Here's the basic thesis. Much of our imagination about how God works in our lives has been shaped by soteriology, our beliefs about salvation. That is, when we talk about God's actions in the world we mostly talk about how God saves us. This creates a habit of mind, an imagination about the shape and nature of God's actions in our lives. But this imagination, while appropriate for talking about salvation, isn't always the best for thinking about mental health and well-being. Basically, we import a soteriological imagination into therapeutic contexts where it is ill-suited.
This is especially so in Protestant spaces where the soteriological imagination tends to focus on justification, God saving us by declaring us righteous. Justification becomes a template for how God works in our lives, and this creates unrealistic and triumphalistic expectations about divine action within our mental health journey.
What might that template of divine action look like? Salvation-as-justification has these characteristics:
- Immediate
- Complete/Total
- Permanent/Irreversible
- Passive
- Spiritual/Gnostic
Let's walk through the list.
By "immediate" we experience justification as an event that happens in a moment. Justification is instantaneous.
Relatedly, justification is total and complete. We aren't 34.7% justified. We're 100% justified.
Salvation is also considered in Reformed and Calvinistic spaces to be permanent and irreversible. And if not permanent, then pretty durable and hard to lose. We don't move in and out of salvation.
We also experience salvation passively. We cannot justify or save ourselves. Salvation is wholly the work of God and we are its passive recipients.
Lastly, salvation is experienced as "Gnostic." By "gnostic" I mean the event is largely invisible and spiritual. Justification is something that transpires in my relationship with God. Justification doesn't affect my physical body.
So, that is what I mean by a "template" of divine action. Because we mainly think about justification when we think about God's impact upon our lives, the list above comes to shape our imagination regarding how God acts in the world. When God acts in our lives those actions and effects are immediate, complete, permanent, passively received, and Gnostic (affecting the spiritual rather than the physical).
And yet, while these descriptions are perfectly legitimate for soteriological conversations about justification they are wholly unrealistic when it comes to our pursuit of mental well-being. Consider how we experience our mental health journey. Our pursuit of mental wholeness is experienced as:
- Slow
- Incremental
- Faltering
- Effortful
- Embodied
As should be obvious, this list is pretty much the exact opposite of our soteriological expectations in regards to justification. Healing takes time, often over many years. It's an incremental, step by step journey. We can also stumble and fall. We experience setbacks. The process is hard and effortful. There's no silver bullet, just the work. Finally, well-being and wholeness are embodied. There are biological aspects that need to be examined and addressed.
Here’s the big implication. Many of the desolations we experience with our mental health struggles, I would argue, are due to clashing expectations related to the lists above. A lot of the confusions about how God relates to our mental health happen because we are importing soteriological expectations into our mental health journey. When facing something like severe depression our expectation is that God will act in our lives immediately, completely, permanently, passively, and Gnostically to resolve that depression. These soteriological assumptions create the triumphalistic expectations about mental health that we find within prosperity-gospel spaces. Mental health issues can be “fixed” in exactly the same way God justifies sinners. Say a prayer and your depression will go away. The Sinner’s Prayer becomes the paradigmatic model of divine action and the sole approach for addressing mental health.
This isn’t to say God has no impact upon our mental health. Just that God’s influence in our lives in regards to our mental health will be experienced as slower, more effortful, incremental, and embodied. People dealing with mental illness will be better equipped if they have these sorts of expectations. By contrast, importing soteriological assumptions into this domain sets people up for disappointment. The person might turn away from God, feeling that God has abandoned them. Or the person might come to blame themselves for not having enough faith.
But slowness isn’t a sign of God’s absence. Taking it step by step doesn’t mean God has failed you. Having a setback doesn’t mean God isn’t with you. Doing the work isn’t a lack of faith. Using medication isn’t a spiritual failure. Thinking otherwise means you’re mis-imagining how God acts within our lives on our journey toward wholeness and well-being.
