“YET, In many cases, even reckless would be better than the very starchy kosher yet utterly destructive treatment many hurting people get from the mental health profession.”
Stop deflecting.
Your statement is the issue, not Dr. Zsaz nor your wholesale attack on clinicians. I have no idea what “starchy kosher” treatment is other than another of your obfuscations, or an attack on the medical treatment of the mentally ill.
“““Experienced pastors, deacons, elders and even laymen and women did quite well at discerning the difference between demon possession/oppression and mental illness”
Reckless. I wouldn’t expect a layman to distinguish between
hebephrenic schizophrenia and possession or any of the many biologically induced mental disorders.
~And neither should YOU. ~And certainly, neither should a gaggle of teenage girls who resemble nothing more than a modern day Salem witch hunt.
I’m done with this thread.
For a year or two, I was part of a San Diego house based church headed by a former Methodist MD and his wife who’d been brought into ‘Charismania’/Pentecostalism.
Mental health professionals and pastors referred some of their most hopeless folks to the church from all over Southern California. A surprising number of such folks were made whole and became overcoming healthy Chrisitans in good relationships with their loved ones and holding down productive jobs.
Derek Prince had taught at the church for a period of days if not weeks, IIRC.
Much of the operation involved deliverance prayers.
But that was not all. Folks were divided up into ‘spiritual families’ of 3-4 households each. And each week, one household was on the ‘hot seat’ in terms of processing with prayer and Biblical counsel whatever had gone on with those household members the weeks since their last being the focus.
People were assigned homework and/or new ways of relating, thinking, speaking and expected to earnestly work at such. They did.
Given that the approaches were Biblical and Holy Spirit really WAS involved, people got dramatically better. In many cases, the mental health profession had UTTERLY FAILED such individuals for 10-20 years or more.
Yes, the group eventually became ingrown and fell off the cliff. But for a period of years, they did many people tremendous good—with lay persons as the leaders.
I think you are minimizing if not wholesale laying aside the
capacity and willingness of Holy Spirit to bless
WHOSOEVER WILL
with sharp anointed discernment, wisdom and knowledge in such matters.
I’ve seen HIM do it repeatedly.
I’ve seen laymen give a mental health assessment slicing between the ‘bone and the marrow’ much more accurately than most of my famous supervisors could have done—and usually in a lot less time.