Chemical Imbalance?
I am not the only one dealing with people who are hearing “voices” or struggling with condemning, and blasphemous thoughts. Every psychiatrist and professional counselor is treating patients with such symptoms. They are experiencing a chemical imbalance is their likely explanation. When they don’t have a biblical worldview, or no understanding of the spiritual world, that is about the only explanation they can offer. When an anti-psychotic medication is administered and the voices are stopped or muted, it may seem to verify their diagnosis. But is that really true? Honest questions need to be asked.
How can a chemical imbalance create a personality or a thought? How can neurotransmitters randomly produce a thought that one is opposed to thinking? Is there a natural explanation for that? Did the anti-psychotic medication cure the problem, or did it mask the symptom? If the person stopped taking the medication would the voices still be there? Was the medication just a narcotizing agent, which is why many people take drugs and alcohol? They have no mental peace so they numb the mental confusion with chemicals, only to wake up the next morning a little worse than the day before.
Attend a secular recovery group in a chemical dependency unit and you will hear statements like, Don’t pay attention to that committee in your head, or You have to get rid of that stinking thinking. Is that describing mental illness, or a spiritual battle for the mind? Ask prisoners who are incarcerated for committing a crime what their thought life is like. They will probably tell you, but most people in our churches won’t disclose that. This is Satan’s greatest “scheme.” Since we can’t read each other’s minds, we don’t have a clue what other people are struggling with in their minds.
When I explain this in a church I am usually inundated with questions and requests for help. I had a crowd around me one night when an usher broke through and said they needed me to help a young lady who was desperate. She wouldn’t talk to anyone else. As I approached her she kept repeating, He understands. He understands. She has had two voices in her head that she referred to as guardians since she was three years old. She had attempted to deal with her voices by being a super-disciplined marine, but that only added to her driven lifestyle. Staying busy was her only means of staying sane, but one can’t do that forever. I met with her the next week, and helped her “submit to God and resist the devil” (James 4:7), and she was free.
Dr. Neil
For Spanish, see http://www.ficmm.org/blog
