Mental illness is an ongoing battle said author Jon Seidl in his new book Finding Rest: A Survivor’s Guide to Navigating the Valleys of Anxiety, Faith and Life. That’s not to discourage anyone. “[I]t’s to encourage you that the message of the Gospel is not that Jesus takes away all of the bad things. The message of the Gospel is that He is the one that allowed you to make sense and go through them.”

‘I Finally Knew What I was Fighting’

Jon makes no bones about struggling with anxiety and obsessive compulsive disorder, or OCD. He always felt like he was different, he told The Stream recently. But his life changed when his wife of three years told him she was walking on eggshells. He had lost it when she put the wrong kind of sweetener in his coffee. “And so that was the moment that it really clicked for me that I needed to get help.” He saw a doctor, who diagnosed him with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) and OCD. “And to get that diagnosis, it was just like, it was like, I finally knew what I was fighting.”

The Stigma is Real

The stigma of mental illness still exists. Perhaps especially in the faith community. Jon’s family told him to just pray about it, or read the Bible more. Or “there’s something that you’ve done that you haven’t repented of.” The problem is, in many ways, what Jon calls “feel good theology,” or “coffee cup theology.” “There’s this idea that we are disappointing God by treating our mental health. You know, we don’t think twice about going to the doctor for a broken bone, but there’s this stigma about going to the doctor for a broken brain.”

The problem isn’t with one denomination, however. “It’s not a Pentecostal problem. It’s not a Baptist problem. It’s not a Presbyterian problem. It’s a church-wide problem.” Jon adds that the church as a whole hasn’t taken mental health seriously. 

What Churches Must Do

The church must understand that it must be a place of openness and vulnerability. “When we … bring things into the light, they also lose their power.” It’s important for churches to talk about mental health and that it isn’t formulaic.

“It’s an ongoing battle. … I tell people, ‘This book is not going to heal you. This book is not going to make it go away. It’s going to give you the tools though, to fight back.” The church must stop treating mental illness as if one solution exists. “And so, I think the more that we’re vulnerable and open and talking about [it], the more power it loses over us and the church as well.”

A Proper Theology of Suffering

Jon wants pastors to understand a proper theology of suffering. While it can help those who suffer with mental illness, it’s really for everyone. “It’s for the person who just lost the job. It’s for the person who’s gotten in a car accident and broke their leg and now can’t go to work. So, that proper theology of suffering that points us upward and says, ‘All of this stuff is happening for my good and His glory.'”

Pastors shouldn’t be the mental health expert. But they should gather resources to help those in their church who are suffering. 

A proper theology of suffering is the foundation on which everything else is built. “If you can come to the understanding that I don’t judge God by my circumstances, but I judge my circumstances by who God is, everything else falls in line.” People cannot control their suffering or God. “But the truth is that God allows these things to happen to us to refine us and to redefine us.”

A Closer Relationship With Jesus

Some therapies do help, such as exercise and taking medication. “I can do all the things and sometimes it’s still overwhelming. And those are the times I just have to throw myself even more on the Lord. And what has that done? It has brought me into a closer relationship with Jesus.” He thanks God for his illnesses, because it has made his relationship with Jesus “so much richer and so much better as a result of this.”

Anxiety and Depression During a Pandemic

The pandemic hasn’t made any of this easier. Some struggle with even more anxiety. “Everyone has a little anxiety. Anxiety is really just self preservation. It’s that fight or flight response. If you see a bear in the woods, you either fight the bear or run. I hope you run. Because I don’t think you’re going to win against the bear. But everyone has that fight or flight response. Anxiety is that overactive fight or flight response. So everyone kind of has habits, anxiety, [but] the pandemic, you know, kind of unleashed or released this anxiety on a whole new level.”

Jon believes that God has used the pandemic to open people’s eyes, especially in the church, that mental illness is a real problem.

Treating Mental Illness Holistically

Jon wants people to know that the problem with mental illness isn’t a physical problem. It isn’t a spiritual problem. It’s both. “So many times there’s people that say, ‘Well, this is all a spiritual problem.’ Well, they’re wrong. And there’s people who say, ‘This is all a physical problem.’ Well, they’re wrong, too. And so my advice is you have to treat this as both a physical and a spiritual problem. You know, for me, I have to treat the physical first if I’m ever going to get to the spiritual, I have to treat the physical first.” He exercises and changed his eating habits. He avoids too much caffeine.

“And so, what I want people to understand is that by treating that holistically, that is when you do find rest.” But rest isn’t the destination. He adds:

We’re given the armor of God that assumes that we’re always going to be in a battle. And so for me, I’m in the battle. Can the Lord miraculously take this away? Absolutely. Has He? No. So right now this is the battle I’m in. So the rest that I’m talking about in the book, it’s not a destination. It’s these moments within the battle where you go behind the lines and you rest and you recover and you find food and you heal your wounds. And then you go back into the battle.

The Message

The book is not a 10-step program to healing, “because that’s not the message of the Bible. The message of the Bible is ‘in this world you will have trouble. But I will give you peace.’ And so, it’s the idea of finding that peace amidst the storm.”

Nancy Flory, Ph.D., is an associate editor at The Stream. You can follow her @NancyFlory3, and follow The Stream @Streamdotorg.