Those with disabilities are essential to the Church.
Nov. 17, 2023
This article was originally published in the student magazine of Covenant Theological Seminary, The Common Table, Issue 7, November 2023.*
Assuming psychological disorder is no match for divine sovereignty in an individual’s salvation—and the reverse, that psychological order grants no soteriological advantage—how should we think about the choice of God to redeem into his Church individuals with deep and permanent mental disturbances, some of which perpetually hinder the individual from solid contact with reality? I don’t mean simply “Should we agree with it or not?” It’s one thing to accept this as factual and to believe God is right and just. But the deeper response of faith, it seems to me, is to heartily welcome the notion that the Church needs these individuals—if we can be permitted to speak of “them” this way—as much, possibly more, than they need “us.”[1]
This spring I watched What’s Eating Gilbert Grape four times, thinking about spiritual aspects of intellectual disability. This exercise forced me to conclude what I otherwise never would have considered: if I viewed Arnie Grape’s disordered relation to reality as a hindrance to belief in God, I would have to claim my own faith as a product of mental clarity. But no person sees with such clarity as not to require an intrusion of the Holy Spirit into their soul to bring them to life. God loves and saves the seemingly mentally disordered in the same exact way he saves the rest of us. Mental health, after all, is not binary, and we all are someplace on its spectrum.
There is a proper Christian response to mental illness that, despite its rightness, is still merely surface level. It is easy enough (although not exactly “easy”) to accept God’s inclusion of those with mental health troubles into the Church. But it is a labor of faith to commit to an understanding of mental illness as redemptive. What redemptive good could come from a mental disorder?
Arnie Grape got me on the road of raising this question; Kay Jamison began to bring me home. A renowned clinical psychologist with vast expertise in treating bipolar disorder, Dr. Jamison is also a life-long combatant of her own bipolar disorder (or manic-depressive illness, as she prefers the “outdated” terminology). Bipolar[2] disorder is a (typically) genetically inherited illness usually characterized by extreme mood alternation between episodes of mania and episodes of depression. Her book, An Unquiet Mind, grants the reader a glimpse into the inner world of someone suffering with a severe mental illness. While the author is probably correct in her suggestion that only those with manic-depressive illness can truly understand the disorder, it is nonetheless enlightening to follow her invitation into that inner world and attempt to understand her experience. And it is this experience that first suggested to me that redemptive light might emerge even out of the blackest depression.
I initially found myself somewhat shocked reading Jamison’s representation of manic-depressive illness as beneficial. After all, this disorder is often debilitating, mercilessly swinging a person from elation to despair, sometimes, as in her case, rendering many normal life tasks virtually impossible. Only by compromising with a life-numbing lithium regimen could she engage in work and relationships. And yet, from within this cruel genetic prison, she finds herself speaking positively of her illness.
Despite the severe difficulties of her life, including multiple suicide attempts, Jamison’s desire to have her own children would not be swayed even in the face of genetic risk. Bipolar life, after all, was still life. The appreciation she developed for her life became an appreciation for what was, not for what she thought it should be; this became a guiding perspective for her consideration of broader issues. For example, in her skepticism regarding the ethics of prenatal screening for bipolar disorder, she questions the ideological origin and consequent direction of such screening: “Do we risk making the world a blander, more homogenized place if we get rid of the genes for manic-depressive illness?”[3] If we can appreciate what exists, and for the moment forget our notions of what should be, we can begin to see the redemptive possibilities of what we call the disordered.
Listening to Jamison’s acceptance and positive view of her own difficulties while keeping a theological eye toward the kingdom of God and the new heavens and earth, a new perspective begins to form. When she speaks of her experiences of mania, and the benefits that had come from those experiences—periods of seemingly superhuman productivity, intoxicating perceptions of beauty no “sane” person would have ever recognized—I have to wonder if this is simply a different shade of the image of God reflected in the mania and “black depression” I was never brave or wild enough to recognize before. Her belief—and my growing opinion—is that the person with manic-depressive illness blesses the world (and, I say, the Church) precisely because she experiences the ups and downs of life more vividly (clearly?) than “normal” people. When we read through the Old Testament drama that reveals the heart of God in his experience with his people, we see intensely emotional language with soaring hopes and despairing lows, and we might ask at times if God himself is manic-depressive. Or has the sin nature clouded our ability to truly see the beauty and evil of the world without falling apart?
I am not suggesting manic-depressive illness is desirable, but maybe one of the ways God redeems this illness is by the sufferer’s mind occasionally “becom[ing] a carnival of lights”[4] because there really is that kind of wonder in God’s creation. Maybe it’s not the case, after all, that they see and feel too much, but that the rest of us see and feel too little, and maybe it’s the grace of God that protects us from seeing and feeling what we cannot handle.
I am committed—or am at least working to become so—to a refusal to see only negative in mental illness. I also refuse to limit my understanding of the divine redemption of illness purely in terms of resurrected wholeness after death. To be sure, many mental disorders are dangerous and potentially lethal and require professional treatment. This potential should never be minimized or treated casually. However, our mental health problems—our anxiety and depression, addiction and compulsion, trauma, phobia, psychoses and anxious attachments—are no barrier to the God “who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist.”[5] I tend to think this is the only reason any of us have hope.
As I invite you to reflect, converse, and take these ideas farther than I can (or correct them if they are wrong), may I offer a challenge to all of us to push the limits of how we understand mental illness with respect to 1 Corinthians 12:21-26.
21The eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you,” nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.” 22On the contrary, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, 23and on those parts of the body that we think less honorable we bestow the greater honor, and our unpresentable parts are treated with greater modesty, 24which our more presentable parts do not require. But God has so composed the body, giving greater honor to the part that lacked it, 25that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. 26If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together. (ESV)
In his commentary on this text, Gordon Fee offers this reminder: “If one removed an organ because it appeared weak, the body would cease to be whole. So with the church. All the parts are necessary, no matter what some may think.”[6]
It is not up to us who is included in the Body or what they have to offer; it is up to us to accept as essential all who have already been included.
* Reproduced here with one minor edit, the inclusion of verse 1 in the 1 Corinthians 12 passage.
[1] 1 Cor. 12:21-26.
[2] Specifically Bipolar I, although the DSM-5 describes three related disorders: Bipolar I, Bipolar II, and Cyclothymic disorder.
[3] Kay Jamison, An Unquiet Mind, (New York, NY: Vintage, 1996), 194.
[4] Jamison, An Unquiet Mind, 213.
[5] Rom. 4:17b, ESV.
[6] Gordon D. Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, ed. Ned B. Stonehouse et al., Revised Edition. The New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI; Cambridge, U.K.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2014), 679.
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