Connecting Faith and Mental Health by Jennifer Kerr
W
hen it comes to discussions of mental health, many Christians today aren’t sure how to respond. This summer, for example, I was invited to speak on mental health at the IMPACT Youth Gathering in Grand Forks, B.C. When my subject was announced online, a woman named Nicole asked how the talk would connect to the Bible and Lutheran faith. (I mention this story with her permission.) Nicole noted that mental health is a mainstream topic to which her kids were already well-exposed. I appreciated her concern. While we hear a lot of talk about mental health today in Canada, much of that talk does not honour God as the Way, the Truth, or the Life that we know Him to be. I understand how that can make many Christians feel that the mental health conversation is not for them, or that it has nothing helpful to say to them. But we do not need to be wary or suspicious of mental health discussions as people of faith. In fact, as Lutherans, we are uniquely equipped to enter into the discussion to share, serve, and love.
I am a marriage and family therapist, and I studied at a Christian institution where each course of my degree integrated the history and practice of the counselling field with biblical concepts and a ministry focus. One of my goals in becoming a marriage and family therapist was to serve the mental and relational health of the Christian community, especially my Lutheran faith family. It is very important to me to ground my work in who God is and who He created us to be. I grapple with what that looks like and how it works every day, just as all of us do in our own vocations. It is not an easy journey, but I am so grateful for the chance to serve and care for others. There are many points of connection between faith and mental health, which teach us how our faith can help us better understand and nurture our mental health experience—and how the wider conversation about mental health is better when God is the foundation. I have chosen three points of connection to share in this article. The first point is that mental health is not simply an individual issue, but one best understood systemically.
Our faith can help us better understand and nurture our mental health experience.
12
THE CANADIAN LUTHERAN September/October 2023
