Bipolar

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ, based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the Apostle Paul said, �But we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.

In short, if you like smooth, watered-down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn�t for you. By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we�re called by the Divine Trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King.

Here�s our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry. It is today, the day we�re recording this show. It�s the first day of March and we have, I don�t know, a foot of snow outside.

It is menacing outside. It is macabre. Macabre? How do you say? How do you? I think that�s spelled at the end, M-A-C-A-B-R-E. Macabre? What kind of word is that? We today at No Compromise Radio would like to talk about a recent town hall opinion.

And this is a subject that usually gets me in trouble, so might as well keep going. This particular town hall opinion, written on March 1st, 2012, so by the time you hear this, maybe in April, it will be dated, but that�s okay.

Written by Mike Adams. Actually for some reason, maybe I printed it on March 1st, I don�t know why it says March 1st, but it says here by Mike Adams, July 22nd, 2009. So I have no idea who Mike Adams is.

Let�s see what it says on the back. Is a criminology professor at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington, and author of Feminists Say the Darnedest Things. Can I say darnedest on No Compromise Radio?

A politically incorrect professor confronts women, W-O-M-Y-N, on campus. So see, maybe already you say, I don�t want to hear from Mike Adams. I don�t know if Mike Adams is born again. I don�t know his theological constructs, but I do know he does have an interesting way of looking at things, and I�d like to read part of his article, but I want to preface it because maybe you�re new to No Compromise Radio, maybe you don�t like blunt, maybe you don�t like always biblical, always provocative, always in that order.

Maybe there�s an issue here or there. And so I want to say ahead of time that I don�t necessarily endorse everything that this guy said. But if I�m going to read it, I must either say to myself, well, I�m going to critique this or I�m going to agree with it.

And I think it�s going to give us good fodder for how does a Christian see himself or herself? How does a Christian lady see herself? And this is going to help us because we are narcissistic, we are self-consumed, we are selfish, and we are people who, if not for the Spirit of God�s work, we�ll consume ourselves by focusing on ourselves.

It�s like Oscar Wilde who said, �Come over here and sit next to me. I�m dying to tell you all about myself. We have a funny saying that we say around the house, �Enough about you, let�s talk about me.

G. Gordon Liddy said, �I have found within myself all I need and all I ever shall need. I am a man of great faith, but my faith is in George Gordon Liddy. I have never failed me. Wow, that is unbelievable.

The Christian Problem of Self-Absorption and Counseling

So I�m not a doctor, I�m not a psychotherapist, I�m not a psychologist, well, I have a doctorate, but not an MD. When I first got my doctorate, the kids would say, �Daddy�s a doctor now, like I can do operations on people and stand in a surgery suite and do liposuctions.

They didn�t know what that meant. So if you�re taking medicine, I�m not trying to say you ought not to take medicine. If you�re a Christian and you�re on psychotropic drugs, I think probably the first thing you should do is have a physical to see if there are organic issues.

And secondly, I think you should talk to your pastor, that�s what you should do. I didn�t say you should stop everything, I didn�t say you should send me some nasty email, although I�ve gotten a few lately on ADHD.

Here�s the point, and Steve and I could have done this, but then it would have just been Comedy Central, at least comedy in our own minds. The title of this article is �You Aren�t Bipolar, You�re Just a Jerk.

Mike Adams. I didn�t say that, it�s not Mike Apenderoth. You Aren�t Bipolar, You�re Just a Jerk. And so I�d like to read some of the article because my theological vantage point comes from self-selfishness, deny self.

Jesus himself said, �For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life from me will save it. What good is it for a man to gain the whole world and yet lose or forfeit his very soul?

Here�s what I�m after, I�m after everyone, whether you have a problem with bipolar issues or not, to focus on other people and mainly focus on the Lord Jesus. The two great commandments are what the issue really is.

So Town Hall, You Aren�t Bipolar, You�re Just a Jerk, Mike Adams. I won�t read the whole thing, but I�ll read some. It�s getting old, isn�t it? Everyone these days is bipolar or has some other chic mental disorder that he feels excuses his self-centered conduct.

Like the guy who once walked into my class 20 minutes late. I told him it was the last time to come in late. He said, �But you don�t understand, I�m bipolar. He said it in front of the whole class. Having a mental disorder used to be a source of embarrassment, but now it�s often a request for special treatment, which when granted fuels self-centered conduct.

That's why a pastor friend of mine now hears the claim, �But I�m bipolar� in approximately 80 of his marital counseling sessions. This means that approximately 40 of the people he counsels are claiming to be bipolar.

Is there something in the water that is causing a massive outbreak in manic depression and other mental disorders? Or is it possible that we live in a culture of entitlement which gives us strong incentives to claim some sort of disability rather than face the consequences of our freely chosen actions?

Just about everyone who suffers from some form of depression, manic or otherwise, has something in conduct. He is engaged in self-centered conduct, which either A, actually caused the disorder, real or perceived, or B, greatly exacerbates the disorder, real or perceived.

People who suffer from or claim to suffer from some form of depression usually respond in one of two ways. I'm looking outside and it's actually more blustery than before. Maybe that's a sign. Actually, if truth be told, I kind of feel down today and I am kind of moody today and maybe I'm pseudo-depressed and I have no real good reason for it, but probably if I believe the article, I've been self-consumed and that's probably true.

People who suffer from or claim to suffer from some form of depression usually respond in one of two ways. One, they seek psychological counseling, which focuses largely on talk therapy. During these talk therapy sessions, the patient pays a doctor to listen to him talk at length about himself and his problems.

Since this is just another exercise in self-absorption, it rarely works. Two, they seek psychiatric care, which usually results in a, what? You know what it results in, drug prescription. Paying someone to give you mood-altering drugs rather than addressing your behavior involves a degree of self-absorption that simply cannot be ignored.

But it usually is ignored and that's why the drugs usually don't do the trick. In fact, they often lead people to suicide. Behind the two generally misguided approaches to curing depression is the common fallacy that our emotions are usually the causes, not the effects of our behavior.

But in reality, it is our behavior that usually shapes our attitudes and our emotions. Isn't that fascinating? Mike Adams in Don't You Aren't Bipolar, You're Just a Jerk has some, I mean, there's some truth to this.

The truth that I see so far is we have a culture that is increasingly self-centered. So it doesn't surprise me that we are increasingly more, we are diagnosing, ghost diets, diagnosing more people with depression.

That is true. He also understands that if you've got a problem with depression, you either go talk to someone about it and or you get a drug prescription. Maybe there are some of you that don't do that, but that's typical, wouldn't you say?

That's just generally a statement. But it's fascinating to me that this man, again, I don't know if he's a Christian or not, he has a pastor friend. I think on Judgment Day, if you say, I think I should go to heaven, Lord, because I was a friend of a pastor, that won't do it.

But maybe there's an inkling of his relationship because it's his pastor. We're not sure. But he talks about depression as not the emotions, let's say the fallacy that our emotions are usually the causes, not the effects of our behavior.

And so that is very true. That is a biblical verity that when Cain did the wrong thing, his countenance fell. Genesis 4, I believe, happy is he who keeps the law, Proverbs 29. If you do the right thing, God gives you the fruits of your work in good feelings.

And if you do the bad thing, you have a conscience after all, your conscience is convicted and you get the negative response to your bad actions. And so for me, I was told back in seminary by a professor, he said, I often ask people, what have you been doing?

Because if they tell me what they've been doing, I can tell them how they feel. How are you? So instead of saying, how are you to someone, you could say, what have you been doing? So if you're counseling, discipling, helping, admonishing, encouraging, coming alongside of a person, you can ask them, how'd your week go this week?

Or you could ask them, what did you do this week? Because if you tell me what you did, I'll tell you how well your week went, or didn't went. So somebody said to me the other day, they visited the church and said they were depressed and depression's a sin, which I was pretty shocked by because I usually don't hear that kind of talk, especially from visitors.

And they asked me what I thought of it, and I said, well, I don't really think depression is a sin. I said, I think what we typically diagnose as depression is often the result of sin. So it's not sin in and of itself, it's the result of sin.

And so he interestingly talks about causes and effects of our feelings, and they are not the cause, but they are the effects of our behavior. So Mike Adams goes on to give a little story about something he thought he should do for the sake of someone, but did not do it.

And then he got very sad because a tragic thing happened to this other person that maybe he could have prevented. And so then he goes on in the story, in the article to say, after a few days of kicking myself, I took out a sheet of paper.

On it I wrote the letter A, and stared at it until I could think of someone who is hurting whose name began with the letter A. After a few minutes, I remembered a woman whose husband died of a heart attack last spring.

I picked up the phone and called her and told her a funny story about her husband. I shared some things about him that brought back some memories and made her laugh out loud. Before I hung up, I told her that many people loved her and were praying for her.

The call made the day brighter for both of us. I then picked up my pen and wrote down the letter B. I don't have to tell you that by the time I reached the letter F, I was feeling like I was on the top of the world.

See interesting, doing then feeling. The truth is that changing one's behavior with an exercise in other absorption, being absorbed in other people, rather than self-absorption, will cure what most people label as depression.

If that fails, they should talk to a professional. If that also fails, they should consider an experiment with prescribed medication. But people who shout, I'm bipolar, usually don't want to be helped.

And if we feed their sense of entitlement, we hurt them very badly. Mike Adams. So you know on No Compromise Radio, I would consider the professional, if you're a Christian, if you're not a Christian, go to your shrink.

But if you're a Christian, I think you should go talk to your pastor and I think he should be very reticent to farm you out to someone who at the core has a low view of sin and a low view of God's holiness and a low view of Jesus Christ and a low view of the Bible.

Why would I farm someone out? Because they have a PhD at the back of their name or an MD. Here's the problem with all psychology and psychiatric therapy. It does not recognize the fall. Adam's sin imputed to us, then consequently our sin nature and our own sinful choices.

And so whatever therapy you want to go to, I think the local church is equipped and adequate for every good work, if I could steal a verse out of context regarding the Bible. Because hopefully the church leaders, your church members who are admonished to admonish one another, can counsel one another, can inform one another, you don't even have to go to the leadership.

Hopefully the leadership or the other people at the church will use the Bible, in fact, that is adequate, equipped for every good work of the minister. In 2 Timothy 3, verses 16 and 17, which I quoted from, because we've got this all-sufficient word.

Either the Scripture is sufficient or it is not, but the second you say but, then we've got a major problem. And here he talks about experiments with prescribed medication, etc. Now I wouldn't necessarily go that route right away, but I think he's got many things that are very, very helpful for Christians.

He started focusing on himself and he did feel better. Now certainly, even if you are on all kinds of medication, I can tell you that it is good for you, even if you don't feel good about it later, to still do the right things.

Blaise Pascal said, It is vain, O men, that you seek within yourselves the cure for your miseries. All your insight only leads you to the knowledge that it is not in yourselves that you will discover the true and the good.

No Compromise Radio, we want you to be others-oriented. And we think that if you do that, you'll feel better. If you just feel blandly bad, you'll feel better. If you have been diagnosed with bipolar, you will feel better.

And even if you don't feel better, you are to be other-oriented anyway. We don't do things for the reward of the emotion. We do things to please our Captain and our Savior, Christ Jesus. We are sinful people and we need help.

And so I want to help people who are labeled bipolar, who are labeled schizophrenic, who are labeled ADHD, with all kinds of labels. Sometimes I look to the Scriptures and I say to myself, if it wasn't for God's grace and God's wisdom, things would even be worse.

But there is help and there is hope. Someone didn't like our ADHD show and, you know, some of it was tongue-in-cheek and then we got to the real point later. But I said to the person on the email, don't you want to find rest for your soul?

Because this person obviously needed to be saved, knew nothing of the grace of Christ Jesus, at least on the email not conveyed. And so I said, don't you want to have rest? And everybody wants that, don't they?

Peace for their souls, at peace with God, no longer God's enemy but God's friend because of our Advocate, Christ Jesus, the risen King who died on behalf of sinners. Don't you want rest? That's what I need at times.

I need rest for my soul. I need rest for my soul because my soul is agitated and easily filled with depression and anxiety and all kinds of other things. I love John Newton saying, young Christians think themselves little, growing Christians think themselves nothing, full-grown Christians think themselves less than nothing.

See, that's a lot different than Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow, humanistic psychologists. That is much different than having those kind of men talk about developing self-esteem, maintaining positive self-image so that you could be more productive.

Friends, No Compromise Radio Ministry friends who are listening today, no matter what Mike Adams says, no matter what your psychologists say, no matter what your psychotherapists say, no matter what I say, no matter what you say, Jesus does say that you are to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength and to love your neighbor as yourself.

And so that's what we want. When you feel funky, when you feel down, you don't need to do what Melody Beatty says, have a love affair with yourself. I think that's part of the problem. When you consume yourself, then you've got a problem.

Whitney Houston said, in The Greatest Love of All, learning to love yourself is the greatest love of all. Now, it doesn't prove my point to say, look where that got her, because that's not necessarily a way to prove a point.

What I can say, lives spent on others are lives that, if you're a Christian, are honoring Christ Jesus. If you're not a Christian and you want to go help the poor, you can, but Jesus is top priority. Without faith in Christ, it's impossible to please God.

So how can you say you're going to please God by feeding the poor, but not believing in the Son? One goes first, then the other. The Bible says, in the last days, 2 Timothy 3, 1, difficult times will come, for men will be what?

Lovers of self. And if you're absorbed in yourself, you've got a problem. So what do you do? The Bible says you repent. You change your mind and turn from that, and then go do the opposite. So we believe in, say no to laziness and say yes to work.

Say no to lying, say yes to telling the truth. Say no to self-absorption and pour your life into someone else's life. This is the great commandment, to love God, and it is foremost commandment. The second is, you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

On these, Jesus said, Matthew 22, depend the whole law and the prophets. There's nothing in there about loving yourself. It assumes you love yourself, and so with the same intensity that you love yourself, love God and love other people.

Philippians 2, do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind, let each of you esteem one another as more important than yourself. I want you to be focused on other people, and I want you to be focused upon Christ Jesus.

Galatians 6 says, may it never be that I should boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me and I to the world. Second Corinthians chapter 12, Paul says, I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties for Christ's sake.

For when I am weak, then I am strong. We are wretched men and women, and we need Christ Jesus. That's why Paul says in Romans 7, thanks be to God, through Christ Jesus, our Lord. Jesus says on the Sermon on the Mount, blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Charles Spurgeon said, poor in spirit is an absence of self-esteem. Where that kind of spirit is found is sweet poverty, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Romans chapter 12, for through the grace given to me, I say to every man among you not to think more highly of himself than he ought to think, but to think as to have sound judgment as God has allotted to each a measure of faith.

If you're listening today and you've got bipolar diagnosis, you're manic, you're depressive, you're schizophrenic, you're having anxiety attacks, you've got any of these things, here's what I can tell you.

I'm not telling you to stop your medicine. I'm not telling you to do anything except look away from yourself and look to the Lord. That's a good remedy for everyone. The answers are found in Christ Jesus.

This world's not going to last forever. You may have certain tendencies and predispositions because of the fall and because of your own self to be more apt to suffer from anxiety and other things like that that we have to be responsible to say, I'm anxious and that's a sin, but I live in a long line of anxious parents and so I've learned some of that behavior, but I can't blame them.

I stand before God and God alone. We need to turn from ourselves and follow Christ Jesus. Everyone could use that advice. If anyone wishes to come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.

If anyone wishes to come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life shall lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake shall find it. That's what Jesus says.

He who loves his life loses it and he who hates his life in this world shall keep it to life eternal. We need saviors, don't we? And our saviors happen to be money, power, pills, doctors, self. But once God opens our eyes, we realize we need the Savior, the one who can make God, who's angry with the wicked, at peace with the wicked because of what Jesus did.

We try to have a sacrifice and get God to like us like other pagans, but the only sacrifice that God accepts is his own pure sacrifice, sacrifice Christ Jesus, the high priest who is the sacrifice. And then God's wrath is propitiated.

It has been propitiated at Calvary and Jesus was raised from the dead to confirm the fact that that wrath was, in fact, propitiated. So you can write us. Of course, if you don't like what I've said today, you can write us at info at NoCompromiseRadio .com.

I'll be glad to get your emails anyway. And I do want to say that if you have certain feelings, those feelings are the cause of the issue. No, they're the result. And so we have a solution. And I have a solution that your psychologist, talk therapy, and your psychotherapist with drug therapy really can't offer, and that is peace.

Rest for your souls for those who are weary and heavy laden. You can talk more about it, I guess, but that's not going to work. It hasn't worked, has it? Or they can give you different drugs or higher dose, but that's not going to work, is it?

So I'm not telling you to stop your drugs because some drugs you have to stop slowly and you have to stop every drug that's given by those guys underneath their care. But I can tell you they can give you not this, and that is rest for your souls.

Come to Christ Jesus. Follow him. Do what the Bible says and pour yourself out in the life of other people and then have a conscience that isn't tormented. NoCompromiseRadio .com. No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life transforming power of God's Word through verse by verse exposition of the sacred text. Please come and join us.

Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at 6. We're right on Route 110 in West Boylston. You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400. The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio do not necessarily reflect those of WVNE, its staff or management.