Question:  What do autism, Asperger syndrome, ADHD, bi-polar disorder, bulimia and OCD all have in common?  Answer: They are all labels for mental conditions or personality disorders that make life challenging for those who have been assigned those labels.  You may know some additional conditions that I have not listed, because there are literally dozens of such conditions.

It is not my intention here to play down in any way the seriousness of mental illness or to minimize the hardship brought about by personality disorders.  Over the years I have counselled too many people who struggled to come to terms with their condition or whose disability has made life extremely challenging.  This is a serious issue.  Some have even come within a hairsbreadth of suicide.  I think of the man who phoned me in the middle of the night from a phone booth by the river to say goodbye.  I drove to where he was and by the grace of God was able to talk him out of drowning himself in the river.  This man had twice had a nervous breakdown and although he survived into his 70s life was always especially challenging for him.

I do want to do two things though in this article.  First, to highlight that these are all manifestations of our fallen and broken condition that resulted from The Fall in Genesis 3.  In the light of that, one could even ask whether there is anyone who is “normal”.  All of us come into this world as flawed people.  It’s just that the flaws are a little more obvious in some than in others.  My tendency to be a workaholic is probably less noticeable than my neighbour’s alcoholism and it’s no doubt also more socially acceptable.  All of us are flawed – whether we are able to put a label on it or not.  For some of us there are phobias that keep us on edge, for others there are addictions we vainly struggle to overcome.  Our character flaws will only be fully overcome when Jesus returns or when we are called to leave this life.  Until then all of us will have our struggles.

This reality that we are all flawed ought to make us much more compassionate towards those whose particular flaws are serious enough to be debilitating.  As Christians we can sometimes be just as scathing and inconsiderate as the rest of the world when it comes to people with mental or emotional handicaps.  How often haven’t we heard well-intentioned church members speak of someone in terms of “not all the oars reaching the water” or of someone being “a few cents short of a dollar”?  I plead guilty too!  But I need to remind myself that this kind of talk is hardly showing Christ-like compassion.

Secondly, I have always encouraged people with any kind of disorder or syndrome not to allow their condition to define them.  It’s all too easy for someone to use their condition as an excuse.  Think, for example, of the child who has been diagnosed as having an attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).  Such a child may become complacent about schoolwork because after all, he has ADHD.  This person needs the challenge to rise above his ADHD.  Obviously there will be some limitations to this challenge to rise above one’s mental or emotional condition.  It may be possible to challenge someone who is mildly autistic to do that.  However, others are so profoundly autistic that it is almost impossible to communicate with them.

We do need to recognise too that many of these conditions are very complex.  Spiritual depression is hardly solved by telling someone that they need to rise above their depression, or simply to “get over it”.  That’s not only simplistic it is also lacking in compassion and understanding.

However, my concern is that too often the condition of a sufferer becomes the defining thing about this person.  Some years ago I knew a girl who was diagnosed as being schizophrenic.  For her parents the schizophrenia became the defining thing in her life.  They constantly helped her avoid responsibilities because after all Emily^* was schizophrenic.  Some family members often commented that Emily was far more capable of handling life than her parents gave her credit for.  The danger is that the compulsive sees himself as an Obsessive Compulsive (OCD) rather than as a human being made in God’s image who also happens to have some special struggles with obsessive compulsiveness.

Above all, we are called to live the whole of our lives by faith in the Son of God.  It is only in Christ and by His enabling that I can live the Christian life.  But that call to live by faith is not just extended to “normal” people or to people who “have it all together”.  The call to live by faith in Jesus is extended to fallen people who have found salvation in Christ as Saviour – and that includes folk whose character flaws are not so immediately obvious as well as those whose character flaws can at times become debilitating.  Please don’t let your mental or emotional condition define you but let what you are in Christ define you.

John Westendorp

^* not her real name.