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The following article is concerning ‘mental illness’ and how churches handle those who are diagnosed with such. It is interesting that Paul said in Philippians 4:8 Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.
Thinking takes place in the mind. In Scripture, the mind and heart are closely related and according to the following two passages that is where our thoughts originate. Matthew 15:19 For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies:
Mark 7:21 For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders,
An article answering this issue in more detail from the Scriptures will be written later.
‘As studies continue to show how ill-equipped many churches are in ministering to Christians who struggle with mental illness, some who were once among the faithful are now speaking out about how the spiritualizing of their conditions in church culture forced them to flee. 
In a recent discussion sparked by a rant in a subreddit of more than 40,000 anonymous former Christians, many shared stories about how they were forced to suffer as their evangelical churches and family members urged them to pray away conditions such as bipolar disorder, anxiety and ADD before they were finally able to get help. Some, like one critic identified as just reib0t in the discussion, never got the help they needed until they were adults.
“I am 30 and was recently diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder,” the former Christian began.
The National Alliance on Mental Illness describes schizoaffective disorder as a chronic mental health condition characterized primarily by symptoms of schizophrenia, such as hallucinations or delusions, and symptoms of a mood disorder, such as mania and depression. It is often treated with a combination of medications and psychotherapy.
“As a TEENAGER I said to the Christian I looked up to, ‘Hey, I hear voices and see shadow people everywhere, also I want to kill myself.’ And I was told it was just ‘spiritual warfare’ and Satan fighting for my soul. I was told to NOT seek therapy because therapists work for the devil to drive people away from the Lord,” the ex-Christian wrote.
“I believed it easily because of the nature of my illness. He downplayed and contorted my illness so badly that even after I stopped believing in God, it took me years to get into therapy and get treatment. My life spiraled into drug abuse to cope, lost job after lost job, and my 20s wasted in pain,” the person wrote.
The individual explained that since they decided to get professional help, their life has changed for the better.
“I feel a lot better on medication, have better understanding, and am looking forward to my 30s being a lot better in general, but… I think back to my teenage years and wonder what my life could have been if I wasn’t Christian and got on the right meds much sooner. F**k the evangelical Christian view on mental health,” reib0t said.
About one in four Americans are estimated to suffer from some kind of mental illness in any given year, NAMI says, and many, according to LifeWay Research, turn to the church for help.
A 2014 study by the Nashville-based research organization, which was co-sponsored by the conservative organization Focus on the Family and the family of a man who endured schizophrenia, pointed to the lack of awareness and help available to Christians who turn to the church for help with mental illness.
The study found some pastors were reluctant to help those who suffer from acute mental illness because it takes too much time and that most Protestant senior pastors rarely spoke to their congregation about mental illness.
Asked to describe current church culture on mental illness, Tim Sanford, clinical director at Focus on the Family, said there has been some progress made in recent years but many churches continue to blame mental issues on sin.
“Fortunately, there has been positive movement in recent years as the church is beginning to respond to mental health issues and recognize their legitimacy. While many churches acknowledge mental illness as legitimate and are actively helping their parishioners with such issues, sadly, the belief (and subsequent responses) that anxiety or depression is sin or is a ‘lack of faith’ on the individual’s part is still too common in the body of Christ,” Sanford told The Christian Post.
“Blind adherence to a flawed ethic on mental illness can lead to unnecessary guilt, debilitating shame and fear. This, in turn, limits access to help and freedom — the kind of freedom and compassion Christ modeled and died for (John 10:10). Focus on The Family encourages believers to take a measured, integrated approach to the subject of mental health; hold to what is biblically true and accurate and also hold to what is scientifically true and research proven.”
One former Christian in the subreddit group identified as CastIronMystic, called out Focus on the Family, however, for what they described as an insensitive encounter when they once tried accessing a Christian therapist.
“I was told that I was sinning by having anxiety and intrusive thoughts. This caused me anxiety about anxiety and a spiral of feeling like I wasn’t a true Christian because a true Christian wouldn’t worry. Then there was the time I called Focus on the Family because they said they had a hotline for mental health. I got to their hotline and was matched with a cold rude and condescending mental health worker who tried to charge me $60 to match me with a Christian therapist in my area. Their hotline was a referral program that charged its patients a finder’s fee,” the individual wrote.
Sanford apologized for the encounter and debunked the notion that “true Christians” don’t worry.
“I’m very sorry this person was treated in such an uncaring manner and their relationship with Jesus was put into question because of anxiety. The statement ‘a true Christian wouldn’t worry’ is simply not true. I can only imagine the added stress and pain that statement caused this individual,” Sanford said.
He pointed out that Focus on the Family does not provide fee-based tele-mental health services nor does the organization function as a hotline service.
“We have a highly experienced and caring staff of 15 licensed and/or pastoral counselors who return calls to people requesting a consult. We are not a hotline service nor do we provide tele-mental health counseling services for a fee; rather we provide a free, one-time consultation for the caller. Our primary task during this brief consult is to assess how we can best assist the caller,” he explained.
“We will provide answers to questions as we are able, direct them toward resources that may be helpful (be it online or printed resources), make suggestions of professional treatment facilities to consider (if that is what is requested) and provide referrals to licensed counselors in the caller’s area for ongoing therapy as appropriate,” he noted.
As Christians with mental health illness struggle to find help from churches, research also suggests that the need for mental help is not just among the laity. Many pastors struggling with reconciling their mental illness with their faith have turned to suicidebecause they feel they have nowhere else to turn.
Some pastors, however, are choosing to fight back and turning to places like the Shepherd’s Canyon Retreat Ministry in Phoenix, Arizona, for help. The organization offers weeklong counseling retreats for men and women in ministry who are in the midst of various stages of burnout, stress, depression and conflicts of all kinds.
In the last 10 years, Pastor Phil Lee, a Lutheran pastor since 1981, and a licensed marriage and family therapist since 1999, who serves as the organization’s counseling care director, says he has seen 400 to 500 at-risk leaders.
He explained that rather than ignoring the spiritual nature of Christian leaders to address their mental health issues, they take an integrated approach to care.
“We are very careful not to separate the emotional and spiritual; they are interwoven. They are integrated. So our approach to mental health issues, whatever they may be, is that they are part of the overall human condition. Physical, emotional, spiritual — that is all interwoven,” Lee told CP.
“We do not take the simplistic approach, that just pray about it and it will be alright or just pray about it and it will go away. Mental illness is most always more complex than that. Folks on the more conservative end of the spectrum within Christianity often take a pretty simplistic approach — just give it to God. Just pray about it,” he said.
“It really does require different interventions along with Scripture and prayer. Many mental illnesses, for example depression, especially if it’s clinical depression, bipolar, those kinds of things, they really call for therapeutic interventions like talk therapy, counseling, sometimes medication, and other mental illnesses,” he continued. “More complex mental illness like personality disorders, those are things we usually don’t work with because they are more complex than we are prepared to deal with.”
He noted that based on the reporting collected by his organization, the need for the services they provide is “huge” in the Christian community.
Sanford explained that churches can help make churches safer for Christians who struggle with mental health issues by acknowledging that they exist, be knowledgeable about them, establish what level of mental health care ministerial staff can provide and have a trusted network of mental health professionals to which they can refer them.’ https://www.christianpost.com/news/as-churches-struggle-to-help-christians-with-mental-illness-many-flee.html?utm_source=The+Christian+Post+List&utm_campaign=f57bbeb629-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2019_02_25_05_59&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_dce2601630-f57bbeb629-2218869
What do the Holocaust and the making of Muhammad cartoons have to do with one another? For most normal thinking people they have nothing to do with each other but to the sensitive Muslim, they do!
‘Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan said that the absence of an international policy against the generation of blasphemous content is a “collective failure” on part of the Muslim countries.
Addressing the Senate for the first time as prime minister on Monday 27 August, Imran Khan said his government will raise the matter before the United Nations. 
The Senate had passed a resolution to bring the UN’s attention to the matter regarding the announcement by the leader of Dutch Freedom Party and Parliamentarian Geert Wilders to hold a competition of blasphemous caricatures.
“Our government will raise the matter in the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) and ask the Muslim countries to come up with a collective policy that could then be brought up at international forums.”
“This should have been done years ago,” PM Khan said while giving the example of the Holocaust and how four European countries have jail sentences for “anyone who misquotes the figures of Holocaust. That is because they realise that this is something that hurts the sentiments of the Jewish community.”
“We need a similar policy for this matter so that people do not repeatedly hurt our sentiments.”’ https://www.amust.com.au/2018/08/imran-khan-on-wilders-blasphemous-cartoon-competition/
So, lying about how many Jews were murdered in the Holocaust is comparable to the sentiments of the sensitive Muslim when a cartoon of Muhammad is drawn! How absurd is that?!
Well, the sensitive feeling Muslim did not need to worry for the Muhammad cartoon competition was canceled.
‘Geert Wilders said the controversial contest would not go ahead following death threats and concerns other people could be put at risk.
“To avoid the risk of victims of Islamic violence, I have decided not to let the cartoon 
contest go ahead,” the far-right opposition politician said in a written statement.
Mr Wilders, who lived for years under round-the-clock protection because of death threats sparked by his fierce anti-Islam rhetoric, said he did not want others to be endangered by the contest he had planned for November.’ https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/muhammad-cartoon-competition-cancelled-geert-wilders-netherlands-a8515801.html
Does anyone see the irony in all this? It seems the sensitive feelings of Islamists supplant the freedom of non-Muslims!
When Islamic terrorists strike Western nations those Muslims living in those Western nations tell us ‘that’s not Islam’! Well, is Pakistan’s style of Islam the real Islam? Is the Islam of Saudi Arabia true Islam? Is Iran’s Islam authentic Islam? However, there is now good news from an Islamic nation and that news concerns the Pakistani Christian woman that was sentenced to death under Islamic law but later acquitted. That good news is that ‘The Supreme Court of Pakistan has rejected a challenge to its acquittal of Asia Bibi on blasphemy charges, ensuring the Christian mother can finally join her daughters in Canada.
In 2009, the farm worker and mother of five from the small town of Itan Wali was arrested for blasphemy over an argument with some Muslim co-workers who allegedly claimed they couldn’t drink from a cup she had touched, as her Christian faith 
contaminated it. She was accused of making offensive comments about the Prophet Muhammad in the ensuing argument, in response to claims she should convert to Islam.
Bibi was subsequently beaten and allegedly raped at her home, during which her attackers coerced a blasphemy confession out of her. She was convicted in 2010 and sentenced to death by hanging. The case quickly garnered international attention, with groups such as the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) fighting on her behalf.
In October, the Supreme Court of Pakistan overturned Bibi’s conviction and authorized her immediate release. “Blasphemy is a serious offence but the insult of the appellant’s religion and religious sensibilities by the complainant party and then mixing truth with falsehood in the name of the Holy Prophet Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him) was also not short of being blasphemous,” Judge Asif Saeed Khan Khosa wrote.
The ruling sparked violent protests, and while Bibi was technically free she remained in grave danger, and she and her family had to spend this past Christmas in protective custody in an undisclosed location.
The Supreme Court upheld its October ruling on Tuesday, dismissing a challenge of it for lack of merit, the Catholic Herald reports.
“I feel huge admiration for the Supreme Court justices who, by taking this decision, have been willing to put the rule of law above every other consideration,” Liverpool human rights campaigner Lord Alton said. “We cannot forget that Asia Bibi’s case is one of many, and that, by some estimates, more than 70 people are currently on death-row for alleged blasphemy crimes.”
Bibi was elated by the news that she’ll soon be able to go to Canada to finally be with her daughters, according to a friend speaking anonymously to the Associated Press. She reportedly speaks with them daily, and has been worried for her 19-year-old who struggles with unspecified learning challenges.
“I am really grateful to everybody. Now after nine years it is confirmed that I am free and I will be going to hug my daughters,” Bibi said, according to the friend.’ https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/christian-mom-jailed-for-blaspheming-mohammed-heading-to-canada-after-court
whatyareckon 