When Covid 19 Causes Depression
נפשׁ
nephesh soul, self, life, creature, person, appetite, mind, living being, desire, emotion, passion
“And Yehovah God formed the man out of dust from the ground, and blew into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.” Genesis 2:7
I started my computer day today with a news update from www.churchleaders.com which informed me that “One in Five COVID Patients Go On to Develop Mental Illness.” Now we have a link between a virus and mental illness? Next you know we will have a diagnosis for mental flu (perhaps that is what was being hinted at)!
Yes, I do know there are bonafide problems with brain functioning. I know that first hand having worked on the front lines of behavioral healthcare for just shy of 30 years. And yes, I have seen it all.
But in America we treat people like something we can run through a kitchen gadget and slice and dice them in so many ways. Physical ailment – go see your doctor. Spiritual ailment – go see your pastor. Emotional ailment – go see your counselor. Mental issues – try a psychiatrist. Let’s take that last one on.
The DSM (Diagnostic Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders IV) describes the separation of mental and physical as “a reductionistic anachronism of mind/body dualism.” Mind body dualism is to say we are material (physical) and immaterial (soul, spirit). What the psychiatrists who formed the American Psychiatric Association (APA) have done in their “bible” is vote in a catalogue of mental disorders. The statistical comes in because if you have enough people with similar characteristics, then you have enough statistically to name a new disorder and then you lobby to get the vote. (For more on this try reading “Making Us Crazy: DSM: The Psychiatric Bible and the Creation of Mental Disorders
by Herb Kutchins and Stuart A. Kirk, both psychiatrists who chronicled the politics of the APA and their system of voting in and voting out disorders).
Leave it to the APA to sidestep the created order of material and immaterial as the basis of existence. That gets into the arena of the existence of God, heaven forbid!
Translating their interesting choice of words, reductionistic is an attempt to explain a complex set of facts with something simpler and anachronistic is about pulling from another time period than the present. The folks who put on the Renaissance Festivals around the country are called “the society for creative anachronism.” However, the APA is not so creative.
In effect what they are saying might sound something like this: “You only think you have a soul or a spirit because your brain secretes chemicals that tell you this. That is why if you have something wrong, we give you chemicals to change your on-board secretions to straighten you out.” I have tried for decades to debate this and have never found a taker, for here is my question for the debate. “How do you know your brain was secreting correctly when you came up with that idea?”
Now a virus leading to mental illness? If you look up “mental” it will say something like “relating to the mind.” Mind then will say something about thinking and feeling. How does one have an ill thought? Or for that matter an ill feeling? Want a simpler, more direct world to live in than the one being described?
Please pick up your Bible and let’s go towards the front cover to our verse from Genesis When God created mankind he created Adam as a nephesh chayah a nephesh living. Plants are chayah – they are living, but you move up the created order to nephesh chayah and you find animals and mankind.
By definition, nephesh is a way of describing all of the immaterial aspects of life including the mind and the emotion. Dualism is basically a Western view of the nature of man, based on Greek thinking. This idea is completely foreign to the biblical Hebraic view of man as a unity.
When Moses says we should love God with all of our heart and soul and strength he is not proposing three different parts to a human or when Paul says “Now may the God of shalom Himself make you completely holy; and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept complete, in 1 Thess 5:23 (TLV), he is not saying that man is composed of three different parts. Hebrew repeats to make a point and the use of nephesh in Scripture https://www.therain.org/appendixes/app13.html shows this. While it appears 754 times it is translated soul 472 times, the other 282 are translated with many other words including four instances where it is even used for dead body.
David got depressed, Yeshua wept and Paul became despairing of life.
These are all expressions of life on earth in our current state and not bits and pieces that can be made into slices and dices by some kitchen gadget. Now imagine any of these three going to see a psychiatrist to get medication to treat their sadness.
All three went to the Creator in their own way, but to the singular creator who created mankind as a living unity. Disassembling people reminds me of the first car I ever rebuilt, a 1956 Chevrolet Bel Air. It ran fine afterwards, even better but I had a coffee can with some leftover bolts and nuts. Still wonder where they went or what replaced them.
None of us helps our fellow people by taking them apart into bits and pieces, We help them only when we bring them to Yeshua who makes people whole by bringing healing to all of their being, and not just one part. Read Isaiah 61:1-3 and consider this as not different categories, but the bringing of unified healing to a life that is afflicted in different ways.