Now We're All Just Crazy?

A survey for the National Institute of Mental Health says that one in four Americans suffers from some sort of mental disorder. The report, published in June, predicts that more than half of us will develop a mental illness at some point in our lives.

If you’re like me, you’re skeptical of those numbers; they seem awfully high. Part of the problem is that the definition of “mental illness” is always expanding. In the last 50 years, the American Psychiatric Association’s “official list” of mental disorders has grown from 60 to well over 300. Even some things that once were just considered bad behavior, like drug and alcohol abuse, are now classified as mental illnesses.

Which brings me to my point.

Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan used to talk about how our nation is “defining deviancy down.” Like those of Isaiah’s day, we have become skilled at calling evil good and good, evil (Isaiah 5:20). Redefining some sins as “illness” — implying that we can’t help ourselves, so it’s not our fault — is just one way of doing that. Instead of taking responsibility for evil choices, it lets us claim to be innocent victims.

But sin is still sin, no matter how stubbornly we ignore it, no matter how eloquently we excuse it, no matter how creatively we redefine it. “If we say we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves, and the truth is not in us…if we say we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us” (1 John 1:8,10).