Jesus, Positive Thinking, and Mental Health

Physical health is on a continuum. Few are perfectly healthy. Sometimes, the apparently healthy suddenly suffer a brain tumour, an aneurysm, a stroke or a heart attack. Their apparently healthy body concealed malignancies.

Similarly, mental health is on a continuum too. When someone totally loses it, and is obviously “mad” enough to be sectioned, we say they’ve lost touch with reality.

But how few of us see reality as it really is.  With a God’s eye view. As Jesus taught us to see it.

If we could train ourselves to think the way Jesus taught us to, what splendid mental health we’d have!!

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Jesus’s teaching was strikingly positive.

And here are a few ways I am trying to train myself to think the way Jesus taught us too. And better mental health will be a fringe benefit of this.

1 He taught us not to be afraid. "Do not be afraid," echoes through the Gospels. Most of our fears never come to pass. And even when our anxious minds help produce the very thing we most dread, God’s help is available to help us deal with it. 

There is a difference between prudence (adjusting one’s actions because an adverse outcome is very likely), and fear: irrational dread!

2 Jesus told us not to worry about anything at all. What a splendid recipe for mental health, freeing us from circular and literally sickening worry. Worry is particularly unproductive, because most of our worries (like our fears) don’t come to pass, and, again, God’s help is available in our worst case scenarios.

3 Jesus advises us not to judge. We recently had house-guests about whom I felt negative and judgmental. Telling yourself not to judge can be like commanding someone not to think about a pink elephant!!

So, as always in the spiritual life, you overcome a negative thought or habit with a positive. And so I thanked God about everything good about them—and, thank God, there was rather a lot!!—and all the good things they had done, and felt substantially more positive about the visit before they came.

4 Another startling bit of advice Jesus gives is forgiving if you have aught against any. How sweeping.

When specific grievances surface in my conscious mind, I attempt to dissolve them by thanking God for the good things about the person, by praying for the person as whole-heartedly as I can, and by praying for grace to turn the acid and claws of my feelings towards that person into sweetness.

Any hatred--towards nations, for instance--is as harmful to our mental and emotional health as hated of individuals. I recently talked to a Christian man who was consumed, to the point of mild insanity, with his hatred of the USA and all the harm and evil its foreign policy has done. Releasing aught against any would require him to release his hatred of the US—not for the sake of the US, but for his own sake.

I’ve similarly know two American Christian men who are consumed by their hatred and dislike of Barack Obama. Gosh, I have never witnessed such hatred towards a politician as many American Christian nurture towards Obama.   If I hated Obama as much as these two friends of mine appear to, I would need to “forgive” him before I stood praying to keep a clear stream and channel of grace open between me and God.

Far-fetched? I remember Catherine Marshall saying she had to forgive Henry VIII for his desecration of monasteries as part of her releasing aught against any.

5 Another instruction of Jesus which is great for mental health is “Do not let your hearts be troubled; neither let them be afraid. Trust in the Father, trust also in me.”

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So many of Paul’s precepts are about following Christ in the secret place of the thoughts.

Rejoice always; in everything give thanks. Believe everything works out for good.

Paul’s life was full of extreme pressures—both glorious preaching, miracles and influence, and imprisonment, solitary confinement, floggings, slander, and disgrace.  

 The mental health and strength he cultivated in the secret places of his heart kept him sane, productive and creative in the very dire places of his life, such as the dreadful Mamertine Dungeon from which he wrote his most joyful and inspiring letters.