Emotionally Healthy Christianity
Emotionally Healthy Christianity
By Dr. George CrabbThe world thought Jesus was insane.
“There was a division therefore again among the Jews for these sayings. And many of them said, He hath a devil, and is mad; why hear ye him?” (John 10:19-20)
“And the multitude cometh together again, so that they could not so much as eat bread. And when his friends heard of it, they went out to lay hold on him: for they said, He is beside himself.” (Mark 3:20- 21)
“Hang that question up in your houses, ‘What would Jesus do?’ and then think of another, ‘How would Jesus do it?’ for what he would do, and how he would do it, may always stand as the best guide to us.” Charles Spurgeon
“When the whole world is running toward a cliff, he who is running in the opposite direction appears to have lost his mind.” C.S. Lewis
Jesus was the most certifiably sane person to ever walk the planet.
We Must Remain Engaged With The Truth:
#1 Study of the Word of God
“I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which isyour reasonable service. And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.” (Romans 12:1-2)
#2 Prayer
#3 Fellowship / Worship
“And let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works: Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another: and so much the more, as ye see the day approaching.” (Hebrews 10:24)
The Twelve Habits of Emotionally Healthy Christians:
#1 Seek to Serve
“There is that scattereth, and yet increaseth; and there is that withholdeth more than is meet, but it tendeth to poverty.The liberal soul shall be made fat: and he that watereth shall be watered also himself.” (Proverbs 11:24)
“I have shewed you all things, how that so labouring ye ought to support the weak, and to remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he said, It is more blessed to give than to receive.” (Acts 20:35)
“Even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many.”
(Matthew 20:28)
Those who are happiest are those who do the most for others.
Our fleshly tendency is to take. There are three groups of people we can look at:
“Matchers” – I’ll give as much as you give.
“Shortchangers” – I’m going to give you less than you give me.
“Riskers” – I’m going to give to you whether you give to me or not.
#2 View Reality Accurately
“And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” (John 8:32)
“Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.” (Philippians 4:8)
“The Bible was not given for our information but for our transformation.” Dwight Moody
Indeed, one can be deceived in many ways; one can be deceived in believing what is untrue, but on the other hand, one is also deceived in not believing what is true. “Egocentrically” – take everything personally. This distorts reality. The numerous lies we believe and the depth in which we believe them are a huge part of what makes our lives emotionally unhealthy and our interpersonal relationships troubled.
How we distort reality:
Magnification – make something bigger than it is.
Minimization – make something smaller than it is.
Personalization – make things all about you.
Polarization – turn everything into a black or white situation.
Selective abstraction – you focus on a detail out of context so that you miss the larger message.
Overgeneralization – predict a negative future from a previous event.
Emotional reasoning – feelings get in the way of seeing the truth for what it is.
Jesus’ emotional health was that He always mentally “filtered” everything He experienced through the truth. Jesus viewed everything through the lens of truth. To become emotionally healthy Christians, we must dedicate ourselves to thinking the way Jesus thought.
#3 Take Appropriate Responsibility
“Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual, restore such an one in the spirit of meekness; considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted. Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ. For if a man think himself to be something, when he is nothing, he deceiveth himself. But let every man prove his own work, and then shall he have rejoicing in himself alone, and not in another. For every man shall bear his own burden.” (Galatians 6:1-5)
“So then every one of us shall give account of himself to God.” (Romans 14:12)
You are only young once, but you can live immature for a lifetime… Maturity doesn’t come with age but begins with the acceptance of responsibility. One mistake is to take too much responsibility (neurotic), and the other is to take too little (character disorder). If you want to be an emotionally healthy Christian, you need to agree to the following: I am 100% responsible for how I think, feel, and act, and others are 100% responsible for how they think, feel, and act. If we agree on that, we can do a much better job of resolving conflict when it takes place in our relationships. What others do or say triggers us to feel and act the way we do, but it doesn’t cause our feelings and actions. Jesus is the only person who took full responsibility for everything He felt and did.
Example:
“And Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, and the seats of them that sold doves, And said unto them, It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves.” (Matthew 21:12-13)
Jesus was neither neurotic nor character-disordered in how He went about His life. He never blamed others for how He felt and acted, and He never accepted blame for how others felt and acted.
#4 Delay Gratification Properly
“This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh.” (Galatians 5:16)
“Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul;” (1 Peter 2:11)
The ability to discipline yourself to delay gratification in the short term in order to enjoy greater rewards in the long term is the indispensable prerequisite for success. One of the many challenges we face in life is learning to delay gratification rather than instantly indulging it. The Christian life is the longest delay-of-gratification project we will ever undertake given that we are to properly delay gratification here on earth to build up rewards in heaven that we will enjoy forever. A life of indulging every pleasure is the path to self-destruction and harm to those around you. (Solomon) The problem is not our desire for pleasure but rather our willingness to rein in those desires. We must let God meet our need for pleasure at the right time and in the right way and develop greater self-control over time.
#5 Listen Wholeheartedly
“He that answereth a matter before he heareth it, it is folly and shame unto him.” (Proverbs 18:13)
“Wherefore, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath:” (James 1:19)
Deep listening is miraculous for both listener and speaker. When someone receives us with open-hearted, non-judging, intensely interested, our spirits expand. Many people don’t really listen. Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply. It takes effort and energy to truly listen. We want to hear what they aren’t saying. Listening to the meaning behind the words. This is another reason that people felt so loved by Jesus – they had never been listened to in such a deep and penetrating way before, and it shook them to the core.
#6 Forgive and Seek Forgiveness
“Forbearing one another, and forgiving one another, if any man have a quarrel against any: even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye.” (Colossians 3:13)
“And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you.” (Ephesians 4:32)
Not only do we struggle to seek forgiveness when we act badly; we also struggle to offer forgiveness when someone has acted badly toward us. First, when you are the one being hurtful, you have to own your actions, feel the pain the other person is in, ask for forgiveness, and make amends; and you must do all this with no strings attached. When you are the one who is hurt, you must be willing to forgive the person who mistreated you whether they are sorry or not. Forgiveness is at the very heart of Christianity. It is central to our relationship with Jesus.
#7 Face Problems Head – On
“Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.” (Matthew 6:34)
“These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33)
The best way out is through. We become our own worst enemies when we run from our problems. Jesus never ran from a problem.
To be an emotionally healthy Christian, we must face the problems life throws our way rather than run from them, and we need to be willing to properly help others face their problems when called to do so. There is no non-suffering path in life when it comes to having problems. Be a problem-facer rather than a problem-avoider.
#8 Anchor Worth in God
“I will praise thee; for I am fearfully andwonderfully made: marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well.” (Psalm 139:14)
“And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.” (Genesis 1:31)
Christianity preaches the infinite worth of that which is seemingly worthless and the infinite worthlessness of that which is seemingly so valued. God’s love does not love that which is worthy of being loved, but it creates that which is worthy of being loved.
One of the biggest lies you will ever encounter is the idea that worth equals performance. Emotionally healthy Christians don’t tie their sense of worth to their performance. They are wise enough to anchor their worth in being fearfully and wonderfully made by God in His image.
When we find our worth in our God, it frees us to treat others in a loving, kind, and gracious way. The Pharisees saw the woman caught in adultery as worthless; Jesus saw her as priceless. The Pharisees saw her worthy of contempt and condemnation; Jesus saw her worthy of grace and kindness. How we treat others shows whether we see people as having worth or being worthless. When we understand that people have worth because God made them in His image, we will treat them well. When we see them as worthless, we are more likely to pick up stones and presume to punish them for their sins.
Your worth is being created in God’s image. I’m not a big fan of the notion of “self-worth.” Self-worth implies that worth comes from self, something that inevitably ties it to how smart, talented, moral, and socially adept you are. There is no such thing as self-worth, only God-worth. It is crucial that we anchor our worth to God and God only. Let God set you free from the bondage of performance-based worth so you can experience a fuller taste of the abundant life.
#9 Have Compassion
“But 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)
“Put on therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, longsuffering;” (Colossians 3:12)
It is important to remember that underneath every struggle to forgive is the struggle to have compassion for the person who hurt us. Forgiveness and compassion always go hand-in-hand. Cold-hearted, non-compassionate Christians are an oxymoron; they bring dishonor to God and turn people away from the cause of Christ. Warm-hearted, compassionate Christians emulate Jesus’ character. They bring honor to God and draw people to the cause of Christ.
Jesus felt deep compassion for the people He encountered. He never felt cold or indifferent. Compassion is good, but compassion in action is better. For an emotionally healthy Christian, compassion for the pain and suffering of others is the only proper way to live. The ability to have compassion for others means that you have learned how to set yourself aside, focus on the hurting human being in front of you, walk in their shoes about what they are going through, and communicate to them that you genuinely care.
#10 Grow in Self-Awareness
“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” (Jeremiah 17:9)
“Either how canst thou say to thy brother, Brother, let me pull out the mote that is in thine eye, when thou thyself beholdest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, cast out first the beam out of thine own eye, and then shalt thou see clearly to pull out the mote that is in thy brother's eye.” (Luke 6:42)
Of all the people Jesus encountered, He seemed the most upset with the Pharisees. They were blind to their own defects. They had very little self-awareness. The Pharisees were the most toxic and unhealthy people Christ encountered in His day-to-day activities. They were judgmental, arrogant, and cold-hearted. They misunderstood God and how blind they were to their own flaws.
“Woe to You” sermon:
“But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in yourselves,neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye devour widows' houses, and for a pretence make long prayer: therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves. Woe unto you, ye blind guides, which say, Whosoever shall swear by the temple, it is nothing; but whosoever shall swear by the gold of the temple, he is a debtor! Ye fools and blind: for whether is greater, the gold, or the temple that sanctifieth the gold? Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone. Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess. Thou blind Pharisee, cleanse first thatwhich is within the cup and platter, that the outside of them may be clean also. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness. Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! because ye build the tombs of the prophets, and garnish the sepulchres of the righteous, And say, If we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets. Wherefore ye be witnesses unto yourselves, that ye are the children of them which killed the prophets.” ((Matthew 23:13-17, 23-31)
These sayings expressed Jesus’ distaste for when anyone refused to admit they had anything wrong with them while seeing nothing but planks in everyone else’s eyes. The Pharisees were the poster children for those who saw themselves as flawless and everyone else as deeply flawed.
A key mark of an emotionally healthy follower of Christ is a high degree of self-awareness concerning “the good, the bad, and the ugly” inside them and a willingness to take the plank out of their own eye when it comes to owning their own stuff. A lack of self-awareness in relationships is toxic and damages both people involved. Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.
While Christ had perfect self-awareness, He shared a story about someone who seemed to have little, if any, self-awareness at all. Let’s zero in on this story of one man whose arrogant, un-self-aware words will echo throughout the ages.
“And he spake this parable unto certain which trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others: Two men went up into the temple to pray; the one a Pharisee, and the other a publican. The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican. I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess. And the publican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner. I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other: for every one that exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.” (Luke 18:9-14)
Jesus aimed this parable squarely at the self-righteousness of the Pharisees. The Pharisee had little, if any, self-awareness. The tax collector, on the other hand, was self-aware. When I think about this issue of self-awareness, I’m always drawn back to this verse:
“If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” (1 John 1:8)
We need to stop kidding ourselves. We all have numerous blind spots when it comes to the truth about how we really are, especially the dark side of who we are. When it comes to self-awareness, we are all “looking through a glass, darkly”
(1 Corinthians 13:12). If you want to be an emotionally healthy Christian, you must allow God to hold up whatever mirrors He wants when it comes to your flaws and defects. Strangely enough, sometimes we’re also blind to our good qualities, and our gracious and kind God wants to show us those as well.
#11 Handle Anger Well
“Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath: Neither give place to the devil.” (Ephesians 4:26-27)
“Be not hasty in thy spirit to be angry: for anger resteth in the bosom of fools.” (Ecclesiastes 7:9)
“Wherefore, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath: For the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God.” (James 1:19-20)
Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured. Some of us have anger problems because we get angry too frequently. Some have a anger problems because our anger is too intense. Some of us have anger problems because of the duration of our anger.
There are numerous ways to mishandle anger:
“Stuffing it”
“Spewing it”
“Passive-aggressive”
“Self-medicate”
“Perfection”
We are to be angry about the right things in the right way at the right time. Christ’s anger was always perfectly righteous, but far too often, our anger is imperfect and unrighteous.
“But now ye also put off all these; anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy communication out of your mouth. Lie not one to another, seeing that ye have put off the old man with his deeds; And have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him:” (Colossians 3:8-10)
I want to encourage you to keep following in the psychological footsteps of Jesus by practicing these biblical commands: Speak the truth in love (Eph 4:15), tell people face to face when you have a problem with how they are mistreating you, others, and God (Mat 18:15), and use great boldness in your speech (2 Cor 3:12). Bear with others in love (Eph 4:2), be angry but don’t express it sinfully (Eph 4:26), and don’t think more highly of yourself than you ought (Rom 12:3).
#12 Agape-Love Neighbors
“And one of the scribes came, and having heard them reasoning together, and perceiving that he had answered them well, asked him, Which is the first commandment of all? And Jesus answered him, The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord: And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment. And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these.” (Mark 12:28-31)
“A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.” (John 13:34-35)
Noy everyone is your brother or sister in the faith, but everyone is your neighbor, and you must love your neighbor.
Agape love – unconditional, sacrificial love. Agape love promotes a person’s growth and meets their physical, emotional, and spiritual needs.Jesus founded His ministry on agape love. Jesus met people’s needs and enabled their growth.
There are two primary ways we can love God and two primary ways we can love our neighbor. First, loving God means obeying His commandments.
“He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him.” (John 14:21)
“For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments: and his commandments are not grievous.” (1John 5:3)
Second, loving God means meeting the needs of others.
“For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me. Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink? When saw we thee a stranger, and tookthee in? or naked, and clothed thee? Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee? And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.” (Matthew 25:35-40)
We can agape-love our neighbors in two primary ways – meeting their needs and fostering their growth.
