Clough Proverbs Lesson 1

What is Mental Illness?

This morning we begin a new series on Proverbs but it is not just on Proverbs, it is on the psychology of the soul and Proverbs, the reason for this being that Proverbs deals is essential a training manual in what the Hebrew calls chakmah or wisdom. The word chakmah, if you want to transliterate is c-h-a-k-m-a-h, and chakmah is a word for wisdom, translated “wisdom” in your King James but it means more than just the word wisdom as you are used to hearing it in English. For in the Hebrew the word wisdom meant skill and involves the concepts, not only of learning principles but it also involves the concepts of applying principles over an extended period of time to the point where you gain a practical efficiency of application. So chakmah deals with application and this is the primary focus and we’ll see this over and over and over and over again throughout the book of Proverbs, that we are dealing with something that involves skill that is gained only through extended practice and practice and practice and more practice.

This is not something that comes just by hearing a principle. It is a proficiency and the flavor of the word can be seen in various passages of the Old Testament where it is used for carpenters. For example, when the tabernacle was being constructed by Moses God provided a spirit of chakmah to the craftsmen for the tabernacle. Now the craftsmen for the tabernacle were men who obviously had what you would call, the English word “skill.” You had tailors that worked on the linens that would be draped over the tabernacle; they too had the spirit of chakmah and so since the chakmah is used in that context, the only conclusion you can come to on logical grounds is that chakmah means skill and it can mean skill in anything.

In fact, the Old Testament is divided actually into three parts. The first part is called Torah in the Hebrew; the second one, the Prophets, the Kethubim, and the Writings. Now the Torah gives you the Law; the Prophets obviously gives you the prophecy, and the Wisdom literature gives you wisdom. And in the wisdom literature you would be amazed to find a book by the name of Daniel; Daniel is not part of the Prophets of the Old Testament. You would find writings like the Psalms; you will find writings like Proverbs, writings like Ecclesiastes, all of these are in this section called the Writings; and therefore scholars have concluded that the thing that unifies what appears to be such a heterogeneous collection of literature is the concept of chakmah, that the books that are placed into the third section of the Hebrew Bible are placed there because they either show a wise communication of doctrine or they communicate wisdom, one or the other.

For example, artistic communication of doctrine such as in poetry and poetic form would be chakmah and thus you have the book of Psalms. The Psalms are actually the lyrics for music and since these are lyrics and do not just represent prose but they represent something that is artistic and beyond just mere prose, they are chakmah, they are the works of chakmah, they show chakmah, they show that wisdom in how they are structured. And those of us who have been working through the Psalms will understand there is a certain motif and a certain set of structure or pattern in the Psalms. And the Psalms, therefore, show chakmah.

Now, in order to understand the book of Proverbs it becomes necessary for us to understand phrases such as we see, if you’ll turn to Proverbs 1:23. In Proverbs 1:23 we have this expression, “Turn ye at my reproof; behold, I will pour out My spirit unto you, I will make known My words unto you.” Now if those are intended to be seriously understood you cannot understand those until you have some idea of ruach, this is the Hebrew word translated here for “spirit,” and your must understand what “pour out My spirit” means. And immediately, therefore, to understand verse 23 we’re face to face with a problem and the problem is that we encounter psychological terms in the book of Proverbs that have dropped out of most people’s understanding and are no longer understood by modern man. Such terms as spirit, soul and so on have become distorted through bad usage, and so it becomes necessary if we are to understand Proverbs and the instruction, like verse 23, we first have to understand the psychological terms that are used in the Bible. And we must understand these in a way in which they were originally understood and how they were originally related to empirical phenomenon.

Now it may strike you as a bit odd that we have to pause at the beginning of the Proverbs series, and we’re going to go no farther in the book of Proverbs for the next four or five weeks; we are going to spend time instead on they psychology of the soul in order that we can define and lay a basis for the terminology used in the book of Proverbs. Therefore this series is not just on Proverbs, it is on psychology and Proverbs but by psychology we do not mean the modern study of psychology, for reasons which I’ll demonstrate in a few minutes. By psychology we are using that word to refer to Scriptural terms understood in the Scriptural sense, not in the sense of modern psychology. There are going to be very, very strong differences between modern psychology and how the Bible understands the problem of man. And we have to be very, very careful because many, many Christians get completely off the track in this area; they take a few courses on psychology, consider themselves experts and then form an unholy wedding between the Scriptures and modern science. Modern science in the areas of fact is fine but when you have the theoretical constructs that are erected of human viewpoint basis they are to be rejected emphatically by the Bible-believing Christian. So when we get involved in this area we must define terms very carefully and work through to make sure that we understand these things.

Now it shouldn’t strike you as odd that Proverbs deals with these questions because Proverbs deals with skill. For example in Proverbs 1:7 we read: “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge, fools despise wisdom and instruction.” And so in verse 7 we immediately have… notice the word for “God” by the way, the word for “God” is the Hebrew word Yahweh, and this immediately tells us something about the book of Proverbs. Proverbs is usually looked upon by people who do not have good backgrounds in the Bible as nothing more than sort of a farcified Poor Richard’s Almanac, that it’s nothing more than a manual of good advice. Such is not the case because when God is addressed in the book of Proverbs He is not called Elohim. Now if the book of Proverbs were just good advice for man on how to exist in the world and so on, if it were filled with this kind of advice, then Elohim would be used because Elohim is the generic name for God. But Elohim is not used; Yahweh is used. Yahweh is the covenant name of God and therefore focuses attention on the fact that Proverbs is addressed only to believers.

The book of Proverbs is for those who have personally accepted Christ and only for those who have personally accepted Christ; nobody else. This is not general advice given to the world at large. This is advice for the believer in his relationship with his Lord through time. And the sign of this, one evidence of this is that God is always addressed by His covenant name and not by His generic name. And this is evidence that this is covenantal literature. We’ll deal with that further.

However, I want you to notice that since this is for believers, it obviously involves a spiritual relationship that man has with God. In Genesis we’re told that man is made in the image of God. This means that the psychological terms of the Bible describe something that is very, very important, the image of God. Now if you have an image of an object, the way to understand that image is obviously to understand the object of which it is an image. And so therefore man cannot be understood in the biblical way unless you first understand who and what God is. And here is where we clash very violently at a very profound level with all modern psychology. We reject the premise that man can be known inductively on the basis of just his experience. We reject that emphatically because the Bible informs us that man is made in the image of God and God cannot be known in this way. God can only be known by receiving revelation of Himself; this is the content of Scripture. Therefore, no man can be known as he should be known, you can’t know your own soul; I can’t know my soul until we first know God to some degree. And when we know God to some degree, since we are made in the image of that God, then we can be understood.

This can be no more clearly demonstrated than by going back through and dealing with the phenomenon known as mental illness. I’m going to use this as just an example; we’re not going to go into the depths of this because we’re going to deal with this later on in detail as we go through the book of Proverbs. But I’m going to take this as a concept and use this this morning to demonstrate to you the difference between the biblical approach and the 10^th century approach in the world at large and to give you an idea of the contrast between the two.

So we’ll go back and study a little about what is mental illness and how it begins and what modern man tries to do and how he tries to label it. This will involve history, this will involve citations and it will involve a minimum today of exegesis in the text. Do not apologize for this because you need this background and we’ll have plenty of exegesis of the text of Scripture in weeks to come.

Going back in the history of man and going back into the ancient world we can go back to times such as 1550 BC; in 1550 BC a group of Egyptians we don’t know wrote a papyri. On this papyri was the most complete set of medical and psychological instructions that we have from the Egyptian civilization. It is called the Papyri Ebers and it is this famous medical papyri that gives us insight into the hygienic laws, or lack thereof, of the Egyptians. They had all sorts of queer things like taking rattlesnake oil and putting it in lady’s hair and so forth, and if you think your hair is snarled, wait to you get that in it. And these were the things that were supposed to produce health in the ancient world. They had all sorts of queer things in this thing but part of this document reveals to us how they handled the phenomenon of mental illness. And it is a wonderful contrast to God’s Word.

Now I want to start here because I want to show you human viewpoint as it existed in the ancient world and where the Bible cut across this human viewpoint and where it did not cut across the human viewpoint. There’s going to be some ways in which Israel handled the problem in a fashion identical to the ancient world, but in another area Israel handled her problem radically different than all other countries and civilizations in the ancient world. It would do us much benefit if we would look carefully at exactly how Israel handled the phenomenon versus the way the ancient world handled it, then we’ll come into the modern scene.

Universally throughout ancient history mental illness was always looked upon as the product of evil spirits. It was always looked upon from the standpoint of mechanics; it was looked up from the standpoint that there had to be forces operating on the human psyche beyond those that were resident in that psyche from birth. And so therefore people who worked closely with the phenomenon of mental illness in the ancient world continually attested to the fact that what we now call mental illness was a matter of fact caused by evil spirits. These evil spirits were spirits that precipitated cause and force, the psyche to react in certain ways and produce personality distortions.

We are going to see something very interesting. God’s Word continues the same kind of mechanics but with a radical difference. So please do not be deceived here; you have probably heard, those of you who have been in the college classroom, some freshman instructor getting up in the class and liking to lump the Bible with the ancient world and show that these poor people that were mentally ill in the ancient world had evil spirits and they had a little drill and they drilled their skull and put a few holes in their head to let the evil spirits out and so on, and see, this was all superstition and this caused great suffering in the victim, etc. etc. etc. And therefore we live in a modern day now and we don’t put up with any more of that superstition and so forth. Now that’s a very clever debater’s technique but it doesn’t get to the truth.

We are not recommending all of the procedures of the ancient world. The Bible doesn’t, but the Bible agrees with the ancient world that evil spirits do exist and they are part and parcel with the phenomenon called mental illness; not in all cases, as I will demonstrate shortly. But nevertheless, the mechanics are similar. The difference, however, between what Israel did and what all other civilizations did surrounded the problem of cause and cure, and it is that area where the Bible differs radically from the ancient world. Keep this in mind as we proceed today; the Bible is similar to the ancient world in mechanics but the Bible emphatically rejects the same causes and cures of the ancient world. So the cause and cure are radically different in the Bible but the mechanics of the Bible are the same or very similar.

Now let’s go back and look at Israel. How did Israel differ from this? We said that the ancient world, that you can go read the Vedas of Hinduism, you read the writings of the early Greeks, whatever you read you’ll find this prevalence, almost universal prevalence of belief in the mechanics of evil spirits working on the human psyche. When we come to Israel we find a difference and I think the best way to see this difference is to make a little chart and on this chart we’ll have two columns. One column we will label as general; the other column on the right we’ll label as specific. Then we’ll have two rows so we’ll have four boxes. On the top row we will label physical and the bottom row we will label mental. So we have four combinations of these two sets of two factors each and these are the possible creatures.

Now Israel recognized both physical and mental illness. They weren’t naïve, they could observe, they had eyeballs, they had personal relationships and they were well aware of what you and I would call physical and mental illness; they knew about these things. I can show you passage after passage in Scripture to prove that the Israelites were well aware of these phenomena. Now, the Israelites introduced a new cause in the ancient world. Now I say the Israelites because that’s the historical fact; we know, however, it’s because God revealed Himself to them. But the general and specific factors are something new with the Israelites and the Israelites introduced the factor which we will call responsibility or volition. That is where Israel cut across the entire ancient world. It is that point where the modern Christian differs from his modern counterpart in the area of volition and responsibility. Israel claimed that all suffering and all evil is a product of the creature’s responsibility. This goes back to the doctrine of the fall and once again we’re back to our divine viewpoint framework that no question can ever be discussed unless we have some sort of working knowledge of the framework of the Bible.

First of all, we come to the fact that the Bible, when it speaks of truth is talking about truth in the same sense as any other concept; that is that it can be checked empirically and rationally. Even divine revelation can be checked empirically and rationally. Jesus Christ became incarnate and therefore the apostle John says we saw Him, we heard Him, and our hands have handled Him. What is that but an empirical checking on divine revelation? So the Bible does not go along with mysticism, the Bible does not go along with spiritism. The Bible says frankly that when God reveals that He reveals in the empirical realm that is open to public observation, in the same fashion as any other phenomenon.

So building on that foundation we then come to these three points in the foundation of biblical truth; namely that we have a creation, we have a fall and we have the Noahic Covenant giving order to nature and therefore the base of modern science. But we have creation and the fall. We dealt with the fall earlier in the Romans series and while we were working with the fall we said something: that if we do not have a literal historical fall, it becomes very highly fashionable under academic pressure, group pressure, bully-boy pressure to say well, I no longer accept a literal fall and with this you appear to be well ingratiated with the local group of eggheads. However, the problem with this is that without the fall and if the fall is removed you have no way of defending a good God who at the same time is a sovereign God; namely that either God is good and not sovereign or God is sovereign and not good; those are the only two conclusions you can come to if you drop out a literally, and I mean a literal fall from Genesis 3. It is absolutely essential that all evil be created within history by responsible creatures, that is, by their own volition, an act of volition.

So since evil is a product of the creature and not the Creator, then we have introduced into the problem of mental illness the problem of the role of responsibility and volition, and it is that factor that will be pounded away over and over again in the book of Proverbs, making the individual responsible for his mental situation.

Now there are four combinations of this and on the chart we have these two columns; one is the general and one is the specific. The general is what we would call general responsibility or the responsibility of the entire human race in Adam; that is, at the point of the fall the human race corporately fell with Adam, doctrine explained in Romans 5:12, 14. So we have, then, the concept of a general responsibility, that is, every living person and every person has ever lived and every person who will ever live in the future becomes corporately responsible for introducing evil into history and this is a general sense. But then we have in the Bible also a specific form of responsibility. This means that not only am I responsible in a general sense for the introduction of physical death, for the introduction of sorrow, for the introduction of heartache, for the introduction of sin and the separation of man from his Creator, not only am I responsible and you are responsible for this but each one of us is specifically responsible in our own individual spheres of life. In other words, you transgress and I transgress God’s laws at specific points in our personal life. And therefore we are held not only generally responsible but we are held specifically responsible for our own pattern of life.

Now let’s go through the four categories of the possible combinations here and watch how the Bible handles these categories. Let’s first look at physical illness that is due to general responsibility. Turn to Genesis 3; here is the introduction of physical suffering by general responsibility, namely every member of the human race faces degrees of this kind of suffering; you will, always will and always have faced this kind of suffering. It is a product of being born into a fallen world, into a fallen race. And I can’t emphasize strongly enough, if you are weak in the area of Genesis 1-3 that you do extensive studies and research in this area yourself to come to these conclusions yourself because all of Proverbs presupposes that you are solid on Genesis. Now I haven’t got time in this series to go back through all the apologetics that I’ve dealt with hour after hour after hour on Genesis; we haven’t got time to do that in this series. I refer you to the evolution series, I refer you to the various publications on the reading list for that research but I presume that you have a solid view of Genesis. I have to presume that in order to proceed in the book of Proverbs. If you do not, this will seem very inappropriate and offensive to some of you and to others you will just write this off as some sort of a creature’s ravings and so on. And you have my sympathies but unfortunately you don’t have the background to deal with it. All I can say is I can’t do it in this series; I’d like to be able to do it but time does not permit it now.

In Genesis 3, for reasons which we have gone into elsewhere, we take this as literal history. Therefore in Genesis 3:16 we have part of physical suffering introduced by general responsibility. This phenomenon is an abbreviated version. I’ve said again and again in working with Genesis there’s a little trick to understanding the book of Genesis and you’ve got to catch onto this little trick. The author of Genesis writes a highly, highly abbreviated history. He’s writing a very abbreviated history and he will only give you representative observations of history and you have to use your scientific and historical skills to fill in what he meant to imply in other areas. He gives us a few observations. What I am going to show you in verse 16 is an example of his abbreviated style. He is picking out something that happened as a result of the fall but he does not intend us to conclude from Genesis 3 this is the only thing that proceeded from the fall. This is only one specific. We must adhere, if we are going to have Jesus Christ’s own view of Scripture we have to adhere to a literal Genesis 3; there’s no option on that, no option whatever. Either you have to accept Christ’s view of Scripture or reject Christ’s view of Scripture. Christ’s view of Scripture is that this is literal.

Now taking Jesus Christ’s own view of Genesis 3 we must conclude that these observations are valid. In Genesis 3:16, “Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and they conception,” now this doesn’t mean that she had sorrow before; it means simply that he is increasing in sorrow, sorrow begins here, see where he says in sorrow thy shall bring forth children, and this deals with physiological changes in the female body that was caused by the fall so that childbirth itself becomes a threat to the female body. And this is a physiological fact of history; it is up to the man trained in medicine, it is up to the biologist trained in physiology to draw the necessary conclusions and make speculations as to the mechanisms that God invoked at the point of the fall. All verse 16 gives you is the observation.

Now don’t be tricked by a debater’s tactic. In evangelical circles today it’s quite fashionable to read well, the Bible isn’t a textbook of science and so therefore we can’t draw conclusions. Very correct, the Bible is not a textbook of science but the Bible is a textbook of observations from history and though the Bible doesn’t dictate the theories, the Bible gives us observations that must be explained by whatever theory you choose to work with. If your theory does not explain these observations then your theory does not fit true history. That’s the answer to the problem that the Bible is not a textbook of science; it isn’t, it’s a textbook of history and historical observation.

So in verse 16 we have an obvious introduction of pain into the female body and we have another one in Genesis 3:19, speaking of the introduction of sweat, “In the seat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return.” And so we have the introduction of sweat and I believe we have in our library Dr. Custance’s work, who is a physiologist in Canada speculating on the physiological changes of the human body to produce the various kinds of sweat; there’s mental, the emotional and thermal sweating, and speculations on the mechanisms that were involved, the decrease in efficiency in the body’s metabolism and so on introduced by the fall causing sweat to come into existence. So verse 19 is a hint of another thing that happened, another change to the human body. Again, this falls in our first category, that is introduction of physical discord in the human body due to general corporate responsibility at the point of the fall.

Turn to John 9 and you’ll see another illustration of disease that is a direct result of this kind of thing. John 9, another illustration, another observation of real history pointing, with the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, back to an illustration of physical deterioration, physical disease, caused by general responsibility.

John 9:1-3, this is a very critical passage to remember because it clearly demonstrates that diseases are not necessarily personal in the sense that they are personally directed toward the victim. This is an important chapter for those of you who deal with problems in your family; those of you who have problems with your children in the area of congenital weaknesses. These set of verses should be of great comfort to you to know that it’s not the parent’s fault; it is not the child’s fault.

Here we have John 9:1-3, “And as Jesus passed by, He saw a man who was blind form his birth,” obviously a case of congenital blindness. [2] “And His disciples asked Him, saying, Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind.” Now going back to our chart you can see what the men were asking Jesus. They were thinking over here, that the physical disease is caused by a specific act of the volition by either the parent or the child. Jesus emphatically denies this here in this passage when He says in verse 3, “Neither has this man sinned, nor his parents, but that the works of God should be manifest in him, [4] I must work the works of Him that sent Me, while it is day,” and He goes on to say that this particular case of congenital blindness was there in order that I might do My work and I might be glorified in that person. Now that was a miraculous way in a spectacular sense but in similar cases we have Christian parents who have raised people who have been mentally retarded, we have Christian parents raising children with physical defects and they can attest to the fact that these have been given in order that the works of God might be manifest and the blessing they have gotten out of a positive attitude seeking God’s will in working with these kind of children.

These illnesses and these congenital defects are not due to a specific responsible act on the part of the parents, and Jesus answers in verse 3 this because He wants parents not to go around blaming themselves for something they supposedly did and therefore bear a guilt burden for the next 30 years because they have some sort of a deformed child or something and it’s their fault. Nonsense! This falls into the category of the outworking of the fall for which we are all responsible and we’d all have mentally retarded children if it weren’t for God’s common grace. So we can give thanks. The question with the fall is how do so many of us get away with so little of the effects. So this is the general category of physical suffering due to the fall.

Now we come to this; John 9 is denying that this is true in this case but the Bible does not say that all sickness is due to the fall generally. The Bible also goes on to say yes, there are some times when sickness and disease and death in the physical realm are due to specific acts of the will on the part of the individual. Turn to 1 Corinthians 11:30-31, the famous communion passage. Paul clearly teaches that physical sickness can be due to an act of the will of a person going on negative volition toward God and this can precipitate sickness in the physical realm. Now be careful here; we have not yet even begun to talk about mechanics. Remember what I said; remember how I introduced this, how I said be careful, we are not going to talk about mechanics; the Bible’s mechanics are the same as the ancient world’s mechanics and so forth in the area of mental illness; the Bible respects the problem of germs and viruses and so on, it’s not anti-biblical, I’ll show you sanitary laws from Leviticus that imply their existence. We’re not dealing, however, with either the demonic, the viruses, the germs or the mechanisms. We’re not talking about mechanisms; get the mechanisms out of your head right now. We’re not talking about mechanisms. We’re talking about causes behind the mechanisms.

It is wrong for you to think that you walk out of here and you live in an ecological disaster area filled with germs and therefore it is strictly a matter of chance whether you catch a germ or you get a virus. It is not strictly a matter of chance whether you get a virus or a germ. If you argue that way then you must imply there is no overall purpose to your life. Nothing happens by chance in your life, nothing! And so therefore it’s important for you to grasp that everything that we experience as sorrow comes out of the fall in a general sense or comes in a specific sense.

Here in 1 Corinthians 11:30 we have the Playboy award would have been given to the Corinthian church. There were two churches in the ancient world that would compete for the Playboy award, one was on Crete and the epistle to Titus was written to that group and the other was in Corinth and this epistle was written to that group. In 1 Corinthians 11:30 we have a situation where they were getting boozed up at the communion table. The issue was that in Corinth this was happening, and as gross as this may strike you, they were just simply bombed out under the table by the time the elements were being served. This may seem very gross to you, it didn’t seem gross to the Corinthians, they were used to this kind of life, they just had to get a little adjusted to the Christian way of life in a few areas, sex and booze and so on.

In verse 30 they had not yet got adjusted and so God was applying the paddle of discipline and notice how God applied the paddle of discipline and notice how God applied the paddle of discipline in verse 30: “For this cause many are weak and sickly among you, and many sleep.” Now the word “sleep” doesn’t mean they are sleeping under the tables; the word sleep there means they’re dead; that is the word for Christian death and the fact that many are weak and sickly and sleep, notice the three words and the progression of those three words. This would imply that God is using secondary mechanisms such as viruses, germs and so on to bring about physical death, but merely pointing to the mechanisms still doesn’t answer the question why? We’re dealing with two questions: how and why? We’re not concerned with how; we’re concerned this morning with why, and the why question here is why is this happening? Why is the roster of the Corinthian church declining? Every Sunday they get new members and every Friday they have new funerals and they are wondering what is going on; we have people added to the church daily; we have people dying from the church daily; we never seem to gain any numbers totally.

So Paul says this is the problem and then he adds verse 31-32, “If we would judge ourselves, we would not be judged,” with the implication being that if we would take care of our negative volition and if we would confess our sins then God would not have to bring this second type of illness into our lives. Now this doesn’t mean you’ll be without illness because you still have the general effects of the fall but it does mean that some sickness, emphasis on some, some sickness is strictly due to carnality. That’s the teaching of God’s Word. Some physical sickness is strictly discipline from the Father. It’s as simple as that.

Those are two ways of physical disturbances; now since it’s easier to think in terms of the physical than the mental we did the physical first but now let’s forget the physical and drop down to the second row and deal with the mental, and deal with the different kinds of mental problems. Now obviously the primer and push today is that all men can be mentally ill and it’s treated as though it is a neutral kind of thing. Now we’re not going to deny that there are some general mental problems associated with the fall, such as 1 Corinthians 2:14, “the natural man receives not the things of the Spirit of God.” However, it is my thesis and I will defend this thesis over the next four weeks that there basically is no category in this area. This category is void and null; there are no Scriptural evidences that there is mental illness due to general responsibility. It is my thesis that mental illness, what is called mental illness is not due to organic causes; it is due strictly to the individual acts of volition on the part of the person.

For example, let us turn to Psalm 32, a complete dissertation on one man’s mental illness. I will not fully prove this thesis this morning; I suggest it and as we go on I will show more evidences for this. It is my thesis that there are not general mental illnesses due to the fall; now there are mental fatigue problems, we all have some mental problems but I mean in the sense of neurosis and psychosis, in those areas. That is not a result of the fall in a general sense, only in those areas of brain damage from organic causes and so on, we recognize, but as an operating thing, neurosis and psychosis are due in the Bible teaching, in the biblical framework to specific acts of volition on the part of the individual.

In Psalm 32:1-2 David is out of fellowship; David has been out of fellowship for many months and he says, “Blessed is he whose transgression has been forgiven, whose sin has been covered. [2] Blessed is the man unto whom the LORD imputes not iniquity,” do you know why he’s saying that in verses 1-2? Because he’s experiencing psychological disaster; he is experiencing depression, he is experiencing all the characteristics of neurosis and he looks out and he sees believers that are with it, he sees believers that are walking in fellowship with the Lord and he says happy are they, happy are they that they don’t have to experience this that I experience. And then he says in verse 3, “When I kept silence,” keeping silence is refusal to use 1 John 1:9, “When I kept silence” I refused, David is saying, 1 John 1:9, I refused to confess my sin, and all the time that I refused to line up with the will of God this is what happened: “my bones waxed old through my moaning all the day long,” psychosomatic illness, verse 3.

Psalm 32:4, “For day and night thy hand was heavy upon me; my moisture turned into the drought of summer,” dehydration. [5] “I acknowledged my sin unto Thee, and mine iniquity have I not hid. I said, I will confess my transgressions unto the LORD, and You forgave the iniquity. [6] For this shall every one that is godly pray unto thee in a time when Thou mayest be found” and so on. And he goes away from the confession healed in the area of the “mental illness,” end quote.

Psalm 38, written at the same time of David’s life. Again speaking of both psychosomatic illness and symptoms of neurosis. Psalm 38:1, “O LORD,” he says, “rebuke me not in Thy wrath; neither chasten me in Your hot displeasure. [2] For Thine arrows stick fast in me, and Thy hand presses me sore [greatly]. [3] There is no soundness in my flesh,” notice the last purpose clause, because why? Why is there not physical health in David’s body? Germs? Is that what he says there? It may be germs but that’s not the cause; the germs are the mechanics, for “There is no soundness in my flesh because of Thine anger,” it is God’s wrath that is precipitating this, “neither is there any rest in my bones because of my sin. [4] For mine iniquities are gone over my head,” there’s a heavy burden, “they are too heavy for me.” Now what is that but extreme depression? Isn’t what the modern man would call extreme depression? Of course it is. David however has more insight than the average modern man. He knows why he’s depressed. [5] “My wounds stink [are repulsive] and are corrupt,” he probably has staph infection from head to foot, “because of my foolishness.”

Again, is he denying the germs as being the mechanics, the viruses being the mechanics of this? No. But what is the cause of it, not the mechanism. The cause is that “because of my foolishness.” [6] “I am distressed [troubled],” here’s the word distress, “I am troubled; I am bowed down greatly; I go mourning all the day long.” What is that but the symptoms of neurosis, maybe even bordering on the extreme of psychosis; isn’t that what you read there.

Now what is he saying? He hasn’t spent a long enough time on the psychiatrist’s couch? No, you don’t read that there. [7] “My loins are filled with a loathsome disease, and there is no soundness in my flesh. [8] I am feeble and very broken; I have roared by reason of the disquietness of my heart.” What is that but neurosis? “The disquietness of my heart!” [9] “Lord, all my desire is before Thee, and my groaning is not hidden from Thee. [10] My heart pants, my strength fails me; as fro the light of my eyes, it also is gone from me. [11] My lovers and my friends stand aloof from my sore, and my kinsmen stand afar off,” and obviously verse 11 is the reaction of a person in neurosis and psychosis, their friends leave them. That’s when you find out who your real friends are. [12] “They also that seek after my life lay snares for me” and so on and so on and so on.

Now finally Psalm 51, this is the great confession psalm also written during the same period of David’s life. When he confesses in Psalm 51:3-4, “For I know my transgressions,” the word “acknowledge” in the King James should be the word “know,” it is a linear concept, not a punctiliar concept. If you look at the word acknowledge in verse 3 in your King James it tends to convey to your mind punctiliarness, or point action. That’s not true; it should be “know,” it means “My transgressions are always before me, my sin is ever before me.” In other words, it’s constantly on his mind, constantly on his conscience. [4] Against Thee and Thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in Thy sight, that Thou mayest be justified when Thou speakest, and be clear when You judge.”

And then in verses 7-8 when he for forgiveness, notice what is included in the forgiveness. “Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.” And then what does he say? [8] “Make me to hear joy and gladness, that the bones which thou hast broken may rejoice,” in other words, the idea is Lord, resolve my neurosis; bring me back to mental stability, bring me back to mental health because I have confessed my sin.

And so again we are not dealing with mechanics yet; we’re not even touching the problem of how this occurs; we’re simply saying the overall riding purposes, why it happens. It happens in the Bible because of a specific responsible act of volition.

Turn to Romans 1:21, a very, very hard passage if you’ve been ingrained at all with 20^th century thinking; a very, very hard passage that you will find, those of you who have done some thinking in this area will find very difficult to believe until you do a lot, lot more thinking. It will be a very hard passage for many of you to accept. This is a hard passage. Paul speaks of God-consciousness in the individual soul and he says that men have turned away from this and when men turn away by a specific choice in their life from the God-consciousness, this is not talking about believers, this is talking about the non-Christian who knows that God is there and turns away, “Because that when they knew God, they glorified Him not as God, neither were thankful, but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. [22] Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, [23] And changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image [made like corruptible man, and birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things,]” now watch what proceeds in verse 24 and following.

Look carefully at the text; what do you see in verses 24 and following; what are those words talking about? “Wherefore, God gave them up to uncleanness through the lust of their own hearts, to dishonor their own bodies between themselves, [25] Who changed the truth of God into a lie,” verse 16, “For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections; for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature. [27] And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust on toward another, men with men working that which is unseemly….” Verse 28 describes the intellectual tumult that comes out of this [“And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not seemly.”]. Verse 29, “Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate [strife], deceit] blah, blah, blah, it goes on.

Now part of what is included in there are things like homosexuality. I just picked that one not because that’s a worse sin than anything else. There is no sinner’s skyline in the Bible as Dr. Lewis Sperry Chafer used to say. But I point that out for this reason: many today have absorbed the idea that homosexuality really is a disease, it is not due to the individual responsible person. I have to most emphatically disagree. Later in this series I will present medical evidence that will support the biblical position. However at this time on the basis of Paul’s writing to Rome I must say that we have to disagree, that this kind of behavior pattern is a result of a specific choice and act of volition.

So again we find aberrant social behavior, we find individual neurosis and psychosis in the Bible in this category; we do not find it in this category. This suggests therefore that what is now described as mental illness must be treated on the high, high level of man made in the image of God and not on the low level that man is just a body, a biochemical machine. Mental illness is out of the realm of the biochemical mechanisms. Mental illness is on a higher plain, the plain of man’s personal relationship with His Creator and therefore these kinds of problems have to be settled at a very, very much higher level than normal medical problems.

Now we want to deal with the modern view. We have shown the biblical position, we’ve shown a little bit of the view of the ancient world and now we want to deal with the modern view. Interestingly when you go back in the ancient world and you can go back into primitive cultures today, you will find they too recognized mental problems. They too had their systems for diagnosis and therapy for these mental problems. And it was interesting that a while ago Dr. E. [sounds like: Thor a tory] of the National Institute of Mental Health wrote in the magazine, Medical Opinion, in the summer of 1971 when he visited various witch doctors and studied the methods that they used… now here’s man who is an authority in the National Institute of Mental Health, came back after studying the therapy systems that were used by the witch doctors in a primitive culture and here’s what he says.

“I, as a psychiatrist, was using the same mechanisms for curing my patients as they were, and not surprisingly I was getting about the same results. Every technique used in western psychiatry can be found in one form or another among the so-called ‘less advanced’ cultures, such as drugs, electric shock therapy, group therapy, dream analysis, conditioning techniques and institutionalization.” The question we would have as Christians is that since Israel reduced a radical break with ancient world and instead of employing many of these systems such as drugs, group therapy and dream analysis, in Israel’s culture what was used to solve the problem? We have just seen it in the book of Psalms, haven’t we? Isn’t that the way Israel handled her problems? So the break between Israel and the rest of the ancient world wasn’t over the mechanisms, it was over the cure and the therapy, treating at the high level of man made in the image of God instead of man just as an animal that needs a little biochemical adjustment. You don’t put man in a maze like you do dogs and train them. You don’t put them in a cage or a mental institution and handle them like animals. In Israel man is handled as a man that is precious in God’s sight and his vertical relationship with God that has been fractured and the results in all this must be healed. Therefore it is that high level that Israel differed from the ancient world.

So we find this interesting; whereas the ancient world had all of these crazy theories about the mechanisms that most people think are crazy, the modern man, the psychologist and psychiatrists [blank spot in tape] I use this word only generally because there are many Christians among them, but using the word generally they have a completely different set of theories. But doesn’t it strike you as remarkable that both use the same mechanisms of treatment? Doesn’t it strike you as most interesting that both the witch doctor and the modern psychiatrist basically do not differ in their modes of therapy? Now isn’t this interesting? And yet one will claim… the modern psychiatrists love to look down their nose, oh, those stupid people, but when it comes to the clinical level of actually working on a face to face basis with patients what are the methods used? Precisely those used in the ancient cultures. Now why is that? It would seem to suggest, at least it suggest to me the theories are wrong, that basically what’s happening is that the therapy techniques on a face to face basis are simply used because they do work to some degree, but the theories are not valid.

Let’s go to the area of theory and practice of the modern psychiatrist and psychologist for a minute, just to get the contrast with the Bible. This may strike you as being unduly negative, I’m sorry if it is, but I must say that the more I work in pastoral counseling the more I find myself in more and more profound disagreement with what’s going on in this area. First let’s take modern theory: modern theory in psychology today comes basically as all areas of science and you notice the cover in the bulletin, how we point out a unified field of knowledge and that basically all areas proceed out of an overall human viewpoint framework. All right, in the area of psychology and psychiatry it’s the same thing, and so they have a basic human viewpoint framework they use. One is materialism and this has come forth into a school known as the behaviorists. Not all behaviorists, by the way, are necessarily materialists but to a large degree they are. And so therefore the behaviorist school of modern psychology is largely grounded on the philosophy of materialism. But since as Christians we disagree with the philosophy, then we must be in profound disagreement with the whole behaviorist school at this point. Man is not a biochemical machine that the only reason why he has mental problems is because his chemical equations are not balanced. That is not the issue; that’s not what you read in the Psalms. David is not saying would you check the [can’t understand word] on one side of my chemical equation, Lord. That’s not the problem. The problem is not that, the problem is his vertical relationship with God.

Now the second are of psychiatry and psychology today is grounded on existentialism. This is gradually replacing, it seems to me, materialism as a working base and this has produced a school known as the phenomenologist. For example, the college classroom often it’s fashionable to read books like Tortoise Psychology of Being by Abraham Maslow and other men like this who are basically operating out of an existentialist framework. The trouble with this is the Christian again disagrees because the existentialist framework can’t provide absolute truth. And so we cannot agree with the behaviorist because we cannot accept the materialist view of man; we cannot agree with the phenomenologist because we cannot accept existentialism.

So where does that leave the Christian? It leaves the Christian philosophically at odds with the total field. That’s where it leaves the Christian. Those of you who are Christians students and are going into this field you’d better have your philosophy straight and you’d better be able to think philosophically and reason through or you’ll be tricked in the class. You must see the philosophical basis for the various schools. Now we disagree with the existentialists because he cannot produce absolute values. They know this, and Dr. Maslow in his work shows his own lack of understanding of the problem. In Dr. Maslow’s work he comes to deal with this thing and he realizes that all of his theory, all of his theory of working with people is grounded on this one base of existentialism. And then he obviously has to do something in the book. He obviously has to deal with the criticism against existentialism. Now the criticism against existentialism is that it can never give you absolute truth or absolute values. And so therefore, recognizing this, the only reply that Maslow can give to this is the following statement. He calls the quibbling of those of us who attack existentialism at a high level; he calls it “this high I.Q. whimpering on a cosmic scale occurs whenever an external source of values fails to work. These philosophers should have learned from the psychotherapists that the loss of illusions, though painful at first, can be ultimately exhilarating and strengthening.” But what poor Dr. Maslow never realizes is the philosophers know this and what they see is that later on life has no meaning.

One psychology student was telling me of a debate that occurred at Tech in the classroom and he was debating this problem of the phenomenologist and he said to me one time in the classroom in the exchange, it was on a graduate level, and the exchange was going on in this seminar and he finally said to the instructor, he said, man, if the whole doesn’t have meaning how can the part have meaning, namely if the universe and the cosmos has no meaning then what in the hell do I have in my life. And the instructor said you just have meaning. In other words, there’s no way of answering this, you generate your own meaning, you have meaning because you think you have meaning. But if you don’t have an absolute value system you your self can’t.

So we have to, therefore, find ourselves in total and complete and emphatic philosophical disagreement with both schools. This was summarized by a professor of psychology at the University of Manitoba who was an evangelical Bible-believing Christian and he wrote this, Dr. Sleutermann [sp?], he said: “It is important to remember that psychology is not a unified body of accepted knowledge but a broad term covering a multitude of schools differing strongly among themselves in philosophical orientation, methodology, subject matter, and research interests. Eminent psychologists tend to disagree among themselves strongly about basic issues.” So what does that suggest to you as a Bible-believing thinking Christian? Namely that the philosophical basis is not structured there. There is none in the modern psychological field. So therefore we are not intellectually embarrassed and we say to the man, your system is basically ineffective to cope with life, therefore we go back to a divine viewpoint framework because you have not produced something that will give me absolute value, you have not produced something that will give me meaning and you yourself show this because you can’t agree on one thing yourself.

Now let’s go to the area of practice. Remember I said before that the modern theory of therapy, the modern therapy basically does not differ too much to that of the primitive culture. I went through in my reading and began to check what the psychologists and psychiatrists report themselves. Now these are not Christians that I’m quoting here and I want to give you a few concluding quotes to show you that if you are enamored with the psychological approach, please listen carefully to these quotes.

One man, a practicing psychiatrist for 30 years, says this: “Psychotherapy is today in a state of disarray almost as it was 200 years ago,” [end quote]. Another quote: “The success of the Freudian revolution seems complete; only one thing went wrong, the patients did not get any better.” Then the final quote that I thought was very amusing and very informative was this: “Psychotherapy has not yet proved more effective than general medical counseling in treating neurosis or psychosis. In general, therapy only works with people who are young, well-born, well-educated, and not seriously sick.” This doesn’t leave too much hope. Another quote that would show this, a most amazing quote, and this was by Dr. Inseck who was interviews in This Week Magazine, September 18, 1966 and I believe he is a practicing psychiatrist also. “Surveys show that of the patients who spend upward of 350 hours on the psychoanalyst’s couch, two out of three do show some improvement over a period of years. The fly in that particular ointment, however, is that the same percent get better without analysis, or under care of a regular physician. As a matter of fact, the same ration, two out of three, got better in mental hospitals 100 years ago.”

Now do you see anything in the area of theory, do you see anything in the area of practice if that is their accurate portrayal of what is going on? Do you see anything there that would give help to the person that would enamor the person to disregard the Scriptural sources and not turn to the Bible to see that maybe Israel did have the answer when they broke with the ancient world? And it is that break that Israel made with the ancient world that we’re going to study in these few series on the book of Proverbs and in the psychology of the soul.

Let’s conclude by turning back to Proverbs 1:7. Before we read Proverbs 1:7 I want you to get something to compare verse 7 with and so I quote from Dr. Szasz’s book, The Myth of Mental Illness, when he, as a practicing doctor says this, (quote): “Mental health is a myth whose function it is to disguise and thus render more palatable the bitter pill or moral conflicts in human relations.” And one of the famous poems that was quoted by one of the psychiatrist who is rebelling against this kind of thing in his field is Anna Russell, psychiatric folk song; it’s most interesting because this is so opposite to Proverbs 1:7, I want to read this first and then we’ll close by reading Proverbs 1:7. “I went to my psychiatrist to be psychoanalyzed, to find out why I killed the cat and blacked my husband’s eye; he laid me on a downy couch to see what he could find, and here’s what he dredged up from my subconscious mind; when I was one my mommy hid my dolly in a trunk, and so it naturally follows that I am always dumb; when I was two I saw my father kick the maid one day and that is why I now suffer from kleptomania; at three I had the feeling of ambivalence toward my brothers and so it follows naturally I poison all my lovers; but I am happy, now I have learned the lesson this has taught, that everything I do that’s wrong is someone else’s fault.”

Proverbs 1:7, “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge, and fools despise wisdom and instruction.”