Can Mental Illness truly be cured through faith and healing alone?!
Much less the narrative that suggests "healing services" are capable of removing mental health disorders
How many of you have had this experience in the church circles? It usually goes something like this “Well, if you believe in Christ and pray hard enough, you too can be healed from whatever is afflicting you! Or you can go to a faith healer and have them “lay hands on you,” or better yet you can sow a unique love offering to the speaker, and God will receive that offering and bless you for it.
There’s a massive problem with this philosophy; Point blank, that’s not how it works. Of course, a handful of them will cite the miraculous healings that took place in the new testament. And those are legitimate cases of healing, but the healing came from Jesus himself. Big difference. Last time I checked, the only thing Benny Hinn could do was make his bank account “spiritually grow.” Too bad he’s not a big fan of taxes!
"On Wednesday afternoon, criminal investigators from the IRS and the U.S. Postal Service raided the Grapevine, Texas offices of televangelist Benny Hinn.
Today, we are here on official business, IRS criminal investigations special agent Michael Moseley told the flock of reporters who gathered to watch the slow-moving raid.
We are primarily investigating Title 26, which is tax evasion and general fraud against the government, Mosely said. We are conducting a search warrant on the premises. Basically, that's all I can tell you today.”
Benny Hinn tax evasion article.
But surely that can’t be possible; he’s a “devout man of faith.” And world-renowned! For ‘healing’ hundreds of individuals of all sorts of ailments, even claiming to “wake the dead!” But there are videos of him ‘healing’ people, so How is this possible? Simple! He’s one of the biggest douche-bag grifters out there, who preys upon the weak, desperate, and uneducated. I’ll give him one thing he’s a ‘stellar actor’ and utterly charismatic to the crowd.
But in reality, there’s a special place in hell reserved for him and his type. We should consider first-hand accounts of people who were actually at these “healing events.” and some of the things they saw. I just read a very intriguing article published from the point of view of a solid Christian, and this is an excerpt from his perspective.
(I will, however, link the full article below.)
“It also got to the point where Mr. Hinn was talking about how he was "hot with the anointing," and then he began waving his magic finger at people on stage, and people were falling down, supposedly slain in the spirit.....but the funny thing was is that it was mostly his own people that were doing this. He came on stage with about 20 or so people in the beginning, and those seemed to be the people that were falling all over the place when Mr. Hinn suddenly was "hot with the anointing" They were very careful who they let on the stage, and I know for a fact that a large portion of the people that were on the stage falling down by direction of Mr. Hinns magic finger were part of his onterage. Some of his own pastors would start running at Mr. Hinn, and Mr. Hinn would wave his magic finger, and they would start convulsing and falling down and all of that in a very over-dramatic way, and they were all the people that I saw him enter the area with. I did not see anybody from the legitimate wheelchair section get out of a wheelchair and get a healing and get up there on stage and be slain by Mr. Hinn's magic finger.”
A first-hand account from healing service.
So what are we to take away from this account? Well, first off, we have to realize that not everything we see on TV is the honest truth and even right in front of us. We also have to recognize that people are willing to do a multitude of devious things all in the name of the almighty dollar or, in a generalized phrase, “coming into possession of large sums of money.” There is much to this viewpoint, The majority of which we will not have the time or energy to dissect.
But if we could come to the point of understanding, there’s a little trickery in almost every aspect of our daily lives. Not that we’re explicitly conning people ourselves, but that the people, places, and things around us are not always as they seem. How does any of that tie into the main discussion here?!
One in which we’re told if we pray hard enough, have hands laid upon us, and believe or sow a love offering. We’ll be free of our mental illnesses and be able to live “a normal life” “the way God intended it to be.” Alright, now look, first things first, I’m no super spiritual person; I don’t pray over every meal I eat, and I have days, even weeks, where I don’t get on my knees and pray to God. And sometimes I go off ‘half cocked’ in plans, BUT I can tell you this with a clean conscience. Most mental health issues will not just go away without medical intervention, Such as meds or holistic approaches. Those people out there telling you, you can pray the illnesses away are convoluted and dangerous to your well-being by saying that, and usually! They are people of influence telling you this. DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT listen to these people. Because, more often than not, they won’t be with you in the “quiet moments” when you’re contemplating cutting or taking a bottle of pills to make the pain stop or quiet the voices… long enough to breathe
They may visit you in the hospital after the fact. But they won’t be there in your moment of need.
Hear me now, and hear me good! If you or someone you know is struggling with any form of mental illness, the worst thing, I repeat the worst thing you can do is to tell them they need to pray harder, believe more vigorously, or have someone grifter lay hands on them. No, Just No!
In today’s world, there is still a bit of a stigma surrounding mental health issues. But know this, Everyone at some point in their life deals with some level of mental health issue. Whether it’s a temporary or a lifelong diagnosis. Personally, I got the latter… My diagnosis will be with me until I go home to glory, at which point I’ll have a perfect body, mind, and soul. And I’m okay with that. Is it complicated at times to deal with my condition day in and day out? You bet. But I had to decide years ago that if I was serious about getting healthy, that included my mental health as well, so I took steps to do so. And I can tell you now that although I’m not 100% and likely never will be this side of heaven. I’m okay with who I am and where I’m currently at in life. I have a beautiful wife who holds me accountable in the good and bad. I have two wonderful kids who I adore. And a network of people both near and far that have my back. Great friends! My life may not be the “flashiest” or the most “exciting,” But I’m content with where it’s at, and that’s the most crucial factor!
That’s the thing; the older you get, the more you have to realize that the person looking back at you in the mirror will be 98% responsible, if not more, for all of your perceived problems and issues in your life. Concerning mental illness, it is a struggle for most, constantly fighting yourself. And it hardly ever truly gets easier. It’s also a never-ending battle of wits. You can play the victim card, live your life like all of your problems are directly related to everyone else around you, or you can wake up and accept responsibility for your actions! Is that a frequently traveled road? No, not really. For a percentage, yes. But the vast majority? Nope. It’s easier to say it’s someone else’s fault that you did XYZ than it is to say I made a choice; it was the wrong choice… but I made a choice! Because that means we aren’t All that and a bag of chips!
We are revisiting the mental health aspect of it. It’d be easy to believe the lie that all we have to do is go to a church service, and some speaker is going to perform magic by laying their hands on you, and some intrinsic force is going to pass through them into you and Whatever! Ails, you will be gone, never to show back up again! That’d be amazing, right? Rather than the prospect that we may have a thorn in our side for the entirety of our life and we’ll then have to learn how to deal with life while having a perpetual “thorn in our side,” one albeit that can not be removed until we see the father and embrace eternity with our maker, instead of eternal damnation.
(2 Corinthians 12:7-10)
”The Thorn in the Flesh
7And lest I should be exalted above measure by the abundance of the revelations, a thorn in the flesh was given to me, a messenger of Satan to [b]buffet me, lest I be exalted above measure. 8Concerning this thing I pleaded with the Lord three times that it might depart from me. 9And He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore most gladly I will rather boast in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. 10Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in needs, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ’s sake. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”
If I had a choice, I would assuredly choose the former. But we don’t. That’s not reality. Does that mean life will always be bleak and miserable?! Not in the least. You have to realize what you want your life to look like and evaluate the priorities in your life. Once you have that answered, you can press on.
But you have to take a good hard look at your life and the direction you want to go with it. If you fail to do so, you’ll fail to reach your goals in life effectively.
Now that’s an oversimplification of a complicated process. But the actual process of doing all of that is a necessary one.
With all that said, Let’s end this piece by saying the following. In life, there’s hardly ever an “Easy button.” If ever!
Sometimes you’re thrown a deck of cards in a language you don’t even understand, and you’re made to make sense of it…
Sometimes life knocks you down continually, pounds you into the dirt, and causes trauma. But in the midst of it all, there God is! In the lows, there God is! It’s easy to see God from the top of a mountain, the delivery room, or even the wedding altar. But what about those moments in life that kick you square in the teeth? Like when you’re told you have an estimated 5-6 months to live due to some existential disease or cancer, or how about when you get a phone call that your son or daughter was involved in a school shooting and sorry to say they didn’t make it!
What then? How do you make sense of that? Where does grief begin and sorrow end?
There are no real answers to those kinds of questions. You have to buckle up and realize that this life is not our final destination, and we’ll see them again if they were a believer or a young child.
With that same thought process, I realize mental health diagnoses are not the end of the world. Yes, they are debilitating, but you can overcome them and come out the other side. More robust, wiser, more resilient, and there is no easy button to deal with it. Or some charlatan to cure you of it. Remember that.