Good Mental health is good spiritual health

Jesus said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.” – Matthew 22:37-40, NKJV

When a lawyer – an all-consumed person who spent his time studying the Law of God – asked Jesus the loaded question: of all the commandments, which was the greatest, without hesitation, Jesus grabbed a line from the Torah, and another from the script the Levitical priests were to follow during worship.

And then he did what he always seems to do. He took something old and made it new. In essence, he said, “First love God and secondly love people.” What’s often left out of the “Love God. Love People” slogans we use in the church today is love your neighbor as yourself.

I find the church does a great job teaching us to love God and to love our neighbors, but we often spend far less time asking what it really means to love people the way we should love ourselves. If anything, we’re actually taught how not to love ourselves, at least too much, as this creates self-pride that just gets in our way.

What’s left as a result, though, is that many Christians quietly assume caring for their own mental or emotional well-being is somehow selfish, rather than an important part of faithful discipleship.

Connected Health

Many good books have changed the way I think or the way I see the world, but there aren’t many that have actually changed the way I live. When I first read The Emotionally Healthy Church, by Peter Scazarro, I realized for the first time in my life that emotions carry just as much weight as a healthy spiritual life.

Still, I balked at his statement, “It’s impossible to be spiritually mature while remaining emotionally immature.” This is, until I began to realize how much this was true in my own life.

I resisted that idea for years. Even when my doctor told me I was suffering from depression, I remember thinking (not seriously), “I’m a Christian, Doc. We don’t get depressed.”

As a pastor, I assumed my struggles were primarily spiritual. I’d just tell people my emotions were like the Book of Psalms, questioning God one moment, but trusting Him by the end. But when I first started receiving therapy to help me unwind some patterns of thought I had created, I noticed the maturity in my spiritual walk.

I began to realize my depression wasn't simply the result of “not focusing on Jesus enough,” it was very much connected to what I was eating, how much I exercised, the environments I put myself in, as well as how often I prayed.

When Jesus is speaking to people with Eastern cultural ears, they didn’t hear what we hear on this side of the world. When he says, heart, soul, and mind, his audience hears the same thing in three different ways. Western culture often encourages us to separate our spiritual, emotional, intellectual, and physical lives into distinct compartments. But I don’t think this is how we are actually designed.

Scripture speaks of the human person much more holistically. We really can’t separate our mind from our emotions; our emotions from our body. We are more than what James K.A. Smith calls “brains on sticks.”

We are embodied spirits. If God wanted us to just be spirits, He wouldn’t have given us bodies. If He didn’t want us connected to our bodies, He wouldn’t have given us a soul of emotions. They function together as one integrated whole. And for this reason, to care for the mind God created is one way we love the God who created it.

If our spiritual life cannot be neatly separated from our mental and emotional life, then biological burnout, anxiety, and depression are not spiritual failures. They are human realities.

Caring for the Mind is an Act of Worship

Much of our spiritual walk is about “stewardship.” How we handle our resources, our money, our time. When we care for our mental health, we aren't pulling attention away from God; we are stewarding the very temple He chose to live in.

And since we are a whole person, our integrated minds and bodies require physical rhythm and rest to maintain spiritual health. And because God made us as integrated people, He often restores us through integrated means.

Prayer draws us toward God.

The Christian community reminds us we are not alone.

Sabbath restores the rhythms that chronic hurry has stolen.

Wise counseling or therapy helps us untangle wounds and unhealthy patterns.

None of these competes with one another. Together, they are ways God cares for the whole person He created.

Connected to Community

Because we are made in God’s image, we were created for relationship. I think we often forget that the Trinity is a community. It reveals that the relationship is woven into the very nature of God. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit exist in perfect love and communion.

The same is true within us as His creation. If God wanted us to be alone, He wouldn’t have made others. It was his plan and desire to have a community. Not only God with us, but us with each other.

What is so ironic is that in our efforts to really know ourselves, we have become more individualistic rather than dependent on the community Christ was pointing us toward. Our relationships affect our inner lives just as our inner lives affect our relationships.

Bringing Our Whole Selves

Just as Jesus never intended us to love God with only our spirit while ignoring our minds, he never intended us to serve others while neglecting ourselves. Nor did He create us to pursue our healing in isolation.

The Great Commandment isn’t three competing loves; it’s three relationships that flourish together. As we learn to receive God’s love, steward the whole person He created, and live in authentic community, we become more capable of loving both God and our neighbors.

Good mental health isn’t the goal of the Christian life, but it is one of the ways we faithfully care for the life God has entrusted to us. To care for the mind God created, to rest the body He formed, and to nurture the relationships He designed is not a distraction from loving God; it is one of the ways we love Him.

We bring Him not just our prayers, but our whole selves. And as we become healthier, we become more capable of loving our neighbors as ourselves.

That’s probably why Jesus never separated those commands in the first place.