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.