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About Jesus - Steve (Stephen) Sweetman Matters
Of The Mind I am certainly not a
doctor of psychology or anything close to that, but if you are of my age,
maybe you might agree with me when I suggest that what constitutes mental
illness today has a much broader meaning than it had in the 1950's and
1960's. Like all aspects of
human health, matters of the mind have benefited from modern science.
Does the Bible have anything to say about such matters of the mind?
Read Jeremiah 17:9 in the Christian Standard Bible. "The
heart is more deceitful than anything else, and
incurable — who can understand it?" The
word "heart" in Jeremiah 17:9 is in reference to one's inner
self, soul, or mind. No matter
what version of the Bible from which you read Jeremiah 17:9, they all say
that the heart of a person is so deceitfully wicked that we have no clue
how wickedly sick we are. Further
to this, there is no human cure for this sick soul, which by the way, is
the source of all human behaviour.
According
to Jeremiah 17:9, which Romans 7 confirms in these New Testament times,
everyone is mentally sick to one degree or another.
You may claim to be mentally stable when you compare yourself to
others, and that is probably true, but God does not compare you to others.
He compares you to Himself. In
that comparison, your soul, your mind, without question is sick.
There is no scientific cure for such a sick soul.
There is, however, a divine cure.
The prescription is seen in 2 Peter 1:3.
"His divine power
has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of
him who called us by his own glory and goodness." To
be clear, I am thankful for the advancement in medical science, in all of
its various spheres. I would
be dead if not for such advancements.
I also admit that despite our depraved nature, God has fashioned us
with an inherent creative capacity that has brought medical science to
where it is today. That, for
example, includes medication that brings balance to a chemically
imbalanced mind, but it can't heal the sick soul. Jeremiah
17:9 correctly diagnoses the underlying reason for our human behavioural
ills. It's God's divine power
that resides within the true Christian that provides a measure of
stability that will get us to the day when we shed our humanity.
At that point, Jeremiah 17:9 will have become a long lost memory of
an ancient age. What a day
that will be.
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