I went to a session this morning on emotions and how we should deal with them as Christians. Although the talk was good in parts and the speaker was obviously a really nice man, some of it made me feel very frustrated, sad and worried.
I'd just like to say first that I am glad New Word Alive have decided to put in a sermon series on emotion. Emotion is an issue that has been neglected in many evangelical circles and it is great that the New Word Alive leadership have decided to give this issue an airing. The importance of and hunger for teaching on emotion is obviously at the forefront of people's minds, as the venue for this session yesterday couldn't accommodate everyone who was interested and we had to move into a larger theatre today.
The speaker was obviously a man who loved Jesus deeply and wanted to live a godly life. I want to make clear that I am not trying to disrespect him.
What I want to do is draw attention to some things I found worrying about his talk, and some beliefs that I feel are counterproductive and dangerous.
I approached the speaker after his talk to feed back some of my concerns. I thanked him for his talk and for how he had shared. I said I had worked with acutely mentally ill people, and that although what he had said might be relevant to many people without mental health issues or emotional disorders, I didn't think what he said was true of those with mental illness. For them, emotions were not just a matter of "heart values" which they could control using their will and self-control. And their origin wasn't primarily in their "heart values" but a range of complex genetic and social factors.
He was polite and gracious. He said, "I don't know much about psychology." He told me he thought there may be original feelings that sparked everything else up in mental illness, and these feelings were rooted in heart values. And they could try and deal with these in the ways that he'd outlined - that is, to evaluate your heart values and try and love the right things, based in scriptural truth.
What this speaker said really disturbs me. I worry because it is not based on research and well-established psychological insights, but just based on what he thought might be true. This man has written a book on emotions and claims to be an expert in this area - but he doesn't know about key psychological evidence and practice.
This is extremely worrying. In that room there were hundreds of people listening to his teaching. Although he had claimed that the area of emotions is very complicated and muddy, he did put forward his approach as a universal one. He didn't make a disclaimer that this wasn't appropriate for people with mental health issues, which is dangerous, given that, as he confessed he doesn't know much about psychology.
To be honest, I am pretty appalled by this. I don't think it's unreasonable to expect that someone speaking with authority on a certain issue would have done in depth research about that issue, and would actually be teaching true, solid and evidence-based information. I understand that he was trying to base it all on the Bible, but the Bible doesn't tell us how to deal with mental illness. Like many other issues, we have to figure it out using discernment and wisdom.
I don't know in what other sector it would be acceptable for an expert speaker to say outright that they didn't know much about the issue they were talking about, and to still have their opinion treated with the sort of authority speakers have here.
I was really disappointed - and frankly, quite angry - by one bit of the talk in particular. The speaker mentioned phobias. "I'm not an expert on phobias," he said. "In certain situations, it might be good for someone struggling with a phobia to go and talk to a counsellor. But I'm not keen on people going to expert counsellors, as I think we should deal with things within the church. The reason why it might be good for some people to go to an expert counsellor is because they know what kind of questions to ask to help people understand what values are driving them."
Huge alarm bells went off in my head when he said this. First of all, he offered advice about phobias - a serious mental health issue that needs expert care and management - while at the same time professing to not know much about them. If I offered you medical advice about a chronic heart condition,  then said I wasn't an expert on chronic heart conditions, would you accept that? Would that be worth listening to?
Would that be responsible if I were a massively respected teacher and speaker, being heard by hundreds?
The other thing that disturbed me was this notion of keeping things inside the church; . I confess that I was angered, having encountered lots of resistance within certain Christian circles to counselling and emotional support in the past. If you are struggling with a serious mental health issue (like a phobia), you need help from a qualified professional. It is not appropriate to go to a church leadership team, who are not qualified to give specialist help to people struggling with mental health issues.
Again, a medical analogy. If you have a broken leg, is it appropriate to go to your church leadership team to help you recover? No. You go to a doctor.
It's a no-brainer.
So why do speakers like the one I heard today openly say they are not keen on people going "outside the church" to see expert counsellors, including people with mental disorders like phobias? Why is this ignorance about mental health so prevalent in churches?
Like I said before, I honestly think that the speaker was a nice guy. I got the sense that he genuinely doesn't know much about mental illness and mental health. He genuinely thinks that with the help of God, Christians should be able to control their emotions by making sure they have the "right heart" and "love the right things"- primarily, salvation, Scripture and God.
But the whole situation saddens and angers me. Because as Christians, as the Church, we should be at the forefront of standing up for truth and fighting against stigma when it comes to mental health. But instead, ignorant beliefs about mental health abound within Christian communities.
The speaker claimed that emotions originate from our "heart values"- that if we have the right values and perspective, that we desire godly things, our emotions will be right and godly. He said at one point that they are ultimately our responsibility and can be controlled by our will. Although there are influencing factors, like our upbringing and our health, the origin of our emotions is our heart.
Beliefs like these are out of touch with solid evidence and psychological research that has been accumulated over the past decades. In cases of mental illness, this kind of explanation is just circumspect. And it is loosely extrapolated from Scripture - the Bible doesn't offer a theory of emotions, just metaphors and descriptions of. So much research has been done into the origin of emotions and mental health issues, which the speaker just doesn't take into account at all.
Not only are the beliefs based on ignorance, but they also feed stigma. The notion that our emotions can be controlled by our will in this way is hugely simplistic. It feeds the notion that "bad, ungodly emotions" are our fault. And this is plainly untrue for mentally ill people. They can't control their episodes by will. Their conditions don't have anything to do with their moral goodness or their acceptance of God's salvation. They are ill, and it isn't their fault. They can't control it in this way, even if they are faithful Christians.
People are mentally ill not because they are weak or at fault or can't snap out of their wrong emotions. To preach these kinds of stigmatising, ignorant things is unworthy of the gospel.
A church leader can't be expected to be an expert in psychology and mental health if they have not been trained and qualified in this field. This goes without saying. So they shouldn't claim expertise in this issue and go on to give guidance that affects 1 in 4 people struggling with mental illness. It's inappropriate and highly dangerous. It can destroy lives.
So why shouldn't churches work with counsellors and mental health professionals "outside the church"? They are trained, qualified and are in the best position to give people the help they need. And there are committed Jesus-followers who work in these fields. We should be working together.
Dave said some wise words to me a while ago. He said that as Christians, we should be the best at whatever we do. If you're a teacher, you should be the best teacher in your school. If you're a nurse, you should be the most caring and effective nurse in the hospital. If you're a social worker, you should be the most compassionate, well-informed person in the sector.
We are doing what we do for the Lord.
So we need to be at the forefront of advances and discoveries in every field in which we work. Christians are everywhere, and we need to do what we do well.
This is partly why this talk made me feel so frustrated and sad. Because it was so symptomatic of churches' lax engagement with important discoveries in "secular" culture. Discoveries that really benefit humanity and would help us in our mission to bring the Kingdom of God to earth.
As followers of Jesus, we really need to stand for truth, justice, and love. If we don't, then what hope is there for the world?
I'd just like to say first that I am glad New Word Alive have decided to put in a sermon series on emotion. Emotion is an issue that has been neglected in many evangelical circles and it is great that the New Word Alive leadership have decided to give this issue an airing. The importance of and hunger for teaching on emotion is obviously at the forefront of people's minds, as the venue for this session yesterday couldn't accommodate everyone who was interested and we had to move into a larger theatre today.
The speaker was obviously a man who loved Jesus deeply and wanted to live a godly life. I want to make clear that I am not trying to disrespect him.
What I want to do is draw attention to some things I found worrying about his talk, and some beliefs that I feel are counterproductive and dangerous.
"I dont know much about psychology"
I approached the speaker after his talk to feed back some of my concerns. I thanked him for his talk and for how he had shared. I said I had worked with acutely mentally ill people, and that although what he had said might be relevant to many people without mental health issues or emotional disorders, I didn't think what he said was true of those with mental illness. For them, emotions were not just a matter of "heart values" which they could control using their will and self-control. And their origin wasn't primarily in their "heart values" but a range of complex genetic and social factors.
He was polite and gracious. He said, "I don't know much about psychology." He told me he thought there may be original feelings that sparked everything else up in mental illness, and these feelings were rooted in heart values. And they could try and deal with these in the ways that he'd outlined - that is, to evaluate your heart values and try and love the right things, based in scriptural truth.
What this speaker said really disturbs me. I worry because it is not based on research and well-established psychological insights, but just based on what he thought might be true. This man has written a book on emotions and claims to be an expert in this area - but he doesn't know about key psychological evidence and practice.
This is extremely worrying. In that room there were hundreds of people listening to his teaching. Although he had claimed that the area of emotions is very complicated and muddy, he did put forward his approach as a universal one. He didn't make a disclaimer that this wasn't appropriate for people with mental health issues, which is dangerous, given that, as he confessed he doesn't know much about psychology.
To be honest, I am pretty appalled by this. I don't think it's unreasonable to expect that someone speaking with authority on a certain issue would have done in depth research about that issue, and would actually be teaching true, solid and evidence-based information. I understand that he was trying to base it all on the Bible, but the Bible doesn't tell us how to deal with mental illness. Like many other issues, we have to figure it out using discernment and wisdom.
I don't know in what other sector it would be acceptable for an expert speaker to say outright that they didn't know much about the issue they were talking about, and to still have their opinion treated with the sort of authority speakers have here.
"I'm not an expert on phobias... I'm not keen on people going to expert counsellors"
I was really disappointed - and frankly, quite angry - by one bit of the talk in particular. The speaker mentioned phobias. "I'm not an expert on phobias," he said. "In certain situations, it might be good for someone struggling with a phobia to go and talk to a counsellor. But I'm not keen on people going to expert counsellors, as I think we should deal with things within the church. The reason why it might be good for some people to go to an expert counsellor is because they know what kind of questions to ask to help people understand what values are driving them."
Huge alarm bells went off in my head when he said this. First of all, he offered advice about phobias - a serious mental health issue that needs expert care and management - while at the same time professing to not know much about them. If I offered you medical advice about a chronic heart condition,  then said I wasn't an expert on chronic heart conditions, would you accept that? Would that be worth listening to?
Would that be responsible if I were a massively respected teacher and speaker, being heard by hundreds?
The other thing that disturbed me was this notion of keeping things inside the church; . I confess that I was angered, having encountered lots of resistance within certain Christian circles to counselling and emotional support in the past. If you are struggling with a serious mental health issue (like a phobia), you need help from a qualified professional. It is not appropriate to go to a church leadership team, who are not qualified to give specialist help to people struggling with mental health issues.
Again, a medical analogy. If you have a broken leg, is it appropriate to go to your church leadership team to help you recover? No. You go to a doctor.
It's a no-brainer.
So why do speakers like the one I heard today openly say they are not keen on people going "outside the church" to see expert counsellors, including people with mental disorders like phobias? Why is this ignorance about mental health so prevalent in churches?
Ignorance and stigma
Like I said before, I honestly think that the speaker was a nice guy. I got the sense that he genuinely doesn't know much about mental illness and mental health. He genuinely thinks that with the help of God, Christians should be able to control their emotions by making sure they have the "right heart" and "love the right things"- primarily, salvation, Scripture and God.
But the whole situation saddens and angers me. Because as Christians, as the Church, we should be at the forefront of standing up for truth and fighting against stigma when it comes to mental health. But instead, ignorant beliefs about mental health abound within Christian communities.
The speaker claimed that emotions originate from our "heart values"- that if we have the right values and perspective, that we desire godly things, our emotions will be right and godly. He said at one point that they are ultimately our responsibility and can be controlled by our will. Although there are influencing factors, like our upbringing and our health, the origin of our emotions is our heart.
Beliefs like these are out of touch with solid evidence and psychological research that has been accumulated over the past decades. In cases of mental illness, this kind of explanation is just circumspect. And it is loosely extrapolated from Scripture - the Bible doesn't offer a theory of emotions, just metaphors and descriptions of. So much research has been done into the origin of emotions and mental health issues, which the speaker just doesn't take into account at all.
Not only are the beliefs based on ignorance, but they also feed stigma. The notion that our emotions can be controlled by our will in this way is hugely simplistic. It feeds the notion that "bad, ungodly emotions" are our fault. And this is plainly untrue for mentally ill people. They can't control their episodes by will. Their conditions don't have anything to do with their moral goodness or their acceptance of God's salvation. They are ill, and it isn't their fault. They can't control it in this way, even if they are faithful Christians.
People are mentally ill not because they are weak or at fault or can't snap out of their wrong emotions. To preach these kinds of stigmatising, ignorant things is unworthy of the gospel.
Christians need to be the best at what we do
A church leader can't be expected to be an expert in psychology and mental health if they have not been trained and qualified in this field. This goes without saying. So they shouldn't claim expertise in this issue and go on to give guidance that affects 1 in 4 people struggling with mental illness. It's inappropriate and highly dangerous. It can destroy lives.
So why shouldn't churches work with counsellors and mental health professionals "outside the church"? They are trained, qualified and are in the best position to give people the help they need. And there are committed Jesus-followers who work in these fields. We should be working together.
Dave said some wise words to me a while ago. He said that as Christians, we should be the best at whatever we do. If you're a teacher, you should be the best teacher in your school. If you're a nurse, you should be the most caring and effective nurse in the hospital. If you're a social worker, you should be the most compassionate, well-informed person in the sector.
We are doing what we do for the Lord.
So we need to be at the forefront of advances and discoveries in every field in which we work. Christians are everywhere, and we need to do what we do well.
This is partly why this talk made me feel so frustrated and sad. Because it was so symptomatic of churches' lax engagement with important discoveries in "secular" culture. Discoveries that really benefit humanity and would help us in our mission to bring the Kingdom of God to earth.
As followers of Jesus, we really need to stand for truth, justice, and love. If we don't, then what hope is there for the world?
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