Religion heals our mental health, especially during death
/[Below is a tribute I gave on Oct. 26 at my Future of Mental and Behavioral Health event for my brother who died tragically on Oct. 21, 2022. Since the topic was mental health, I wanted to share how religion is the best antidote.]
Good morning. I thought about moving this event. But too much has gone into bringing everyone together. And this discussion is about mental health and how we treat it. We’ve gone through two years of grief in different ways. So I thought it would be relevant for me to share my story where the grief runs very deep but the joy and gratitude far outweighs it.
As the speakers know, I lost someone special a few days ago. He was my brother (and besides my husband, he was my best friend). He died in a tragic accident. He was killed by a drunk motorcycle driver while he was riding a scooter during sunset on the way to his beach house in the Philippines. For years, he had been planning his next chapter. He wrote a book, built a platform, and gathered many to support this next venture. Then he sold and gave away all his belongings (homes, furniture, boats, assets) and along with his wife moved out to the Philippines to start a ministry. Who does that? He finally made it to the island.
It’s hard to imagine being taken right when you reach the top of a mountain you’ve always wanted to climb - while being in love with his wife, family, and purpose.
Now … I go back and forth between grief and gratitude. C.S. Lewis wrote: “In grief - nothing stays put.”
The grief hits me, when I think of my loss. To be frank – when I pity myself because he’s not here to make me feel better: My brother was very good at giving me wise counsel. He understood our human condition. He was typically the first person I called when I needed sage advice about relationships and conflict. But then I see my brother up in heaven with a small violin saying, “Seems like you're more sad for your loss than happy for me. If you can only see what I see; other people struggle. Your pain is small by comparison. I’ve spent enough time with you. Now you know what to do. Now share with others. I’m a part of you.”
C.S. Lewis also described death as an amputation. Indeed, a part of me died. What I am learning, however, is that in death, the more we can impart the good qualities of the person we lost, the more we can grow back the part of us that was cut off. Then if we exercise those qualities like a muscle. Train ourselves. We end up honoring the ones we lost by showing a little bit of them through us.
So I want to impart his good qualities and share what he taught me that kept me in the best mental state. Now these are from a Christian perspective. But you can simply consider them helpful heuristics.
Practice forgiveness: My brother would say, division is primarily due to unforgiveness. [My brother was killed. I should have trouble with this. Some say I should be angry; and it’s OK to sit in that anger as part of the grieving process. But I’m not]. To apply this to what’s happening in the world, I don’t think we should teach our kids that ALL decisions made by our forefathers were to keep one race down and elevate another. Teaching kids bitterness creates division and instills anger in their hearts.
Our self-worth is in Jesus Christ. My brother would always remind me, “You are not worthy.” Some may wonder why that’s helpful. Because I am not worthy. So I even teach this to my children. My 10 yr old son knows this well. In this world, we’re constantly thinking of our self-worth. We are told to demand others to affirm us. That affirmation may give us a temporal sense of self-worth. But we will fall back to earth, and we’ll need to find worth again. To apply this to what’s happening in the world, there’s far too much emphasis on teaching kids that kindness is affirming someone’s identity. Kindness is keeping others safe in their fantasies to give them some false sense of dignity. If people keep looking to others for their dignity, they’ll never be satisfied. We’re even letting kids cut themselves up, if that makes them feel better. How is that safe? Life isn’t safe and the sooner we know how to live through those dark moments, the faster we find our true identity.
We don’t deserve what we have. My brother would always say, “I don't deserve anything.” What does that mean? It means, I am not worthy and I am broken; I will make mistakes and I will sin against my brothers and sisters, friend and neighbor. Sins big enough I shouldn’t even have the wealth I have. Importantly, if you have what you don’t deserve, then everything is a gift. If more people understood that they were broken, we’d have less stigma about our mental health problems, and we’d have far more mentally healthy people.
So conventional wisdom – says take your time and sit in your anger; conventional wisdom says – you are worthy; you are good and you deserve the best, and you deserve safe spaces. Well maybe conventional wisdom is wrong. The ways we treat the mentally ill are probably wrong; We’re probably also asking the wrong questions. Certainly in mental health, some say, we’re only treating symptoms.
This event will be very different from the others. It will NOT be a safe place. Our mental health is at stake. We will question conventional wisdom - from the way we diagnose mental health, to the current top-down lockdowns and forced mandated healthcare protocols that keep people living in fear. We’ll talk about what's behind the horrific statistics around mental health. And we’ll talk about what technological innovations can really help. But ultimately, it’s not data and gizmos that get us to a healthy mental state. It’s forgiving one another and training ourselves to move from grief to gratitude.