Not Enough to “Feel Better”
Sometimes, treating symptoms is the best we can do. When we have a flu, we’re just going to have to wait for our God given immunity to eventually defeat it. It can help, however, to manage the fever, change our diet to deal with the stomach problems, etc… until that happens. That’s because, in this case, natural immunity is the cure and we’re just dealing with the symptoms as it works.
However, there are other cases where we are content to mitigate the symptoms of an underlying problem without a cure. For instance, depression is something which many of us have been taught is caused by a chemical imbalance. Armed with that knowledge, people set out to find chemicals that counterbalance this supposed imbalance. The cure, right?
Recently, there has been a lot of talk in the psychology community about that very assumption. An umbrella study (study which reviewed other study methods) of diagnosed depression and chemical levels found no correlation and also that most (if not all) effects of anti-depressants can be attributed to the placebo effect (which have a long list of potential, negative side-effects).
How have anti-depressants not only enjoyed the benefits of being declared the cure, but also survived scrutiny when so many have used them for so long and yet the problem remains? People accepted it because they wanted to believe it would work. They wanted a fix to the discomfort and some even found it simply by believing they had it.
In our materialist age, the idea that mental illness could be caused by anything other than biochemical processes unsettles people. That there may be a spiritual aspect to everything from depression to schizophrenia is right out! However, because we only treated the symptoms and sought to feel better, we actually allowed the problem to go unchecked and grow still worse all the time!
The Church Can Do It Too
But what about those who do believe there are spiritual realities to life? Surely, we are immune to such oversimplifications of problems that the materialists stumble into, right? Sometimes, I fear, even believers can stumble into the same trap. We set out to address the problem, only to pick away at the symptoms.
I have seen this very thing in discussions regarding sexual immorality in our culture. So often, we discuss the degeneracy of our time as the cause of judgement upon our culture. However, in Romans 1, Paul is addressing a very similar situation in the culture surrounding that church and he identifies the immorality as a symptom of the problem rather than the problem itself.
Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.
Romans 1:24-25
While mankind’s natural inclinations (in scripture, called “lusts of the heart” or “desires of the flesh”) certainly lead us toward depravity, God graciously preserves us from utter depravity in most cases. We will never truly see how wicked a person could be, praise God! However, here Paul warns that he will “give people up” to their lusts as punishment.
The cause of God’s judgement isn’t the sexual immorality. The cause is that they’ve exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshipped creation rather than him! The immorality is the result of his judgement (of loosening his restraint on sin nature) upon their godless worship of created things.
Lest someone argue that “dishonoring of their bodies among themselves” doesn’t have to do with indecent sex or of another kind than what is popular today, he is explicit immediately following:
For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.
Romans 1:26-27
God doesn’t judge a nation because they forsake the roles he has uniquely given to men and women. He judges a nation by allowing them to do so!
Don’t Treat Only Symptoms
Like Rome, we see the lusts of men running rampant. Greed, homosexuality, fornication, slander, etc… It can be disheartening but we need to remember that these are not the cause of the problem. The cause is that society has allowed (and, sadly, often adopted) the materialist worldview. We’ve accepted the lie that we are just meat machines developed by blind selection processes in a chaotic world where God (at best) may sometimes intervene.
People say things like “marvel of evolution” rather than giving glory to the creator. They care a great deal about being saviors of the planet rather than looking for a savior for their souls. If we want to turn this around, we cannot be content with convincing people to resist their lusts, we must articulate nothing less than worship for the creator.
That leaves us dependent upon God because ultimately he is in control of changing hearts. We cannot convince people to believe. However, if our goal is for God to restore the hearts of our neighbors, while we may sometimes need to treat the symptoms (to protect our neighbors from the worst of human nature), we need to insist not upon behavioral modification but rather heart realignment.
If we could snap our fingers and remove all promotion of homosexuality and transgenderism from children’s education, it would solve nothing if we don’t replace it with an education in God according to scripture. A godless evolutionary position against homosexuality would treat it as nothing more than an undesirable genetic mutation rather than sin from which people should repent.
What people need isn’t to live a more upright life for the material benefits. They need be living sacrifices to a glorious God! There are a lot of movements out there promoting “right living” as a cure for all our ills. Not only is living righteously impossible without Christ but the benefits won’t come no matter how much godless behavioral modification there is.
Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.
James 1:17
Godless purity (as if there is such a thing) is still just as miserable as godless sinfulness. God alone is the source of all blessings!
