Being Honest About Our Mental Health

Reference

Matthew 13:1-17

Professor Kuruvilla George from MST explores Jesus’ parables of the sower and the weeds to reflect on the inner thorns of anxiety and stress, and the outer tests of difficult relationships. With warmth and insight, this message invites us to be honest about our mental health, find hope in God’s grace, and learn practical ways to grow in faith amid life’s challenges.

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Read the transcript

I feel like it's a bit weird to people limping on and off the stage. Good morning.
This morning I'm reading from Matthew chapter 13, verses 1 to 17.

That same day, Jesus went out of the house and sat by the lake. Such large crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat in it, while all the people stood on the shore.
Then he told them many things in parables, saying, A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it.
Some fell on rocky places where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly because the soil was shallow.
But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root.
Other seed fell among thorns which grew up and choked the plants. Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop 160 or 30 times what was sown.
Whoever has ears, let them hear.
The disciples came to him and asked, why do you speak to the people in parables?
He replied, because the knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them.
Whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have even what they have will be taken from them.
This is why I speak to them in parables, though seeing they do not see, though hearing they do not hear or understand.
In them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah: “You will be ever hearing but never understanding; you will be ever seeing but never perceiving.
For this people's hearts have become calloused; they hardly hear with their ears, and they have closed their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts and turn, and I would heal them.”
But blessed are your eyes because they see, and your ears because they hear.
For truly I tell you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it.

This is the word of the Lord.

Thank you for reading that, and it's a pleasure to be with all of you.
thank Megan for inviting me to come and be with you today. And also, Lisa – Jacob is the one who made the first introduction so I could meet Megan and have some time with her.

So it's good to be with you.
So, let's pray, and then I will look further into the word of God.

Father, we thank you for today. We thank you for your goodness, your mercy, your love.
You're a good God, Father. We just want to reiterate that you're a good God.
Father, I just thank you for your word and pray that you will open our eyes – our eyes to understand.
Listen, Father, and also be Father. We ask this today in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Now, I – you heard a bit of my story – but I retired from public service. I never did any private psychiatry. Public sector psychiatry.
I was working for Eastern Health for many years before I retired. And following my retirement in 2020, just before Covid. God's timing.
And I then have been working on an honorary basis with the Melbourne School of Theology, where we started five years ago. Exactly. We started a Centre for Theology and Psychology, integrating theology and psychology.

So that's where I do some work. And always open for ministry in churches and other groups in this area.
So because, as you're well aware, there's still a lot of stigma and lack of understanding about mental health in the faith community.

Now, many have told me, well, in the West it's so much better. Certainly it is compared to Eastern and developing countries. You know, the Western nations are much better in the area of awareness and reducing stigma, but it's still there.

And I give my own example to show that things may not have changed as much as we think they have. I say, well, just after I retired in 2020 – in 2021 – I had cancer of my bladder. And I said, well, I can share that with anyone in the faith community, in the church.

I've got cancer. Please pray for me.

But if I was suffering from schizophrenia or bipolar affective disorder or an anxiety disorder, would I be as free to share that with anyone? even in the faith community, to say that that's what's happening?

So the question that I often have is why not? Why not?
Why do we make that distinction between a mental illness and a physical illness? And we have still quite a bit of stigma, even though we think there isn't.

And so my passion since retirement has been to try and break that down – bring that down as much as I can. So wherever there are opportunities, I will say a bit more about the Center for Theology and Psychology at the end, and some of the resources that we have.

But going to the passage that we just read from Matthew chapter 13 – it's a well-known passage, we all have, I'm sure, read it many a time. But I just wanted to share a few things with you from that.

So from Matthew 13, the part that we read. This is the parable of the sower.

And then if you go on from verse 18 onwards, Jesus explains the parable to his disciples because they wanted to know a bit more. In verse 18 it says: a man hears the message of the kingdom and does not grasp it. The evil one comes and snatches away what was sown in the heart. This is like the seed sown by the roadside.

The seed sown on stony patches represents the man who hears the message and eagerly accepts it, but it has not taken root in him and does not last long. The moment trouble or persecution arises – though through the message – he gives up his faith at once.

And the seed sown among the thorns... This is what I want to concentrate a bit on today.

The seed that is sown among the thorns represents the man who hears the message. And when the worries of this life and the illusions of wealth choke it to that, so that it produces no crop in his life, there's no fruitfulness because of the worries of this life and the illusions of this life that cause the problem.

So the message that I have today is really about what's called thorns and tests. Thorns and tests.

I'm looking for my notes here, and I will go on to the next... see in this chapter.

There are a few things about agriculture – a few parables that Jesus mentions about agriculture. The next one is also about agriculture.

And he says in verse 24, “Then he put another parable before them. The kingdom of heaven,” he said, “is like a man who sowed good seed in his field.”

But while his men were asleep, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away.
When the crop came up and ripened, the weeds appeared as well.
Then the owner's servants came to him and said, “Sir, didn't you sow good seed in your field? Where did all these weeds come from?”
“Some blackguard has done this to spite me,” he replied.
“Do you want us then to go and pull them all up?” said the servants.
“No,” he answered. “If you pull up the weeds now, you will pull up the wheat with them. Let them both grow together till the harvest, and at harvest time I shall tell the reapers: collect all the weeds first and tie them up in bundles ready to burn. But collect the wheat and store it in my barn.”

So we see two parables. Wheat about what you call weeds. One is thorns and the other is tares.

Now, as we all know – when we do gardening in this country (I was just sharing in the first service) – I just came back from the UK after two and a half weeks, visiting my wife's family and some of our good friends.

And yesterday I spent most of the afternoon gardening, and what was most of the time spent on? Weeding, isn't it?
When we say we are going to do gardening, most of the time we spend on weeding.

So Jesus, when you read these two parables, it looks as though there's a discrepancy. In one parable, Jesus is saying the weeds will cause you to be stifled and you won't be fruitful – so we think Jesus is saying you need to get the weeds out if you want to be fruitful. But in the second parable, Jesus is saying, leave the weeds alone. I will take care of that.

So it looks as though Jesus is giving two contradictory – you know, come on – two contradictory teachings to his disciples. But then when we look more closely, there is a difference. One is thorns and the other are tares.

So thorns are a special kind of weed which is very difficult to pull out. We all know when we are weeding how difficult it is. It takes a lot of effort and needs to be done regularly – if we don't do it, weeds take over. (As we all know from our gardens, it's amazing: when we have got fruitful flowers or plants that we've put in our garden, we have to put in the effort to produce the flowers. We have to water them, feed them, look after them, tend them. But weeds – we don't have to do any of that! It just seems to grow, isn't it amazing? It’s amazing how you don't have to care for them; it just grows.)

But in the second parable, tares are weeds called darnel, and darnel has a similar appearance to wheat. It is often difficult to make out, during the time of growth, whether it is wheat or darnel. And that's why Jesus said in the parable, “No, leave it, because if you pull out the darnel, you might be pulling out the wheat. Let it grow together, and at the end then I (or God, the farmer) will take care of it – pull out the weeds and burn them – while the wheat is gathered to feed us.”

So what does it mean? What lessons can we take from these two parables today? Thorns in the first parable (which choke fruitfulness, choke our life and make us unfruitful) are within us – things within us. I would call them psychological pressures: worries and anxieties. These include:

worries about our future
worries about our finance
worried about retirement
worried about our children (if we have got children, about our children's education and about their wellbeing)
worries about our health
worries about world peace (as you can see, with all the things happening in the world these days and how it's going to impact us here or our loved ones overseas)
worries about climate change

...all kinds of worries – things that we are all aware of and often battle with.

Jesus also said something else: not only worries, but illusions. What are these? Illusions of money. Illusions of materialism. Illusions of positions in our life which we put so much energy into. And Jesus is saying that these are the things that cause stress in our lives. Is that true? All these things – worries, anxieties, illusions – cause stress in our life. That's what causes stress in our life.

Now, stress by itself is not harmful. We all have stress; there is no human being that does not have stress. If we don't have stress, something is abnormal – yeah, stress is normal, and stress can be good. For example (I gave this example in the morning service): if we didn't have stress while we were students, would we sit down and study for our exams? It's because we have stress that we do that. If we did not have stress in our normal life to come to church or go to work on time and do what is expected of us – we wouldn't be doing it the way that is expected of us. So stress is normal.

But if we do not take stress and cope with it in a healthy way – if we don't take control of the stress in a healthy way (take control so that it remains productive and not unproductive) – then it becomes distress. And if we let distress go on, it becomes disease (dis-ease), right? …Sorry, I should be showing all this… You should have done that… They're doing it? Okay, right, excellent.

So stress becomes distress and distress becomes disease. Now we use this term disease very often, don't we? We all know the term disease. But do you know where it has come from? The root word is lack of ease. Lack of ease. That's what disease is – lack of ease. We use it, but normally we don't think about it. So that's what disease is: lack of ease.

Stress is normal – we all have it – and it can make us productive and help us live life much better, that little stress that we have. But if we don't control it, if we don't take care of it, it becomes distress. When distress happens, that is a sign for us that we need to do something about it. And if we don't take care of it, then it becomes disease: anxiety disorders, obsessive compulsive disorders, phobic disorders and so on and so on – depression, all kinds of disorders that begin to impact on us, not only mental but also physical.

Now, let me give you an example. You have all heard of the fight-and-flight response – I'm sure these days everybody knows fight and flight – but God has created us in a way that when we are challenged, we produce chemicals in our body (mainly adrenaline and corticosteroids) which help blood go to our brains and other important areas so that we can function better. So when we are stressed – when we have a challenge – our heart pumps faster so that blood goes more to the brain and to the muscles, so that we can either fight the situation or flee from that situation. Humans and animals both do this. Corticosteroids are also produced in our body, which then work on our liver to produce more glucose so that our muscles will have more energy either to fight or to flee. Any animals (like the cat) and human beings all have that internal reaction involving corticosteroids.

Think about it: if you have cats, you will have seen what happens when a cat faces a dog. The back arches, hairs stand on end, pupils dilate, the claws protrude. Why? The cat is either getting ready to fight the dog or to fly (run) away from the dog. Am I right? You've noticed that. But my question is, if the cat is not facing the dog, does it lie on your couch all the time thinking, “What am I going to do when the dog comes?” Does it ever do that? It doesn't. Only human beings do that. Animals don't do that.

We all have the fight-and-flight reaction, but only human beings are constantly worrying: “What am I going to do about my children's education? What am I going to do when I'm retiring? What am I going to do about buying a house? What am I going to do about this? What am I going to do about that?” And what are we doing whenever this is happening? We are throwing adrenaline and corticosteroids into our body – creating high blood pressure, strokes, heart attacks; the corticosteroids producing more and more glucose (diabetes); from head to toe we are being diseased because of this anticipatory stress and our throwing chemicals into our system which was not meant to be. Animals don't do that – only human beings do that. And you know what? These days they are even saying one of the theories is that Alzheimer's dementia is probably due to constant stress chemicals affecting the brain.

Okay, so that's what we are doing to ourselves (not meant to be!). Now, so that is weeds – yes, we need to take care of it. Tests. Tests are outside agents, mainly people and relationships. Remember what we talked about – God said, “Let them grow together; not up to you to pull it out.” Many people and relationships test us.

It could be a difficult colleague at work (when we are working together, somebody makes our life difficult – an unreasonable boss expecting things from us).
It could be colleagues who are bullying us.
It could be an irritating neighbour, constantly irritating us.
It could be even a challenging church member (does that happen in this church? I'm sure it doesn't. But many churches – you know, the number of churches in India which have ended up in court cases and divisions and breakdowns because people can't live together, right?)
It could be a nagging wife (I'm sure none of the wives here are nagging, right?)
Or a domineering husband (does that happen? If you don't have any of these, please talk to me later – I would like to know some secrets for a perfect marriage!)

So it could be any of these. And these are the tests in our life, okay? These are the bait of Satan. You know about baiting – when you go fishing, you put out bait (a worm, whatever it is) and you put it out. Only if the fish bites it is it hooked; if it doesn't, the bait just lies there. So these things (the tests – the domineering husband or the nagging wife, etc.) they are baits of Satan. The bait of Satan is offense. And when we take the bait, we get offended. As long as it lies there, it's just an offense – but when we bite it, then we become offended.

We have the power not to take the bait, and these people and relationships can then strengthen our faith and life. That's why God puts people like that to test us – so that our faith can grow, our life can become stronger. Let God deal with them. That's what it says in the parable: “I will deal with them at the end of time. I will pull them out and burn them if necessary.” He is the judge and not us.

See the difference between the weeds and the tests? Weeds: it's up to us to take care of them – if we don't, we're not going to be fruitful; we're going to become distressed and diseased. Tests: leave it (let God handle it).

Now, when we are challenged by people like that – whether it be a nagging wife or a domineering husband or somebody in the church – we can use what is called cognitive distancing (another term for it is psychological distancing). We have all heard of social distancing (I never heard of it until Covid – now everybody, even in the developing world, knows what social distancing is). What is cognitive distancing?

Before responding – here is an example from my own life. My wife says something to me; I immediately get offended, retaliate and say something else; then she becomes more angry and it becomes a vicious cycle. Instead of doing that, cognitive distancing means before responding with anger (followed by destructive words and actions), step back. Step back. Pause. Pause – maybe for a minute – and then act. It will prevent so much pain and heartache in our life and relationships if we can do that.

Pause before judging. We're constantly doing that, and we should pause before doing that. Pause before assuming what is going on in that person's life – we don't know what's going on in that person's life. Pause before assuming. Pause before accusing somebody. Pause whenever you are about to act harshly, and you will avoid doing and saying things that you will later regret.

If you can just take that principle today – pause – I would be happy. Pause.

You know, I also said at the end of the service (as in the morning service), walking is the best exercise of all. As we get old, walking is the best. Walk away from arguments that lead to anger. Walk away from thoughts that steal your happiness. The more we learn to walk away from things that destroy our soul, the happier our life will be. Our life will be okay.

Now I hope these few thoughts will be of help to you.

I was talking about CTP, so I'll just end there by talking about what we do there.

Seminars, Webinars, Workshops: We do a lot of sort of seminars, webinars, workshops. Actually, two months ago I just did a workshop which was well received – I was talking to Megan about whether it could be done here – on A Christian perspective on dementia, which is becoming an increasingly hot topic in how Christians and the church respond to that.
Programs and Resources: We have degree programs, training, and research – you can look up the website to see what is going on. (I've got a few leaflets about the Centre if some of you want one.)
Directory of Professionals: The other thing is that we have a directory of Christian mental health practitioners (very often Christians who have mental health problems say, “Oh, can I see a Christian? Do you know a Christian psychologist or a Christian counselor or a Christian psychiatrist?”). So we've got a directory – I'm happy to pass it on to you for your private use (not for publication). We can give it to anyone who needs it.
Personal Advice: I'm available personally – I'm retired now (I don't practice, so I'm not registered) – but I'm available to give advice. If anybody wants advice, say you're having a problem and wondering what next step you can take or what might be the way forward (do you need a psychologist? very often people are confused – do you need a psychologist, a psychiatrist, a counselor?) – I'm happy to help with that.
Free Booklets: I've got a few copies of some little booklets I wrote for the faith community (not for professionals). One is A Christian Perspective on Stress and Grief and another is A Christian Perspective on Mental Illness and Suicide. I don't sell them – as I said, I don't have many – but if you want a copy, it's first come, first served. You can have those books (the copies that I have).