"Yes it is," I said.

"Good." She smiled strangely. "I don't agree with those catholics. red flag 1 I think ministers should be able to get married if they want." I nodded tentatively. "And," she continued, "I should have listened to my son... he told me about those priests... and now he's G-A-Y." red flag 2

"Ohhh...yeah, that's tough," I managed weakly.

"But I've come here today to worship the one true God," she said smiling strangely. Her mouth was formed into a gray smile, but her eyes were cloudy and distant. "Of course, we don't know God, but we know the trinity, right?"

"Umm... yeah...." When she started talking about chanting to buddha, red flag no. 3 came up. At our church, there's roughly a thirty percent chance that a new person coming in off the street is drug addicted, mentally ill, or both. Add to that the buffet style religion most people practice, and it becomes a real challenge to engage people in meaningful conversations that lead to any kind of truth.

When this woman asked me if she could bless the congregation with a song, I politely told her we had it covered. I excused myself and continued on with the preparations for the morning service.

Lately, I'm meeting a lot of these type of people. They're out of touch with reality. They wrestle with invisible enemies and mysterious dark forces. They medicate themselves with narcotics. Cliche christian platitudes bounce off them like tennis balls. My usual response is to nod at them for twenty minutes as they ramble incoherently and then find an excuse to walk away. Our church's response, sadly, is to tolerate them until they create a disturbance, then they're sort of pushed out the door.

I believe "sanity" is a relative term. I think we are all touched with a little insanity in certain ways we look at the world. Probably, some psychologist would find me unstable in that I've claimed to hear God speak to me. But, as subjective as it can be, there are those who's lives are obviously tortured by a tumult in the mind. In the teachings of Christianity, the mind seems to be so important. We have to hear, understand, and respond to the plan of salvation. We have to be able to grasp ideas like original sin, atonement for sin, and assurance of salvation. These thought processes are beyond the ability of the insane, so what about them? 

I want to know more about how these folks can be helped. I don't want to avoid them. I don't want to pretend they'll be all right. I don't want to see them barely existing on the streets, harrassed and helpless. My suspicion is that few mentally afflicted people in history have ever found relief.

In my years of church-going I've never seen anyone who suffered from mental illness "delivered," although, that was Christ's method (and also the apostles.) We seem to be far removed from that type of ministry in the 21st century. I know they can do wonders with prescription drugs today. Maybe psychiatric ministries are the answer. 

I don't really know enough about it to talk about it. I don't want to be ignorant, though. If anyone has some insight or knows of a good book on the matter please let me know.