When Nebuchadnezzar erected a huge golden statue to himself for his people to bow down and worship, God befuddled his mind so much that this mighty king was consigned to wander about like an ox and eat grass for seven years: he lost his mind. The longer King Saul ruled, the more corrupt he became. His thinking was debased, and he was envious of the future King David day and night. He became paranoid and murderous, and turned from the ways of God: he lost his mind. Ironically, the only thing that gave him comfort was the music from David’s lyre.
When the great Apostle Paul was imprisoned, he wrote letters to his spiritual son Timothy on how to be a proper pastor of a new church. Paul admonishes him that in the times to come, people would leave the faith, clinging to teachings of demons, having become seared in their conscious minds. They would lose all ability to see truth and reason: i.e. they will lose their mind.
While ‘brain’ is not specifically mentioned in scripture, what ancient authors of the bible meant for brain is ‘mind’. In Hebrew mind is ‘leb’ meaning the heart, or inner person, which only God can see but out of which flows action and intent. In Greek mind is ‘nous’ which means mind or intellect, and which is the fount of our heart and intentions. In the examples above, we see a picture of important, lofty men losing their minds, or ‘going crazy’, as we say. Today we tend to think of this as a ‘mental health’ issue. As I have outlined in previous posts, modern man assigns mental illness to the domain of physical illness. But from ancient times until about the 1970’s, mental illness was always understood as spiritual illness, or sin.
As I have outlined in previous posts, modern man assigns mental illness to the domain of physical illness, or disease of the brain. But from ancient times until about the 1970’s, mental illness was always understood as spiritual illness, or sin.
But what if wrong thinking in the mind (mental illness) really does lead someone to ‘lose’ their mind? What if this happens not only in the abstract, but in the concrete? What if God actually causes physical changes to occur in the brain due to sinful thinking? That is my new theory and understanding. I hypothesize that despite millenia of false teaching by philosophers, we cannot separate the body from the mind. God intended them to work together. The body is rarely mentioned in scriptures except as flesh to be persecuted daily:
This I say then, walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh. For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would. ~Galatians 5:16-17
And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect. ~Romans 12:2
To try and clarify this idea, we need to just understand a human being as one unit in its entirety. We are so used to separating out the outer man from the inner man (physical from mental), but we are one being, not two in one. And this one human being is corruptible in one way only, by sin. Being corrupted by sin causes sickness in us. This sickness occurs outwardly and inwardly, in ways that are visible to the naked eye and ways that are invisible to the naked eye but sometimes visible with sorcery (x-rays, scans, imaging).
The devil has done his work through philosophy and empty deceit (as Paul warned us about) and duped man into thinking that man’s mind and body function independently of each other, and most importantly, independently of God, or the spiritual realm. He has tricked nearly everyone into thinking that what ails man is not spiritual sickness, or sin, but physical and mental illness. And because we don’t understand the true root of our problem, we accept the devil’s offer of his false god, a physician (or its duplicate), to heal us.
If we don’t understand that our human self is sick for one reason only, sin, we cannot seek the correct cure, which is only from God (or His duplicate)–JESUS CHRIST.
One man has one disease: Sin.
One man has One Cure: Jesus.
Now the Spirit expressly says that in latter times some will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons, speaking lies in hypocrisy, having their own conscience seared with a hot iron, forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from foods which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. ~1 Timothy 4:1-3
Besides being an obvious denunciation of the Catholic doctrine of unmarried and celibate priests, the above passage gives us the intriguing concept that in our times, even the elect will not give heed to the Holy Spirit, but to false spirits/demons and believe in their lies. Their conscience will become seared. In the Greek, conscience is συνείδησις, suneidésis, Strong’s entry 4893. It basically means moral consciousness, having to do with the mind. As we have learned, the mind is the inner self, the intellect, the heart, our moral compass. It’s what makes us human and different from the animals. It’s our brain, plus a lot more.
Seared is Strong’s entry 2743: καυτηριάζω, or kautériazó: To cauterize. Which we can understand in our language: a burning or branding that kills the flesh and is irreversible. Paul is teaching Timothy that anyone–even those who should know better as instructed by the Holy Spirit–is vulnerable to false teachings which come by demons and which will cauterize our consciousness. This implies an irreversible state or condition.
The brains of patients with dementia and Alzheimers disease have been studied, and researchers have found varying degrees of corruption from microvascular changes to black necrotic regions which cause outright holes in the brain. Obviously where there is lack of blood flow, tissue dies because the bible tells us the life is in the blood. When tissue dies, it withers away. This sounds like the concept of cauterization. If we use our mind to focus on idols and false spirits, and not what we should be focused on, God and the Holy Spirit, our conscious minds will become seared; it will cauterize our brain. Alzheimer’s and dementia are not organic diseases caused by what we eat, they are death of our flesh caused by sinful thoughts stemming from a sinful heart.
“These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.” ~Jesus
God is clearly telling us through His great Apostle Paul who speaks for Christ that if we do not use our life to serve the Spirit, but instead use our bodies and minds to serve satan and his demons, and believe in their false doctrines, He will allow us to fall into sickness, which is really unrepentant sin. Because we are one being, not two, this sickness will pervade our body, inside and out. On the contrary, the act of worshiping God and thinking night and day on His law and His ways, protects our minds from sin and keeps us healthy.
There are many ways to lose your mind and it manifests in many ways. At first you might appear to be depressed. Then paranoid. Avoidant. Envious. Angry. Murderous. Manic. Selfish to an extreme. If you live long enough, these all lead to one place: Loss of memory and executive function. Dementia. Or the dreaded worst dementia: Alzheimer’s disease.
Now Jesus made it clear that not all disease was due to sin. He said sometimes disease happens so that God’s glory made be made evident through it. But most sickness is due to sin, and sin leads to death. Men who use their minds not as they should, to think about lustful things, murderous things, all the things listed in the bible as sin will not escape with an intact mind. They will go crazy. And it won’t be due to what they eat or due to genetics, it will be due to their sinful heart. There is no place man can hide from God, not even in his mind.
~Selah
~Song of Mary~ 