Pride: It is good to be proud of our accomplishments but at the same time it is not good to be so proud of them that we forget from whence they came. To get so entangled in our own small rewards, inventions, abilities and forget the purpose of our work and begin to believe we did without the help of others and our creator is the beginning of sin. It leads into more of the same and taints our minds into believing we are more capable than we are.
Envy: A healthy mind is not envious. To be glad for others and to appreciate their good fortunes and their well being is healthy; to be envious to the point that we neglect our own work and begin copying or mimicking theirs, is not.
Gluttony: Eating for the sake of eating and not for the nourishment our bodies need is not healthy. The press is full of reports of how not to do this, but few ever mention the nasty word gluttony. They don't do it because they know that some people's bodies cannot process the food and although overweight, they don't want to be callous and uncouth. That's healthy. Working toward better nutrition for everyone is healthy. Living to eat and not simply eating to live, is unhealthy.
Lust: Lust is not love. It is using another person for personal pleasure and that is not healthy. To love others as God loves us is healthy. Lust causes unwanted pregnancies and the killing of unwanted babies. How can that be healthy? That is murder, and the whole affair is not pure and it is not simple.
Anger: Anger can get all of us into trouble and no one in fits of rage can be considered to be mentally healthy. Yet to not get angry at wrong doing and is also unhealthy. There must be less stressful ways of dealing with such intense emotions. People do things when angry, and when mentally not healthy that they would not do when clear headed.
Greed: is another unhealthy mind condition that cannot get enough. They never seem to know when to stop and stop using the fruits of their labor as they were intended to be used by healthy minds.
Sloth: Laziness I suppose is what the amounts to. Nothing much is heard of this word anymore but the word reminds us those slow moving seemingly uncaring creatures. Sluggishness is certainly not healthy, whatever else it is. And who among us has not been lazy at times. We even admit to being somewhat lazy when asked why we did not do such and such, but how many of us will ever admit to sloth?
To answer the question what has sin to do with mental health, I reiterate it has everything to do with it, but probably not in the way sin is viewed by most people. The above characteristics are sinful and aren't we all sinning? And it is this very sin that keeps us from growing mentally healthier and healthier by making every effort to keep to our path and to do the work on earth we were meant to do.
As long as we keep our eyes and ears closed to the truth of our own sin and we use every bit of our energy to hide the fact of our wrong doing, how can we ever hope to be cured of our mental and physical illness? Therefore I accuse everyone, myself included, of being mentally ill at times. Some more than others, of course, no one is mentally healthy to the point they can gloat or brag about it.
The point of the above discussion is to show that no matter how much one denies it, mental illness is prevalent in the world today, and no one is spared.
Before anything can be done about it, each individual -- if they are capable of this much truthfulness within themselves -- must admit to their own signs. To whom do they admit this too? To their God, of course.
No comments:
Post a Comment