How should we, as Christians think about mental health and mental illness? Are there ways in which the Bible gives us insights into treating mental illness, that go beyond what modern secular scholarship can provide?
In our discussion, David talks about his own struggles with mental illness, and about how the Bible gives us the best possible framework for dealing with issues that are often both spiritual and physical in nature.
How should we, as Christians think about mental health and mental illness? Are there ways in which the Bible gives us insights into treating mental illness, that go beyond what modern secular scholarship can provide?
In this episode, I speak with David Murray. David Murray holds a PhD from Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and has pastored churches in Scotland and the USA. He is also a counselor, and the author of several books, including the latest, which he co-authored, A Christian’s Guide to Mental Illness: Answers to 30 Common Questions.
In our discussion, David talks about his own struggles with mental, and about how the Bible gives us the best possible framework for dealing with issues that are often both spiritual and physical in nature.
In these passages, sometimes the demonic possession caused physical ailments. In other cases, such as with Judas, it caused him to do something evil, namely betraying Jesus. In Acts 16, a demon possessed slave girl was able to tell the future. In Mark 5, demon-possession led to a man cutting himself and living naked in a cemetery.
The Bible repeatedly tells us that idol worship can be related to the worship of demons (Leviticus 17:7; Deuteronomy 32:17; Psalm 106:37; 1 Corinthians 10:20), and so it is possible that involvement with idolatry, the occult, or pagan worship could be a contributing factor for some when it comes to demon possession. Some animistic religions, including voodoo and Santeria, directly involve inviting spirits to indwell and possess the worshiper.
However, when it comes to Christians, the Bible tells us that now, after Jesus’ death and resurrection, we who believe in Jesus have been sealed with the Holy Spirit as a guarantee of their salvation, as a seal that they belong to God (Ephesians 1:13-14, 2 Corinthians 1:22; 5:5; 1 Corinthians 6:19) and are indwelt by the Spirit of God (Romans 8:9-11). For more on the three relationships with the Holy Spirit, click here.
Jesus Himself provides assurance regarding the security of His followers. In John 10:28-29, Jesus declared, “I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand.”
In Matthew 12, Jesus spoke about what happens when a demon is cast out from a person.
“When the unclean spirit has gone out of a person, it passes through waterless places seeking rest, but finds none. Then it says, ‘I will return to my house from which I came.’ And when it comes, it finds the house empty, swept, and put in order. Then it goes and brings with it seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they enter and dwell there, and the last state of that person is worse than the first.”
Matthew 12:43-35
What we learn from this description, is that demons can only occupy a person if that person is not already indwelt by a more powerful Spirit, namely the Spirit of the Lord. If the Spirit of the Lord is indwelling a believer, demons cannot also indwell them.
Demonic Oppression and Demonic Influence in the Life of a Believer
While Christians cannot be possessed by demons, they are not immune to spiritual warfare. The Apostle Paul warns believers that they should not be ignorant of the schemes of the devil and exhorts us to put on the full armor of God to stand firm against such attacks (Ephesians 6:10-18). This implies that while demonic possession is not something that is possible for a believers, harassment or oppression by demonic forces remains a possibility.
Oftentimes, the “battlefield” on which spiritual warfare takes place, is our minds and thought life. Satan is referred to by Jesus as “the father of lies” (John 8:44), and we are instructed to fight against demonic influence over our thought life by taking every thought captive for Christ (2 Corinthians 10:5).
Instances of demonic oppression or influence manifest as spiritual attacks and temptations, just as Jesus Himself was tempted by the devil. While these experiences can be daunting, they do not mean the surrender of one’s will or identity to demonic control. Instead, they serve as opportunities for believers to exercise their faith, relying on the power of Christ to overcome the adversary (1 Peter 5:8-9).
For example, King Saul, after rebelling against the LORD, was troubled by an evil spirit (1 Samuel 16:14-15; 18:10-11; 19:9-10) with the apparent effect of a depressed mood and an increased desire to kill David. Peter was influenced by Satan to try to prevent Jesus from accomplishing his mission of dying on the cross (Matthew 16:21-23).
In Ephesians 6, we are instructed to not only take precautions to protect ourselves against demonic attacks, but we are instructed to go on the offense and fight against the influence of these demonic forces using the Word of God and by praying in the Spirit (Ephesians 6:17-18). For more on praying in the Spirit, see: Is Praying in the Spirit Speaking in Tongues?
Conclusion
In conclusion, Christians cannot be possessed by demons, as they are sealed and protected by the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit. However, believers are not exempt from spiritual warfare and may experience harassment or oppression by demonic forces. Nevertheless, our confidence rests in the assurance of Christ’s victory over the powers of darkness and His promise to never leave nor forsake His own. Let us, therefore, stand firm in the truth of God’s Word, knowing that we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us, and that nothing can separate of from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 8:37-39).
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This past Sunday I taught a message from Numbers 14 and Joshua 14, about how Joshua and Caleb understood something about obeying God by faith: that just as we need food to sustain our bodies and keep us healthy physically, we need challenges and steps of faith in our walk with God in order to stay healthy spiritually.
Here’s a link to that message if you’d like to watch it or listen to it.
One issue that comes up in the text, which I didn’t address in the sermon is the question of whether the Anakim (the sons of Anak), mentioned in Numbers and Joshua as the giants in Canaan, are the descendants of the Nephilim mentioned in Genesis 6. In Numbers 13:32-33, the 10 faithless spies claim that there are giants in the land of Canaan who are “from the Nephilim.” What does that mean?
Who are the Nephilim?
When man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive. And they took as their wives any they chose. Then the Lord said, “My Spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh: his days shall be 120 years.” The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of man and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown.
Genesis 6:1-4
There are two main theories on who these Nephilim were:
Theory #1: The offspring of demons and human women
This theory, while perhaps seeming quite foreign to modern Westerners, has the support of extra-biblical Jewish literature. It interprets the above passage along these lines: the “sons of God” is a phrase used in the Bible to refer to angels, therefore the “sons of God” who had relations with the “daughters of men” which resulted in children being born means that these were fallen angels who manifested in physical form and had sexual relations with human women resulting in a race of half-human, half-demons – and that this is what, at least in part, precipitated the flood of God’s judgment in the time of Noah.
The challenges to this view are the question of whether it is possible for demons to have sexual relations with humans, resulting in offspring.
In Matthew 22:30, Jesus states that, “At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven.” However, this merely tells us that angels do not marry, it does not tell us whether or not they are capable of sexual relations with human beings, resulting in offspring.
This view is also interesting in that it seems to correspond with some other ancient stories of the “Titans” – a race of half-human, half-“gods” – who lived on Earth.
Some people see a possible connection with this in 2 Peter 2, where Peter says:
For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to chains of gloomy darkness to be kept until the judgment; if he did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a herald of righteousness, with seven others, when he brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly
2 Peter 2:4-5
What’s interesting about this passage is that the word Peter uses for “hell” is the word “Tartarus” which was considered the deepest part of hell, reserved for fallen angels – or in Greek mythology, that reserved for the Titans. It is also possible that Peter is only referring to the judgment of fallen angels (demons) and not to any kind of unique race of mixed demon-human offspring, but it is interesting that it is tied to a discussion about the flood in Noah’s time.
Theory #2: The intermarrying of the godly line of Seth with ungodly peoples
This theory also has historical precedent, and states that the “sons of God” is a term which refers to the godly and messianic (AKA “kingly”) family line of Seth, because Genesis 4 ends with the words:
And Adam knew his wife again, and she bore a son and called his name Seth, for she said, “God has appointed for me another offspring instead of Abel, for Cain killed him.” To Seth also a son was born, and he called his name Enosh. At that time people began to call upon the name of the Lord.
It is from the line of Seth that the Messiah will come, and some people interpret this to mean that there was an intermarrying of the godly family line of Seth with the ungodly family lines of others like Cain’s descendents, who turned away from the Lord, not only as individuals but as clans and societies. Intermarriage between people who follow God and those who don’t is forbidden, and thus – according to this interpretation – this was a further sign of the depth of depravity at that time: that even the godly people were becoming unfaithful to the Lord, hence the fact that Noah was the only godly person to be found.
Those who argue with this position would say that it makes no sense that intermarriage would so upset God that it would precipitate the judgment of the flood, and that it does not explain the existence of the Nephilim, who must have been very tall people.
In response, those who hold this position would say that what precipitated the flood was that “the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” (Genesis 6:5) God then states in Genesis 6:7 that He will blot out man from the earth, with the exception of Noah. In other words: the judgment of the flood was intended to blot out human beings, not to destroy a race of half-human, half-demons. Furthermore, they would argue that the statement about the Nephilim is simply an aside; it is merely stated that the Nephilim were on the Earth at this time during which the godly family line of Seth was mixing with the ungodly line of Cain – and this is not necessarily an “origin story” of the Nephilim.
Does Nephilim simply mean “giants”?
Another important factor in this discussion is the etymology of the word “Nephilim”. Genesis 6:4 never actually calls the Nephilim “giants”, but the Nephilim are understood to be giants because in Numbers 13:32-33, the giants in the land of Canaan are described as coming from the Nephilim.
Also, the Septuagint (Ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible {AKA: Old Testament}) translates both the Hebrew נְּפִלִ֞ים (Nephilim) and גִּבֹּרִ֛ים (gibborim, “mighty men” or “men of renown”) in Genesis 6:4 as γίγαντες (gigantes, “giants”).[1] (It may be that the Septuagint translated Nephilim as “giants” because of the account in Numbers 13, though some think Nephilim comes from the Aramaic word naphiyla for giant.[2]) (Source: [3])
If the word Nephilim simply means giants, then the statement in Numbers 13:32-33 that the Anakim are related to the Nephilim is easily understood, as simply meaning that they are giants.
The Nephilim and the Flood
One of the problems with the idea that the Anakim in Canaan are descended from the Nephilim in Genesis 6, is that in between Genesis 6 and Numbers 13 there was a giant flood that wiped out the entire population except for Noah and his immediate family.
This means that either:
The flood in the time of Noah was local rather than universal, and therefore some Nephilim survived the flood
What happened in the time of Noah with fallen angels having sexual relations with humans, producing half-human, half-demon offspring happened again after the flood
The word nephilim is simply a general term for giants
The problem with the first option is that even if the flood was local rather than universal (which I don’t believe it was, and I the text seems makes it clear that it was not merely local), the point of the text seems to be that the Nephilim on the Earth at that time were destroyed in the flood either way. There is one other view on this, which states that perhaps a demon-child was able to survive the flood in the womb of one of Noah’s daughters, but this seems a bit far-fetched and has the same problem as the second option:
The second option brings up the obvious question of: if it could happen again after the flood, who’s to say it couldn’t happen now as well? Yet we have no evidence of any half-demon, half-human giants in the world today.
On the third option, if the word nephilim simply refers to giants in general, then it explains why Genesis 6:4 says that the Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward.
What is the connection between the Anakim the Nephilim?
Again, there are a few possibly explanations here, but since I don’t consider the view that some Nephilim survived the flood, these are the three remaining possibilities:
The spies in Numbers 13 were exaggerating, and saying that the giants they saw in Canaan (the sons of Anak, AKA: Anakim) were the Nephilim of Genesis 6 in order to scare the people of Israel into agreeing with them that they should not enter into the land and fight the battles.
These were indeed half-demon, half-human offspring who resulted from sexual relations between demons and humans after the flood.
The spies were simply using a word which refers to giants in general. This is the way the (Jewish, pre-Christian) translators of the Septuagint interpreted it, and this is reflected in the Textus Receptus which is the basis of the King James and New King James translations in English, which don’t use the word Nephilim in Numbers 13, but rather the word “giants,”
I lean towards explanations 1 and 3, seeing in explanation 2 the same problems listed above in the previous section.
Certainly this is a tangential issue and not one related to the core of biblical faith, but I hope this helps bring some clarity and help for those who have wondered about it.
Theology for the People 