By Rafa Albolote, Juicy Ecumenism. (Photo: Adrian Swancar/Unsplash)
One in five U.S. adults deal with mental illness each year, and one in 20 U.S. adults deal with serious mental illness each year. A 2021 Lifeway survey showed that 26 percent of U.S. Protestant pastors have dealt with some type of mental illness. Given the prevalence of mental illness, a sound, biblical understanding of mental health is vital for the health of the Church.
To understand mental illness, Christians must understand what Scripture says about humanity – in other words, the Church needs a sound biblical anthropology, or a framework for “how the immaterial and material aspects of man relate to each other.”
Given this focus, an examination of the creation story at the beginning of the biblical narrative is particularly crucial. In Genesis 1:26-27, 31 “God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground. So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them…God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day.”
God designed mankind’s material existence to be GOOD. Unfortunately, ever since the fall, man’s body is marred and damaged due to sin.