We live in an age when everyone wants to talk rather than to listen, and people really appreciate being heard and being asked questions that show you care about what they have to say and that show you’re processing what they are saying and thinking through their ideas.

So…if you’re having a conversation with your kid, and he says something like “The government is spying on everyone these days and it’s really bringing me down.” Ask him “What do you mean by the government; do you mean congress, the president, a certain political party? Tell me what you see going on?” Far too often the kid in psychosis is met with something like “It’s unfortunate the NSA doesn’t give us our privacy anymore, but don’t let yourself get too caught up in worrying about it”, and the kid’s terms for ‘government’ and ‘spying’ are assumed to have the same definitions as what the general populace, who aren’t in psychosis believe.

Thus the person developing psychosis and the non-psychotic family member end up talking past each other without realizing it.

People not in psychosis don’t think to question the person’s definition. It makes sense they wouldn’t think to do this. The only time in normal settings that a person uses a different definition for a word is if that person holds a different religious of philosophical belief.

For instance, when a pantheist says they asked God for wisdom, they mean a universal divine energy that permeates all things. When a Christian uses the Word ‘God’ they mean the Biblical divine Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. These are completely different concepts, yet the same word ‘God’ is used.

We might think to ask someone of a different faith what they mean by ‘God’, but among people of similar cultures and backgrounds, and especially with words where there are universally-accepted definitions, we’re not going to think to ask what someone means by them. Unless of course we know psychosis and cognitive delusions (less severe ways the brain becomes illogical) exist, and are educated about them. Then we can ask people what they mean by these common words, and gauge whether the person’s logic is on-point, or they may be slipping and needing help.

You might be surprised that what your son means when he says ‘spying’, is that the government is reading people’s minds.

You might be surprised to find out that what he means by ‘government’ is a secret society of demons in the disguise of men who are controlling the world and infiltrating the FBI and NSA.

Your son may be giving divine properties to the government, such as omnipresence, the ability to basically know wherever he is and track him no matter what, in a way that isn’t limited by the current technology of the day.

While it may seem obvious to someone without a psychotic disorder what the government is, you might be surprised to be met with something like “The way the FBI is reading everyone’s thoughts and inserting messages into their minds is a breach of privacy, and it’s driving a lot of people to develop anxiety disorders.” This shows your son clearly doesn’t have the standard view of the government and its involvement in our lives that matches with reality.

Or in the prodromal phase you may be met with something a bit less disconnected from reality, but that might have hints of being illogical like “I sent my application into the college of my choice, but I think the FBI confiscated it and didn’t allow it to get to the college because it’s been several months and I haven’t heard back from them.” This is much less delusional than thinking the FBI is reading people’s thoughts, but there’s still a mild break-down in the kid’s understanding of how the world works that shows errors in logic that could indicate his mind is having trouble connecting the dots. There’s also a mild element of paranoia. And cognitive symptoms too. What likely happened is he thought he sent the application and either forget to send it due to memory issues, or he made an error in the address. Brain fog and cognitive symptoms are common in people in the prodromal phase.

The whats help you understand how he defines concepts, to see whether he’s referring to real things and concepts in the real world, or concepts that don’t exist in reality. The hows help you understand the connections he sees between ideas and things, to see if these are accurate connections. And the whys help you see whether he’s experiencing delusional psychology, and whether he’s having delusions about the psychology of others and failing to understand common rational motivators and reasons for why people pursue and do the things they do.

It’s a common situation where someone in psychosis will believe they are a prophet getting messages from God. Due to how the psychosis distorts logic, the person can’t accurately add up that voices and visual hallucinations are likely a mental illness. They can’t see the hallucinations and voices are nonsensical, which would cue them in to the need to see a psychiatrist. Instead they come to the conclusion that they are a prophet receiving messages from God.

Not only do they believe they are a prophet, but their psychology also matches up with the faulty logic. So they also feel that being a prophet is what gives their relationship with God its value. It’s deeply personal for them. The same way that being a child of God and living to glorify Him with one’s actions and conduct and love is deeply personal for a Christian who is not in psychosis.

When there’s disagreement and tension and fighting between someone in psychosis and someone not in psychosis, it’s usually due to how psychosis rewires a person’s psychology, so that they don’t feel loved or respected by you, because they feel you’re dismissive and uncaring of their deepest values and deepest parts of themselves, and you feel like they don’t care about anything in reality and are just concerned with their grandiose or self-centered delusions.

When my dad passed away for instance, some of my family felt like I was cold and apathetic because I didn’t cry or share memories with them. What they didn’t understand was I was in psychosis, and I was communicating that whole time with celebrities through the Holy Spirit, who represented each of my family members. Through my delusion I was processing what had happened, grieving on the inside, and even trying to hold conversations with my family, because I couldn’t connect with them in the real world due to the fact I was in psychosis. What they didn’t know was this grieving process went on for years, and had many different stages. I had many different psychotic conversations with celebrities who represented family members, and received many different communications from them. I cared, greatly. But I had little shared reality with them in real life.

What’s really going on isn’t that the psychotic person is becoming more self-centered, or that the non-psychotic people are becoming calloused to the deepest values and concerns of the psychotic person. But rather, you’re both experiencing the psychologically painful rift in the relationship that occurs when a core family member enters a psychotic perception and “reality”, that is closed off from the real world.

It is true that when in full psychosis a person feels disconnected from their family, every person alive, all of reality (except maybe a small portion they can still navigate), their own selves which is fragmented, and even God. It is a very isolating experience. It feels like being stranded in antarctica, and you’re just living a survival story, trying to survive every day and do your part to bring about these grand things that you believe will really come to pass, like getting the celebrities out of the secret society and their conversion stories drawing people to God and many people finding salvation. Or escaping the FBI or other organizations that you believe are trying to kill you or stop your work.

You’re fully immersed in the psychotic world when fully psychotic.

This is like a death, or something close to a death, of the person and the relationship. It can be a temporary death, because many people in psychosis come out of it with medication, but as long as that person is almost 100% in a delusional world, there is a profound loss there. There’s also lots of confusion, arguing, disagreement, and hurt feelings. Each party feels mistreated by the other party. This is because there’s little common ground between someone in a delusional world and someone in the real world.

But there is some common ground, and knowing some key communication skills can help you reach that common ground with each other, and have a bond of respect and goodwill, while you look for and devise ways to get the person medicated so they can come more into reality and share more common ground with you and rebirth your relationship with them.

The Prophet Delusion

It’s common for the person to declare to be a prophet, and for the family to disagree and reply that they believe it to be a psychotic illness and not the gift of prophecy. But what they don’t realize is the psychotic person doesn’t actually have the same definition of prophet as they do. To you prophet means someone who receives messages from God (usually in visions) to give to God’s people or to the world. To them prophet means having a close, intimate relationship with God, and possessing the ability to glorify Him in their life and help others in a big way. Basically to have a legacy, and purpose, and meaning. The closest a person can be to God, is a prophet; that’s their definition.

Instead of telling them you don’t believe they are a prophet, and leaving the conversation there, asking them why and what really helps with the prophet delusion. Ask them what a prophet is, and ask them why being a prophet is so important to them.

They will say a prophet is the person who does the most good in the world, who glorifies God the most with their life. Being a prophet means I will be as close to God as its possible for a person to be, in a very special relationship with Him.

When you say they aren’t a prophet all they hear is that you believe they can’t accomplish anything important with their life, that they are an utter failure in your eyes, and that you don’t think they are a quality person who loves God.

Because they think the only way to be all of these things is in the concept of ‘prophet’, if you reject prophet, you’re rejecting that they are all those other things too and telling them it’s impossible for them to have those things that they really need and that everyone needs.

Encapsulated in the term ‘prophet’ is this concept of being a free moral agent who can glorify God with one’s life to the utmost, and will be honored by God.

Within ‘prophet’ is really a core, basic human right. The person is wanting the ability to make moral choices and leave a legacy with their lives, to make their mark on the world for good, and glorify God in so doing.

This is something that is a basic human right, and the objective purpose people were created for. But the psychotic person can’t articulate this basic human right in clear terms, calling it what it is. Instead they call this very core human desire and need “being a prophet” or “being called to be a prophet.”

So to strike against ‘prophet’ is to strike against the very foundation of meaning, in the psychotic person’s mind. It’s to go against the very reason for their existence and be in opposition to it.

Peter Bullimore who works for the Hearing Voices Network, and believes delusions are illogical beliefs the brain generates during psychosis, when it’s trying to reference real-world situations and people and places and events, but refers to them in a type of symbol language that is logically nonsensical, told us in a seminar that he believes when someone is struggling with this dilemma of believing they are a prophet or wanting to be a prophet, that the person is really struggling with not wanting to be psychotic.

He put it something like this:

If it turns out the person is really a prophet, then all those messages and communications – the auditory hallucinations – are messages from God, meaning the person is sane and not psychotic.

But if those messages and communications aren’t from God and are instead coming from the person’s brain, then that would mean they are psychotic.

So this dilemma of wanting to be a prophet is the person’s inner psychological struggle of wanting to be normal, wanting to be sane.

And I would add, of wanting what everyone wants, to make their way in the world and leave their mark on the world and forge a great destiny and leave a great legacy to the glory of God.

It’s a person grappling with the desire to be a moral agent and do meaningful things with their life, rather than struggle to understand right and wrong and reality, and to be trapped in their psychosis.

They are grappling with this dilemma in a psychotic way and explaining it in psychotic terms because they can’t state it plainly and clearly or plainly and clearly understand what it is they are grappling with because they are trapped in the psychosis.

I don’t know if this is true or not, but judging by the way people answer the question “Why is being a prophet so important to you?” it really does seem to add up.

When Peter Bullimore said that believing you are a prophet or wanting to be a prophet was a common delusion, and put it in those terms, I was shocked to hear that the thing that was most important to me was a common symptom and struggle people in psychosis experience, and his explanation that the person was wanting to not be psychotic and grappling with the psychological struggle of being psychotic, made sense to me and added up in my mind.

So personally I think he’s on to something. And there are others in the psychiatric and medical communities who believe that when a person has a delusion these delusions correspond with real-world situations and struggles that are being referred to in a nonsensical way. This is a common theory that scientists and psychiatrists have, though not everyone shares this belief.

There is something called psychodynamic therapy for psychotic disorders, that shares this same basic premise, and the emotions behind the delusions are explored and the therapist encourages the client to find the real-world situations that match the emotions behind the delusions, and this can integrate their perception and help them be more connected with the real world.

I gained much from attending Peter Bullimore’s seminar, and it came at a crucial time in my life when I was out of psychosis, but still emotionally connected with my former delusions. I didn’t believe them logically, and knew them to not be true at that point, but I couldn’t connect my emotions, my goals and motivations, and sense of meaning completely with real-world things, and these perceptions were still connected with delusional concepts, in particular the prophet delusion, and I also had a pastor delusion at this time.

Peter Bullimore helped me to see that my selfhood had become fragmented, and I would later learn more of the science behind this and come to understand that the emotional parts of my brain had become disconnected from the logical parts, and I’d been “rewired” by my illness, a term neuroscientists call ‘altered connectivity’.

Knowing this was extremely helpful, both emotionally and as a self-assessment to be able to see how much more work I needed to do on my brain with my treatments, to bring my sense of self and my perception together in a congruent way.

His lectures helped me understand these emotions weren’t unimportant, and that they were supposed to be connected to logical concepts rather than ignored. I’d been trying to ignore them and just focus on logic, hoping that at some point my emotions would integrate and come back into the picture, but I found that this didn’t work as there should be a sense of meaning that goes with profound logical concepts in the Bible and in the world, and if it’s not there you experience a dis-jointing of the perception that I think ends up affecting both your logic and your emotions.

He helped me see better what was going on with me, and that my prophet delusion (at this point I knew I wasn’t a prophet and had no delusion about that, but I still wanted to be one, and felt hurt that no matter how much praying I did, God wouldn’t make me one and call me to the prophetic office), was me wanting something in the real world, which helped direct me to connect my emotions with real-world things, and I did some CBT work on this that really helped me.

I also worked with someone trained in what’s called the Maastricht Interview that Peter Bullimore teaches and does. Working with her helped me gain further clarity. The questions the interview asked helped my brain really grasp that my delusions and the associated feelings I had with them over the years, were really me and my brain, and that I’d just become disintegrated and disconnected. I knew this, but it really hit home in a deeper way from working with her, and I felt my brain become more congruent.

You can watch Peter Bullimore’s seminars on Youtube by typing his name in. He also has in-person seminars you can sign up for in the USA and in the UK.

Peter Bullimore came out of delusions without medication by processing the emotions he experienced from years of abuse, and others like him have seen a reduction in psychotic symptoms from processing emotions of trauma. He’s out of delusions, but still hears voices, however emotionally processing his trauma reduced the loudness of his voices. They are softer now and less intense and distressing.

Psychosis is due to stress. In my case the stress was toxic black mold and purely physical causes. But for many people the stressor that sets off their psychosis is physical or sexual abuse. In my case I needed to get the mold mycotoxins out of my body to get better, but if abuse is the cause, then processing the abuse and healing from it has gotten some people out of psychosis.

Another woman who reports that she healed this way is Tracey Higgins. She wrote a book called The Girl on The Bridge and has been interviewed in different podcasts that you can watch by searching her name on Youtube.

Point Them to the Real-Word Thing or Concept that Corresponds With the General Goal and Aim the Delusion is Centered On.

So instead of saying you disagree and leaving the conversation at that, instead state that you disagree and then explain why. Do some Cognitive Behavioral Therapy with them (CBT) using the truth found in the scriptures as your way to gauge reality, where you lay out what you believe to be truth, and then explain how the world really works. Don’t try to force them to see things your way, be respectful with them, and then ask them to hear you out on this and respect your opinion as you’ve done with them. You’ve now seen how they are off in their definition of prophet. Show them that all those things they are needing and looking for aren’t found in being a prophet, and redirect them to where they are found, and assure them you want them to have all those things, see the need for those things, and believe they should have them.

Explain that prophet is just a job or role, it’s not the same concept as character, and while yes God did choose some very godly people to be prophets, and there’s a correlation, there will also be people in heaven who did more with their lives and benefitted more people and glorified God in their lives more than some prophets did. Making a difference is something God will always give you the ability to do – to the extent you pursue it and surrender your heart and life to Him. You aren’t held back in making a difference because you aren’t a prophet. There is no glass ceiling that prevents someone who isn’t a prophet from making the greatest impact possible with your life. The Bible promises “You shall seek me and find me when you search for me with all Your heart.” God isn’t holding some people back from finding Him and making them second class citizens and then making some people prophets and allowing them to find Him and know Him to a greater extent simply because they are prophets. God promises “God is not mocked; what a man sows He shall also reap.” If you seek God with all your heart, seek to glorify Him with your life, you will reap the just reward of pouring yourself into that important goal. You will find Him to the extent that you seek Him, and glorify Him to the extent that you surrender your life and selfish heart to Him to allow Him to change you.

Point them to prophets in the Bible who weren’t good people, such as Balaam, who deceived and destroyed many of God’s own people due to a desire for monetary gain. Being called to the role of prophet wouldn’t necessarily make them close to God or a good representative for God. Explain how there will be people in heaven who weren’t prophets who did more good in their lives than some who were prophets. That character and effectiveness in helping others really isn’t tied directly in with being a prophet.

Point them back to how every person should be evaluated by their character and their choices and actions, and that this is just and right, and God will not deal with us unjustly by evaluating people by whether they were given the job of prophet, rather than on their character and willingness to surrender to Him and work for Him.

Point them back to the eternal just principles on which God deals with us and with which we are to deal with each other.

When they see that you don’t think less of them, aren’t against them having an important calling, and don’t see them as a loser, they will feel respected, even if you don’t believe they have the prophetic gift. And reasoning with them in this way can often help someone gain a better grasp on reality. Especially someone who has been medicated and is cooperating with a psychiatrist or Functional Medicine doctor and being treated.

A lot of times the person in a delusion doesn’t know what the real-world thing they are really looking for is. And they don’t think they can find what they are needing in something real. They think that only the delusional belief meets their needs and holds God’s blessings.

But God certainly wouldn’t create us with core human needs that can’t be met in real-world things, like Himself for instance.

And people grounded in reality don’t usually know that the person is searching for meaning and needs help understanding basic concepts about the world, to find their place in it and understand how it works, so they often don’t offer these basic explanations.

But once you know the person needs this help, then you can begin to have conversations that really break down what things are and how they work, and this is a kind of CBT that can help your loved one, especially as they are coming out of psychosis with psychiatric medication.

When you see a person talking about (or trying to meet and achieve) needs, goals, desires, and dreams that don’t match up with the actual human psychology that God has given to human beings, you can know that person is confused, and may have cognitive distortions or delusions. While God has created much variety between individuals, there are some core things that make up human psychology that we all have, and outlier goals and desires aren’t real human psychology. For instance, if a person sits in a box all day and says they feel happy because they are really a cat, and it feels natural to sit in a box, and they do not enjoy sitting in a chair and they say it makes them feel uncomfortable and out of place, you can be sure that’s not a real human desire, because God didn’t create human beings to get satisfaction out of sitting in a box like a cat. They are experiencing psychotic psychology, where the inflammation from a mental illness rewires the brain so that they can get comfort and feel the feelings we would associate with feeling at home in our own skin, with actions cats do rather than ones that people do.

Similarly, when a psychotic person says they want to be a prophet, or feel called to be a prophet, or desire to be a prophet, and when asked about it they equate being a prophet with having agency and leaving a legacy, you can be sure they aren’t actually wanting to be a prophet. They’re wanting what every person on earth wants – agency and legacy – and this is a normal human desire.

This isn’t to say that some people through history haven’t wanted to be prophets, but if you were to question those people about what being a prophet meant and did for them, they wouldn’t respond that it gave them agency and closeness with God. A sane person recognizes that everyone has agency, and that people who are close to God have been kings, shepherds, common folk, preachers, and people from all walks of life, not just prophets. He doesn’t withhold a close relationship with Himself to anyone and there’s no first-class citizens who are prophets and everyone else is a second-class citizen.

Becoming Sane is Really the Only Thing That Will Meet Their Need

If Peter Bullimore is right though, and thinking you’re a prophet means you’re grappling with this idea that maybe you’re psychotic and wanting to be a prophet so the voices are in fact from God rather than a mental illness, then what will make your loved one feel the most secure is if you help them get out of the psychosis. And this is really the only thing that’s going to shut off those urgent, yearning feelings to be a prophet.

Treatments that help stabilize their mind, reduce their mental symptoms, and give them back their agency and ability to forge a meaningful destiny, will bring them ultimate comfort and peace. But due to the fact they are in psychosis, they are likely to resist such treatments if you mention psychosis. However, many people in psychosis can tell they have anxiety, racing thoughts, depression, insomnia, and other mental and physical symptoms besides psychosis. You can often convince them to get on anti-psychotics to reduce racing thoughts and stabilize mood. And then they will also come out of the psychosis too in many cases.

Usually kids in their teens and twenties are forming their beliefs about the world, and will enjoy in engaging in discussions where you ask them what they believe about various things and why they believe that.

We don’t define terms enough in general. I’ve noticed a divide in conversations, with people talking past each other due to this, even among those without delusions or cognitive distortions. For instance, people of older generations will assume they know what younger people mean when they use terms like “equality” and “fairness”. And vice versa. But they often do not mean the same concepts when they use these same words. Defining our terms can really help to clear up misconceptions, and also help people practice logic, which is really necessary for good brain health and possessing good judgment.

Try to Find the Real World Things or Situations the Emotions Match

My aunt was in full psychosis at a time when I’d come out of psychosis with lithium, and I spent some time supporting her and trying to encourage her. We couldn’t convince her to see a psychiatrist, and she’d been involuntarily hospitalized in the past, but they only kept her a few days and then released her and she hadn’t come out of psychosis. (Unfortunately this is all too common that they don’t hold people long enough for the anti-psychotics to work to bring the person out of psychosis.) But we were able to convince her to take supplements – not due to psychosis which she didn’t believe she was suffering from, but for her health. She wanted to look and feel younger, and so we sent her anti-aging supplements which also really help with brain health. For a while she seemed a bit more connected with reality than she had in the past and more stable.

Knowing what I know about delusions from having my own experiences with them, it wasn’t hard for me to see that all the emotions she was experiencing tied to the delusions corresponded with her love for her family and her desire to see them all reconciled. Abuse and half the family siding with the abuser had caused a drastic rift in the whole family. Most of the family thought reconciliation was not possible, and split with the other side permanently and went their separate ways, but my aunt was the only one who tried, until she entered into full psychosis, to reconcile them together, and bring the gap, caring for her mother who had sided with the abuser, and living with her and forgiving her.

When my aunt slipped into psychosis, she heard and saw family members all around her. She also saw their clones and believed they had clones. She would see people who were locked up in storage bins and trapped and who needed help. Most of her delusions were about abused people who needed help and no one could hear their voice except her. All these emotions of her past abuse, and wanting to help her family, and for them reconcile came out in her delusions. She wanted to talk about these things, because these delusions were her brain’s way of referencing the real-world things she cared about most. But people wouldn’t talk with her about the delusions, so she went a long time without people ever speaking with her about the things that mattered most to her, and that must have felt very isolating and psychologically painful.

I don’t think people should talk with her about the clones as though they were real. This would be lying, and I don’t believe lying is ever a solution. But what I did when I spoke with her is I would refer to the real world things the emotions corresponded with. I’d tell her I loved my grandmother when she mentioned seeing her or one of her clones, and wanted to be a united family too. I didn’t tell her I believed my grandmother had clones, which is what she wanted me to talk about.

But as I conversed with her in emotional language about how I loved my grandmother and wanted us to be a united family too, my aunt stopped arguing with me about clones and started agreeing with me about things, and sent me hearts in our text conversations and smiles. We managed to connect emotionally and find agreement and common ground, even if we didn’t agree about the clones and the crying people.

Now obviously this wasn’t enough help for my aunt, and she deserved to be treated for the psychosis (We need to have the laws changed to hold psychotic people for 2 weeks against their will at the hospital – the amount of time needed to bring most people out of psychosis according to studies). But it was a way to communicate with her that I loved her and shared her desire for our family to be reunited, and felt her pain that they were estranged. It was a way for me to make her feel heard and cared about, and less alone.

Xavier Amador is a man who had a brother with schizophrenia and psychosis. His brother refused medication and their relationship was tense for many years, until Xavier discovered a way of speaking with his brother where they could find common ground. This way of communicating he called LEAP – Listen, Empathize, Agree, and Partner. Agreement here doesn’t mean you affirm the delusions. It means you agree to disagree. Partner means you find common goals, like when I sent my aunt supplements for brain health, because they are also anti-aging supplements and she wanted to look and feel younger. Xavier’s brother never came out of the symptom of anosognosia which is unawareness that he was psychotic. He believed he was not psychotic. But he agreed to take medication for other reasons, like to build rapport in his relationship with his brother. The medication helped stabilize him in other ways, but not in the area of gaining awareness.

Xavier wrote several books containing the LEAP technique: “I’m Not Sick, I Don’t Need Help!, and “I’m Right, You’re Wrong, Now What?”

I read his books and absolutely loved them. I love how his approach is so respectful of people in psychosis, and treats them like people. His love for his brother and his general respect for humanity comes out in the pages of the book. He seems like a very gentle, patient person who treats people with dignity and worth.

And the techniques are very helpful, not only in communicating with people in psychosis, but in communicating with anyone with different beliefs whom you care for and want to respect and build a relationship with.

How Doing CBT Exercises Using Bible Ontology Is Highly Effective at Reducing Delusions
After coming out of a psychotic break with treatment, the person regains a basic sense of reality. They can tell most of their delusions weren’t true. They know who they are again, and realize they were in the hospital because they needed to be, rather than that they had enemies who were conspiring against them to have their rights taken away. Their anger against family members subsides as they are able to see their family is on their side.

However, while they regain a basic grasp of reality, t’s very common for the person to still have some delusional thinking and for them to come to false conclusions about reality in various ways, drawing false conclusions. This happens because while the “wiring” of their brain and its connections is much closer to accurate and they get a lot of things right, they aren’t 100 percent improved.

It’s in this state that studies show Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is very effective for people with psychotic disorders. CBT is helpful for some of the residual delusions, and can help them question them and see around them to know they aren’t true. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is basically just reality-checking using logic. The person goes through what they believe to be true about reality and how they believe it works, and then they question these beliefs for their accuracy, to see if they align with the world and whether they check out and make sense.

You can either do CBT on your own, or with someone – a parent, caretaker, therapist, friends, etc.

I’m in schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder Facebook groups where there are thousands of members. Most of the members are people in this state where with medication they regained enough sanity to have a basic understanding of reality, but they still have some residual delusions and make some cognitive errors.

It’s very common in these groups for people to ask whether something they are believing is a delusion, and get help and input from others. They say things like “I’m about 80% sure my neighbors can’t read my thoughts or see into my head, but sometimes I have doubts and it’s like 20% of me thinks maybe it’s possible. Is there a chance it could be possible?” And then others respond and explain that no it’s definitely not possible, that they had that same delusion and it was just that, a delusion, and they’ve come to realize it couldn’t be true.

Groups like this are very helpful for this reason, among other important reasons.

While in the past it was believed by scientists and psychiatrists that delusions are always fixed beliefs that the person couldn’t question or see around, studies are now debunking this previously-held belief. Especially with people who are on medication and who have regained a basic knowledge of reality, logic exercises like CBT where they ask questions and reality-check their ideas, can bring them even more out of delusion. Not only this but CBT has even been shown to reduce voices. I’ve mostly studied into its effects on delusions as I believe this to be the most serious of the two symptoms, because delusions deal with judgment, and voices are just messages and internal sounds. if you can think logically enough to question voices then you aren’t in danger of obeying the voices and carrying out their ideas, which may be dangerous ones. So I’m not studied up on exactly how CBT reduces voices, but the way in which it reduces delusions I understand and it makes sense.

Unfortunately many psychiatrists aren’t aware of the recent scientific findings, and still think delusions are always fixed beliefs. We’ve seen this problem emerge among members in the groups, where even though they are hearing voices, and experiencing delusions they are 50/50 on, or perhaps 80/20 on, their doctors will take away their schizophrenia diagnosis, because they thought to question the delusions, and showed insight into wondering whether they were true. These are people who are on medication and the medication is working to reduce delusions, yet still sometimes their schizophrenia diagnosis gets taken away, and the doctors do not believe they are experiencing psychotic symptoms. This can cause very real problems for the person as a change in diagnosis can result in their antipsychotics no longer being prescribed, and a change in medication that doesn’t treat their psychotic symptoms. Then symptoms worsen and they can have a full psychotic break where they are a danger to themselves and others do to completely losing their judgment and their grasp on reality.

I’ve even seen cases where a person gained some awareness even while in unmedicated psychosis. While it’s common for the severer cases to never gain awareness they might be psychotic, mental conditions with psychosis as a symptom are epigenetic in nature, so just as you might see depression wax and wane over the years, or have a friend with anxiety, and notice that she’s better some years, and other years where she goes through more stress her anxiety is much worse, you can see these same kinds of fluctuations in people with psychosis. Just like other mental conditions, it’s epigenetic, not purely genetic (though genetics usually predispose someone to having a tendency to develop psychosis, this doesn’t mean everyone with a predisposition will develop it, just as everyone with a predisposition to have cancer doesn’t get cancer), meaning the stressors we encounter turn on the expression of the genes, and if we can reduce stressors the symptoms will improve.

If someone has psychosis from black mold exposure, for instance, and then they move from the moldy home and spend several years in a mold-free, healthy house, you will usually see their psychosis reduce. Maybe their delusions will not be so much about impossible things like thinking they are God or that they can fly, and will morph into possible but unlikely things such as that the FBI is spying on them or that their spouse is cheating on them when there’s no actual evidence this could be happening and no good reason to believe it. Or perhaps the delusions will abate altogether and they will be an eccentric creative person, who is on the psychosis spectrum, but without actual delusions, just some eccentric thinking.

If you add in nutrient therapy for mental illness, such as the Walsh protocol, or treatments to bind mold mycotoxins and get them out of the body, the chance the person can improve rise.

In underdeveloped countries 50% of people with schizophrenia spontaneously improve. But that number is much lower in developed countries such as the USA. Functional Medicine doctors believe it’s lower due to all the pesticides we spray everywhere, even in cities, and all the other toxin exposures which are much higher here than in underdeveloped countries.

My point in saying all this is to point out that psychotic illnesses are epigenetic. Symptoms fluctuate in intensity and severity, they can be reduced, and it’s possible for a person to become able to see around a delusion that they previously couldn’t question. delusions aren’t 100% fixed.

However, for the very extreme cases who are unmedicated and untreated, such as the ones that get hospitalized – it’s true that doctors and family members do not have much success when trying to help them question their delusions. These people have lost the use of logic, due to how inflammation has rewired their brain, and they need to be effectively treated before they can regain the use of logic and question delusions or see they aren’t true.

Use the Word to Reality Check

When engaging in CBT and reality-checking, it’s important to understand that God’s Word is truth. You won’t find truth from a secular therapist. You won’t find truth from humanistic ideas which run rampant in psychology and psychiatry.

Thus your reality-checking needs to be done using God’s Word, otherwise you cannot arrive at truth.

Study Bible Ontology

The Bible is the source of true psychology, psychiatry, and true philosophy. Rather than telling us these fields are completely man-made ideas, the Bible supports these fields as being real, over and over again with many different Bible verses to back this up.

In the chapter “Does Mental Illness Exist or Is it an Idea Invented by Secular Psychiatry?” I explain how the Bible supports the idea that mental illness is real, science exists, and that we can study our brain and body to learn the condition they are in.

Then in the chapter “Is Satan Directly Involved in All Cases of Brain and Body Illnesses? Do We Have Authority as Christians to Rebuke All of them Away From Us?” I show how the Bible tells us psychological pain can bring on physical disease. Guilt from sin unrepented of, brings physical illness, including brain illness. This shows true psychology, with the brain influencing the body, and the path back to healing to be to repent of sin, follow Christ, and keep His commands by faith, which are life-producing.

From the very beginning in Genesis, we also see true philosophy as described by the Bible.

The world’s versions of psychology and philosophy are counterfeit versions. It has helped me tremendously to study Bible ontology. Ontology is the study of what things are. Only the Bible has the truth on what things are. It’s unbelievable really that all humans do not even agree on what a human being is! A person’s religious and philosophical beliefs determine how they ontologically define a person.

The truth is that when a Christian and a secularist refer to a human being, we are not referring to the same concept or defining a person the same way.

For instance, in secular philosophy, a person is an animal that has evolved past the point of other animals to gain new abilities they don’t possess, such as the ability to reason and speak. Looking at human beings this way influences how scientists and psychiatrists see the brain, how they order and value each of the functions the brain can do, what they see as mental malfunction and what they see as the normal healthy functioning of the brain and where they draw the line between pathology and health, and what kinds of solutions they seek out. The whole purpose of the brain is completely different in secularism and in Christianity.

To the Christian people are not animals. We are distinctly different from them, with our brain possessing the ability of moral perception and judgment. People are beings under moral law, who can sin or do acts of faith and righteousness through Christ. This dimension is so much more important than what animals do that it’s not even on the same plane.

Human beings alone can be truly benevolent by choice, and possess moral agency. Human beings alone are held accountable for their wrongs and sent to court and jail.

Human beings alone are capable of evil, and the problem of evil makes no sense from an evolutionary view.

We see the concepts of ontology – what things are – when God says “Let us make man in our image”, and when He divides the day from the night, creating two separate distinct ideas. He then goes forward to divide the atmosphere from the sea, and to form dry land in the midst of the seas, making each of these things distinct and separate concepts and things from one another, defining them, as well as creating them.

We see also the true ontology of who God is. We see that He is three separate divine Persons with a shared perfect will and purpose, creating the world together, with Jesus’ divine Word working together with the Spirit who is seen hovering over the waters and bringing Christ’s Words to fruition. It is a joint effort of creation.

The Bible tells us “the Word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit; joints and marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart”
Hebrews 4:12

What this verse is telling us is that not only is the Word so sharp and particular that it can clearly point out the intentions of our heart when we study the Word and compare our attitudes with it, but that the Word created all things in our world, and it defined and laid the boundary lines between created things. Even the subtle difference between joints and marrow, and how to know when you’re looking at marrow and when you’re looking at the joint when you dissect an animal or look through pictures in a medical anatomy book, how each is defined, and how they are different from one another, is found in God’s Word.

When God said “Let there be light” His word defined what light was. In the Word “light” was the definition as well as the Almighty Power of the Spirit working with the Word to create light.

What this means is, the Bible is an absolute necessity for the person coming out of psychosis, who needs to know what reality is, and to distinguish reality from delusional thoughts and ideas that have no basis in reality.

What this means is God’s Word is a necessity for anyone who wants to know and arrive at truth and to avoid error.

To tell whether an idea is a delusion or whether it’s a true idea, compare that thing with scripture.

For instance, let’s say you’re having a hard time with the concept of telepathy. You’re not sure if your neighbors are reading your mind or not – you’re not sure if it’s possible. It feels like they are doing it. You have the sensation of someone looking in at your thoughts, and you have another sensation of them leaving after they’ve been there a while. You even think you can hear them whispering about the thoughts you were thinking and laughing about how ridiculous your thoughts are and asking why you didn’t go on to college so you’d have more intelligent thoughts.

Go to the Bible and study what it says about thoughts. Who can read your thoughts? The Bible actually says the ability to read a person’s thoughts is a divine ability that only God can do.

“But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. For the Lord does not see as man sees. For man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.”
1 Samuel 16:7

“you alone know the hearts of all men.”
1 Kings 8:39

The Bible tells us God alone knows the hearts of people. He alone sees into the heart and reads the thoughts. No person can do that. No angel can do that.

However, the bible is also clear that evil angels can introduce temptations into our minds.

So the Bible truth on telepathy is that two-way communication is impossible. The reading of another’s thoughts can’t be done by anyone but God. But one-way communication is possible and happens every day. Demons insert tempting ideas and thoughts into our minds every day.

One-way communication is actually not called telepathy, so telepathy itself is impossible.

Pain From Reading Studies
While I do need to read studies to gather information, I do so with great pain. I remember my experience going to a medical library, which I recommend everyone do, because there is information there in the journals and books that isn’t being utilized “on the ground” by working psychiatrists and doctors, and so if you have a health history and “profile” and symptoms that are rarer or particularly difficult to treat, you may very well find that that people just like you have already been successfully treated and it’s been documented in the medical literature. For instance, let’s say your diagnoses you with treatment-resistant depression after trying you on four different SSRIs and none of them help you at all. He dismisses you as a patient telling you there’s nothing else he can do to help you. Well the medical literature will tell you differently. You’ll see people recovered from “treatment-resistant depression” with antihistamine medication – something your psychiatrist didn’t even suggest. You’ll see people have been recovered from severe depression with neuro-peptides, and growth factors found in colostrum and IVIG (immunoglobulin) IVs.

You can then collect and take this information to a new psychiatrist, and explain that you want to try some of these more cutting-edge treatments since you’re suffering terribly, and it’s worth it to you to give it a shot. Taking the evidence with you, you may have success getting the psychiatrist to try you on some of these things and you may recover from your depression.

I have found the medical library and PubMed to be great resources.

I remember when I first went to the medical library in Gainesville Florida at the University of Florida, I was greatly encouraged and amazed by how much information we really know that I hadn’t known up to that point that we knew. And there really is a wide array of treatments to try and lots of hopeful possibilities, that unfortunately are being under-used due to the current structure of our medical system, and pressure put on doctors to stick with the status quo protocols.

The potential for what this information could do and how it could be used filled me with hope and joy.

But unfortunately, since people worship people and not God, and since we’re motivated by selfishness desires on this fallen planet, even something as wonderful and helpful as extensive health knowledge is used for the purpose of pride and control.

One of the ways this is done is that medical professionals are controlled by the profession and aren’t free to be their own person. Intelligent doctors capable of agency and making decisions, are pressured into practicing medicine in a very cookie-cutter way that best benefits the pharmaceutical companies.

Recently I asked my nurse practitioner if I could have a NeuroQuant test ordered to check the blood flow in my brain and other important markers. She told me that she was afraid to order the test because the psychiatrist who works over her told her she they both might get in trouble if they order the test, and she didn’t want to risk that happening.

Functional Medicine doctors are much better and I usually see them and work with them.

While reading the studies it was psychologically painful to read the human brain described as though we are animals, with moral perception and judgment not being seen as the highest action the brain performs, not being valued above all others or taken seriously in the way it needs to be. Because in their view there is no objective morality. Our moral perception is just the way it is, not due to a higher transcendent moral law, but it evolved as a way of self-preservation. Animals who had a certain moral compass were able to survive and exist agreeably in their communities, and animals who developed other moral codes and perceptions died out and that’s why we all have the consciences that we have.

But of course there’s variety in what one society thinks is right and what another thinks is right, and this is attributed to cultural traditions and social evolution. Rather than ignorance and lack of access to the Bible or choosing to harden the heart to known truth and engage in corruption and moral failure at a societal level, which are the real reasons we know as Christians.

So evil is explained away as not really being evil. And with moral perception and judgment not being prioritized, psychotic people are released from psychiatric hospitals after being asked some basic logic questions and with a basic assessment done, but moral perception is not evaluated and the kinds of logic questions are too simple to be of much use at gauging whether the person is capable of living in society safely. Thus dangerous situations and tragedies happen, where the person commits suicide after being released, or they assault their partner or a stranger, etc.

This is negligence. Judgment and moral perception are the things medical professionals and agencies and communities should care about most in the treatment of patients, otherwise we’re showing the complete opposite of love and quality care.

Once again, it’s only the Christian who is going to use medical information – or any information and knowledge – in the right way, serving the right purpose for the glory of God and the benefit of men. We see over and over again through our world, how secular ideologies prevent people from using good things for the true benefit of humanity.

As Christians it’s extremely important that we humble ourselves and surrender any pride or love for control to God, and carry out our health and Bible ministries according to the truth in the Bible about ministry and the right way to conduct it, so reveal the truth about God and His principles of love, so people can see the outworking of these principles and how they are real truth in a world of secularism and false beliefs.

I’m posting a link here to a quantitative study that shows the high effectiveness rate of CBT used together with anti-psychotic medication to bring people with psychotic conditions out of delusions and reduce voices:

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for Psychosis: A Health Technology Assessment – PMC

I’m also posting a link to a CBT course on udemy, that teaches family members of people with psychotic conditions, and therapists how to help delusional person to reality-check and gain a better grasp on the world and what things are and how they operate. I took this course and I absolutely loved it and found it to be very helpful at helping me practice how to evaluate whether I may be having delusional thinking and also for equipping me for my health ministry to help others with psychotic symptoms.

If you’re clicking on this link at a time when the class is $85, you need to know that udemy has sales all the time, so keep checking back and you’ll find it for like $13 which is what I paid for it.

Does it Show a Lack of Faith in God if I See a Doctor and Take Medication for My Mental Condition? How About the Reverse, Is it a Sin if I Don’t See a Doctor When I am Unwell or I Don’t Do Medical Treatments? Which is True?

Human beings were created to exist in relationship with God. Before sin our minds worked perfectly and we could understand exactly enough about God for our relationship to have a perfect dynamic based on truth – the truth of human nature and what a human being was created to be and what makes a human being perfect, and the truth about God’s nature and who God is and what makes Him perfect and what makes our relationship perfect. When God pronounced the created world, along with man in it “very good” he was speaking of it being perfect. Mrs. White explains that Lucifer was created to be as near as possible like God Himself (add reference). This was the perfect design for angels and human beings, as near as possible like God (but without divinity for only God is divine and divinity is not something that can be created) for a created, finite being to be, which is of course actually exponentially lower than God Himself. So much so that we have a finite nature and God has an infinite one. In creating us as close as possible to Himself it shows God’s love and that He wasn’t hoarding everything for Himself and making us defective and ugly.

Due to sin affecting our physical brain and processing (we aren’t as smart as Adam was and don’t have perfect health, or a perfectly functioning brain), we likely can’t understand God the way we were created to in a perfect way, but people can still understand enough about Him in order to actually have a relationship built on faith with our Creator. We can understand the spiritual nature of faith and miracles. We can believe God can part the Red Sea, that He can raise the dead, that He can stop the mouths of lions, and we can also believe He can do things in a more natural way if He chooses to, healing through doctors or herbal medicine. People are able to have faith in both situations because we can understand enough about the concept of God’s omnipotence, and His character and what faith is, to choose to believe in Him. We really were created to be in relationship with God Himself, and our brain was designed to be able to commune with Him and exercise faith in Him. The sons of God (I believe this is a reference to the angels) praised God and sang for joy at the creation of the world. Yes, God’s created beings witnessed the creation of the world and could understand enough about the things God had created to see their goodness and respond with shouts of praise and adoration. And the human mind too can understand the created works of God. We can know something about each field of science, physics, chemistry, etc. and even things like logic and the laws of thought.

We’re also able to understand angels and other worlds that God has created, even if these worlds are very different from our own. We have to see and study these worlds in order to understand them as God’s creativity is not something we can invent or think up and is far beyond our own, but if we could be taken to those other worlds we would find our mind can study the science of those other worlds like we do our own.

Throughout the Bible, God did miraculous healings and works, and He also did more natural ones. One of the biggest and most essential lessons through the scriptures is that man shall not live by bread alone, but by every Word that proceeds from the mouth of God. It is God that infuses us with life moment-by-moment. He uses bread to nourishes us because it is a metaphor of the bread of life, Christ Himself, and I believe because as finite beings it makes sense we would require finite food. We are made of the dust – the minerals and nutrients in the soil – and so we replace these nutrients and minerals when they run low with the food we eat, and this causes our physical bodies to function. He does this by choice; He doesn’t really technically need to use bread, but it does bring us in touch with our finite nature and with the earth we were created from to use bread to sustain us. He sustained Moses on the mountain for 40 days without bread and water and kept him alive miraculously, for instance.

God put His children through different tests and trials to teach them reliance on Himself for life, for salvation, and for their every need. If there was no bread or no water, but He had promised their bread and water would be sure, they could trust He would provide for them, whether it meant leading them to the promised land to naturally grow their own wheat, or miraculously sending manna down from heaven to feed them as they journeyed through the wilderness.

Because God’s goal was to teach them reliance upon Himself and on no other person or food source or temporal advantage, He often changed up his manner of working, and did not always provide in the same ways each time.

The only real question to be asked was “Lord, I seek you to provide for my needs. Please tell me how you’d like to do that. Lead me and guide me. Show me what your Word says.”

Abraham had a huge denial of faith when he tried to have a child the natural way, by resorting to taking another wife who was younger than old Sarah and was fertile. God wanted to work in miraculous fashion this time and give an elderly Sarah fertility, at a time He decided on, which was later than Abraham and Sarah wanted it to be. But at other times he caused the lineage that brought the Messiah to occur in the natural way without complications. God’s work has moved forward in both natural and supernatural ways through history, but God’s power always attends it whether it appears natural on the surface or not.

The underlying denominator is God’s people always sought His will, and surrendered their own. They searched the scriptures to find the promises of God. Abraham had been specifically promised his heir would come from Sarah. He should have believed God and not resorted to human methods. Resorting to human methods when God has spelled out in his Word how He wants to do things is a denial of faith.

So the question “is it a denial of faith to seek doctors for my mental illness”, while usually not a denial of faith and this is the typical way that God works in these end times (see EGW quotes about how God will not do many miracles in these last days), could at times be a denial of faith. It depends. If you are putting your faith solely in these physicians to heal you and you are not putting your faith in God, then you’ve made idols of your doctors and this is a denial of faith. God told James White through a prophecy he gave to Ellen White that God did not want James to depend on the doctors at the sanitarium to get him well, but to get well at home. James was being tempted to trust in men and not in God, and so God healed him another way that required dependence on God for healing. For those who depend too much on doctors God often does not allow the doctors to get you completely well. We each have individual stewardship under God to take care of our bodies and minds, and God will often leave you somewhat sick so that you have to come to Him in prayer for your answers, and take charge of your health to get well, changing your diet to be healthy, taking time for adequate rest, taking supplements if needed and really investing of yourself in your healing.

It could also be a denial of faith not to see a doctor if you really need to see one. Definitely neglecting one’s health is a denial of faith. So they need to attend to their health in some way, whether at home studying on their own and doing treatments for their condition, or by seeing a doctor and getting put on a healing protocol. Some people want to go it alone and don’t want to cooperate with the church or a physician or anyone at all. I could see how someone with an individualistic mindset that has become an idol God could direct to see a physician, and seek help from members of the church. While we should never primarily rely on another person to heal us, and God ultimately is our Healer, the Bible is clear that people have a role in God’s work and that we are to cooperate with the church. The church was established by Christ and it is a core Bible doctrine. So someone who thinks they are sufficient in and of themselves and doesn’t need anyone, God might convict them of these doctrines and humble them and teach them by convicting them that they need to see a Christian doctor.

He does different things for different people, depending on what they need. And God’s big goal in all of this is our sanctification, which is much more important than even our physical health.

In order to get well it’s often the case that you will have to develop virtues you didn’t have before. Things like perseverance. If there is a need for perseverance, God often won’t allow the first physician or health worker you see to diagnose you accurately and give you all the right supplements to recover health. Because then you’d become physically healthy, but you wouldn’t have changed in character. No, for the person who needs to develop perseverance and commitment to health treatments and caring for their health, God will often gives bits and pieces of helpful information from one source here and another source there. The person may have to see doctors, and read articles, and study books by people in the health field, and pray for wisdom while doing all this. Then over time God helps them put all the pieces together and they regain their health.

For the person prone to pride, God may not enable them to get fully well. He may give them back some of their health, but leave them a bit fragile and dependent on Him so they will remember that they are a person and they aren’t God. Like Paul they may have a thorn that God uses to keep their characters grounded in love and truth and not pride and delusion.

As we read God’s Word we become convicted of these core truths – things like we should not look to a doctor to be our Savior. Cursed is the man who trusts in flesh. We become convicted that people play a role in God’s plan as counselors and helpers, and that it’s wrong to go it alone. Then once we understand these core Bible truths, we can make wise choices in our lives about how to pursue healing. If for instance you are idolizing a certain doctor, seeing him as the one who is going to get you well, making you into a savior. It may be a really good idea to not see that particular doctor. Remind yourself that health truth comes from God, not man. God is your source of help. And God has blessed many different doctors and health workers with truth. Then maybe see someone else, trusting that God is able to work through others too and that there is no one person whose job it is to get you well. People are helpers but ultimately you’re the steward over your body and God will help you get yourself well with their help, but not relying on them, relying on God alone.

Unlike in Bible days (and it was rare then too), God often does not speak to us in vision and tell us the exact course of action to pursue. If He told us our every move, this would be micromanagement. This wouldn’t establish us as stewards and sons and daughters of God. Remember that God is preparing us to tend and to keep the new earth where we will live after going to heaven for 1000 years when we come back to earth for the judgment of the wicked and the recreation of the world. It wouldn’t be good preparation for training us to reign over the new earth and to tend and keep it if God didn’t teach us good judgement and how to move from principle, managing our lives according to Bible principles.

We have to practice these things in order to get skilled at them. God doesn’t treat us in a way that is less than human. Satan certainly does, and fallen people under His control often treat each other this way. The domineering boss who never lets his employee think for himself and barks complicated orders to him all day long – God is not this kind of God.

There were cases in the scriptures though where God did sometimes give people exact instruction, however, we’re not in that boat. Unless we have a vision and it meets all the Bible requirements for being valid and for knowing it is the exact voice of God (this is very rare), we are not under obligation to follow any specific commands.

However, we can be under obligation to do specific actions, but we don’t determine this by visions or auditory commands (and if you’re prone to auditory hallucinations following voice commands and visions can be especially dangerous as it’s your own mind giving them to you in these cases and when one is hallucinating often their judgment is very impaired also as this is a symptom that often accompanies hallucinations). How do we know when a certain specific course of action is required by God? When it’s definitely the right thing to do, and there’s no other right options. If you find yourself in a situation where say you’re praying about meeting someone you can marry, and you meet a kind atheist but he’s not interested in God at all, you can know it’s absolutely God’s will for you not to date or marry Him, because God’s Word is very firm about not being yoked with unbelievers. You can know you would actually be going against God to marry this person. You are under obligation to turn this man down and not marry him.

There are situations in life where there’s only one right move, and this is when you know you’re under obligation to do a certain, specific action.

There’s also a lot of situations where there are multiple right moves. Let’s say you attend a Christian college and you’re not sure which degree to pursue. You could become a nutritionist or you could go into culinary arts and open a healthy restaurant. You know from the Bible that both of these occupations benefit humanity and build up their health. God wants us to care for our bodies and encourage and teach others to do so too. You can do this work with either degree. You would want to go with the degree where you can do the most good, based on the Bible, but having finite knowledge and not being omniscient you may not be able to know which degree would be most beneficial to people. Sometimes it’s obvious, sometimes it’s not. In cases where it’s not it’s not wrong or a sin to simply choose one of the degrees. You don’t want to be trapped in indecisiveness over a decision when both answers are right according to the Bible. Pick one, go forward, and know God will bless your choice because you made a choice that aligns with the principles in the scriptures.

How do we know when a certain choice or course is God’s will and in alignment with faith? By conviction. And how does conviction happen? By the Word of God, and the Holy Spirit making the Word clear to us. Not by a feeling, a desire, or human opinion. We must check all our desires and thoughts and our planning with the scriptures to see if there is a thus saith the Lord about the subject and choice we’re facing. And then do what the Word says is right.

We have a responsibility to care for our bodies and one way to do that is to see doctors and be put on treatment. It could be unfaithful stewardship not to see a doctor. It depends. It’s definitely unfaithful stewardship to not eat and live healthfully.

When it comes to treatment it is a denial of faith to blindly take whatever medication your doctor prescribes, without thought and prayer. Not every treatment is right for everyone and wisdom is needed – not just the doctor’s wisdom but also the wisdom God gives to you personally to make the choice. Since you are the steward of your body, you are ultimately the one God will give this wisdom too. He may send you doctors and wise counselors to give input, but when it comes to making the final choice you are the one who will be blessed with wisdom to make it, not your doctors or therapists or friends or family. It is very important that you seek out and take to heart godly counsel of people you trust. That you don’t develop a proud attitude that your judgment by itself is sufficient to make important decisions. At the end of the day you get the final say, but these people are on your team.

It could definitely be a denial of faith not to see doctors and take medication. Let’s say that you know you have a severe mental illness (SMI). Schizophrenia. And that when you’re not medicated you believe homicidal aliens are impersonating your family members. You get dangerous delusions like this that could cause you to make an error in judgment and physically attack a family member in what you believe to be self defense since your mind really believes your family is aliens. Or let’s say you have an impulse control problem that causes you to lose control of yourself and you could assault someone. If you know you need medication in order to be sane, or in order to maintain control over your compulsions, and you willfully refuse to take medication or to see doctors, then by refusing medication you are putting other people in harm’s way knowingly. This is no different morally from an alcoholic knowingly getting black-out drunk. When one gets black out drunk they become responsible for everything they do while drunk because they were the ones that chose to put themselves into an inebriated state. In the case of someone with a psychotic disorder it’s a sin of omission not commission. They aren’t the one making themselves psychotic, their illness is. But they know medication can help bring them out of that psychotic state and they knowingly refuse medication. It’s the same sin as the alcoholic, one is just committed via commission and one via omission.

It’s worth noting that one of the essential verses in the Bible that defines sin defines it using omission. While this verse also applies to sins of commission it’s interesting that God chose to use omission as the example. Perhaps it is because people have a tendency to think sins of omission are not sins or at least they aren’t as morally wrong as sins of commission. God’s Word clears up this common human misconception, showing sins of omission to be as morally wrong as sins of commission.

“If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them.”

James 4:17

However for someone who is in full psychosis, I believe since they have lost their moral agency, they also lose their moral autonomy. It is not the responsibility or job of those in complete psychosis to check themselves into a psychiatric hospital, or to talk themselves out of doing something immoral or dangerous. You can’t usually talk yourself into taking medication when you’re in that state. Taking medication just doesn’t make sense once you lose the ability to be logical and common delusions include things like thinking your medication is poisoned or that your doctors are lying to you and part of an elaborate scheme to get you institutionalized or killed. They have no ability to be logical and thus cannot talk themselves out of dangerous things or talk themselves into doing safe and right things. It is the job of society to protect its citizens from people in full psychosis, and to protect and provide mental health services to those in psychosis. The person in full psychosis is like someone in late state dementia. No contract signed by such a person is valid because the person cannot consent to an agreement (if they could people would take advantage of them). Similarly the person in full psychosis is not going to agree to spend time in the hospital because their complete psychosis does not allow them to see that they are experiencing psychosis (the nature of psychosis is it changes your perception and logic so you can’t see what things are accurately or deduce what is happening to you), and they need to be involuntarily hospitalized. It is the job of the family and of society to do this service on their behalf when they have lost the ability to give their consent due to being out of their minds. And a good and just society will take care of the weak and handicapped and needy in society.

“We then that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak, and not to please ourselves.” Romans 15:1Is the principle that must govern us.

Do I Lose My Value or My Personhood If I Develop Dementia or Severe Psychosis, or Another Serious Mental Condition?
It’s usually as you’re going into a severe mental illness that involves loss of logic, and after you’ve started coming out of one with treatment (such as psychosis), that a person will have the understanding and the cognition to ask this question. This is the question you can’t really ask when you’re in the midst of it, because to be severe enough to feel the need to ask the question – to really think your personhood might be gone – you will be so severely compromised you won’t be able to think logically enough to ask the question. It’s a question that comes up when someone is in the mid-stages of dementia and they know what kinds of symptoms they will encounter in the future. Psychotic symptoms are not as well known, and it’s more common for someone to slip into psychosis and not know what’s happening, and then lose awareness and insight, so this is why fewer people with psychosis ask this question in the beginning stages of the illness than those with dementia.

It’s also a question those in the mental health field or family members of the mentally ill may ask. The person they once knew can really seem to be fragmented, or nearly gone completely, and they may ask how God views that person in an ontological sense in such a condition.

Human beings have a lot of opinions and philosophies about personhood. But what does the Bible teach about what personhood is, and whether it can be lost, and if so at what point this occurs?

I remember feeling a sense of worthlessness while psychotic (this can be psychological and this feeling can also be due to biochemistry and not be psychological in origin. I think I had mine from both sources), but I didn’t know I had a psychotic disorder. I think my mind was really trying to ask whether I’d lost value due to psychosis, but I wasn’t aware I had psychosis so I couldn’t fully frame the question. I knew something really wrong had happened to me though, that felt like a death of the self. I was very sad and weighed down with a sense of loss.

It wasn’t until I’d come out of psychosis with lithium, but still had a few delusions and symptoms I struggled with left over like dissociative symptoms, that I started to fully ask this question and study into the Bible to see what it said on the subject. I didn’t really believe I’d lost value, but I wanted to have a “thus saith the Lord” to confirm the position that seemed right and that really seemed like it must fit with God’s character of love. I needed to know for sure.

Many severe mental illnesses (SMI) cause a fragmentation of the self. You feel like your psyche is in pieces. You may also feel like part of what makes up the self is missing, or disjointed, arranged in the wrong alignment. This happens because our brain is what makes up our self. It composes all of the attributes and functions and perceptions that give us self-hood. When these parts of the brain aren’t operating according to how they were designed and they malfunction, experiencing reduced blood flow, connectivity problems between the regions, problems with neuro-signaling, excess inflammation, and problems with electrical impulses being too high or too low, it isn’t just a superficial malfunction like when a computer malfunctions. Since a human being is a deep and spiritual being, when that person’s brain malfunctions, all the deep desires and wants and psychology of the person also suffer malfunction. Thus someone with a SMI suffers terribly, and not superficial pain, but deep psychological pain.

The brain is a magnificent creation of God, and when malfunctioning, it can create a reality that is nothing short of terrifying, at times being incredibly creative and dark at the same time. It’s common for people with psychosis to see and hear the types of things fitting for a horror film, the high adrenaline and inflammation giving them a bad trip. They are also highly creative individuals, and it’s not just the conscious parts of their brain that are creative. They have heightened creativity in the unconscious, involuntary brain responses too. This means the hallucinations and delusions can be highly creative and dark at the same time.Tactile hallucinations can cause a person to feel things like being physically attacked and having all the sensations of actual combat, even though it’s all in the mind and isn’t actually happening.

Not only can one be trapped in a terrifying world of thinking people are trying to kill you when you’re paranoid and seeing and feeling actual people present in your own home assaulting you, but you can also have deeply psychologically painful “round square” delusional ideas, such as nihilistic delusions. These delusions warp and twist reality so that the things most important to you – your salvation and the salvation of the world and of your family – can become written as a tragedy that there is no escape from. For instance, one can believe they have died and are already in hell, and there is no way back to make a choice for Christ and go to heaven. Unable to use logic, the person cannot deduce that this isn’t true. This can go on for months or years.

You can also lose access to the parts of your brain that make you you. Moral perception being the most important and biggest one. You may have been someone who cared much about living a life pleasing to God, doing the right thing, and leading others along the path to life. Then over time you develop a SMI and suddenly you’re manic and very ambitious, but you have no moral compass. You’re sleeping around and drinking and smoking and never want to talk about God, or when you talk about Him you speak about Him with delusional ideas that do not make sense. You undergo a complete personality change, and not only this, but you lose the ability to remember and discern that you ever believed there was a moral law. Right and wrong seem like arbitrary concepts to you. You think when you formerly believed in them that you just weren’t seeing things right.

It’s also common in psychosis to give up all the things one used to love and to begin to refer to these same things in a kind of symbol language. You may forget who you are and may think you’re someone famous who symbolically represents you.

With dissociative symptoms you may lose memories from the past and may experience black outs in the present where you do things and don’t remember what experiences you just engaged in. You may come to and be in a different city, doing something strange. You may be violent while dissociated. If you have a lesser form of dissociation you may just never feel connected to other people or to yourself. You may seem like a stranger in your own body, or it may feel like you are possessed and other people are controlling you. The world or people in it may look robotic, or you may feel like a robot or some other sense that isn’t what life in this world really feels like.

You may enter this robot world (or another distortion in perception) and not come out of it for years. You can feel isolated from the world, other people, and even parts of yourself.

It is a very lonely and troubling and isolating existence, and can be very terrifying.

With cognitive symptoms you can struggle to do basic tasks like figure out how to play a CD on your computer. This can make the world seem really intimidating and life can feel frustrating beyond measure, along with very defeating. If this goes on a long time the natural reward center in your dopamine pathways won’t operate right because these pathways rely on small, daily victories and successes in order to function properly and motivate us. So you may lose motivation and feel like you can’t be successful at much of anything. This is kind of a chicken and egg situation because SMI can also cause a reduction in dopamine, which can make it hard to have problem solving skills, and then you stop having any daily accomplishments, and then the lack of feedback through those dopamine pathways causes you to be even worse at problem-solving and to have even less motivation.

The way back for these symptoms is often to raise dopamine and improve cognition with supplements (gingko biloba and cat’s claw are two herbs that are excellent at improving cognition and motivation), and then as it goes up and you find yourself more able to accomplish things, begin having little daily successes every day and use success to re-wire your brain to have more success.

No matter how severe you or your loved one’s condition, people are made in the image of God. This fact does not go away. Even when someone loses the capacity to understand right and wrong completely, while their time in this world to choose Christ has ended (it can resume if they are effectively treated and the symptoms reduce enough for them to have moral perception again), their worth isn’t something that ends. Being in God’s image isn’t something that is an isolated part of us; it’s our whole person that is in God’s image.

It is not just one’s moral perception that makes them in the image of God, but their body also, their whole organism.

I’ve heard people give the argument that our body isn’t in God’s image just our brain and our capacity to understand right from wrong. This is really what it means to be in God’s image, to have a mind that functions like God’s mind and can understand the deep truths in His Word. What this argument does is it divides a person into parts. Part of you is one thing, and part of you is something else – not sure what. But personhood in the Bible is our whole being. In the garden God formed clay and breathed into it the breath of life and the man became a living soul, or being. This shows us that what makes someone a soul, or a being, or a person, is their physical body infused with God’s life-giving power. If one has a physical body, and that body is alive by God’s power (and isn’t dead) then that person is a living soul, they possess personhood.

If our physicality isn’t like God and in His image (and only our brain functioning is, which really doesn’t make sense because the brain is a physical thing so if our physical body isn’t in God’s image then our brain wouldn’t be either and wouldn’t function like a brain made in God’s image), then it actually follows that God was lying when He said He made man in His image. Because God didn’t specify and say “man’s brain has been made in my image but not the other parts of him”. (This would have actually made His creation not good had he done this; to be partly in God’s image and partly not would be an immoral design on God’s part. God can have animals that are fully not in His image, and He can have man who is fully in His image; but He cannot have beings that are partly in His image and partly not; this would be degrading to such a being if it say had the brain of a man and the body of an animal or other lesser creature). No, the statement “in the image of God made he them” is the statement “the whole being (all parts) of the man and of the women has been made in my image”.

What this means is it isn’t just our moral capacity that gives us value, but our whole body, our whole self, our whole person. When someone in late stage dementia has nearly lost all cognitive functioning and their brain has severely atrophied, we don’t treat them like they are not a person anymore. And rightly so. As long as there is life in that beating heart the person holds the full amount of worth of a person in God’s eyes. God doesn’t give worth out in degrees. You aren’t worth 50% of a human being’s worth if you have 50% brain functioning, and you’re worth 100% of a person if you have full mental capacity. If you’re human and you’re alive, you hold full worth in God’s eyes, the same as the most intelligent people in the world with the best brain health, even if you have severe mental handicaps. All human beings are equal to God.

We run into serious problems if we separate a person’s personhood from their whole selves. One of the big reasons abortion has so much support is because people don’t see a developing body that is very much alive as holding the same value as a fully developed body with reasoning ability and cognitive capacity.

Just as the dying elderly person retains their value and personhood as long as there is a spark of life left in their body, so the developing baby in the womb holds personhood and value as soon as the spark of life begins for that baby, which is at conception. It’s at conception that God infuses the embryo with life and it’s God’s power that forms that child in the womb. The child has personhood from day one, because personhood according to the Bible is being in God’s image and possessing a living body; it’s not something we have when we have full cognition and it’s not measured by mental capacity.

It’s also for this reason that I believe that someone on life support is still a person. What a lot of people don’t know but which is very true scientifically is that if the brain were to fully die, the body would begin to decay and smell within hours. Thus if someone can be hooked up to life support and live for weeks or months, they do still have a tiny bit of brain activity that may not be picked up by the EEG. The person may have no higher cognitive powers, but if they can be kept alive by machines, their brain is actually alive because true brain death would result in the person decaying before our eyes, smelling, and becoming a corpse.

Many of these people on life support do eventually fully die, and start to decay and smell and have to be taken off machines and buried, and sometimes the family chooses to take them off support before full death happens, when the person shows no brain activity on the EEG, because such a person isn’t going to recover and regain brain function, and doctors know this. They are not quite dead, but they also aren’t going to recover function either at that point.

Until they decay and smell and the machines can no longer keep them breathing and their heart beating, I believe they are alive, and I believe they are a person and have personhood, as I believe the Bible supports this position, but whether to keep them alive using extraordinary means is another question entirely. If it’s going to cost the family tens of thousands of dollars to keep the person hooked up to machines for several weeks while they slowly die, it may not be doable to keep them alive. It could bankrupt the family and put them into a dire state; or if insurance is covering it it could bankrupt our nation. And withholding extraordinary means to keep someone alive is not the same thing morally and conceptually as directly going in and taking a person’s life. The latter is murder; the former does not fit the Biblical criteria and definition for murder. In many countries with less advanced medical technology, such a person would die naturally quickly, and this wouldn’t even be a question.

Whenever I drive by rest homes I always want to salute. Because there are so many of our older men and women experiencing dementia which is the battle of a lifetime, and they encounter it late in life when they are at their most frail and weak condition. It takes great courage to do that. This is something we should respect them for. The person in psychosis suffering terribly should likewise be respected and encouraged and valued, not treated as less-than.

We hold great value. It’s not value that can ever be diminished or taken away. Even if our actual brain function diminishes, our worth remains in tact and never diminishes and can never be erased.

But this is not the philosophy of the world, which idolizes intelligence and ability and beauty. In the world’s view if you lose any of these things or they diminish, your value does go down. This philosophy can be a temptation to the Christian entering or recovering from a SMI. If we adopt the world’s views on this, it can lead to us mistreating ourselves, or worse perhaps believing life is not valuable or worth living if our brain function is compromised, and resorting to suicide.

The population that has the highest suicide rate is elderly men. They are losing functioning physically and often mentally as well and older men with a worldly mindset often do come to this false conclusion that they’re value has diminished or that life has no purpose or meaning because of their loss of function. They can’t see purpose in sticking around to develop full dementia and suffer and die from it. They feel they are a burden to their families.

Since 80% of people over the age of 75 develop dementia and since it is serious illness involving atrophy of the brain and eventual death (although in the earlier stages supplements and treatments can actually lessen the disease or in some cases even reverse it Link to the dementia summit), it’s crucial that Christians know what the Bible has to say about personhood, as Satan will tempt many of them – especially men – to end their suffering in the early stages of the illness to prevent future suffering.

The truth is it is murder to commit suicide to escape dementia worsening. The right thing to do is to take supplements and do your part early on – especially before you get older, but also in older age – to reduce your suffering, but it’s never ok to end your life to escape suffering. As Christians we can only use moral methods to solve problems, never immoral ones, especially one as immoral and final as suicide.

There’s been a strong societal push to legalize euthanasia for physical illnesses involving great suffering that will end in death, and even more recently in Canada, for physical illnesses that involve great suffering that do not end in death, and most recently in Canada, to legalize euthanasia for mental illness and mental suffering. It’s shocking and alarming how fast these new movements are gaining traction. Canada will allow euthanasia for mental illness starting in 2024.

God has the authority to end a person’s life if He so chooses and thinks best (all His choices are made from righteous principles with our best good in mind), but no human being has that authority. The cross reveals that God’s motives for giving His own life and for taking life is always 100% loving and good. For us to take human life is for us to commit murder. The level of suffering the person is experiencing doesn’t have any bearing on whether murder is murder. It’s not as if killing someone whose suffering is a level 5 is murder, but killing someone whose suffering is at level 10 is not murder. This is illogical and makes no sense.

Suicide is a tragedy. Euthanasia is a double tragedy, because both the doctor and the person enlisting his assistance in death are committing murder and putting themselves out of alignment with God and His Spirit. The family is also often involved so they become guilty too if they support in any way the murder. Then there is a powerful impact on society at large because suicide has contagion. Anytime there is a suicide in the media, or in one’s hometown, rates of suicide go up. The truth is someone’s suicide tempts other vulnerable people to do the same. It is not a harmless act; its effects ripple through society. If the family and society at large, doctors, etc. paint assisted suicide in a positive light, this further tempts vulnerable people.

These are not solutions for the Christian. Jesus told us in this world we would suffer. The fact the woman was cursed with pain in childbirth is a constant reminder that it’s through suffering that great joy is made possible – through the suffering of Christ who came from the woman, and our own patient endurance under suffering – that the war against evil is won and sin and sorrow and suffering are ended for all time. There is no other way. All will suffer in this life, some much more than others, but if we remain true to God through suffering and allow Him to overcome evil through us, we will share in His eternal joy when He comes again. This is the great purpose of life, honoring Him in this world. If someone is slipping into dementia, they must honor God as long as they have moral agency, and trust Him to keep them as they slip into symptoms so severe that they no longer have moral autonomy, and then pass away. It then becomes the role of the family and care-takers to care for the person with dementia, and to ensure they do not harm themselves or others or become erratic and walk the streets and do other things that are then outside of that person’s control when they slip into the severe symptoms of the later stages of the illness.

When it comes to psychosis, the person usually slips into it much earlier in life. Most people come out of psychosis with antipsychotic medication – 2/3rds do – so there is great hope for this condition. If one also adds supplements and natural protocols to their treatment they can increase their chances of coming out of psychosis and they can come more fully out and reduce symptoms more than with meds alone. Some people find they can eventually taper off medication altogether with natural treatments, or take less medication (under a doctor’s supervision of course).

1/3rd are treatment-resistant to medication (again, with adding in natural protocols to their treatment, this number is likely less). If such is the case, it’s important to always treat that person as a person. The parts of their brain that make up the psyche and the self may be fragmented and confused, but there is still a self there, and that person is suffering terribly. Treat them with the dignity and respect and kindness worthy of their personhood. Never treat them as a non-human object even if they are severely compromised in brain function. Sometimes the person with the SMI can be abusive verbally and physically because the brain inflammation drives them to paranoia that causes them to think you’re trying to kill them, or they just lose control altogether. Unfortunately resources for long-term in-patient care for people with treatment-resistant psychosis are hard to access. In some cases the family member can be taken into a nursing home. Sometimes the person is accepted into a long-term psychiatric hospital stay, but this is really rare. It’s much more common that they are kept for a short time and then released. We actually really need nursing homes for young people with treatment-resistant psychosis.

Do Suicides Go to Heaven?

This subject about whether suicides go to heaven is one that needs to be handled with both the utmost compassion and also the utmost care with Biblical accuracy. It can be dangerous to hold a false doctrine about suicide that the Bible actually doesn’t support –it can even be eternally fatal.

After spending a lot of time studying this subject from the scriptures and discussing it with other Christians, I’ve come to the conclusion that this issue is broader than the question of the eternal fate of those who commit suicide. The real question to ask is “How does anyone go to heaven–what is the way to heaven?” And also, “How is anyone lost–what is the way to perdition?” It’s within that framework that a suicidal person is saved or lost, or a drug addict, or a pastor, or a woman, or a man or anyone of any background or lifestyle–salvation works the same for all of us.

When I was 12 to 20 years old, due to deep, crushing and unrelenting depression, I wanted to die every second of every day. There was no relief at that time from the tremendous sadness. There was nowhere I could run to escape it. The level of sadness was like hearing a knock at the door and running to open it—just to hear the tragic news that my entire family had died; like finding this out anew every day. The sadness didn’t lessen with time. At least not for 8 straight years, with no end in sight. I reasoned that I would likely suffer in what felt like unbearable sadness for the rest of my life, which appeared impossible to do. But fortunately my biochemistry shifted after those 8 years, and my crushing depression turned into mania and emotional numbness. While mania was still a mental illness and far from being healthy, it brought me out of crushing depression, and I never experienced the very dark depression again after that. Which meant, I didn’t have to stay alive every day through sheer willpower, and battle my way to live another six months, as I did before.

I looked up the statistics on suicides from depression in people with bipolar disorder. Those with bipolar 2, who have more severe depression than those with bipolar 1, also have a depressed phase that is longer lasting than those with bipolar 1. They have a higher suicide rate because of this. When my mood swings didn’t cycle my mood up and my depression dominated for those 8 years, I couldn’t catch a break from what felt like intolerable sadness. That is what made it so hard to endure. In anecdotal experiences, talking with people with mental illness, I’ve found this to be the case with others, too. Those whose mood lifts for a few days per month get relief from the depression for those few days, and they can endure the rest of the brutal and painful days knowing a break is coming. Their will to live is usually strong. But people who experience no break at all for months and years have a much harder time keeping their will to live alive.

Biochemical Depression Can Be Worse Than Situational Depression
I have a suspicion that biochemical depression can reach far deeper levels than even possible for circumstantial depression to reach. Why is this, you may ask. The reason I suspect this is from my own experience with depression and also the conversations I’ve had with others who suffer from biochemical depression. I remember watching the testimony of a woman who said her hormonal depression, brought on by having a full hysterectomy in her 30s, was more severe than the depression she experienced when her husband and young daughter were killed in a car accident. This was even after she was put on hormonal therapy and successfully treated for her hormonal depression. This really hit home on how severe biochemical depression can be for some. It really feels like an out-of-this-world level of sadness. Like you’re in a different reality where deeper levels of sadness become possible that aren’t normally possible to feel on earth.

I remember one of the rationales that tempted me when I was experiencing severe depression, which I’m sure Satan tempted me with, was if I killed myself my family would be sad and suffer, but their suffering would be a 1/10th of what I was experiencing. I was troubled about the idea of their suffering, but if I lived I’d suffer much more than they would if I died. My logic was that I’d actually reduce suffering by killing myself than if I lived. The net loss would be less if I died than if I lived. A lot of people who support euthanasia have this line of logic, and it’s a very common humanistic way to think. They see someone who is dying, in horrific pain for months and conclude the most humane thing to do is eliminate that horrific suffering. And this same line of logic can be applied to those who aren’t dying yet they experience chronic pain conditions that cause horrific suffering which, overall, may be worse than someone who is actually dying. The reasoning goes, “What right do we have to ask them to live under such difficult circumstances, when if they died, even though it would cause pain to see them go, the pain their family and friends experience at their loss would not be close to the amount of pain they would experience for decades and decades if they continued to live?” It’s in this way that euthanasia for chronic pain conditions has gained traction and is now legal in Canada.

Thinking from a merely humanistic point of view, it really is just simple math. When you’re the one suffering horrifically, you add up the math and reach the conclusion. While your death would cause your family to suffer, if their suffering wouldn’t be as terrible as yours, then it mathematically makes sense to end your life. But if their suffering from your death would be worse than your suffering—you stay alive.

If you’re the family of a person suffering horrific pain, seeing them in pain day-in-and-day-out for decades often wears you down. You may begin to believe that the pain their death would cause you would not be as great as the pain they experience every minute of every day for decades. Family members can break down and support euthanasia, wanting relief from suffering for the one they love most in the world. The argument is given, it’s merciful to end their life and it’s the exact opposite of mercy to allow them to live. This makes sense if you look at things from a purely humanistic view. Not understanding the war we’re in. Ignoring there is an afterlife, that there is a God who alone has the right to take life. For whom alone taking someone’s life is not murder (however, when we take another person’s life or our own it is murder.)

What then can give us the resolve and the courage to endure pain and not seek suicide as a way out if we’re in the unfortunate situation where we’re stuck in horrific chronic pain? It has to be something more than one’s zest for life, more than a desire to return to a life filled with feelings of happiness and joy. It has to be something more than your family’s love for you or your love for your family. Otherwise you and your family could fairly easily reach a euthanasia agreement that is becoming popular today. Where the family sits by the loved one’s bedside as they die, and say their goodbyes. Meanwhile a doctor sets it all up and the loved one administers the lethal medication. Sometimes you’ll see an article in the news where a family member speaks of how peaceful and calm their loved ones death was, and how much better it was than seeing them suffer year-after-year. Or how much better death by euthanasia was, surrounded by family, than if their loved one had died alone in the woods or in a hotel by suicide.

To faithfully endure suffering year-after-year without losing your faith in God or giving up requires biblical values where your chief objective is pleasing God, not your family, not yourself, not anyone else but first and foremost God Himself. We were created to give God glory with our lives, this is the purpose of man. This is what gives life profound meaning and value. What you cannot do for yourself, or for your family, or anyone else, you can do for God. Living for Him is a higher standard of living that perfectly fits a person’s purpose and function as a human being. It meets the deep needs of the soul. Nothing else is enough. What a person needs when suffering terribly, is a chief objective that is of sufficient value as their suffering. In fact if you serve anyone or anything else besides God as your god and chief objective in life, you will become nihilistic and lack courage.

When you serve God He infuses you with moral strength to do right. You are actually filled with His Spirit, and equipped to do all things through Christ who strengthens you, even if those things feel unbearably hard. Even in the midst of great suffering God will give you blessings—a deeper relationship with Him, a greater understanding of His Word, a stronger and kinder character that reflects Him more and gives Him more glory than before you went through this hardship. You will be a victor, in the midst of your great pain. You will not be just a victim or merely a sufferer. Paul says the suffering of our present time is not to be compared with the glory that shall be revealed in us at Jesus’ coming.

The “Well Done” We All Long to Hear
To hear Jesus say, “Well done thou good and faithful servant.” To be proud of us, pleased that we carried His banner in this war of good vs. evil, pleased that we took a stand for the One who stood for us on the cross, is everything. Martyrs have endured years of terrible torture and eventual death to hear those words, slaves who were Christians and couldn’t escape their slavery have been cheered by the prospect of hearing those words, cheered on to serve God their true master with zeal and love despite their tragic lot in this life. They have died faithful, possessing nothing when it comes to material possessions in this world, but as Paul says yet having everything, they died in poverty awaiting those words. The desire to hear those words has spurred on Christians through every kind of hardship, persecution, obstacle, and privation throughout human history. And that aim and objective can give you meaning and faith in the midst of your terrible suffering, too, just as it has millions of others.

But the devil has dangerous lies he introduces that skew the correct Bible doctrine on this important subject, and confuses people, causing them to think one can commit suicide and be right with God. The question of whether suicides can go to heaven, is really a bigger question than just being about suicide. It’s really a question of whether a person who is unfaithful to God can go to heaven? That’s really the core question here. Is God’s faithfulness enough, and ours not needed? This question then becomes a foundational question to the Christian faith itself, and what you believe about this will shape how you view Christianity, and what kind of a life you live as a Christian.

Does Our Faithfulness to God Matter, or Only God’s Faithfulness to Us?
Lies about this subject are far bigger than just the subject of suicide, and they hit at the very foundation of Christianity. This lie that one’s faithfulness to God doesn’t matter and that only God’s faithfulness to us matters, seems merciful and loving on the surface. It seems like the objective and motive of such a belief is God’s desire to let no one perish and for all to be saved. But if you dissect this belief just a bit more you begin to see how it completely destroys essential points that bring meaning and joy to the life of the Christian.

If God did everything that needs to be done for us to be saved on the cross, so whether we live faithfully or not doesn’t really matter, then we have no actual objective purpose in life. It means we bring nothing to the table at all. It makes our relationship with God a one-way relationship. It means we cannot glorify God with our lives. This is actually, at its root, the same belief atheists often have where they say life has no objective purpose. That we create, instead, our own subjective purpose which really isn’t valuable at all in an objective sense, but it’s valuable only to us. They claim it’s not actually deeply valuable and meaningful to live a Christian life, but rather Christians just have a proclivity and desire to live that kind of life. Christians lives don’t hold more objective value than the atheist who lives for selfish purposes. Follow my logic…if glorifying God with your life is optional in order to be a Christian, that some Christians choose to glorify Him with their lives and walk in obedience and faithfulness, while others choose not to be faithful and obedient…if your purpose is optional…then you don’t really have a purpose at all. If faithfulness is optional then you don’t really have a relationship at all.

Imagine getting married, and the covenant says you can be faithful to your spouse if you want to be, but you don’t have to be—you also have the option of sleeping with other people. It wouldn’t matter if people called this agreement a marriage, it’s not a marriage. The definition of marriage involves exclusivity and faithfulness. If your spouse is not faithful, and there’s no repentance for their cheating, you cannot form a marriage with such a person. You can forgive someone who has cheated, if they agree to be faithful, and to stay true to you in the future. But you can’t form a marriage with someone who will not agree to these terms of exclusivity and faithfulness. You could stay with them but it wouldn’t be a marriage. The same is true of a Christian’s relationship with Christ. If He is faithful to us, but we don’t live a faithful life in obedience to Him, then we aren’t in relationship with Him.

What True Mercy Entails
And while this may at first appear to some to be unmerciful on God’s part, if hypothetically God were to take away the faithfulness requirement, then He takes away our ability to please Him, our ability to give Him glory, our whole purpose and function as human beings. We would then descend into the same kind of nihilism and subjective goal-setting that atheists suffer from. Being filled with a kind of misery that is far worse than any amount of chronic pain, whether purely physical like bone pain or something that feels psychological like biochemical depression.

The great meaning of hearing, “Well done thou good and faithful servant,” gives us courage and a reason to press on through any kind of pain we may experience in this life. It’s also true that without the prospect of hearing that, “Well done,” just thinking God doesn’t exist and will never say it, or the many other lies Satan has about this subject takes away our joy. Including lies that our faithfulness doesn’t matter and thus, “Well done,” has nothing to do with us and only Christ makes Christianity a one-sided relationship. Without the prospect of that, “Well done,” even if everything else goes wonderfully in our lives, even if we have wealth and health, happy relationships and every other kind of joy—we will be miserable. While it may not hurt more than bone pain or depression, it’s actually more spiritually painful than any of those other terrible pains. It takes the wind entirely out of our sails. It leaves us with no joy whatsoever. Just bland, purposeless nihilism.

I’m sure we’ve all heard the story of the kid born into a rich family who has it all. He or she lives for pleasure alone—while having great health, and all life can offer, and yet is directionless, completely miserable and makes a wreck of their life. People need more than good food and good health, lots of friends, and feelings of pleasure in order to not suffer. We need a Savior to forgive us of our sins, who enlists us under His banner to stand as witnesses for Him. If we could be saved, but not be witnesses, there would be no purpose in that. If we were saved the same way a child is saved out of a house fire, rather than saved to glorify God with our good works and life of benevolent actions, then life in this world is meaningless, and life in the next world is just as meaningless.

Back to Biochemistry
Our biochemistry affects how we react to the outside world. Later, in life, at age 20 after a manic episode that left me emotionally numb and with a symptom called anhedonia (which prevented me from not only feeling joy and pleasure, but also sadness or any feeling at all—except anxiety) my father passed away. I couldn’t even cry. I was so numb and felt no emotion. Years went by and I still couldn’t feel anything until at age 32 after I started seeing Functional Medicine doctors and correcting biochemical imbalances that I regained some feelings. I still have blunted feelings but I can enjoy some things again and am better than I was.

Experiences like these seem to testify that what’s going on biochemically in our brain shapes our reality more strongly than what’s going on outside around us. Indeed, the only way we connect to the outside world is through our brain in the first place; it’s our reality generator and processor; it gives us all of our human experiences.

After the experience of soul-crushing depression from 12 to 20, to when I went completely emotionally numb (and was no longer sad nor tempted to commit suicide due to depression),my OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder) worsened. I experienced compulsions to commit suicide even though I wasn’t sad. These were intrusive urges to just throw myself over the balcony. As a child I had a compulsion to reach back into the car as my mom was closing the door and even though I knew my finger would be crushed, the compulsion was so strong I ended up doing it anyway. Blood gushed from a vein and I had to have stitches at the ER. These new suicidal compulsions were nearly as strong as the one I had as a kid, and I was deeply concerned I may take my life almost by accident. It was really frightening.

I was also experiencing a lot of dissociative symptoms where you are mentally not connecting with what you’re doing and you feel almost out-of-body. The combination of compulsions and dissociation where doing things before it even registered in my brain that I was doing them was terrifying. I did not want to die at this time and I feared I’d do myself in during a moment of uncontrolled compulsion.

This was an entirely different kind of ‘suicidal.’

Irresistible Compulsions One Type of ‘Suicidal’
It’s possible for those brain damaged from strokes to have compulsions that they literally cannot control. I believe that we’re held responsible by God for the things within our control, not the things outside of our control. If they can control it, they must, otherwise it’s a sin for them to take their own life. The suicide must absolutely be outside of our control in order for it to not be a sin. God alone may be the One who knows the truth of what happened in suicides like this. Sometimes the person doesn’t even know that the compulsion is outside of their ability to control. We tend to assume we can always control ourselves and that everything we do is a conscious decision. But there are biochemical imbalances and brain injuries so severe that they take us over.

Suicidal Due to Psychotic Delusions Another Type of ‘Suicidal’
There’s also another kind of suicidality – psychotic suicidality – where the person commits suicide because they lose the ability to tell right from wrong. Maybe they have a delusion that they can fly so they jump off a building, or a delusion that they are Satan and have committed the unpardonable sin and must destroy themselves in order to save the world.

Psychotic symptoms include visual and auditory hallucinations, delusions, and paranoia, among other symptoms. For an illness to be considered a psychotic illness, either hallucinations or delusions must be present, but both are not required (many people with psychotic illnesses do experience both). The ability to understand right and wrong may be intact in someone with a psychotic disorder. As it’s possible to see hallucinations and have some delusions without losing the ability to tell right from wrong, but it’s also common that someone with a psychotic disorder loses the ability to tell right from wrong.

In practice psychiatrists usually refer to delusions and hallucinations as positive symptoms of the disorder itself. They may refer to someone’s ‘schizophrenia’ when talking about their hallucinations. But when someone becomes so incapacitated that they are spending all day trying to open dimension portals in the sky and have stopped eating and sleeping or caring for themselves, if they speak in word salads and can no longer form logical sentences, this is when psychiatrists refer to their condition as ‘psychosis’ or a ‘psychotic break’. Technically though hallucinations are psychosis, in practice ‘psychosis’ is usually used to refer to a huge break with reality that is especially severe.

Even PTSD, Anxiety Disorders, and Depression Can Have Psychotic Features in Some People
It’s now known that anxiety disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and even depression can have psychotic features. Depression with psychotic features is a common type of depression. It’s estimated that 3-11% of people will experience severe depression during their lifetime. About 14-18% of those will develop psychotic depression. Of those 14-18% some of them could lose the ability to tell right from wrong, or have a delusion involving suicide, such as thinking they must destroy themselves in order to save the world.

The fact that we know this now about depression really changes the way we’re going to look at suicide from depression. It was previously thought that people in depression were simply in great pain and that the great mental pain led them to suicide. If someone commits suicide due to great mental pain, but still knows right from wrong, then it’s a sin. But if they commit suicide when they don’t know right from wrong, then it’s actually not a sin.

Nutrient Therapy Can Treat All the Different Types of Suicidality
Praise the Lord, I found effective treatments for all of the types of suicidality I went through, and have found relief! I experienced suicidal thoughts from depression, suicidal urges due to compulsions (which ended up being a high histamine issue – more on this in future articles), and nihilistic and spiritual delusions such as fearing I had committed the unpardonable sin and would be lost and so I was dead already so I was tempted to kill myself to escape the pain of being lost and knowing it (this type of suicidality for me went away when I got better blood flow to my brain and took herbs that boost BDNF (Brain-Derived Neurotropic Factor, which repairs and regrows damaged brain neurons).

In this article I won’t go into all the different treatments I’ve done or the different Functional Medicine practitioners and the treatments they offer for suicidal symptoms, but for that information you can read my autobiography and it will also be covered in future articles.

Sin Involves Knowledge of Right and Wrong
The Bible says, “So whoever knows the right thing to do, and fails to do it, for him it is sin.” James 4:17 ESV. What this means is that knowledge of right and wrong must be present for something to be sin. An old man who was a respectable Christian gentleman all his life, but who suddenly starts sexually assaulting nurses at the rest home because his brain is atrophying from dementia, and doesn’t know what he’s doing, is not committing sin. A woman who has had a psychotic break and completely lost her ability to tell right from wrong and drowns her babies in the bathtub because she thinks she is saving them, hasn’t sinned. You may remember the story that was in the news headlines a decade or so ago of the woman who drowned her babies and went to prison. People couldn’t understand how she could do such a horrific thing. Well, do you know how the story played out? She was arrested and taken to jail. Then after many years she was retried and found to be not guilty by reason of insanity and was taken to a psychiatric hospital where she was put on anti-psychotics. She came out of the psychosis, realized she had killed her kids and spent every day sobbing and remorseful, clutching pictures of them to her chest and in terrible sadness. You can see that she wasn’t a murderer. She was psychotic, because as soon as she came out of psychosis she was appalled at what she had done and experienced profound regret. This is very different from someone who plans and executes a killing knowing right from wrong and wanting the person dead.

Now that we know people in depressive states may not simply be extremely sad and tempted to commit suicide due to the sadness, but that they may actually be unable to tell right from wrong, or have a delusion centered around death that prevents them from seeing what they are doing is actually fatal or dangerous. This gives a lot of hope for families whose loved one’s committed suicide in a depressed delusional state, perhaps that person was right with God. Maybe they didn’t know what they were doing. Perhaps they didn’t die in a state of unrepentant sin.

I came from a family with strong values. Neither my mother nor my father believed suicide was a moral option. I knew that if I killed myself it would be a tragedy to them, and it would disappoint them. They would wonder “How could Brooke do something like this? She was a Christian girl.”

I’ve been concerned lately with the recent emphasis on legalizing euthanasia for people with terminal illnesses. Besides the fact that I believe euthanasia to be immoral for the terminally ill person, legalizing it also has the potential to do something else. It has the potential to change society’s view of suicide. As a 12 year old, daily tempted to kill herself, at a time when psychiatric care was greatly lacking and the professionals couldn’t help me (I tried SSRIs but was treatment-resistant to them and this was all they had to offer me at the time). Feeling the burden to not kill myself and fail my family, was a huge load for a kid to carry all by herself. The last thing I needed was for suicide to not be seen as taboo, not be seen as a tragedy, not be seen as an unthinkable act. In those days it was seen as the cowardly way out. I had strong desires to leave a good legacy with my life and the idea of ending my life in a way that would be seen as cowardly and immoral safeguarded me against actually doing it. The fact that my parents held such strong values against suicide served to dissuade me.

If, however, my parents supported euthanasia for the terminally ill, and said things like, “the person is in extreme pain and they’re only ending their life because of the pain,” I would have been tempted to think, “I’m also in extreme pain, though mine is emotional/biochemical and their pain is physical, if they can have an out through death, why can’t I?” If my parents had seen euthanasia as a beautiful death where friends and family members could come and say their last goodbyes as the person drifted into oblivion—the picture many are accepting about euthanasia nowadays. Then it would have taken away the negative stigma and it would have paved the way for people like myself to see suicide in a less negative light, thus paving the way for my temptations to be stronger than they already were, and making it more likely that I would kill myself.

I don’t think it’s possible to legalize euthanasia without adding to the temptations those with mental illness face to commit suicide. We are affected by societal changes in values. It wouldn’t be fair to us to increase our temptation when we already feel like we’re grasping at straws. It would push some of us over the edge.

Tragic Camp Suicide
I remember when I was 8 years old and went to camp. One of the campers had committed suicide. It had been some time before this, but everyone was still talking about it. I remember that nothing negative was said about it. Only love poured out from the hearts of the camp counselors and staff. The way they mentioned the kid who had killed himself made him out to be a saint and almost immortalized him. I remember being struck with a strong temptation that day, one that would bloom later on when my depression increased at age 12. A fascination with suicide developed because of this talk at camp about this boy. I’ve been depressed my whole life, and I was struggling with depression as an 8 year old. And this boy had found, not only a way out of his pain, but a way to be immortalized in a glorified state for the rest of time, it seemed like. Their golden boy was dead, and because of it, he’d remain the golden boy forever. He wouldn’t grow up to make mistakes and cause his family to be disappointed. He couldn’t do anything wrong now. He didn’t need to grow up to leave a legacy of helping others and making the world better, either. Strangely because he’d died young by suicide he was immortalized more than those who lived longer and accomplished benevolent things. He was held esteemed more than those who lived their whole lives doing good, it seemed like. And no one was saying suicide was wrong. No one was saying he’d done the wrong thing and that he’d disappointed his parents and erred. That he’d been tempted to do something no one should ever do.

Why couldn’t the love be poured out while also sending the strong message to other kids struggling with the same thing, that suicide is immoral and that this kid had done a shameful act that no one should ever do?

At age 5, I attended a Wesleyan Christian school. It’s where I gave my heart to Christ after hearing sermons every morning at worship and realizing that Jesus was the water of life that alone could satisfy my thirst and the bread of life that alone could take away my hunger. My kindergarten teacher led me in a prayer to accept Jesus into my heart. At this school we sang songs like, “Onward Christian Soldiers” and “I’m in the Lord’s Army” and they taught us that we had a personal responsibility to be true and faithful to God that rested on us that no one could carry for us—not our parents, not our friends, not our teachers. It couldn’t be transferred or deferred. One day at school they had us all bake bread with Bibles in them and told us the story of the Waldensian Christians when the only Christianity that was legal was Catholicism and how they stayed true to Bible Christianity in an age when they were persecuted and killed for their beliefs. My teachers taught me that I must remain true to God even in the face of great hardship, persecution, and death. That only through Christ’s strength could I do this and that I must not get proud and think I was strong without Him. But always see my need for Him and pray daily for strength to remain true.

I can still feel the joy that welled up in my heart knowing I was a soldier for God and that I carried the armor for the one who loved me enough to die for me. The great joy of my Christian experience was that I could love back the one who loved me so much with tangible love. Had this responsibility been taken away from me or not given to me, the joy also would not have existed. My purpose in life would not have existed and I would have been miserable. But having this joy made it possible to endure all my early symptoms of mental illness and still have great joy in my heart, and after I developed terrible depression at age 12 this purpose kept me alive through that huge trial, giving meaning even to extremely painful experiences.

This early teaching, which was the accurate gospel, really helped me stay true to God when I developed a crisis situation that was severe. It felt similar to what the Waldensians experienced while being persecuted: unrelenting, chronic depression.

Don’t Judge the Individual; Jesus Alone is Judge, but Point Clearly the Way to Heaven
When it comes to suicide, I believe that we shouldn’t judge the individual. (Paul says “Judge nothing before the time,” 1 Corinthians 4:5. There is a day of judgment and it’s not necessary that we label a person saved or lost now, and it’s not even our place. God is the ultimate judge. All things can’t be brought to light now, but they will be then.). But we should definitely come out strong that suicide itself is immoral and that it is not a path to heaven.

It’s well-known in the psychiatric community that whenever suicides are known, there are follow-up suicides as a reaction to the news. Suicide has a contagious effect. For this reason we need to be extra careful how we talk about and handle a suicide.

As I struggled to stay alive through major depressive disorder, I often thought about the boy at camp. His story and the way it was handled increased my temptation greatly, but the views my family and church held on suicide helped counteract that influence.

Discussions in the Aftermath of a Suicide
Whenever there is a suicide, the tragic event often facilitates discussions about how to be saved that may not have been examined from the scriptures in a long time. Lukewarm Christians are sometimes roused to not only look into whether the person who committed suicide could go to heaven, but also ask the question of what is required for their own salvation and the salvation of their family and friends and church family. Recently I learned of a tragedy: the son of someone my family is acquainted with took his own life. The tragedy struck their community with great sadness and had his parents slip quickly into a state of agonizing grief. They posted about their nights of uncontrolled sobbing and everyone sympathized. Their Christian community kept them in their prayers and brought them meals and sought to lessen their suffering even slightly if it was possible. Of course the question on everyone’s minds was what will happen now? Will their son go to heaven, or will he be eternally lost? Unfortunately in this situation the statement was made first by his parents and then over and over again by friends of the family that his son would definitely be in heaven, without a doubt, without question. Someone wrote an article about the funeral service and mentioned his father who was a pastor preaching that his son will go to heaven because what Jesus did on the cross was enough to cover any and every sin. Jesus is enough, period, was the message preached that day. His son had spoken of meeting in a certain place in heaven, and I watched in alarm as this location was taken up as a mantra by many other people who commented on the article that they also would be there and meet the son for the first time, or reconnect with him if they knew him before he took his life.

There was no self-examination with the scriptures. They didn’t ask the question “Am I ready to meet God?” They jumped to the conclusion that because what Jesus did on the cross is enough everyone in their church will go to heaven, no questions asked.

Rick Warren, a popular preacher who believes we can never lose our salvation once we’ve been converted, tragically lost a son to suicide. He actually had a conversation with his son 10 years prior to the suicide where his son asked him point blank if he would go to heaven if he committed suicide. His father told him yes he would go to heaven, but that he should stay alive in this world for his family and because God had a plan for him here in this world. Rick knew his son was suffering terribly from a depression that didn’t respond to medication, and his son’s depression was not a secret. His son tried to stay in this world, but 10 years later he committed suicide. Would his son have committed suicide if he knew he wouldn’t go to heaven? Looking at this from the perspective of someone who struggled many years with the temptation of taking my own life, I can say that God and eternal life is the only reason sufficient to keep someone in this world when they are in agony. If they are presented with a reality that instead disconnects their actions from their relationship and standing with God, and their own family is voicing this lie, this increases the temptation greatly. You want relief badly, and it’s tempting to embrace lies thinking you can get relief by suicide and still go to heaven. But it’s just not Bible truth.

The lie of once-saved-always-saved can be an eternally fatal one. No one should be supporting and voicing this lie, especially around vulnerable people.

A Dangerous Lie
I began to ask questions about the bigger picture. “Is it possible that Satan has an even more damaging idea than suicide, as tragic as suicide is? Are many of these people who think they are automatically right with God just by taking on the name Christian really involved in a slow suicide–the spiritual kind? Where even if they live out their full lives in this world and do not take their life prematurely, they are going to the judgment of the wicked after they die, and not heaven due to false doctrine?” Could it be that the hardness of people’s hearts was excited to get onboard with this idea–that they can be saved while remaining in their sins? Making it one of the big reasons they were so quick and eager to support the mantra?

I can imagine the logical thought progression: “My pastor says suicides automatically go to heaven if the person believed in Christ, so why can’t I also go to heaven even though my lungs are destroyed by smoking and I’m going to die from my condition?” Or someone else might think, “If the pastor’s son is going to heaven and it’s a done deal, even though I’m involved in an extra-marital affair Jesus should cover my sins too and I’ll go to heaven. I mean an affair surely isn’t as wrong as a suicide?” After all, Jesus is enough, Jesus is enough.

The truth about what it takes to be a Christian and to be saved has actually to a large extent been lost sight of in our day and age. The gospel has been watered down. Materialism has mixed with Christianity and many people who call themselves “Christian” worship money and possessions along with God. He is one God of many gods in the lives of many American Christians. The false doctrine of the prosperity gospel (the belief that if you have enough faith in God He will bless you in all areas of life in this world–financial, relational, and physical with good health, etc) has been embraced by millions of Christians. Christian movies paint the picture that if you are true to God and don’t commit fornication that He will send you a spouse who also loves Him and you will have a great married life with kids, where love abounds. Christianity has become a cultural affiliation rather than a creed. One may call themselves ‘Christian’ the same way they refer to themselves as ‘American.’

This is not what the scriptures actually say. Jesus cannot be Savior if He is not also Lord. Someone who worships Hindu gods cannot also be a Christian. This is true of all idols, not just Hindu gods.

Jesus said “He who will not take up his cross and follow me is not worthy of me.”

But to believers of the prosperity gospel, hardships and crosses go against their gospel.

This also is a lie. Take marriage for instance. The scriptures are clear that marriage is holy. designed by God. That there is happiness to be found in it, or perhaps more accurately stated that we bring happiness into it by choosing to love unselfishly (Proverbs 5:18-19, Ecclesiastes 9:9). But Paul does tell us that those who marry will have many troubles, 1 Corinthians 7:38, and that “She who does not marry is happier,” 1 Corinthians 7:40. He’s talking about Christians here, believers who love each other with a godly love! These texts don’t mean that no one should marry, but that if they do it won’t be the picture-perfect marriage many Christian circles preach and will potentially be the source of many conflicts. Paul is just saying to be realistic and understand that when two sinners are put together in close union there’s going to be a lot of pain and disagreements from that. The statistics back up Paul and not the prosperity gospel. Unhappy Christian marriages are commonplace. The divorce rate is as high in those who claim to be Christians as in those who don’t (to be clear I don’t believe divorce is Biblical but that’s a subject for another time and I’m just mentioning this to show the incidence of marital unhappiness in those who identify as Christians). Mental illness, cancer, diabetes, strokes, and heart disease affect Christians at the same rate as non-Christians. In America we’re not very healthy or happy, though we are richer than other countries. It’s not enough for us though, many of us want more money and expect God should make us millionaires. Idolatry runs rampant but it’s not getting us to a place of peace and happiness. Of course many of us struggle with disability and poverty, also.

What did the early church at the time of Paul and Peter believe? What was their religious experience? If the prosperity gospel is true then you would expect Peter and Paul to be the richest and most healthy human beings on the planet. Instead, all of the disciples except John died as martyrs for their faith, Paul had a thorn in his flesh (likely something physical either an illness or handicap of some sort as it’s specifically stated to be “in the flesh”), and they were hunted and persecuted. Paul was a tent-maker in order to earn an income. He wasn’t wealthy, but he did have enough money to survive and live, and keep building up churches and do the work of an apostle. Because he dedicated himself to God’s will and God’s kingdom, God ensured he had what he needed to do his work.

Their material lives were basically the opposite of what prosperity gospel preachers proclaim. Their material lives would not be envied or desired by such people. Indeed Paul said, “If our hope in Christ is for this life alone, we are to be pitied more than all men,” 1 Corinthians 15:19. They were the lowest on the totem pole when it came to worldly success and prosperity.

Rather than believing, as so many prosperity preachers do–if you’re not wealthy or if you’re suffering from health problems, Satan is stealing your blessings and you need to exercise more faith to win the battle against him and reclaim the blessing God intends for you. Understand what Peter says “Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that has come upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. but rejoice to the extent as you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed,” 1 Peter 4:12-13.

Suffering was a part of their sound Biblical doctrine, or teachings, that they received from Christ, not something God said would not happen or is not supposed to happen. Indeed they were seen as vital and necessary and rejoiced in them because outward sufferings rightly endured brought inward spiritual richness and prosperity to the heart and soul of a person.

What gave the early disciples the courage to accept such a life, to take on such stress and pain? It was the joy of knowing Christ and working for Him to build up His kingdom. The joy of giving Him glory with their lives, of becoming sanctified, having their characters recreated to match His. The joy of bringing lost souls into the faith.

“I want to know Christ and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to Him in his death.” Philippians 3:10

Knowing Christ means knowing His sufferings by experience. If we don’t experience His sufferings we cannot know Him. Do we care about knowing him? Is knowing Him more important to us than comfort and escaping suffering and pain? Is knowing Him the most important thing in the world to us?

Being conformed to His death means dying to self and sin. There can be no joy in the heart if we aren’t dying to self daily. Trials and suffering are the agents God uses to mold our characters. He does not do this willingly and it’s painful for Him to discipline us, but it’s vitally necessary to our spiritual health (Lamentations 3:33).

Do we care about parting with sin? Isn’t the evil and selfishness in our hearts the enemy we should care about most? If it takes suffering to hew away the evil in us and we’re unwilling to go through this process and aren’t rejoicing at the opportunity, we aren’t even Christians. The truest most godly desire a Christian should have is the desire to part with the sin that is in them and to become more like Jesus. If this isn’t the most important thing to us, we’re not in the faith.

“For unto you it is given in the behalf of Christ, not only to believe in Him, but to suffer for His sake.” Philippians 1:29

Knowing Christ in His sufferings is a gift that the Father gives to every Christian on behalf of Christ so that we can know Him in this vital way.

In order for us to share in His glory in heaven and to have joy in heaven, we must faithfully endure trials. We couldn’t be happy in heaven knowing Jesus suffered immensely for our sakes and that we did not do the same for Him. There could be no peace in that, there would be no love on our part for Christ if we desire to shirk the trials and sufferings needed to build character and make a stand for Him in this world.

Let’s go back to creation to find the purpose of man before trials. How did our relationship with God play out back then? It turns out as you may expect that the purpose of man has not changed (if it had that wouldn’t make sense). The only thing that has changed is the war of sin and evil happening, and people are no longer sinless and righteous. What did it mean to know God, to be in relationship with God, back then? Man was created in God’s image to glorify God. This is what the meaning of life is. The purpose of life for human beings is to fear God, worship Him, glorify Him, bear fruit for Him, and keep all His commands (Ecclesiastes 12:13, Rev. 14:7, Isaiah 49:3, John 15:8).

If a person does not glorify God they turn nihilistic and miserable. They also sin because sin is synonymous with dishonoring God. Glorifying God is synonymous with having faith that works by love and produces good works. We are moral agents, and when we do good works God is glorified. This is the dynamic of the human-divine relationship. This is what it means to know God; to glorify him in our life. This is what it means to have a relationship with God that is closer than a husband with a wife and that is the very purpose of life. Of course due to sin we can no longer produce good works that glorify God. What we can do that glorifies God is repent of our sins, believe in Christ and submit to His molding process and then good works will appear naturally that will glorify God. We have to go through Christ now. We can’t do good works on our own and all our righteousness is as filthy rags. (Isaiah 64:6)

Jesus first tells the crowds that He is the light of the world, then He says you are the light of the world. Without Him we can do nothing, but through his forgiveness and creative power to recreate our hearts we can produce much fruit (John 15:4-5). “This is to my Father’s glory, that ye bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples,” John 15:8. Fruit is how we glorify God. What is fruit? Good works, righteous actions. Love, to put it succinctly.

The lukewarm state of the church, mixing love for God with love for idols has now given way to post-Christianity. Millennials and Gen Zers no longer believe in objective morality–that right and wrong exist. Many of them are atheist or agnostic, or progressive Christians. Which often involves the rejection of Jesus’ substitutionary atonement, believing Jesus died on the cross due to the hatred of the Jews and not to meet the demands of God’s righteous law so that we could be forgiven. They reject the concept of sin.

This generation coming up is the most nihilistic and unhappy of them all. I’ve heard it said in discussions I’m in with such people online, that many people in this generation wish their mother had aborted them, and that they want to get abortions to spare their kid the hardship that comes with life in this world.

This makes sense. If this life is all there is, and there’s no God, no afterlife, and there’s no right and wrong, no Savior, and no opportunity to glorify God with our lives, then the suffering in this life is too great to want to push through and endure. Especially when that suffering reaches high levels and the person has a severe mental illness or chronic pain condition, or has suffered from abuse. When you take out the big eternal piece of the picture extreme human suffering seems impossible to endure. Why go through all of that to just exist in this world? Why not pull the plug and save yourself the agony? BUT on the other hand–if we can glorify God with our faithfulness through suffering, know Christ in his sufferings, be changed in character and part with many sins and undergo an eternally-significant and important process–and go to heaven as sons and daughters of God. Then faithfully enduring suffering–even high level suffering is more than worth it. It’s worth it many, many times over.

Paul put it this way: “I consider that our present sufferings are not worthy to be compared with the glory that will be revealed in us.” Romans 8:18

“For our light and momentary affliction is producing for us an eternal glory that is far beyond comparison.” 2 Corinthians 4:17

A person’s beliefs about whether suicides go to heaven is dependent on their belief about how a person is saved in the first place.

If a person believes in a once-saved-always-saved view of salvation, then they believe that as soon as the person has become a Christian that person can never in the future lose their salvation no matter what they do. They may believe that a true Christian will cooperate with God through the whole process and won’t engage in any sins that would separate them from God, because God has chosen them and called them, and it’s impossible for that person to fail to live a faithful life to God. In other words, if you’ve been chosen by God for salvation that means God will ensure you don’t slip into a sinful lifestyle. Those who do slip into such lifestyles were never saved to begin with.

The problem with this belief is that it destroys the dynamic mentioned earlier in this article about how man must glorify God in order to be happy and God needs the love of man in order to be fulfilled in His relationship with us. More than this, God needs witnesses. He’s always needed witnesses and being a witness to His Name and character of love is foundational to what it means to be a son or daughter of God. Since the war of good vs evil began God has needed a group of people, a church to stand for Him in the conflict, to preach the gospel, and to help free slaves of Satan from darkness to join the kingdom and family of God. Free will must be present or love cannot exist. The truth is, God wants love just as we do. “If you love me keep my commandments,” John 14:15 and “If you keep my commandments you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in His love,” John 15:10. There are many places in the Bible where God asks us to love Him. If a person isn’t free to choose to love God and follow Him or free to rebel against Him, then that person isn’t free but is forced to love, based on God’s decision.

If this belief is true, that God elects some to be saved and not others and that they will follow Him all the way if they’ve been chosen by Him, then this belief guarantees the salvation of anyone who has been chosen, but it destroys the love. It destroys everything noble and just and good in a person. A person can’t be benevolent and holy like God. They are just robots. And if they were taken to heaven this way they’d be nihilistic and miserable. This false belief if true would be a much worse situation than people choosing to leave God and be lost. It would put human beings in nihilistic servitude to a tyrant God for eternity. They would beg to die after a time. And if this belief is actually false and not true, then it’s dangerous because it tells people like my 12 year old self when I struggled with wanting to commit suicide every day, that I can commit suicide and go to heaven. For someone who has no good feelings left in life, who has no biochemical joy or ability to feel any relief at all–why wouldn’t I suicide and go straight to heaven if this were possible?

If it were true that I could kill myself and go to heaven, then it would also be true that any good works I did under the influence and power of God’s Spirit would not glorify my Father in heaven. If such a violent, immoral act as killing oneself doesn’t bring dishonor to God, then this also means that any good acts I may do inspired by His Spirit cannot bring honor and glory to His Name.

Either both are true or both are false. Either killing myself doesn’t dishonor and deny God and standing for Him or doing righteous acts doesn’t honor and glorify Him, or killing myself brings dishonor to God and denies Him, and standing true to Him glorifies Him and honors Him. And therein lies the crux of the matter. Being a moral agent, loving God and glorifying Him means that we can also dishonor and deny Him if we so choose to. And denial that one can deny Christ is to deny that one can give Christ glory with their lives. Thus the great joy of life and the purpose of life is absent and meaningless if one adopts the belief that a person cannot deny Christ. The whole weight of rightness and goodness ceases to exist and everything becomes arbitrary and meaningless and God’s law no longer exists in the mind of someone who throws out the concept of moral agency in cases where the person has chosen badly and immorally.

I’ve had discussions with people who claim that suicide won’t affect your salvation but it will affect your reward in heaven; you’ll get less of a reward but you’ll still go. This won’t dissuade someone who is in great pain. If I truly believed as a 12 year old that I could have gone to heaven if I committed suicide, I would have done it. I’m a very proactive, take-charge kind of person, and I would have mustered up the courage and gone to be with Jesus. This is the truth. I would not be alive today if I sincerely believed in the once-saved-always-saved belief.

I still have days where I’m tempted to think “It’s too bad I can’t kill myself and go to heaven, or pack up my things and go to a country that allows euthanasia for mental illnesses and go die today or next week, whenever I can get in.” This is 24 years later. I’m still tempted with it, though nowhere near to the extent that I was during those years of 12-20.

The only thing that stopped me was I believed it to be immoral and that I’d lose heaven if I committed suicide. I didn’t want a tragic eternal end; I wanted Jesus to wipe every tear from my eyes and end my pain–not my life–forever. So I chose to stay alive in this world and battle through many years of depression, in order to gain heaven in the end.

Can Immoral Methods Ever be Used to Escape Difficult Situations?
The subject of suicide brings up a deeper question. It’s the question of whether a person – who is tragically trapped in a bad situation – should resort to immoral methods to get out of the tragic situation? This underlying principle applies to every such situation, not just those with terrible unrelenting depression who are tempted to kill themselves. Does the person in the bad situation become guilty if they resort to immoral methods of escaping the bad situation? Do they incur guilt?

These situations certainly are worthy of great empathy, compassion, and understanding on our part (as well as helping them out of the bad situation if it’s in our power to do so.) But all the empathy in the world, all the understanding in the world, can’t make wrong right or right wrong.

Some women abort their babies in order to not bring their children into poverty. In times of great economic distress it’s even happened that women will kill their children quickly so that the child does not have to die slowly from starvation. Certainly these are difficult and tragic situations worthy of our human sympathy and compassion, but isn’t an immoral action always immoral?

Is there an objective standard of morality, or can it be changed and edited when things get hard? Can wrong become right when things get hard?

Here we see why this world is such a battleground. Satan has the ability to add pressure, hardship, and devastation to our circumstances. Or even prosperity and temptations to make us forget to be a moral person. He employs all of these methods, but wrong is still wrong, even if we’re under pressure. The truth is, the devil isn’t setting about to cause us pain as his end goal: he wants our character. He wants us to turn into dishonest, untrustworthy, lying, thieving, self-trusting individuals who doubt and shun God.

And if we allow our circumstances to make us into that kind of person, then isn’t this a greater tragedy than that of suffering?

The woman who does not kill her own child and the child starves to death, is innocent. It’s a tragedy, but she has no blood on her hands. In the same way, the person with cancer who dies from the disease is innocent, but if they resort to euthanasia then neither the cancer patient nor the doctor assisting in the death or the family who supports the act are innocent.

Suicide from depression and great sadness is in the same boat as all of these other very difficult scenarios. It’s not a sin to suffer, or to die if it happens naturally, but it is wrong to kill yourself. Because you’ve allowed your great suffering to make you into a self-murderer.

Above all we must care about character. And any doctrine that teaches that the character of the Christian is not important is not in agreement with the scriptures. Are we not witnesses for Christ in the world – isn’t this what it means to be a Christian? Why wouldn’t our character and our choices matter then?

Is there such a thing as a Christian who is not like Christ in character?

The truth is, we want to believe what the Bible says, not what human opinion says. But why do we believe what the Bible says, and why are we even Christians at all? Isn’t it because God is good? God is morally perfect; all of his judgments are right?

Again and again throughout the Bible God claims to have perfect actions, perfect judgments, perfect laws, to be perfectly just and good in all his ways. This is why we love Him; this is why we worship him.

What this means is that any way that is not good or just or right God is actually against. “I hate every wrong path,” Psalm 119:28.

Therefore, if we read Bible texts put together in such a way that doesn’t seem right, doesn’t agree with God’s declarations in other parts of scripture, and doesn’t add up, we ought to question the belief, and not just believe it blindly. We ought not to love such a belief, because it’s the wrong path.

“You are not a God who is pleased with wickedness.”
Psalm 5:4 NIV

“The Lord detests the way of the wicked, but he loves those who pursue righteousness.” Proverbs 15:9

Isn’t that what it means for God to be God – that he’s righteous, never does the wrong thing, always upholds the truth?

Would it be good for a person to be a Christian and yet not have God’s character? The truth is that it would not be good for God to consider someone a Christian who did not have his character. It would testify against the power of the cross to give us a new heart. Jesus would be testifying against himself if He accepted someone as a Christian who did not have His heart of love and obedience.

And God will never do anything that goes against His own name and nature. He is good, and He can’t do anything bad.

“He cannot deny himself.”
1 Timothy 2:13

God cannot promote or support evil. Could the Bible – that testifies to God’s goodness – be in support of something that is wicked or evil? There are things the Lord hates. He hates every kind of evil. “I gain understanding through your precepts; therefore I hate every false way.”
Psalm 119:104

“I hate and abhor falsehood, but I love your law.”
Psalm 119:163

The Bible calls us his witnesses.
“Ye are my witnesses, says the Lord, that I am God.”
Isaiah 43:12

What does the Bible call someone who claims to be a Christian but lives a life of immorality? A false witness. Can a person be a false witness and be a saved Christian who is going to heaven at the same time?

Isn’t someone who takes matters into their own hands to commit self-murder rather than to trust in Christ to empower them with strength, being a false witness? They aren’t testifying to Christ’s power to help them resist temptation. They are giving in to the temptation instead.

This reminds me of the martyrs of the early church at the time of Paul, who under great pressure – threat of death – had to stay true to Jesus in order to witness to the unbelievers around them. Their true witness resulted in many non-believers becoming converted and joining the church. Their choice to remain true to God will result in eternal life. Our witness matters.

This text has been a big help to me:

“Do not be afraid of what you are about to suffer…be faithful, even to the point of death, and I will give you life as your victor’s crown.”
Revelation 2:10 NIV

Here Jesus tells us what to do with great suffering – do not fear it. Don’t seek an immoral way out of it. Faithfully endure it and then he will give you eternal life.

“The one who stands firm to the end will be saved.”
Matthew 24:13 NIV

If we are sifted out by Satan before the end of our lives, we’ll be lost. Satan tried to sift Peter. Jesus, told Peter:

“Simon, Simon, Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat: but I have prayed for thee that thy faith fail not: and when thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren.”
Luke 22:32 KJV

Here we see that a person can be sifted. Also, that they can lose their salvation and need to be reconverted. Jesus told Peter that he needed to be converted, and when he was converted he would then have strength from God to strengthen his brethren.

What had Peter done at the time that had caused him to lose his salvation? He had denied Christ. Christ tells us that if we deny him before men, he will deny us before the Father in heaven. Matthew 10:33

Denying Christ results in a loss of salvation. Denying Christ under pressure or hardship results in a loss of salvation. This is why Christ tells us to be strong and faithful until the end of life, in order to receive eternal life.

Christ is the door – the way to heaven. What does this mean? Well, if someone is a pagan and worships other gods and also asks forgiveness of Jesus and claims to believe in Him – will that person go to heaven? No, they won’t. But wait a minute they asked forgiveness of Christ and they believed in Him. Why doesn’t that work? Because they have other gods. They wanted to make Jesus Savior without making Him Lord, and He can’t be Savior if He is not also Lord.

But let’s go deeper, what’s the real reason? It’s because the way to heaven is through Christ, and that person isn’t actually going through the door, even though they claim they are. There are a lot of false ways — false doors — that claim to go through Christ but do not go through him at all, but embrace idolatry, even within the church.

“And we know that God’s judgment on those who do such things is based on truth”
Romans 2:2

God’s judgment cannot be based on opinion, whim, passion, feeling, or anything else but truth and right. Someone cannot get to heaven who does not go in through the door and goes in some other way.

There is something going on in Christianity today that is taking more lives than those who commit a quick suicide, it’s the gradual eternal suicide of Christians that aren’t walking with Christ and aren’t right with Him, but don’t know it due to deceptive doctrines.

How does the average person who calls themselves a Christian live their life? What do they believe about what it means to be a Christian?

The reason a false door is a false door is because Jesus being the way and the door has a lot to do about His character. His ways reflect His character; this is always the case in everything Jesus does in the Bible and through history. Jesus won’t take a strategy to help people that involves telling lies – why? Because Jesus is the truth, and He’s always truthful and lies are immoral and wrong.

To go through the door requires not just consenting to believe in Jesus, but also to become like Him. This is the way. If a person becomes like Satan and won’t lay idols down and won’t submit to Christ’s refining process of sanctification – they aren’t going the way of Jesus. What is the way of Jesus? Taking up your cross and following Him – the way of crucifying the self and its evil desires. If they won’t die to self, they aren’t walking in the way that leads to life. They aren’t on the narrow road. In asking us to believe in Him, Jesus is asking us to follow him and walk in the way He walked when he was on earth. This is the only way to heaven, and the reason why is because we must be like Him if we are going to enjoy and live in heaven, otherwise it would be misery for us.

“To this you were called because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should walk in his steps.” 1 Peter 2:21

“Whoever claims to abide in Him must live as Jesus did.”
1 John 2:6

Why do we have to live Jesus’ life, become like Him and follow in His ways in order to go to heaven? Why isn’t just believing in Him in our minds enough?

The answer is that walking in Christ’s footsteps and living His life is what worship is. If we aren’t living His life, we aren’t worshipping Him. We’re keeping Him at a distance. We’re liking Him and perhaps wanting His company – wanting Him to be in our lives – but we aren’t bowing to Him and surrendering our lives to Him and living for Him alone. We want Him to be a god among many of our other idols/gods, not the one and only God of our lives. Worship is not merely an outward praise flowing from our lips, it is loving everything about Christ’s character and heart, and living out the same life He did through the power of His Holy Spirit. It is being kind and self-sacrificial to the point of crucifying the lusts and desires of the fallen heart. Including the desire to escape suffering through suicide when suffering becomes intense and extremely painful. A way out of suffering that is immoral is a temptation of the flesh. (There’s nothing wrong with moral ways out of suffering though.)

The answer has to do with the purpose of man. What were we created for? What is the only way that a human being can live and be eternally satisfied and healthy and happy? The answer is in glorifying Christ. Man was created to give glory to God. This means everything man did was to be moral and good and shine glory on God. If human beings don’t live for this purpose and won’t glorify God with their lives, they turn nihilistic and miserable. Heaven would be torment for them.

You see, there is no such thing as a person who doesn’t live for God. Not eternally. A person who won’t do that can’t have some other purpose that they live for for eternity. They’d be miserable and eternity would end up just like earth has, with pain, and suffering, and sin in abundance. People would pray to die and be put out of their misery rather than having to live forever in such a state.

In this life people have many gods. Some people live for horses. Or football. Or movies. But these things aren’t the purposes we were created for, and a person could not live for eternity holding to these things as their life purpose. They’d become the worst kind of miserable imaginable.

There is no such thing as holding onto sin here and having idols, rejecting the way that leads to life, refusing to be molded after Christ, and then being transported to heaven and able to be a virtuous person who enjoys heaven to the fullest. If we reject God here that’s our decision and it carries over to heaven. It carries over because God will not force someone into heaven against their will. Love is not love if force is involved, it’s oppression and abuse.

So the truth is, those who commit suicide knowingly, make a choice to reject God, to reject the sufferings of Christ and decide not to glorify Him with their lives. This is a personal choice that no parent can make for their child. You cannot make your child an overcomer. You can raise them right. You can love them deeply and actively. You can tell them about health treatments that balance their biochemistry and lift their depression and get them to good doctors who can help. (I wrote another book called ‘The Purple Dot: My Story of Psychosis and My Return to Sanity that goes over in detail many of the available health treatments for depression and anxiety and OCD and psychotic disorders, even when you’re treatment-resistant according to mainstream psychiatry medications). And give them the best possible chance of living for Christ’s glory. And it is the solemn responsibility of every parent to do these things to the best of their ability. And if you know how to do these things and you do them it will greatly help your child and give them an advantage in the battle of life. But you can’t make that choice for them. And the truth is that many teenage and adult children do decide to reject God and live for self rather than His glory. Worship is not something that can be forced on someone, not even on your beloved children.

Christ wants a relationship with each of us that is closer than a husband has with a wife. This isn’t something everyone wants with Christ though. Many people want to be their own god. Many do not want to stand for him under trial and hardship and reject His call to take on His sufferings. As hard as it may be for some of us to believe, there are people out there who want to worship football, or their spouses, and make those things number one in their lives. Let those things take up the time and attention that God alone should have in one’s life. Become more important than spreading the gospel. Crowd out God. Take their allegiance and dedication. This is the lifestyle they desire. There are people that the myriad of temptations in our world ensnare. There are others who are ensnared by the hardships of this world and deny Jesus the commitment it takes to be true to Him under pressure. Worship is not something that we can decide for anyone but ourselves. And it’s just and right that it should be that way, that every person should decide for themselves and relate directly to God. This is a fundamental human right. When it comes to your loved ones, this isn’t your choice to make. And they may use their free will wrongly to succumb to temptation under pressure. And if you’ve done all you can to support and help them, and they decide to succumb anyway, the truth is there isn’t anything you can do about it. (Though if they are severely suicidal you can always have them Baker acted and put in a psych hospital and this is a great resource. Eventually though they will be released). God Himself is the one protecting and upholding free will for each and every person. Even God will accept this person’s choice, though it grieves His heart in a deeper way than us human beings can ever understand, and though it was definitely the wrong choice for that person to have made.

An Answer Sufficient to the Pain of Seeing a Loved One in Extreme Pain or Their Life Ending in Tragedy

I deeply loved my father, but he was an atheist, and then he passed away, most likely unsaved. I also saw him go through a lot of pain in life, and knew that he went through even more before I was born. I always wanted to see him happy and healed, especially eternally happy. But he most likely will not be in heaven, unless he did something like repented towards the end and didn’t tell anyone. There’s a deep pain knowing he most likely will never get his tears dried by Jesus or an end to his pain.

I watched myself endure deep depression and pain all through life that I felt terrible about too. I didn’t understand these things very well at the beginning. But having been through everything I have and knowing what I do now, I have a sufficient answer from the Word of God that answers this question.

People need to be, not accessories or objects to God, but actually important to God. They need to be vital to His Name and His glory in the universe. If our obedience is optional – if we could take on the name Christian and still be saved – we would live meaningless lives. It’s in glorifying God, defending His Name, that we have objective meaning that is enough for life. Nothing else is enough. I heard one person say he’s going to go to heaven and sail sailboats and eat good food and really enjoy himself. While it may be sad to think he will never do those things if he isn’t in heaven, those things can never provide sufficient meaning for a person, especially for eternity. In this world those who reject God have guilt and sadness because they haven’t let Jesus forgive their sins. They aren’t walking in obedience to Him, or living for Him, which is what they were created to live for. In heaven they would have this same guilt and sadness if they were taken there after rejecting Him. After a time they would start asking for God to annihilate them. They would plead for death. This would actually happen quickly because no unholy person can handle the glory of the Lord without calling for the rocks to fall on them. But I’m trying to make the point here that all the wonderful things in heaven–none of which could provide meaning–will satisfy without knowing and honoring God. Only glorifying God with one’s life can satisfy that need.

And one of the things all people on earth need is to enter into Christ’s sufferings. The times we suffer the most in this life – whether sent directly by Satan to harm us or tempt us, or by God to discipline us – are used for good to change our character and bring us to a deeper level of surrender if we are willing. All those terrible tears (so many of them over the years) that I and many others cried were an opportunity to grow closer to Christ and to enter into His sufferings. Our relationship with Him is the most important one by far. Only Jesus is the reason for our existence. We could lose everyone else but if we still had Jesus we could still live. He is the One who gives us breath so if we reject Him we lose our life, our breath. He is not just a Person; He is our everything.

I now understand that all those times I saw my dad go through pain and bear the pain of the past, were opportunities to enter into Christ’s sufferings, and to gain Christ for all eternity. This was the offer God was extending to him. In my own life in the end all the pain has been more than worth it many times over, having gained character and a closer relationship with Christ, preparation for heaven. I gained precious memories through the hardest times that I will carry with me forever into heaven. This same offer was extended to my father, and to all our loved ones that committed suicide. But instead of saying yes to extreme suffering as Christ said yes to it for their sakes, they said no (provided they weren’t in psychosis or experiencing an uncontrollable compulsion when they took their life which I cover in another chapter). They wouldn’t go through agony for the One who went through agony for them.

The reason I can have closure about this is that God gave them the opportunity. He did the right thing by them, always. Paul tells us we need severe trials in order to become like Christ, not moderate ones. This means every Christian will face severe trials in their life at some point. Even non-Christians will be given the opportunity to pass their trials by becoming a Christian and taking a stand for God. Those trials are our opportunity to say yes to Christ who said yes to us on Calvary. But some people will choose no–the vast majority of humanity sadly will choose no. And this may be a hard concept to grasp, but sometimes that’s what suicide is. It’s a way to say no to God’s call to enter into suffering. People say no in different ways and this is one of the ways people say no. If the person is sane when they commit suicide, they know they are making an eternal choice against God. Just about everyone knows this. We all know it’s not a path that ends in heaven. There is no more sure way to seal your fate in rebellion than to take your own life. All of us who struggle with suicidal thoughts know this. The Holy Spirit convicts us of the fact we do not want to meet God after having committed suicide, and that it can’t possibly be a good way to meet Him that will result in life. False doctrines can tempt and confuse people though and this is why it’s important Christians are honest about what the Bible says about murder and salvation.