New Testament Reading-Luke 4: 31-37
As Michael Greenberg describes it, July 5th was the day his daughter went mad. What transpired reminded Greenberg of a legend he had once heard about King Solomon and a demon. In the legend, the demon outwits Solomon and takes over the throne. While the demon rules in the guise of Solomon, the real Solomon lands on the streets of Jerusalem begging for food. On July 5th, it had seemed to Greenberg that his real daughter had been kidnapped and replaced by a demon who had taken over her body. Previously, Greenberg had regarded demon possession as an “ancient superstition,” but in that moment it seemed like the only fitting way to describe the “grotesque transformation” of his daughter.[i] Later, Greenberg would come to learn the medical diagnosis for his daughter’s demon: bipolar disorder.
Among her many symptoms were delusions and hallucinations. At the age of fifteen, on the day the disorder became full blown, she began grabbing and shaking strangers by the arms on the streets of New York City. When her best friend pleaded with her to stop, she “flew into the middle of traffic, rushing at oncoming cars, sure that she could stop them in their tracks.”[ii]
Despite all the advances of modern science and medicine, it is sometimes easy to understand how demon possession would have once been the diagnosis of choice for various mental illnesses. Indeed, sometimes one wonders how much further we really have progressed. A few pages into his memoir about his daughter’s illness Greenberg tells of how he had initially put his “hope in the doctors,” only to eventually realize that “beyond the relatively narrow clinical facts of her symptoms, they knew little more about her condition” than he did. He discovered “the underlying mechanisms of psychosis” to be “as shrouded in mystery as they have ever been.”[iii]
This is not to devalue scientists and medical professionals. A good psychiatrist along with prescribed medications were indeed crucial to the recovery of Greenberg’s daughter so that she could become a functioning and contributing member of everyday society. Still, the fact remains that in the total scheme of things we understand only dimly the demons we confront. Perhaps, conceiving of the cosmos in spiritual terms to understand forces beyond human control is not so wacky after all. In fact, Greenberg writes that there were moments with his daughter when he felt “the distressed sense of being in the presence of a rare force of nature, such as a great blizzard or flood.”[iv]
If times have not changed all that much in some respects, it is surely true that Christians today still face the question of how to confront the demonic forces of mental illness? One does not have to be a social worker or married to a social worker to appreciate that mental illness has become one of the significant public health and public policy issues of our time. Since the deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill that began nearly 55 years ago, we have evolved to the point where a third of the homeless population in our country is either schizophrenic or manic-depressive, while 16% of prisoners suffer from these same illnesses.[v] If our country has demons, they do not merely afflict individuals, they afflict entire institutions and systems.
Then, there are the demons that can be said to afflict our broader culture. I am not sure how patriotic, anti-immigrant protestors feel about this, but one study found that as Mexican immigrants adapt to living in the United States “their mental illness rates increase dramatically.” Newer immigrants tend to have better mental health than the rest of us, but the gap narrows over time. The longer they live here, “the worse it gets” when it comes to things like drug addiction, severe anxiety, and major depression.[vi] Eventually, those who have been here “for more than 13 years [have] nearly the same rate” of mental illnesses as people born in this country.[vii] Instead of Mexican immigrants being the ruin of American culture, it turns out that American culture is the ruin of Mexican immigrants.
I am not sure anyone fully understands the cultural demons at play in our society, but one writer lists a number of rather predictable culprits. First, there is the disintegration of community that Robert Putnam introduced to public awareness with his book Bowling Alone. Simply put, members of our society are spending less “time with family, friends, and neighbors and have fewer significant human relationships.”[viii] All of this translates into less social support and more depression. Then, there is the problem of the meaningful life with some studies reporting that “as many as 80 percent of workers in our society feel their jobs are meaningless.”[ix] Then, again, there are the other problems breed by our economic way of life. Years ago theorist Erich Fromm looked at the extreme consumerism of our society and saw a host of traits such as greed and aggression leading to increased mental illness. In his 1955 book entitled The Sane Society, Fromm gave a devastating indictment of Western countries. He wrote, “The fact that millions of people share the same vices does not make these vices virtues, the fact that they share so many errors does not make the errors to be truths, and the fact that millions of people share the same form of mental pathology does not make these people sane.”[x] Yikes!
“Okay, okay, Brooks, before you go all Michael Moore on us about the evils of capitalism and our society, did Jesus really have anything to say about all this? I thought Jesus was simply casting out a demon. Even if the demon diagnosis is understandable, casting them out sounds more bizarre and hokey than political and radical.” I confess I also have moments when I struggle with what would seem to be the hokiness of it all, but then I look at how the gospel conveys all of this to us. Earlier in chapter four, Jesus does get pretty political and radical when he steps into the synagogue and declares that he has come “to bring good news to the poor,” “to proclaim the release of the captives,” and “to let the oppressed go free.” These words at first stir a bit of incredulity, but eventually people get flat out angry. They have a town hall moment. They drive Jesus out of Nazareth and almost throw him off a cliff.
Jesus manages a miraculous escape, and it is at this point that he performs his first big public act by throwing out the demon. Given the context in which this happens, to me it sounds like Jesus is essentially on a mission to bring sanity to an insane society. Remember that this is also pre-medicine and pre-science. Back then the diagnosis of demon possession said more about one’s place in the community than anything else. A large part of healing someone was bringing them back into the community.
In truth, however, casting out a demon was not really all that unique back then. Jesus is not the only one reported to have done it. What was unique in the case of Jesus was the message that went along with it and the fact that this message came from someone who was an outcast himself. Jesus really did bring good news for those barely hanging on to the fringes of society.
What does the example of Jesus mean for us today? Are their captives who need to be set free? Maybe not to the streets of Vancouver without proper support, but perhaps being set free sometimes means being given the chance to live somewhere that allows one to flourish as a healthy and vital human being. The National Alliance on Mental Illness currently has a campaign to help improve re-entry support for mentally ill persons after they have been released from prison. This alliance also has its own local chapter that provides support for mentally ill persons and their families. This past week I read part of a book by a psychiatrist on their board of directors. It is entitled I Am Not Sick, I Don’t Need Help: How to Help Someone with Mental Illness Accept Treatment.[xi]
Probably not unlike the times of Jesus, a lot of the struggle today is figuring out how to re-thread the social connections and ties between mentally ill persons and those around them. Greenberg’s daughter was able to make those connections. She is an adult now, and she works for a bakery in Vermont. She specializes in muffins and lemon squares.[xii] Now someone like that can be a member of my community anytime. Amen.
[i] Michael Greenberg, Hurry Down Sunshine, (New York: Other Press, 2008), 24.
[ii] Ibid., 16.
[iii] Ibid., 4.
[iv] Ibid.
[v] Treatment Advocacy Center, “A Failed History,”
<http://www.treatmentadvocacycenter.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=35&Itemid=64>.
[vi] Patricia McBroom, “As Mexican Immigrants Adapt to American Society, Their Mental Illness Rates Increase Dramatically,” Berkeleyan, (October 21, 1998),
<http://berkeley.edu/news/berkeleyan/1998/1021/immigrant.html>.
[vii] Bruce E. Levine, “U.S. Mental Illness Epidemic,” Z Magazine, (May 2006),
<http://www.zmag.org/zmag/viewArticle/13901>.
[viii] Ibid.
[ix] Ibid.
[x] Qtd. in David Edwards, “The Insane Society,” ZNet, (December 14, 2005), <http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/4815 >.
[xi] Xavier Amador, I Am Not Sick, I Don’t Need Help!: How to Help Someone with Mental Illness Accept Treatment, 2nd ed., (New York: Vida Press, 2007).
[xii] Greenberg, 232-233.
