Mental Illness and Depression (iii)
Thursday, 26 October, 2006
The rest of the Old Testament
Throughout the rest of the Old Testament the situation remains pretty much the same.
Physical
Physically, humanity is still a mess. Adam lives for 930 years (Gen 5:5), but if you read through Genesis and trace his lineage, you'll notice that his descendants die earlier and earlier. We're not told how they died—and, indeed, illness might have been part of that—but the important thing to note is that the effects of sin—i.e. death—are spreading.
Physical illness in the Old Testament includes things like barrenness (think Sarah [Gen 11:30]), boils (think the plagues of Egypt [Ex 9]), leprosy and other skin diseases (think Miriam in Numbers 12), lameness (think Mephibosheth in 2 Samuel 4:4), blindness (think the men of Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis 19) and deafness.
As I was tracing this theme through the Bible, I noticed five interesting things about illness:
1. All illness comes from God
Firstly, all illness comes from God. In Exodus 4:11 when Moses meets with God for the first time, the Lord says to him, “Who has made man's mouth? Who makes him mute, or deaf, or seeing, or blind? Is it not I, the Lord?”
We mustn't think that illness is beyond God's sovereign control and that he doesn't know what he's doing. We may not understand why but we have to trust him because he is God and we are not.
2. God uses illness to execute his judgement
Secondly, God uses illness to execute his judgement on sin. He sends a plague of boils on the Egyptians in Exodus 9. He strikes Israel with the plague after they complain about the lack of food in the wilderness and grumble against him (Num 11:31-35). He turns Miriam into a leper in Numbers 12 after she and Aaron stand up to Moses' authority. He gives tumours to the people who touched the ark of the covenant (1 Sam 5). After David's adulterous affair with Bathsheba, the Lord infects their baby son so that he dies (2 Sam 12:5).
Judgement by illness is definitely one of the terrible things that will happen if the Israelites break their covenant with God. In Deuteronomy 28 when the people are just about to enter the Promised Land, Moses reminds them of the terms of the agreement: if they are obedient and do not forsake the Lord, they will enjoy prosperity and blessing in the land which he is giving them. If they turn away from God and walk in disobedience, they will be cursed—and part of that curse will be sickness (Deut 28:22).
This is not to say that all illness is judgement against sin. If you get sick now, don't think that God is punishing you for something. He may not be.
3. Illness makes you unclean
Thirdly, illness made you unclean in the eyes of the Lord. If you were sick, you could not approach God because he is holy and cannot abide uncleanness.
As God's chosen special people, the Israelites were required to undertake certain activities when they got sick. Leviticus chapters 13 and 14 outlines the rules and requirements that people had to follow if they contracted skin diseases or leprosy. Patients were usually isolated until they got better. Once cured, they had to perform some sort of ritual cleansing—washing or animal sacrifice—before the priest could pronounce them clean and they could rejoin the rest of the community.
Illness is a good reminder that, whereas God is holy and perfect, we are sinful and destined for death. The next time you catch a cold, ponder your mortality and the frailness of your body. Illness humbles us and reminds us that we are finite—just like the flowers of the field.
4. Illness is sometimes used as a metaphor for a person's spiritual state
Fourthly, illness is sometimes used as a metaphor for a person's spiritual state—i.e. their sinfulness. This is particularly true in Isaiah where blindness and deafness illustrate the hardness of the people's hearts and their inability to turn to God (Is 6:9-10).
5. Only God has the power to heal
Fifthly and finally, only God has the power to heal. Just as all illness comes from God, all healing comes from God. Psalm 146:8 tell us “the Lord opens the eyes of the blind” and Psalm 103:3 tell us that the Lord “heals all your diseases”.
People got sick in the Old Testament but some were also healed—even if they died from their illnesses. In Zarephath, Elijah resurrected the widow's son (1 Kings 17:17-24). Elisha did the same to the Shunnamite's son in 2 Kings 4:18-37. Naaman, commander of the army of the King of Syria, was also healed of his leprosy in 2 Kings 5. And Hezekiah was given an extra lease on life in 2 Kings 20.
This is not to say that God will always heal us. It's just that sometimes he does.
This little fact is a good reminder of how much we depend on God. We may not like relying on him—after all, we have modern medicine, and surgery can do amazing things these days. But medicine and surgery are gifts from God, and our health is just as much under God's control as everything else.
Situational
On the situational side, it's easy to see that the prevalence of sin in God's world gives rise to much grief. The first human death occurs in Genesis 4 and it's not from old age; it's because of murder. By Genesis 6, the world has gone to the dogs and God regrets creating humanity in the first place (Gen 6:6). This is quite a change from the pronouncement of “very good” in Genesis 1!
And of course it only goes from bad to worse: think of the bickering between Sarah and her maidservant, Hagar; think of Jacob deceiving Isaac by pretending to be his brother; think of the rape of Dinah; think of Simeon and Levi going on a killing spree in Schechem; think of the Israelites turning to idolatry with the golden calf; think of the war, ungodlessness, injustice, oppression, poverty, sexual immorality, grief and suffering that characterizes the rest of the Old Testament.
Is it any wonder that some of God's prophets were completely depressed by it all? David, persecuted by Saul and faced with the disintegration of his own family, cried out to God in the Psalms. In 1 Kings 19, Elijah is in despair, thinking he's the only prophet of God left. Jeremiah mourned the destruction of Jerusalem and wrote Lamentations. Habbakuk foresaw the Babylonian invasion and called to the Lord for justice.
It's all pretty grim. But thankfully everything changes in the New Testament with the coming of Jesus.
Blinks:
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I think this would make a great Briefing article Karen!
PS See you tomorrow - YAY!!