{when faith and antidepressants aren't always polar opposites}

"You just want to believe in chemical imbalance so you don't have to take responsibility for your depression...You don't need medication. It's a cop-out so you don't have to have faith."   

I sank to the edge of my bed in disbelief, feeling the breath rush from my lungs, as those words lit up the screen of my phone. 

Having been brought up in a family which had always attributed mental illness to spiritual causes, it took nothing short of my hospitalization due to a suicide attempt for my parents to reluctantly allow their 16 year old daughter to be prescribed antidepressants. 

Their resistance largely stemmed from a deeply held belief in certain Christian circles that mental illness is spiritual in nature; and therefore, all it takes is enough prayer, Bible reading, faith, and trust in God in order for you to be 'all better'.  

Unfortunately, this isn't always limited to just mental illness. I know plenty of people who don't believe in pharmaceutical medication at all, for anything, choosing rather to rely on positive affirmations, 'claiming God's promises', and homeopathic remedies.

The difference, though, is that abstaining from medication for physical ailments (such as the pain from a broken leg, etc) is looked upon skeptically. While refusal to take medicine for mental illness, on the other hand, and instead claiming that it is all spiritual and can be cured spiritually, is still very much the general Christian reaction. 

I cannot count the number of times I've been told I ought to "just have faith, claim God's promises, oh and have you tried Bible memorization?" 

"Depression is a result of unconfessed sin in your life / dabbling in the occult, and if you simply trusted God more you wouldn't have anxiety or panic attacks!" 

But there are several flaws in this thinking. First, it presupposes that God will never allow us to experience things which are not conventionally viewed as 'health'. However, Paul and his thorn in the flesh could tell you otherwise. Sometimes God doesn't 'heal' in the way we want Him to, because He wants us to grow closer to Him, or to help others through the way we handle our hardships. 

Additionally, there may very well be a spiritual component when someone struggles with depression or anxiety. Not all depression is caused by a chemical imbalance. Not all anxiety is misfiring brain chemicals. On the other hand, it's really not our place to determine whether someone's mental illness is spiritual or not.

In one of my favorite analogies ever....if someone is drowning, you don't yell at them that they need to learn how to swim. You throw them a life preserver. Might they need to learn how to swim? Possibly. Or possibly they are a world-class swimmer who has happened to get caught in the undertow. If you're standing there watching them drown, it is not your place to determine whether or not they need to learn how to swim. It's your place to throw them a life preserver. 

Additionally, even if they do need to learn how to swim eventually, when you're drowning, you can't learn how to swim. You first have to get to a place where you're no longer drowning, before you can learn how to swim. 

Go ahead and pray for someone. Go ahead and encourage them to pray. But it is counter productive to stand on the side of a boat, holding a life vest, watching someone drown not five feet away from you, and pray as they drown. Throw the life preserver as you pray. Pray as you reel them back in. Then praise God for their safety; and if they need that life preserver for the rest of their life in order to stay above water, then you thank God for providing what they need. 

And there seems to be a false dichotomy, in Christian perception of mental illness, that you either have faith or medication. You can either rely on God to heal you, or you can take medication. We have created this dichotomy where you cannot have a strong faith in God and simultaneously take medication for mental illness. 

But for me, and so many others I know, us being on medication is us having faith. 

Let me say that again: Us being on medication is us having faith. 

Because truthfully, the decision to take medication is not something we take lightly. We know medicine isn't magic, much as we sometimes wish it was. We know that there are still things that we need to work out, healthy ways to learn how to live, but sometimes we need to not be drowning and this is the provision of God. We would never dream of replacing Him with a pill.

And personally, it calls for no faith at all to take matters into my own hands, despite God's clear guidance, and take myself off of the medication. But the only place that gets me is relying on my own strength and power again to try to fight the seeming insurmountable darkness which always leaves me defeated.

What requires faith is trusting that the same God who has led me to this place can and will carry me even now. What requires faith is believing that when He said "yes" and opened these doors, He meant it. What requires faith is swallowing a small white pill and an oblong green one every day and not knowing how it will affect my brain, whether it will work or not, and praying for patience as we discover what works.

And truthfully? It takes far more faith for me to be on medication, than it would were I to take myself off of it. For some people I'm sure it's the opposite.

But to be patient, to not judge and shun those who take medication for whatever cause, and encourage them to be open to God's leading in either direction and then support them as they follow Him, is what we as Christians, and we as a church can and ought to aspire to. 

See, having faith in God and taking medication aren't always opposites. 

Sometimes they're the same thing. 

(dance... devil)

​I have a confession to make.

Suicide Squad hits theaters this weekend and I will not be among the hundreds of movie-goers sweltering in lines for their first peek at the latest DC franchise.

it's very simple. the main reason I will not be supporting the movie with my money is the main reason most people I've talked to are looking forward to the movie...otherwise known as Harley Quinn and the Joker.

Why, you ask?

Well see, I kind of have this thing where I'd rather not give my money to perpetuate stories about abusive psychopaths preying on the women who love them.

Now, before you jump on my case, vehemently protesting that 'it's just fiction! everyone recognizes that, and no one actually thinks their relationship is goals!', do us both a favor and look up 'Joker and Harley memes'.

Still don't believe me? here. take a look at some of the results.

um...excuse me...perhaps i didn't catch that....the JOKER and HARLEY as relationship goals? the only way those two ought to go together in a sentence is as relationship goals of what to be avoided at all costs. 

.....I don't care who you are, if the man you love backhands you across the face, then he doesn't love you. This isn't romance. This is abuse. 

..okay, this actually makes me sick....I could go on citing examples... but at this point it would just nauseate me further, and I think you get my drift. At least, I hope so. 

And my goal here is not to condemn anyone who watches Suicide Squad. But the difficulty with portraying relationships like Harley and the Joker's as a love story, is that it teaches young people that dysfunctional abusive relationships are love.

See, somehow we are being taught as a society, through media and books, that "screw Romeo and Juliet...the true love stories are the Joker and Harley...Christine and the Phantom....Gideon and Ana....Bella and Edward", which simultaneously breaks my heart and terrifies me. 

Have we become blind to the point of failing to recognize abuse when it's staring us right in the face? Or, even worse, justifying it under the banner of love? 

After all, Harley's famous quote?: 'He's a little rough sometimes, but he loves me...really!'.....How can we not see the enormous damage that this phrase, with its justification of abuse, does to women in abusive relationships? I can't count the number of times I've heard abuse rationalized with that phrase, or some variation of it.. I can't count the number of times I've rationalized abuse with that phrase, or some variation of it.

'he really isn't all that bad' / 'he loves me, he just has anger issues'.

'that's just the way he is..he's been hurt in the past, so it isn't really his fault he's the way he is. it's the fault of those who have hurt him'.

But no. love and dysfunction aren't equivalent. If you truly love someone, you will want what is best for them. You will want what is good and right and true and healthy to be in their lives. You do not manipulate the ones you love. You do not abuse them. And you never ever ever hit the woman you claim you love.

Love is not abuse. Love is not controlling and manipulative and distrustful. Love is not destructive. Love will not beat you and leave you in a corner. Love is not perverted. Love is not a backhand across the face while he's drunk or death threats in a fit of rage. 

True love is patient. True love is kind. True love does not envy or boast. It isn't arrogant or or rude or willful. True love isn't resentful. It doesn't fly off the handle at the slightest provocation. True love is hopeful, faithful, enduring, steady. True love builds up. It restores what is broken and heals the wounds of the heart. It does not create further scars.

True love is not abuse. True love is never abuse. It is not psychopathic devilry disguised as intense and damaged and a bit overbearing. And while it looks alluring in movies - painted as romantic, passionate, and exciting - every time you say that you want what the Joker and Harley have, this is what you're really saying you want:

You're saying you want blood and bruises and cuts and scars. You're saying you want to be backhanded across the face for any minor infractions. You're saying you want to be tied up and beaten, chained and left hanging in the basement for hours on end. You're saying you want to walk on eggshells all the time, to be terrified to cross him or make him mad. You're saying you want physical, mental, sexual, emotional, and verbal abuse. You're saying you want slavery. You're saying you want pain and humiliation....you're saying you want death.

And trust me. you do not want a relationship like they have.

Because in real life, women like Harley and Ana and Bella and Christine don't end up Happily Ever After. The end of abuse is not romance or marriage or love or happiness or health. The end of those relationships is a woman lying dead in a puddle of blood on the floor because her lover got out of hand one too many times, and she fell final victim to his cruelty. That is the dark side of our obsession with the romanticization of abusive relationships. That is what we are asking for when we romanticize relationships like Harley & the Joker or Ana & Christian or Bella & Edward.

Now obviously I shan't shun you for going to see Suicide Squad, but just remember, when your beloved daughter comes home from college with a controlling boyfriend and new bruises only to refuse to listen to your concern because 'I really love him!', or you have to watch as your daughter-in-law slowly fades away before your very eyes and you are too afraid of your son to venture recriminations, it's because we as a society teach them no better. It is because we support media which romanticizes abusive relationships, depicting them in glowing exciting terms.

And it's time to to stop. It's time to call a halt, to take a stand, to say no. 

A dance with the devil, no matter how charming initially, is living hell, ultimately resulting in a death sentence. It is not life you teach every time you hold this up as an ideal - every time you show the movie industry that romanticizing abuse makes good money. It is not life. And it is never, ever, ever love. 

A dance with the devil is death. And I opt out.