There is no Condemnation to those who take Medication
Some Christians often face the dilemma if one should take medication for various ailments. With mental illness, this dilemma is no different. Should I or should I not?
Does taking medication mean you are not exercising your faith in God? Or worse that you are sinning?
Well here are my personal opinions and revelation on the subject of mental illness, medication and faith. My rant…
Firstly, what is the purpose of medication, drugs, pills or medicine?
There is one purpose and that is to bring healing; to improve your health.
Second question. Who gives doctors, pharmacists and researchers the wisdom for health and healing?
Surely not the devil. We read from the Bible that God is all knowing and all wise. So is it not a good God in His infinite wisdom dispenses that wisdom for our well being?
Question three. Are there doctors, nurses, and those in the medical profession among us who are Christians?
If medicine was even remotely a dishonorable profession, then no Christian should be any of these! All we should be advocating is ‘faith in healing’ and that alone. We would be hypocrites otherwise.
Mental Illness, Medication and Faith
Faith is at different levels for everyone. There are people who still take medicine and don’t get better. Some people need to work their faith to believe that they will indeed get better with the medicine. That is where their faith is at. This class of people should not be condemned. Getting better with the drug is a big deal for them.
Then there are those who have terrible side effects from medication. Some of the side effects may seem just as bad, nearly as bad or even worse than the symptoms itself. When Chuck was taking Olanzapine, he had some undesirable side effects. Our prayers then was to cancel the side effects of the drug so it would have no effect on him. And those prayers were answered.
Eventually Chuck started weaning himself off the medication. It was a personal decision that he took after several failed attempts beforehand in the past.
But a day came when he knew he had grown his faith sufficiently enough to start coming off the medication. Obviously, we are not saying you should follow suit. Chuck’s doctor was not happy about this, but Chuck and I had a personal conviction about what we were doing.
But by this time, Chuck had been on various medications for varied diagnosis in sixteen years! So it was certainly not an overnight decision. Gradually, over time, Chuck won over the dependency of drugs and walked free from the disease, and all things to do with it!
We certainly do not look down on others, including Christians, who make a personal choice to take medicine.
Obviously, no one wants to be on any form of medicine. It costs money for starters and even though we can always pray against the side effects, it was one less thing off our prayer list. This is where we must grow and flex our faith muscles to aspire to come off medication. This is the ultimate goal.
However, in all you do, you make the right decision for you when it comes to mental illness, medication and faith. Remember above all, to always differentiate between faith, foolishness and presumption
If you know someone is in a dilemma about taking medication, please share this post. It may be just the medicine they require!
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