Wanderer above the Sea of Fog, Caspar David Friedrich c. 1818 |
The search for human emotions and mental health issues in the Psalms.
I've just spent the past hour copying Psalm 4, getting my links in my browsers bookmark bar set to Psalm 4 and using various new and old calligraphy pens to write. I decided to write here some thoughts because it feels more direct to someone who is listening. I'll copy and paste this into a google doc in the folder after I write.
I started the Psalm project 168 days ago with the purpose of finding Christ in each of the Psalms.
I honestly didn't know what to expect. But as time passed and each day God gave me something pointing to Jesus in the Psalms I was excited to look for and find Jesus each day in the Psalms. Not too far into the project I noticed that the level of human emotion and mental stress was very high in some of the Psalms. Even though I had set out to essentially write an messianic Christology of the Psalms I was noticing an anthropology that needed to be looked at. So I made the plan to in 2024 give each Psalm more time by going slower and taking at least two days per Psalm and to look at the human emotion and mental health issues that I could see in the Psalms.
That led me to a few new thoughts I want to share.
1. We are made in the image of God and often God expresses through the Psalmist an emotional response to something.
2. Not all emotional or mental health related expressions in the Psalms (or for that matter Bible as a whole) are solved or even recommended. To note, express, or identify something is not necessarily an example to follow.
3. Just because God does something or expresses something we are not in the place to be God. We can not assume everything God does is okay for us to do. We are not God.
On a personal note I am writing from a highly personal point of view. I suffer from many mental health challenges, some surely rooted in sin. I am not a mental health or emotional expert. I don't know what I am talking about, I have not studied enough to be able to offer advice. Today as I focused on Psalm 4 I was reminded why I thought an anthropological look at the Psalms might be a valuable endeavour just as was a Christological search.
Jesus the human is a perfect reflection of the image of God in human form.
Jesus had to learn.
Jesus struggled or at least was tempted, got tired and expressed emotion.
It is not sufficient to look at the Psalms or the Bible seeing the divinity of Christ alone, Christ is also fully man and in so being When we see Jesus identifying with the Psalmists like David we see something we can understand and relate to a little more. I believe we should be able to look at Jesus and see everything we need to relate as a human. I don't think that just because David or others are sinners like we are that we need other human intermediaries to feel like Jesus can understand us and we can understand Him. So I embark on a new journey and that is to try to compare, recognise, see humanity in its sinfulness and humanity in its humaness as a reflection of God, as a made in the image of God entity. We are human. We are not God. But we are like God. We are sinful and fallen. But that does not mean everything about our thoughts and feelings are sinful. I'm looking for expressions of emotion, and mental health processes both well and less well and trying to see what I can learn from this search about myself, others and Jesus. I just want to observe rather than seek to solve.
or even use proper terminology. I am thinking very much aloud. I'm bound to get many things wrong.
Around six years ago I read a number of books by Ted Dekker including his nonfiction work, The Slumber of Christianity: Awakening a Passion for Heaven on Earth and his The Books of Mortals Book series. I was definitely sparked to think because of reading these books. I am not saying He has the answers or even all the right questions. But in my experience I was challenged to think about human emotion and mental health in a new way because of reading these works. As I write that sentence I am flooded by the emotion that was conjured up by reading George MacDonald and G K Chesterton and many other authors like Steven Lawhead and Francine Rivers.
Today as I focused on Psalm 4 I was reminded why I thought an anthropological look at the Psalms might be a valuable endeavour just as was a Christological search.
Jesus the human is a perfect reflection of the image of God in human form.
Jesus had to learn.
Jesus struggled or at least was tempted, got tired and expressed emotion.
It is not sufficient to look at the Psalms or the Bible seeing the divinity of Christ alone, Christ is also fully man and in so being When we see Jesus identifying with the Psalmists like David we see something we can understand and relate to a little more. I believe we should be able to look at Jesus and see everything we need to relate as a human. I don't think that just because David or others are sinners like we are that we need other human intermediaries to feel like Jesus can understand us and we can understand Him. So I embark on a new journey and that is to try to compare, recognise, see humanity in its sinfulness and humanity in its humaness as a reflection of God, as made in the image of God entity. We are human. We are not God. But we are like God. We are sinful and fallen. But that does not mean everything about our thoughts and feelings are sinful. I'm looking for expressions of emotion, and mental health processes both well and less well and trying to see what I can learn from this search about myself, others and Jesus. I just want to observe rather than seek to solve.
As always life seems a race against the clock. The normal work schedule, distractions, interruptions, and so on seems to steal away the time to think, meditate and read. I feel way behind even before I get properly started.
Wanderer above the Sea of Fog, Caspar David Friedrich c. 1818
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