The Great Physician XXII: Mental Illness & Mentally Handicapped

So I continue on with my medical examination of the Scripture. 

I'm going to be honest. I am not going to cover all the medical stuff in Leviticus. There is just too much of it. As I started looking through the purity law I realized the scope of what I was dealing with an realized I was going to have to massively scale back the scope of this series for want of time. Moving forward I will hit on specific issues. I will NOT be going over genital discharges in males and females. That means I will not be covering Chapter 15 as a whole, like I did Chapter 13 to get to the bottom of leprosy. I may briefly touch on a few things in it though in a later post. I'll leave the genital stuff like STD's and bladder infections to your gross overactive imaginations. It will suffice to say that as long as there is illicit sexual behavior, adultery and other anomalous sexuality...there's going to be problems.

This post will be on...deformity or disability as will other later posts. When I say disability, I mean something in a person's life that doesn't allow them to be a whole person has God originally intended. To be able to say disability we need to know what ‘ability’ is in the Bible. We need to understand and think in terms of symmetry and balance. We’re revisiting the idea of wholeness again. In this case…mental.

The Bible certainly does not see anything good in the mentally defective. Then again, nor does it see anything explicitly bad in some cases either. However, there appears to be two different reactions to mental deficiency.  One in the texts of Scripture… and another in the cultural milieu or worldview at the time of the writing of Scripture. It seems that mental disability was not a spiritual ritual impurity but it was stigmatizing in the culture. The best I can surmise is neither ‘fool’ nor ‘mad’ nor ‘madness’ appear anywhere in Leviticus. Most likely, neurosis went unnoticed except perhaps by the immediate family; psychosis was almost certainly perceived [visually] as ‘raving madness’ and incurable. Although there are distinctions in the NT of madness and possession, they’re not always clear. It should be noted that the Bible saw them as distinct and separate conditions. One may have been clearly spiritual but the other could quite possibly have been organic or physical/mental in nature caused by trauma, stress, etc.

 From the story of Saul (1 Samuel 16:14–23), we know that mental disability was, in his case, seen specifically as a sign of divine rejection.  It was clearly something to be noticed but clearly not a matter for the priests and their rituals. The cure in the New Testament with Jesus was healing and/or an exorcising of the spirit affecting the person. The inclusion of madness in the curses of Deuteronomy 28:28–34 need to be noted though. To be included in a curse would surely be highly stigmatizing and, therefore, important. It is interesting to see madness in verse 28. What is literally says is what the cursed one ‘sees in his blindness’ will drive him mad. This is likely describing an unpleasant hallucination or possibly schizophrenia.  If we go back to verse 15 we find out for what crime this was this punishment.  It turns out, unsurprisingly, to be a failure to observe all the Lord’s commandments and statutes.  If you don’t use your eyes for the right things, you will lose them to something much worse. Here then, we see, not punishment for madness, but punishment by madness.

Either way it is madness that stigmatizes and threatens individuals, society and, ultimately purity of mind or wholeness or both. We see clearly that part of the curse of disobedience is therefore lack of wholeness. First at the individual level and then societal. Hence the condition of the world we see around us now.

Mentally ill individuals (not possessed, they are delineated), though consigned to a lower social degree were, nevertheless, widely tolerated and not necessarily ill-treated.  They weren’t seen as sub-human as much as they were restricted in their fulfilling all the functions one should expect of whole human beings.  Society is, nevertheless required to help or deal with them as needed. Although they may be non-contributors within the community, they are harmless and, most importantly, their defects are not contagious. They should be welcomed into the church unless they are totally disruptive.

In general, cases of physical and mental disability, while undoubtedly lowering the social standing of the afflicted individual, were treated by a policy of laisse faire.  Additionally, the deaf/mute are seen nowhere in the Hebrew Bible as ritually impure but were undoubtedly viewed as socially inferior to the whole-bodied.  A great case in point was Zechariah father of John the Baptist who was struck mute for disbelief and did not unmute until the prophecy of the angel had been fulfilled in John’s birth (Luke 1:5-79).

The distinction of mental illness is more often implied as a narrative descriptor than implied as a shortcoming. Among the ordinary non-believing people, such a response was, perhaps, simply a fear of ugliness, weakness, incapacity, ignorance, immobility and those things seen as antitypes of beauty, perfection and wholeness. A ingrained, mentally-programmed social wholeness paradigm.

This therefore tells us that not every category violation of wholeness went on to cause ritual impurity.  These lesser category-violations were still antitypes of wholeness and so consigned the sufferer to a lower social stratum in the culture. They were often stigmatized by men but not always by God.

As far as I can tell from the available Scriptural evidence, they did not transgress the strict purity requirements. These may be imperfections but is never associated with contagion which is a feature of causes of ritual impurity. In the end we realize that illness like these are consequences of the Fall and its subsequent corruption of God’s creation. Besides pure unadulterated madness, throughout Scripture we see biblical figures such as David (Psa. 38:4), Job (Job 3:26), Elijah (1 Kings 19:4), and Jonah (Jonah 4:3) dealing with deep feelings of despair, anger, depression, and loneliness.

If we’re going to err in the side of caution it would be best to do so as The Good Samaritan did. When the Samaritan comes across man on the side of the road who is essentially, not whole, he takes him to be cared for until he recovers (Luke 10:34). We should do the same for those suffering from mental illnesses. Mercy and grace is always the right answer.