It all begins in Genesis, where God shows us his definition of mental health: a perfect, unobstructed flow with God that produces healthy relational connections with others. Then he shows us see what tears that down: degraded or destroyed identity. That is where Satan started, with an attack on Eve’s identity. In her pain she allowed Satan to determine how to medicate her heart. By the time we get to Cain, his heart was so shut down to God and others that only shame spoke, and he senselessly murdered his brother. I believe this shows that his heart’s damage had degraded into a mental disorder.
This was where God first promised Jesus, in the story of what breaks his children’s hearts. Degraded personal identity is where heart damage begins. It freezes parts of the heart in pain and memories of the past and degrades our connection with the one who makes all things new.
Jesus was promised to heal and restore the broken hearts of his children. His mission is to give us back what was lost in the Garden, as unobstructed life-flow with God and the rest of his children. When we have this, we have mental health, just like the picture painted for us in Genesis shows.
The key to deep healing is knowing how to find the places in the heart where our personal identity and relational health have deteriorated and been replaced with something other than God. That is binding up the broken-hearted (Is. 61:1). Step by step, piece by piece, God makes each wounded part of us new, putting our entire heart back in connection to him. Sometimes all you need is someone to help you through the process.
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God designed us for relationships. For that purpose, he gave us a heart. But when our hearts become wounded, a healthy relational connection with God and others gets replaced by things like self-medication, withdrawal, anxiety, anger, depression, and many other struggles. Emotional wounds cause our heart’s capacity for healthy relational connection with God and others to shrink or sometimes to shut down altogether. When heart damage is severe enough, it can produce mental disorders.