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Preventing Thoughtful Depression Warrior
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Preventing Suicide
Karen Mason
EOF: Let’s just start with the obvious
question. Do you feel Psychology and
Christianity are at odds with each other
or help each other?
Love Note Number 47 by Alisa Massey Mason: Well, I think they can be at odds,
but there are many places of intersection.
Interestingly some of the earliest thinkers
about psychological conditions like depres-
sion were actually the desert fathers and
desert mothers in the third century. It wasn’t
until later when people like Freud and Ellis
who rejected faith, when the church really
developed that uneasy relationship with
psychology. But, when they don’t conflict
there really are ways where they do help
each other. Here’s some ways that I like to
think about it: So for ethics in Christianity,
we have the doctrine of common grace. That
was articulated by Calvin who believed that
even though people were fallen and human
nature was perverted from its original integ-
rity, still people who were redeemed were
still adorned and invested with gifts from
God. Abraham Kuyper was the one who
said, “Hey, it’s because of common grace
that sciences like Psychology actually allow,
through God’s common grace, people who
aren’t redeemed are allowed to find some
important truths through science.”
One in five Americans suffers from some type of mental illness. This means you probably
know someone in your church that is suffering from some form of depression and possibly
even suicidal thoughts ... maybe it might be you. We are part of the body of Christ, and we
are His children, but we also live in a fallen world. We have bodies that get diseased, age and
die. Mental illness can’t be physically seen, like a bacterial infection or a broken bone, but it
is an illness just the same. As Christians, we need to be aware of our surroundings and be
prepared to help others. Read on so you can learn how. One of the doctrines that I bring to my
answer here is common grace, and the other
is really God’s sovereignty. Again, it was
Abraham Kuyper who said, “Christ really is
sovereign over all science, even the science
of psychology.” I put them together when
they don’t conflict with each other. But at
the same time, I want to say that I think
it’s important to understand that psychol-
ogy as a science does have limitations. It
can’t decide the question of morality. I’ve
heard psychologists say things like, “moral
objections to suicide are not helpful.” Well,
interestingly the research suggests that they
are helpful to people, and those come out
of a person’s faith. I think it’s important to
understand Psychology, definitely. I’ll just
say it has its limitations. But, at the same
time, while the Bible is completely true, the
Bible doesn’t tell us things like how to build
a cell phone that allows an interviewer and
an interviewee 2,000 miles apart to talk to
each other. There are certain things that
science is helpful. What strikes me is that
“Not all “suicide attempts”
would be called suicide
attempts if the person
doesn’t have a clear, con-
scious desire that they are
trying to harm themselves.
the Bible describes several suicides. But it’s
really the science of Psychology that fleshes
out my approach to working with a suicidal
person. As long as it’s not contradictory to
biblical truth, I will bring in the science. In
fact, I wouldn’t want to work with suicidal
people without incorporating all that’s been
learned about the science of Suicidology.