Is It Ever Ok to Tranquilize Someone?

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01:32

Welcome to Bible Bash, where we aim to equip the saints for the works of ministry by answering the questions you're not allowed to ask.

01:38

We're your hosts Harrison Kerrig and Pastor Tim Mullett, and today we seek to answer the age -old question, is it ever okay to tranquilize someone?

01:47

Now this is going to be a continuation of the episode that we put out last

01:53

Monday, and the reason that we decided to do this was because as we were interacting with people online who were listening to the episode and sort of seeing some of the content that we put out last week, a lot of people gave us what

02:10

I will call gentle and friendly pushback.

02:17

It really wasn't. Unsurprisingly, when you talk about something like this, it's very much like a sort of golden calf type of situation where you're really kind of treading all over something that a lot of people have built up to be something that it was never meant to be in the first place, and it's sort of like an untouchable, like don't go there kind of topic.

02:46

But obviously, with the podcast, we go there all the time, and so this is no different.

02:52

But we wanted to do a second episode and just sort of fill in some of the blanks that we felt like we didn't touch on maybe as much as we could have or we just didn't have enough time or whatever, but we wanted to dedicate some more time to this discussion because it really is something that I think a lot of people just, they really don't understand because we sort of live in what

03:19

I would call a materialistic society, which is basically just meaning we try to find as a society a physical explanation for everything, right?

03:31

And so we really don't make categories as a society for like the spiritual, for example.

03:39

Now, obviously, the church tries to do that in general, but then as a society, we try to address everything through the physical.

03:49

And so now it's funny too because we actually recorded a different episode earlier this last week that was going to be coming out on the day that you're listening to this episode, but we just got so much pushback that we decided we needed to call an audible and talk about this again and just fill in some of the blanks that maybe we didn't discuss before.

04:18

And so, Tim, we're back at it again, talking about depression and anxiety.

04:26

Before we really dive into talking about is it okay to tranquilize someone, what were some of your thoughts in general on some of the pushback we got online?

04:42

Yeah, well, I mean, I know that we had a significant amount of pushback online, but then I also was engaging in plenty of discussions with individuals in terms of my own life with a variety of individuals along those lines.

04:58

And not all of it was crazy, like in terms of the active discussions that I've been having with individuals along these lines.

05:07

I mean, I've engaged in a significant number of good faith kind of discussions, but it's one of those things where this is a topic that has been so obscured as it relates to just the drugs in general.

05:23

Do you ever take them? The effectiveness of psychology, what are you talking about? And it really is one of those things which is somewhat amazing just to think about a lot of the things that people hear you be saying in an episode like that.

05:37

And part of it is because there's so many shared... there's so many assumptions that just simply aren't shared in a discussion like this.

05:44

And it is a discussion that has broad -ranging implications. And so a lot of the discussions

05:51

I've been having have been discussions that make you realize that there really are a lot of different truths that you have to believe in order to where you...

06:05

pieces that you put into the puzzle, so to speak, to where you come to a position one way or another.

06:11

And I think most people feel like the safer kind of option in a discussion like this is just to essentially kind of register what

06:26

I would describe as a kind of mild concern about the fact that these drugs in general and what they're doing.

06:36

And so you have a lot of people who are willing to register a mild even to a serious kind of concern but then because of I think a lot of factors they're unable to commit to a position with any kind of clarity as far as that goes because there's a sense in which a lot of this discussion is wrapped in a lot of very technical kind of language and related to your position on a lot of different issues.

07:05

And so most people are just kind of a little bit nervous to wade into it with I think the level of urgency that we really need to wade into this kind of discussion.

07:15

Considering the fact that we've literally created a generation of drug addicts and that is disturbing.

07:25

I posted something on Twitter along these lines and essentially

07:31

I pointed out that psychologists gave us lobotomies for instance and when we look back on lobotomies as a therapy for depression or anxiety or other mental disorders, we look back on that and we think largely that was monstrous to remove individuals' prefrontal lobes in order to remove the bad thoughts, right?

07:56

And then we also participated in electroshock therapy and most people kind of instinctively recoil at the thought of shocking people.

08:07

In order to shock them. Now, they're still doing it. They're still doing that one now but now they apply anesthesia and lower the voltage or whatever.

08:19

But they're still doing that kind of thing but most people have this intrinsic... Got to do it humane, right? Most people have intrinsic kind of recoiling at the thought of dealing with the unpleasant thoughts in that way.

08:30

The step we're on right now is we're largely tranquilizing a lot of people. So you have different types of psychotropic drugs.

08:37

You have uppers and downers but your vast majority of predominantly anti -anxiety meds are going to be tranquilizers essentially.

08:48

And so we've tranquilized a whole entire generation treating them like you would treat a rampaging elephant or something like that.

08:56

And most society hasn't quite registered the horror at the thought of what we're doing yet like they did with the lobotomies.

09:06

But I assume in 20, 30 years we'll look back with great shame at what we've done here.

09:12

But then the next step is going to be human 2 .0 and transhumanism. The thing is we're not ready to approach that subject matter.

09:22

If you could literally put a chip in someone's brain and regulate their emotions to a precise degree through a computer chip we're not ready to respond to that in moral terms and moral categories as demonstrated by the fact that we can't even respond to a lesser kind of thing with the tranquilizers.

09:44

But we really do have to think through these things because and the problem is that we don't have a doctrine of sanctification that's robust enough to even know how to approach any of it.

09:55

So with each new thing that psychology brings along in order to tell us in order to seek to manage the basic human condition we just kind of as long as the doctors are telling us it's okay then we buy it.

10:11

As long as people are saying it's safe we just buy it uncritically. We don't have a robust enough doctrine of sanctification essentially to know what to do.

10:19

But we better figure it out because we might be pretty quickly facing the new tranquilizers with the brain chips and I don't know that we have answers to what you'd even do there.

10:35

Yeah and so when you're talking about tranquilizers just so everyone's clear what exactly are you meaning by that word?

10:46

Well everyone knows what a tranquilizer is but I mean the issue is what most people are not aware of is the fact that most of your anti -anxiety meds like Xanax in particular or your benzos are essentially tranquilizers so they're mild tranquilizers and that's what you're looking at and these are kind of the go -to drug for a vast majority or a broad array of unpleasant symptoms that a person might experience is that we essentially tranquilize them is what we do and so a lot of your anti -anxiety meds are basically that they're mild tranquilizers and it's kind of like it's like chemo essentially so if you think about the way chemo actually works chemo is not really the best kind of treatment for cancer so if you have a group of cells in the body that are growing out of control creating a tumor growing out of control bad cells you give it an individual chemo and that's essentially going to destroy the good cells along with the bad cells and it's somewhat of a gamble so to speak you're hoping that with all the good cells you destroy you also get the bad ones and that's essentially what tranquilizers are doing to the thoughts if that makes sense and so if you have an individual who's unable to manage the worried anxious kind of thoughts or even the depressed thoughts depending on who's prescribing that what you're going to do is you're going to numb the thoughts and so you have an entire generation of people who are essentially being drugged and tranquilized in order to in an attempt to stop the bad thoughts but then you're creating a generation of zombies in a lot of ways and that's what's happening in a lot of cases and there's whole movies that are devoted to that basic premise of the kid having the dad who was a psychologist who thought that the answer to life was essentially to drug them to the point where they can barely think and that's what we do to a lot of elderly people too once they start exhibiting crazy sorts of symptoms we'll tranquilize them and that's why they look like zombies that's what you're doing if that makes sense and so a lot of your you have the uppers and a lot of your antidepressant kind of drugs are typically uppers and then your anti -anxiety stuff or traditionally anti -anxiety stuff are downers and so you're managing it all that way you know if you have a kid who basically is struggling with attention deficit disorder you're going to put them on a stimulant in order to essentially help their brain focus but then you're not addressing anything wrong with them you're just putting them on a stimulant and we all know what stimulants do

13:40

I mean if you wake up in the morning and you're sluggish you drink some caffeine it will give you clarity of thought but it may be that you might not want to sleep for three or four hours too you know and so I mean it may be that you want to address the problem in a different way and so you can't just look at the presence of uppers and downers and say like they're accomplishing necessarily any sort of medical function if that makes sense

14:07

Yeah, yeah and you know so this wasn't really like a planned thing when we when we put out the first episode we were initially responding to the situation with JD Hall because he you know he obviously he got in a lot of trouble disqualified from ministry for some of the stuff that he was doing and I think some more stuff has come out at least in the form of accusations

14:39

I don't really know where all that's gone so I don't necessarily want to comment on all of that but we were initially responding to that but then you know

14:49

I guess in God's sovereignty a few days before we put out the episode we had already recorded it a few days before we put out the episode the

15:00

I don't know who I don't know who exactly it was that put out the study but a study came out that basically sort of undid like I guess what would be one of the biggest claims in terms of where depression comes from right or one of the biggest like a hypothesis for where it's coming from and so we actually got a lot of this pushback which was to say hey look depression it you know it's a chemical imbalance in the brain right and that's why these antidepressants are effective is because they're sort of working to balance out what's happening chemically in the brain and then you have this study come out and can you tell us a little bit about that study yeah yeah the

15:57

University College of London essentially put out an analysis of 17 different systematic reviews and studies which basically came to the conclusion that there you know may be no link between serotonin levels in the brain and depression and so the idea has always been here's the thing so when you're talking about depression we're talking about anxiety when you're talking about really any of the psychological diagnosis of that you're going to find in the

16:30

DSM -5 I mean the vast majority of them are essentially labels that are put on individuals after like all medical tests have been exhausted at that point so you know if you look up like depression in the

16:43

DSM -5 or you know general anxiety disorder which you know you have your two major diagnosis that are being used to explain like depression and anxiety so depression or general anxiety disorder when you look at these things one of the things you're going to find is that like these diagnosis they're not like medical diagnosis it's what they're not so they're not that like they're you know like the depression diagnosis is like if you have like sudden unexplained depression for two week period that is not the that is distinguished from bereavement other psychological disorders and you know medical conditions that might cause a depressed mood like thyroid problems and that kind of thing right so like these labels like they're just descriptions of a person you know who is depressed or who is has repeated anxiety for a period of time that are not explained by a medical problem does that make sense yeah yeah right so but then the prevailing kind of theory that undergird undergird uh what uh the possible biological explanation that could be explaining it was the chemical imbalance theory does that make sense so as that relates to depression most people kind of assume that you know anytime you get one of these labels it must be because there's a chemical imbalance in your brain that's what most people have assumed for many years because this has been like the prevalent theory right so there's not another medical cause but because you're you know like for instance with an antidepressant you're gonna put you know serotonin give individual serotonin and all that and that's a chemical in the brain it must be that there's an imbalance of that there's a study that came out recently that did um an umbrella analysis of you know 17 different reviews and studies and they determined that this is not real right or that there's no conclusive evidence that there's any kind of chemical imbalance in the brain that's causing depression for instance but then this isn't really anything new everyone like this is where the research has been going for many years now right so for many years like when this theory was put out it was put out with very little you know scientific evidence that would show even remotely the effectiveness of antidepressants in general and so like in the academy they've been moving away from this for many years but it's never been kinda it's not been just popular knowledge at this point because it's like drug money is you know big business and all that and no one wants to face the obvious but then so there's a study that came out essentially that's showing the obvious I mean and it should be obvious because like we we obviously don't know how you know what the appropriate level of chemical you know chemicals there are in an individual's brain no one wants to volunteer to have all their brain chemicals drained and measured right right yeah

19:42

I'm not lining up for that you're not lining up for that and so so this is this is not like this isn't news you know and I think if you listen to our old you know is depression real podcast we talk about some of that at various points like the science has been pointing away from that for a long time but then we put that out there you know in some memes along those lines about what was the one with Anakin that you put out oh yeah that was this last week

20:13

I think I think it said something along the lines of when you find out that depression isn't caused by a chemical imbalance right

20:20

Anakin and he's saying how many other lies has the council told me or something like that right right well then you have a lot of people who are essentially like emoting and responding to that you know like you ignorant plebs you know who don't know the science behind this and then you have even people on their side coming along and essentially saying hey you're not aware of the article that just came out

20:41

I will I will say that that was an encouraging thing to see there were people who um yeah who initially were very aggressive towards us um you know because of the because of the claims and then you send them the the articles about it or you know someone else would send them the articles about it and there were several people who were like oh okay

21:06

I think I was mistaken on you know on this one so that was at least encouraging to see yeah well that study came out you know and that that was news you know to many people but it's um it doesn't have to you don't really have to think like it's not a complicated kind of issue in general it's one of those um issues that you know many people just haven't thought about that taken along with blind faith and not only that but like almost every psychological disorder is treated that way like in the minds of you know vast majority of people they think every you know psychological label essentially has some kind of chemical imbalance involved because you're taking they think they don't realize that like the anti -anxiety meds or tranquilizers right and that kind of stuff and so they think across the board that everything is a chemical imbalance but then that just shows how pervasive and wide this theory has spread to where it's not even understood to be a theory in the minds of many it's like an immutable law of physics or something like that yeah that you can't transgress um right but and I think ultimately you know a big part of that is um

22:18

I think for a lot of Christians and probably non -believers as well it gives you an out for sure when it comes to depression and anxiety you know to be able to say hey look it's you know it's not a it's not anything because of me it's you know just the chemicals in my brain man what do you want me to start managing the chemicals in my brain manually or something you know it gives people an out and we talked about that a lot in the uh is depression real episode

22:50

I think but it is I think it is worth repeating again because there there are very many people

22:55

I have learned that if if I have learned nothing else this last week I have learned that there are very very very many people who do not believe um that depression and anxiety are spiritual problems or at all at all or if they do they are very willing to excuse anyone who is is dealing with it and not like hold them accountable and I don't think

23:23

I don't think I think a lot of people are you know they're not sitting there thinking to themselves hey

23:30

I want to make sure this person is like depressed and suffering as long as possible and so I'm not going to tell them you know what

23:37

God has told us in order to deal with these types of things I don't think people are approaching it from that standpoint

23:43

I genuinely do think a lot of people are just convinced that that bringing it up at all in like a like a sin category is going to do more harm than good to the individual right and so at that point you just say well you know

24:02

I'm not going to bring that up yeah let them take the antidepressants let them you know go see a psychologist or something and get it maybe they can figure it out for them you know yeah well part of that is part of what's happening there is that psychology is kind of like a parasite discipline essentially and it's attached itself to the medical community in such a way in a pretty pervasive way when you think about it and so for many people there's it's very difficult for them to you know weigh in on that kind of issue and the only way

24:43

I know how to describe it is kind of to describe it like COVID or something like that so you know when you think about like what has happened with the

24:53

COVID stuff you know part of you know part of our reaction in general my reaction in general to like the

25:00

COVID phenomenon was that you know I'm being told that something is a pandemic and I'm looking around my eyes and my eyes are telling me that I don't know anyone who's died of this thing and so you know every single like I still don't know anyone who's died of COVID but then we were told it was kind of this massive emergency that you had to shut down the entire country for years about and no one could go to work because of the possibility that someone could die or something like that right?

25:27

And then the vast majority of stories about people who actually died at that level were like individuals who had multiple comorbidities and significant you know problems and were one step away from death anyways and so like then the issue becomes it's like well maybe this is a threat

25:51

I mean if you have a nation of over 300 million people I'm sure that you can show stories of perfectly healthy people who get taken out by it but is this problem reaching to a level where you want to shut down the entire world over right?

26:07

Like particularly when all the statistics coming in even with the exaggerated numbers towards the end are like 99 .95

26:14

% survival rate maybe this isn't what you think it is and so like the issue is people do have to use their brains and then like when you look at a problem like anxiety and depression there are a variety of like medical things that could happen to an individual that might produce anxious feelings or depressed moods like you know like for example like hypothyroidism even though the thyroid stuff is kind of being way over diagnosed those can produce like things like anxious feelings or depressed feelings or something like that or you know vitamin deficiencies or cancer there's a variety of medical conditions that can make a person feel sluggish and lethargic and you know on edge but then what's happening though in the main and this is what people just like you just it's hard to interact with people in the main is like you know the vast majority of individuals in America yeah let's just talk about American Christians for instance like your vast majority of American Christians are listening to prosperity stuff on the radio they're listening to Hillsong they're listening to Bethel they're listening to songs about Jesus being their boyfriend or girlfriend you know and then singing about their victory their prosperity victory and facing their giants and all that so they're listening to a bunch of prosperity stuff and that's what they're listening to on a regular basis they're going to you know churches that are not doing church this one they're not challenging them in any way or expecting them to do anything you know in our neighborhood group we you know there's a lady who visited

27:57

Church of the Highlands in Birmingham here and was asking for recommendations of other non -judgmental churches right but that's

28:06

American Christianity so American Christianity is you're listening to all these milquetoast kind of songs and these milquetoast kind of pastors and you know it's all

28:13

I'm broken and I'm wounded and I'm damaged and Jesus is my savior and I'm and I'm damaged and I'm and I'm never reading their

28:58

Bible never praying their life is a mess they're characterized by sloth you know like they're not they're never actively sharing their faith like I mean

29:10

I know the vast majority of professing Christians in America probably never share their faith even once a year right and so you look at that and you look at that kind of situation and it's like what do you think is gonna be the result of this like what do you think is gonna be the result the result is obviously that you're gonna you're gonna be weighed down by guilt and shame and condemnation in the main and if you go to a doctor or a psychologist they're gonna give you general you know anxiety disorder or clinical depression as a explanation for why you feel bad all the time right and so I'm comparing that to the

29:49

COVID kind of thing if you just look around with your eyes you know that that's what's happening 99 % of the time but then because there are some cases you know somewhere along the line where someone might conceivably you know actually have something medical wrong with them then the vast majority of people are just gun shy and basically just say well we don't want to talk about like the obvious problem like the obvious elephant in the room you know because we don't want to be guilty of you know jumping the gun when people when there might be some you know one in a 10 ,000 kind of situation where someone might have actually something wrong with them but in most cases even when there is like you know something like that like if they would just like fix their diet and exercise a little bit more most of it would go away anyways and so we're in a situation where then you have to demand an entire cease fire on the discussion of anxiety and depression because of the possibility that there might be one person who might one in 10 ,000 who might have a legitimate something wrong with them but then the problem is you look at the bible and the bible says be anxious for nothing that's actually command right and then you know you put out a verse psalm 94 19 when my anxious thoughts multiply within me it says well you know essentially go to the doctor and you know get put on a tranquilizer or something or take xanax yeah take xanax or you know don't be judgmental because you know who knows maybe in 100 years they'll figure out what the medical cause is for it so you have like verses in the bible that just have no meaning because we're just like there's ceasefire on the topic it doesn't say that by the way hopefully that's obvious for everyone but it doesn't say that when my anxious thoughts multiply within me thy consolation is to light my soul you know yeah and so you know i found it interesting i was reading about that report and i thought it was a i think i was reading out of like psychiatry today i don't think i ever saw the hill version of it but i think i was reading out of yeah a lot of people are reporting on it i think i read psychiatry today's article on it i can't remember who it was that wrote the article it was kind of funny when i was reading it because towards the end of it he makes he tries to qualify the author of this article i think he tried to qualify his review of the report that came out by saying hey look he did strongly say anyone who is telling you that depression is from a chemical imbalance is either ignorant or is lying to you so he took a strong stance on that but he was still trying to qualify the article by saying antidepressants may or may not work but what i thought was really interesting was and sort of really like an obvious i thought it was obvious kind of like that you don't even need a report to know but he obviously felt like this needed to be said towards the end of the article he basically was he wrote that essentially it seems like depression like the majority of the time is caused by external factors right now he says it's caused by i don't know we would say it's caused by i don't know we would communicate that way but he was at least acknowledging if it's not a chemical imbalance it does legitimately seem like the explanation for why people are depressed are their circumstances right and i thought that was sort of like a well yeah obviously like i mean i mean that feels silly to be reading from a doctor now i understand like you were saying there can be exceptions to it and it can be a complicated issue to try and figure out where things are coming from specifically but i thought it was well yeah that is the best they can do at that point so part of it is like when you have a like a materialistic view of man like you don't have a category for like a sinful heart that's in rebellion against the lord and so then you know the explanations reduced to it must be something biological meaning it must be a chemical imbalance like that's the only internal category they have is some sort of like you know coming from within it either is genetic or it must be some sort of chemical imbalance or it must be something like that but then when you've ruled that out like it's not a chemical imbalance then you're left with environment you know for the secular psychologist and i would say that the environment plays a it obviously is a factor it's just not the only factor right like meaning but that's all you have if you're an atheist really is just all you have left is well your background your upbringing you know trauma in your life stress in your life that kind of stuff and so they only have an external explanation but then biblically we have like you are an embodied soul right you know you have like you have a sinful heart that's in rebellion against the lord and the issue is like you can put like you can literally you know take a christian you can put him in a japanese concentration camp or something like that and they don't have to be depressed despite the fact that they're being beat you know with you know bamboo sticks or whatever they have in their fingernails pulled out and so like they still can't account for like the fact that we have a sinful nature that doesn't have to respond you know to whatever external environmental stimulus that comes our way you know but that's what they have left but I mean of the two explanations like it being some sort of chemical imbalance in your brain or it being you know your environment

36:20

I think your point is obviously like we should probably lean like it makes more sense to lean towards yeah you're just responding to different situations that are happening in your life with you know sorrow or worry right

36:32

I mean that's kind of like well yeah duh duh yeah alright well but the only reason you can't go there is because there's a lot of money and drugs that have clouded the discussion you know so yeah

36:47

I think even the article I read I think even you know he was I don't know that he he um directly was accusing you know pharmaceutical companies but I think he was sort of implying like like there's a lot of money here you know so when yeah when when antidepressants were being approved initially there was five studies

37:09

I believe that were done on antidepressants and you know three of them I think if I'm remembering correctly they showed that that they didn't perform better than a placebo or a sugar pill or something along those lines but in order to approve them they needed some studies so five were done two showed that they you know performed slightly better on the scale than a placebo which is a sugar pill and so they obviously went with those two studies in order to approve but but then them performing slightly better like um like the there's like a a point scale or whatever and essentially from what

37:48

I remember um you know a cup of coffee will move like the individual six points up on the scale and these were only moving it up two points if that makes sense so like that like over against a sugar pill so it's not like it was it was like scraping at the bottom of the barrel and then you know there's a big discussion within psychology in general as to whether or not they should allow the drug companies to perform the studies and so but you know there's a 2002 article as it relates to this point you know in the

38:23

Washington Post against depression a sugar pill is hard to beat this isn't new man like this stuff isn't new

38:29

I mean people have known for years that like these antidepressants aren't performing statistically better than sugar pills and people have known for years

38:39

I mean it's there's been you know articles you know 15 years old that are saying the same thing that's coming out now what's different what's different that's happening right now is that we just got done being deceived so thoroughly with the

38:50

COVID stuff and because we've been deceived so thoroughly with the COVID stuff people have had their confidence shook by the medical community and what they're telling us because if you could you know like I think you have these pharmaceutical companies that have essentially committed genocide against our country and a lot of people feel about it like that and I do too and so when you're you know when you see people like healthy people dropping dead you know in tennis games and everything else and you know sports stars and all that and UPS guys you know falling over in the sun and you know you know it's from this vaccine but then you're being told it's climate change now

39:28

I think there's like a lot of people who have lost faith in the medical community and now this kind of article is like I think there's been a lot of people who are now questioning a lot of things like that you know and this article is gotten a lot of traction from the kind of individuals who have been disillusioned by what's going on in other areas

39:48

Right yeah and so in light of the recent studies that have come out you know a lot of people would say hey you know you're you are harming a lot of people when you say like like people need to be held accountable for their depression or their anxiety right um so I guess that I guess that sort of begs the question

40:15

I mean I get like what what would your response be to that should we uh I chuckled you chuckled you chuckled so that kind of that kind of that kind of uh sabotages my setup but I'm going to continue on anyway go carry on um so so um you know what is your response to that I mean should we be telling people to to get off of these drugs or should we should we say like hey you know maybe maybe there's still some value in them or should we or is it just like a well hey look you know

40:51

I don't think it's actually helping them but then they're going to respond really negatively if I tell them you know that they need to get off the drugs because it's not going to help them

41:00

I mean I mean there's a bunch of different ways you could go here there's two yeah there's two kind of questions there one is should we tell people to get off the drugs and then two like you know are we harming people by trying to raise a warning call against the antidepressants in general let me start there and then we'll we'll go to the should you tell people to get off the drugs kind of thing um so if you take something like because there's different types of drugs doing different kinds of things

41:29

I'll just try to talk about um specific types and so you know you're generally you're anti -anxiety meds and people people don't know this but um just a side note um a lot of your anti -anxiety meds are being used now um to treat depression also and so there's not like any like it's not just your anti -anxiety meds you know are treating anxiety and your antidepressants are treating depression like these drugs are used in a wide variety of circumstances okay so there's a study that just came out that was showing that benzos are your your classic anti -anxiety meds are the first line of defense in one in ten cases of depression now and part of that's because like your you know your antidepressants and your are part of that is because the fact that you know depression and anxiety come are um what's it called um are often a package deal in an individual and there's not like a lot of care that's being given by the doctors

42:28

I wish I I wish that weren't true but I mean I I know plenty of cases where my church members have gone to and individuals

42:35

I know have gone to the doctor and they're just almost arbitrarily being given these labels with like no care whatsoever and it can go either way you know and so but like the issue is let's take something like your your classic you know anti -anxiety meds like your ben your benzos for instance

42:51

I mean they're essentially tranquilizers okay and so if you're gonna ask like like if you call them tranquilizers you don't call them medication and that's part of the problem is that everyone thinks these things are medication and so if you're a kind of individual saying don't take your meds or you know you should should consider not taking your meds everyone thinks like you're monstrous and Hitler but if you call them a tranquilizer then and you quit calling them medication because that's what they are they're mild tranquilizers and you know in some case in some cases like when like what makes you say that by the way like that they're mild tranquilizers well

43:28

I mean every just look it up just look up you know look up anti -anxiety drugs on the internet and one of the things you're gonna find is they describe them as mild tranquilizers because that's what they are so like that's not a that's not me putting a negative slant on it that's what every website that's gonna describe what they actually are tells you they are it's just no one knows that does that make sense?

43:55

yeah like very few people know that so so when a drug like Xanax for instance is prescribed for depression it's gonna be prescribed at double the dose it's already addictive and it's a it's a tranquilizer and so it's gonna be more of a tranquilizer at that point but like the the issue though is like let's just deal with tranquilizers for a second if you quit calling them medicine you start calling them tranquilizers alright like and I'm I'm obviously not saying every psychotropic drug is a tranquilizer

44:24

I'm talking about the ones that are tranquilizers like the benzos when when you when you give someone a tranquilizer if you think about them like a tranquilizer then it should cause you to think like is it ethical or moral to treat someone like you would treat a rampaging elephant right it's like if you see a no one's gonna question like question whether or not you see a rampaging elephant in the street you shoot it with a tranquilizer whether or not that may be by very few people you know you have the animal rights crazies who might consider it cruel but for the vast majority of people think hey that's okay but then when you're tranquilizing actual human beings like and that's what's happening then you should think whoa like is that normal or reasonable or something that we should be doing right once you take it out of the realm like the euphemism medicine you say it's a tranq then at least it gives you some awareness of what you're even talking about at that point right like what we're talking about is tranquilizing someone and so then and then like why would you do that you know and so that brings the ethical and moral issues to the front you know and so like now when individuals like you're saying isn't it the response is like isn't it cruel to question what's happening it's like well

45:42

I don't want you know I've known plenty of people who have been on an anxiety med so I can't even have a conversation with I can't share the gospel with because I can't concentrate on anything

45:50

I'm saying because they are functionally you know um you know basically tranquilized to the point where they can barely think right and so like it's not intuitive or obvious to me that I'm the bad guy by asking them to consider maybe talking to their doctor to get them off these things so I can have a conversation with them right and so with a lot of older people in particular like you have uh you know like what you have is they start getting put on these you know on tranquilizers and like they're basically zombies man like they're basically just you know sub almost subhuman at that point like you're robbing them of their intrinsic uh dignity and I'm not trying to say that there might not be some cases where that may be wise or helpful

46:40

I'm just trying just call it what it is and then let the moral issues be what they are and so the issue then in general though is with these drugs you know if you understand what's happening you're just talking about uppers or downers you know as a general rule then like you know if you um you do have to step back and say is this the way that God wants us to try to manage bad thoughts it's either to put like a you know a blanket on ourselves to where we can't concentrate or to put some stimulant in our brain to where you know we're um uh you know hyped up on some kind of drug is that does

47:21

God think that the primary way to manage people's behavior is through uppers and downers in that way uh because that doesn't feel very medicine e you know what

47:32

I mean and like in some sense you're just like treating a person like an animal and so there are ethical kind of discussions that are happening along those lines but then not only that you know not every antidepressant or anti -anxiety med is equally addictive uh but and some people like with some of the antidepressants can get off of them with little with uh little trouble but that's not the case for everyone uh so like and then you look at all the massive side effects that come with these things and it should be remarkably concerning I mean most people who like most people who are on the drugs at some point they see all the bad side effects and they just like they want to get off but they can't because the moment they try to get off the moment like it's just like trying to get off caffeine or something like that and then when you're getting off caffeine like you know you would be excused for thinking that like if you didn't realize that it was the caffeine making you feel crazy right you would be excused for thinking well

48:31

I must need caffeine in order to be okay because it's medicine because when I get off of it everything feels terrible right but all that's happening is you're chemically dependent on the substance at this point and when you get off of it like you might be suicidal you might be like homicidal you know with some of these things and so the side effects are really bad they're you know in a lot of cases they're very addictive um and you know

48:56

I do think you have like a younger generation of people who are just don't want to be drug addicts you know who are kind of a lot more alert than some of the older generation at that point but I don't think it's even remotely cruel to ask basic questions like why are we you're asking the same kind of questions you ask of a lobotomy right mhm so with a lobotomy if someone wants to drown out all the bad thoughts by cutting out a portion of their brain you might look at them and say is that the answer right like is that the answer to remove your permanently remove the ability you have to think like a human being you know and so then you know dealing with tranquilizers or with uppers or whatever like just asking basic questions is this how you get rid of the bad thoughts the only thing you can do is just you know put a wet blanket on all the thoughts like I turn yourself into a zombie

49:51

I don't know if that's the right path right mhm and even if you do it to like very small dosage is that the answer is to muffle the thoughts like it doesn't even seem logical so you know

50:02

I think if you do have concern for an individual soul and you have an understanding of like what the bible says the bible does say the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for casting down strongholds and arguments and every you know lofty opinion that raises itself up against the knowledge of God you know and then taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ essentially and so you look at passages like that and I think like the bible is saying the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but involve taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ it doesn't seem to involve tranquilizing every thought to the obedience of Christ right right right so then if you were to ask the question though and I'll try to answer this one shorter if you were to ask the question should you encourage people to get off the you know the meds you know or the tranks or the you know uppers or whatever

50:50

SSRIs should you encourage them to do so I would think you if you're in a position of authority in their life you should be pretty cautious in that because like because the side effects are often so severe when they get off depending on the kind of psychotropic drug they're on I mean they could kill themselves or kill someone else or something and in a lot of like you know a lot like there is a rise of school shootings that have been happening and a lot of that is because you have a generation of kids who are drug addicts on these drugs that brain altering drugs and so I don't think you want to like be an individual who's just saying you know get off of them right now or else you know because like it you what you what you might want to do is more encourage them to go talk to a doctor and talk about how can they wean themselves off of these things and consider weaning themselves off of you know unless you're opening yourself up to litigation along those lines and that's part of the reason why people are so afraid to even go there is because they don't want to get sued you know and I think some of that's reasonable like you don't want to get sued you know with but you know as a general

52:02

I don't know how you like if you're living in a society where everyone is just like performing lobotomies on people in order to get them to not have the bad thoughts anymore then that's pervasive and widespread

52:14

I think you want to say hey we got to stop doing this right? yeah and you know if someone's going to say well you're you know engaging in criminal malpractice it's like well you know in 50 years we're going to look back on this with great shame so maybe we should we can get a head start you know so and the same thing with you know if you have a generation of you know normal kids who are you know normal boys who are you know having helicopter women you know basically turn them into drug addicts to suppress their masculinity at some point you might say hey maybe this isn't a drug problem you know like maybe maybe this is a society problem you know upbringing problem maybe it's something else and so I think we need to be pushing against this this trend and I think you know

53:05

I think there's a lot of momentum that's that now is being momentum in this area where people are just kind of tired of being drug addicts and they don't trust you know pharmaceutical companies like they used to and so I suspect we're going to get on the other side but then

53:21

I do think the next thing will be like human 2 .0 and the transhumanism and we'll be doing the same thing with the next technology because I don't know that we have the arguments we need to push back on any of it you know basically the only reason why we're pushing back on lobotomies at this point is because science decided it was cruel and so you know

53:41

I think most people are waiting around for science to decide that tranquilizing a generation of people was cruel you know and treating them like an animal you know so I think we'll get there

53:51

I just but then we need to think through why that was bad you know so we can escape the next round you know and so but I don't think

54:01

I think most people just you know as a thought experiment like just you know

54:09

I mean you know the Stepford Wife kind of movie or whatever like you know there's a way to turn like if you could turn a woman into a robot right if you could put a chip in her brain and basically control her behavior to such an extent that like she always smiles at you and she always is nice to you and she always responds to every one of your requests

54:32

I mean there'd be no shortage of feminists who would basically look at you as literally Hitler for reducing her to some sort of automaton like that you know what

54:40

I'm saying like they would think that that would be fundamentally immoral but like we're not doing much like we're not doing anything different with tranquilizing people we're reducing their capacity to think and have normal human emotions that they probably should have right like we're reducing their capacity to have these normal emotions that God has put in their life in order to wake them up right and so if we're the people who are coming along and just like destroying like if you're living a life of rebellion against God and we're the people coming along basically just removing their capacity to feel the consequences of that we're doing something profoundly immoral right and we're not thinking about that and we'll be you know caught up in the next wave as soon as it comes for sure so do you think that there's any use you know for these types of things in terms of sanctification at all like when it comes to you know like Xanax and stuff like that no no but let me let me let me break that up into two questions alright so is there any use for it at all and then is there any use related to sanctification sanctification is a hard no like absolutely no like like no way at all right kind of no but any use at all let me give you a scenario so there is a old guy

56:07

I know that I'm gonna do the best I can to not to change his story a little bit and not say his name and so but there's an old guy

56:17

I know who essentially had a I had regular interactions with and he had a wife who was basically kind of a contentious woman okay like she was the definition of sleep in the sleep in the corner of the rooftop kind of woman house kind of woman yeah and he was getting older you know and she was she was just that woman and every time

56:37

I went around you know he you know he was kind of a yes dear guy right okay he was a yes dear you know you know gotta keep if mom ain't happy ain't nobody happy kind of guy who never really pushed back against it and just kind of grit his teeth and kind of okay smile on her face try to be happy kind of guy right but then her demands just were constant and her complaining and her fussing were constant and it's just that kind of scenario but then like what happened was you know all of a sudden he got

57:12

I think it was dementia or something like that Alzheimer's or dementia I think it was dementia he got dementia and then instead of being like the nice guy who's like trying to keep you know the unreasonable woman from getting too upset right then all of a sudden he's like you know yelling at her and screaming at her and shaking her right and it was profoundly like startling to her now in that kind of scenario what happened is like what you know he had anger obviously that he had built up over the years towards her and in a way that's somewhat you know understandable if you knew her right

57:53

I mean it's somewhat understandable why that would be the case but then once like his ability to like filter it filter it goes then all of a sudden he's yelling at her and shaking her and all that right so in that kind of scenario

58:07

I then you have to figure out what are you going to do with that right so what are you going to do with a guy like that who like you know you can't just kill him off or something like that right

58:19

I mean like that would be immoral so what do you do I'm not suggesting that as like a positive

58:24

I'm just trying to say that what do you do in that kind of scenario considering that you're a

58:30

Christian and you're not like eugenics and all that are not on the table and so like the issue then with that kind of thing is that you know if you put him on a tranquilizer like yeah what you're going to do is you're going to turn him into a zombie right you're going to remove his ability to think he's going to be you know basically kind of he's going to be there but he's not going to have the capacity to think very much

59:00

I mean you can go that route and you know but I would like people to if they're going to consider going that route like in order to keep him from being a danger to himself and other people and try to preserve as much human dignity as you possibly can

59:14

I would like you at least to have your eyes open as to what you're doing right and so what hospice does a lot of times they step in and they just drug people to death right and then they're basically just sitting there you know once they start becoming you know hard to manage like it's just like you come in there and drug them you know yeah and a lot of people like they're being told in order to comfort themselves that this is just medication it's like just look at what it is it's just they're you know like this isn't medication you know this is treating them like an angry rampaging bull and so you know

59:48

I'm open to the idea that that may be okay but I at least want to call it what it is does that make sense yeah it's an unfortunate thing but then there are situations where it probably is necessary like for people's safety and whatnot yeah so at least you call it what it is and you know treat it like what it is but yeah

01:00:09

I mean I obviously want to use sedatives strong sedatives if you're doing surgery on someone you know and then you're just knocking them out but then what you're doing in that way is like I think in cases where there's something like like medically wrong with an individual that can be established like dementia or something like that you can do a brain scan you can see there's something actually medically wrong like there are scenarios particularly those kind of scenarios where you say hey like this isn't medicine in the traditional sense this is like we're knocking a person out in order to you know perform surgery on them or we're long term tranquilizing them to keep them from killing themselves or someone else like there may be scenarios like that but you know you want to know that there's something medical wrong with a person you know consider a soldier who's gotten the skin blown off you might want to knock him out for a while and give him some time to heal so he doesn't have to be in excruciating pain and pain and agony and all that but you know what what's happening is you have individuals who like their first response is basically to tranquilize people and instead of like understanding that like the vast majority of cases there's nothing medically wrong with these people and 99 % of the time

01:01:31

I mean 99 % of the time you have someone who gets a general anxiety disorder diagnosis or clinical depression diagnosis like those are the labels that individuals get when all other medical tests have been ruled out and in these cases like these are the worst possible solutions that you can do you know at this point like this is not like you know it's it's kind of like putting you know an

01:01:56

ADHD kid on Ritalin or whatever as your first thing that you're going to do it's like hey you know this kid like has probably has two parents who are working full time and is being raised by pagans you know has no attention from his parents doesn't feel like his parents love him when he comes home like he's you know addicted to entertainment they're addicted to entertainment he has no interaction with anyone he really has never learned to read in his life because you know he's has the attention span of a goldfish right and he has a lot of hyperactivity and a lot of you know aggression probably just because he's a guy and he hasn't been taught how to manage that and so he's been abandoned by his parents raised by pagans you know taught that everything about himself is fundamentally wrong and needs to change you know he's addicted to all sorts of entertainment and your response is to put him on a stimulant right it's like I think that there's other problems that are here that that isn't the first response you should go to you know and so and I think what we do we need to do is regain a sense of the obvious you know in a vast majority of these kind of cases like this what we're talking about is individual like anxiety and depression are the normal human condition that comes from individuals who are weighed down by guilt and shame and condemnation and living worthless lives and and like that's what you feel man you know and and so so yeah

01:03:18

I mean I I think there may be conceivably some scenarios like that where you know you might be able to do that but then in the vast majority of cases you're just putting a band -aid on problems that you know need to be solved in other ways right so it's like it's like sitting on a tack and taking pain meds like the best thing to do is to get up and remove the tack right right yeah like you can limp along you know but you're just met you're just putting a band -aid on symptoms right if that and the problem is that they don't even work they're not even working much better than placebos like in the main and then like you know despite all the propaganda they're you know they don't they're not even beating out sugar pills man right and then they have all these side effects it's just like a bad solution yeah they're addictive yeah yeah so if if they're not if it's a hard no in terms of you're asking about sanctification too right yeah yeah good well

01:04:17

I was gonna explain explain what you mean in terms of it's a hard no and for sanctification purposes yes so I mean the

01:04:27

Bible says the weapons of warfare are not carnal right like so this is what people don't realize and so like just imagine the like imagine the

01:04:38

Stepford Wife kind of scenario right that I brought up and you know you can just put a chip in her brain and turn her into a submissive wife was she sanctified in that no like why not well because it's more than it's more than just you know actions yeah right so you can get all the right so like you know like God doesn't want a woman just to be a mindless slave of a man like that's not what

01:05:09

God wants right God doesn't want just a woman who has like if you could just you know flip a switch in her brain or something or install some programming and get her to like you know just unconditionally do whatever a man says to do like that everyone would look at that and you would say hey you've just like removed her humanity right right like she's no longer a human being like these these like this submission to her husband is not coming from her heart from a heart that desires and longs to obey it's like it's coming from a computer chip that's forcing her against her will yeah and in like in the whole point though is that like there's a sense in which like a man like needs a check on some of like he's a sinner he needs a check on some of the stupid things it comes up with right and a wife needs to like you know she needs to you know obey the

01:06:02

Lord first and not just her husband and so like just think about a scenario like like you think about think about like the lobotomy think about the lobotomy like did that fix anything so you had anxious worried thoughts and you cut out part of your brain did that fix anything no like you didn't do anything it just removed your capacity to think right and so you put someone on a heavy tranquilizer you know this

01:06:22

I mean it's supposed to be a light tranquilizer but often like it just that they it has a sugar pill effectiveness and they start upping the dose and then they change medications and get them on two or three different drugs and then they're just a mess man but like all you're doing is like you're doing nothing different than you're doing with a lobotomy is that you're using the creation to to mask unpleasant feelings but then the problem is that like that's not the way sanctification works right so the way sanctification works is that like we're moral individuals who are created in the image of God and you know like let's talk about the standard

01:07:00

American who is watching eight hours of TV a day you know tooth to income family that has their pet and has their kid all day long at daycare kind of thing that they've functionally abandoned and then they come home and they're all addicted you know the two parents come home from work they're all addicted to their entertainment together and they spend all their time sitting around they're lazy they're overweight they've abandoned their kids they've abandoned the responsibility they have to raise their kids right yeah they never read the

01:07:28

Bible and then they go to some church where Steven Furtick kind of guy is preaching right yeah and you know and then in their free time they're listening to you know you know songs about Jesus being their boyfriend and you know them being broken and they never read the

01:07:43

Bible like what do you think that they should feel like what do you think they should feel that kind of person right well what they should feel is anxiety and depression that's what they should feel okay but then the thing is like that anxiety and depression that they feel is

01:07:59

God's way of like helping to wake them up about the nature of their condition right yeah like they feel guilt and shame and condemnation because they're moral beings who were created in the image of God and they're made to do more than this right to just be entertainment junkies to you know let their bodies atrophy to like you know gain a hundred pounds and you know have all the problems that come with that like they're that's not what they're made for right they're not made for that and so you do that you feel guilt you feel shame you feel condemnation and that's like the prodigal son you know experiencing the bitter fruit of his rebellion against God as he's going to end up like eating with the pigs right now if you come along and you just basically give the prodigal son food indefinitely and let him keep on going to the prostitutes and give him in the supply of money you haven't helped him be sanctified you're an obstacle in the way of a sanctification that's why the

01:08:57

Bible says if you if an individual doesn't work don't let him eat right like you're not helping him at all okay now like if you imagine that like God has designed these negative emotions to be things which like remind us of our need for him so you know

01:09:11

David of his son says when I kept silent you know my body wasted away you know the Bible says that essentially a tranquil heart gives life to the flesh but envy makes the bones rot so God has designed these negative kind of things to be things that wake us up right and then like God has designed like so we're complicated along those lines now if you come along and you just tranquilize some tranquilize all that away all that you've done is you've cut off their need for God at a pretty fundamental up you haven't helped them be sanctified yeah like that's not an aid to sanctification that is a hindrance to them feeling the things they need to feel in order to make the changes they need to make right and so there's no like you know the fruit of the spirit is love joy peace long -suffering gentleness meekness kindness faithfulness self -control and you can feel like I'm contrary to the prosperity folks like happiness isn't the good emotion and sadness is a bad emotion like there are times when you should feel like like the thing is like most people like that standard person

01:10:13

I'm talking about they feel happy about all the wrong things and they feel sad about all the wrong things right and so they don't feel sad about their sin they feel sad about their circumstances and their situations right and they don't feel happy in the

01:10:26

Lord they feel happy in all their stuff right and so if you come along and just try to change the emotions you didn't fix anything man right like they need they they need to repent of their sin they need to repent of their sins of omission repent of their sins of commission they need to turn to the

01:10:42

Lord they need to live a life worth living they need to you know demonstrate what it looks like to be parents to their kids you know like they they've been created to worship

01:10:51

God and to glorify God and to make him known to other people and the more that they fight that the more they're going to feel miserable and if you come along and just kind of you know tranquilize all the bad thoughts you know or you know give them uppers you know indefinitely forever and perpetuity all you're doing is dampening that those emotions

01:11:11

God is designed to actually produce you know sanctification in certain ways right yeah now in terms of sanctification if we're saying that the the those types of drugs are not helpful for sanctification at all are we then essentially saying you know the only response we have is to like pray the depression like like Philippians you know

01:11:35

Philippians 4 talks about through prayer and supplication making our requests known to God and the and peace that surpasses all understanding will be with us right so so that's like what

01:11:47

Philippians 4 I'm summarizing it a little bit but that's what it says so are we then just saying like all right the only the only you know recourse you have against depression or anxiety is to pray it away mm -hmm yeah

01:12:03

I think that's same argument is being made in the same sex attraction Christian movement pray the gay way pray the and so what you have happening is you have individuals who have a very stunted view of the way sanctification actually works and so what they think is anytime they have an unpleasant feeling whether it's depression or anxiety they they think that what people like us are saying is would just pray it away right and then if you have an unpleasant or if you have like an undesired attraction to something of the same sex or same gender then they think people like us who are saying there's hope for change the only thing you can do is pray it away right and that's a dodge

01:12:42

I mean and what that is is that's just shows that you have very little understanding of the way sanctification actually works and so you know you can look at Philippians 4 6 be anxious be anxious for nothing but in everything by prayer and supplication with Thanksgiving let your request be made known to God that isn't saying pray the anxious for nothing but some simple way that's saying but in everything by prayer and supplication with Thanksgiving let your request be made known to God like that's saying like there are solutions to anxiety and the kind of solution the

01:13:14

Bible is giving is more of a comprehensive kind of solution meaning like you know if like the reason why we're anxious is generally there's something we want that we don't have that we think we need in order to be okay right so it's saying go to God with that request all right so God's a good

01:13:31

God he knows what you have need of even if you don't right he's a good heavenly father who delights to give his children good gifts so go to him with that that's what it's saying but then it's not just simply saying

01:13:41

Lord give me the thing I need right it's saying let your request be made known to God right with but with everything with prayer supplication with Thanksgiving let your request be made known to God so what you need to be doing in that point is like putting on thankfulness yeah putting off worry right so and this is the thing like I've never met the depressed person who has some sort of medical problem or anxiety person you know filled with anxiety who has you know some kind of vitamin deficiency some kind of like thyroid problem whatever

01:14:11

I've never met that kind of person who the things that come out of their mouth are God is so good and his plans are so right and you know

01:14:20

I feel terrible right now but he knows what he's doing and I can trust him and I'm so thankful for everything that he's done and how he's using this to make me well

01:14:28

I can't like what you need what you need is not to pray the anxiety way it's not just like you need to pray like Lord take away the worry take away the worry is you need to cultivate the kind of character that is filled with Thanksgiving right no matter how you feel right yeah no matter how you feel and if you're that right then the

01:14:44

Bible says the peace of God which surpasses all under all comprehension shall guard your hearts your minds of Jesus and what does it look like to have

01:14:50

God's peace guarding your hearts and mind it says finally brother and whatever is true whatever is honorable whatever is right whatever is pure whatever is lovely whatever is good repute there's any excellence if there's anything worthy of praise that your mind dwell on these things right right right so like you're at like it's not about just praying the anxiety away it's about actively like fighting all those anxious and worried thoughts and making a pattern of thinking on what is true in the situation what is honorable in this situation what is pure in this situation what is right in this situation and and I'm going to dwell on that and I'm going to be filled with Thanksgiving right right and not only that that the next verse says let the things you have learned and received and heard and seen in me practice these things and the

01:15:30

God of peace will be with you I'm going to make changes in my life and I'm I'm so like it's it's like you know the kind of individual who is worried about not having a job that provides enough for his family and all he does is just in you know

01:15:43

Lord help me quit worrying about it help me quit worrying about it help me quit worrying about it right yeah but what didn't and God's not taking the worry away it's like well yeah because you need to go look for a job man you know whatever is the things you've learned and received and heard and seen to me practice these things like you need to take steps you need to change your behavior right you need to change what you're doing and so in a lot of these kind of situations you have individuals who are weighed down by guilt and shame and worry and condemnation so consider like the example

01:16:08

I've given you know just of the two income family who you know probably has a bunch of pets and maybe one kid or something who is in day care all the time and you know and that they never talk to and never see because they're all addicted to their phones and you know and then they're you know eating things they shouldn't eat and all this stuff and like not that there's any bad food but you get what

01:16:27

I'm saying like just imagine like that kind of scenario and then they're they feel terrible all the time because they never know and they never pray all the time and then like the caricature is that we're just looking at that person and saying pray the warrior way right right yeah pray the anxiety away man it's like no like you need you need to fundamentally change everything about your life right yeah yeah it'd be really interesting to know with with people who face who deal with these things on a regular basis and really do struggle with it it would be interesting to know like hey okay so I'm how much how much how often do you read your

01:17:05

Bible you know how often do you you know meditate on the word how often are you praying how often are you you know going to church how involved are you at your church how often do you share the gospel how often what kind of church are you going to what kind of church are you going to how often do you serve other people you know

01:17:25

I mean how often do you have people over at your home and and have dinner with them for example and all of these different things

01:17:33

I mean part of part of repentance is is not just stopping the bad thing right but it's right replacing the bad thing with what

01:17:45

God is called good right and and so I found in my life that the more that I've I've focused on those things it becomes a lot

01:17:56

I mean number one it just becomes a lot harder to like want you know want to continue in my sin anyways but the more that then there's so much more peace that I've found in in pursuing obedience to the things that God's commanded right well yeah but it's not like it's just imagine that scenario and then what you what's happening is like a person like in that kind of scenario where they're just living a worthless life in general it's not amounting to much of anything it's like what they do then it's just like well

01:18:29

I try to read my Bible a few times this week and then I'm like and nothing changes right and then they're like well that's irrefutable proof that it must be some medical problem right and then people on the outside are basically just looking at them in a sentimental way and know nothing about how they're living their life and then they're just like well they seem like a nice person you know so like it must be something wrong with them it's like you don't know anything about what they're actually doing in their life you know and so what like what has to happen is it's like you need like that kind of person

01:19:00

I'm talking about they need more than just read their Bible a couple times and see if everything is fixed they need to develop like they need a total like a lot of times they're probably not saved but then a lot of times like what you need is you need like I you need to look at that kind of person in and in the vast majority of cases like I don't see any fruit of the spirit in your life and and what people think when you say fruit is like they do nice things sometimes right yeah yeah but do you see love do you see like is that person defined by love is that person defined by peace

01:19:31

Is that person defined by long -suffering? Is that person defined by gentleness, patience, self -control?

01:19:37

Is that person defined by any of those things? And in the vast majority of cases of individuals who are getting these labels and who everyone is so convinced that this is some sort of medical problem, that person would never be accused of ever thanking

01:19:52

God for anything, right? There's no joy in their life. There's no peace in their life. When you talk to them, it's a list of complaints.

01:19:59

It's a list of all the bad things that are happening. It's a list of all the disappointment. Hey, how are you doing?

01:20:05

I don't feel good. I still don't feel good. It's been a hard day. Everything's so tough because I'm so bored with my life and all my first world problems and everything else.

01:20:17

And part of it really is that you have a generation of people who are just so bored because they don't have anything productive to do.

01:20:23

And then they try to drown it all out with entertainment and they feel worthless and everything else.

01:20:29

Now, what they need though is you need to think through biblical husband -wife roles, right?

01:20:37

And think through actually raising your kid and think through why is your house full of dog hair and feces and pee?

01:20:48

There's so many things that you have to think through with that kind of thing. Think through are you going to a good church?

01:20:55

Are you ever reading your Bible? Are you praying? Are you other -centered? It's amazing that people who are depressed, you mentioned do you serve other people or you invite them over to your house?

01:21:05

One of the main counsel you give people like that is that you need to go serve someone else and get your focus off yourself because that will help you to have something.

01:21:15

You're here not just for yourself, for other people, but there's comprehensive kind of life -changing things that most people need.

01:21:22

And then what people react to that is there might be some random person somewhere along the line who really is filled with all the fruit of the spirit who just can't, just feels down because maybe there's something medically wrong with them.

01:21:38

It's like, I'm not talking about that person. I'm talking about 99 % of the people who are getting these diagnosis after all the medical stuff has been rolled out because they're typical

01:21:47

Americans who are living typical American lifestyles and like, it shows, you know?

01:21:53

So, like, that's what we're talking about. Petey Right. Now, this question, it might be kind of superfluous to ask it at this point, but I want to ask it anyways.

01:22:05

In terms of battling depression, part of what we're saying is like, essentially repentance, right?

01:22:14

You know, pursue obedience to God. Is there any sense in which saying that means we're delving into prosperity gospel realm?

01:22:27

And the reason I ask this, I know you're laughing. I wanted to laugh, but I suppressed it. I suppressed it, and I thought

01:22:33

I did a pretty good job. Mark Good job. Showcase. Petey The reason

01:22:39

I ask this is because there's a lot of people who, you know, if you were to say, for example, hey, depression is not something that you should be turning to like psychiatric drugs to deal with in general, right?

01:22:57

There is a lot of, you get a lot of, you're going to get a lot of responses that are along the lines of like, oh, okay, so, you know, when you break your leg, do you tell them to not go to the doctor, right, and just pray for healing?

01:23:11

Or when someone has diabetes, you know, do you tell them to like, avoid the doctor and pray it away, right, at that point?

01:23:21

Or they have diabetes because they haven't been faithful enough or whatever, and so, people really do, they really do legitimately compare like a broken leg, for example, to depression as if they're the same thing.

01:23:35

Pete So, the question then becomes like, all right, our reading of Philippians 4, for example, are we reading a prosperity gospel version of Philippians 4?

01:23:45

Jared This is the same thing that happened with the same sex attraction Christian movement with Rosario Butterfield, you know, she described conversion therapy early on, you know, for years as a heresy, it's like prosperity gospel basically just to say that you should try to pray the gay away, you know, but then recently she put out an article saying that that was one of the most ignorant things she's ever said as a

01:24:10

Christian, because that's just sanctification, right? Such were some of you. Part of the issue here is it's just, we're often talking past each other with the language that we're actually using, and so, and I don't know how to give, like,

01:24:27

I think a good place to go would be our podcast on Is Depression Real?,

01:24:33

where we do try to delve into this kind of question with much more depth. Part of the problem is that we're just not using words in the same kind of way, and so, in the common mind, if you use a term like depression or anxiety, in common usage, that can mean a wide range of phenomenon, right?

01:24:57

So, depression can mean you're sad because of the, you know, as we said in the

01:25:03

Is Depression Real?, because the nacho fries were not on the menu, right? Right, yeah. People use that word flippantly.

01:25:10

Yeah, it can mean that. It can mean your dad just died or bereavement, right? It can mean that you have cancer and you are suffering from a depressed mood that is resulting from the fact that you're in chemotherapy and you just feel like you have no energy all the time, kind of thing, right?

01:25:33

And then it can mean that, like, sudden unexplained sorrow, as the DSM -5 clinical definition of depression is talking about, that lasts for, that has been ongoing for a two -week period of time that has no medical cause.

01:25:47

And so, when we're talking about depression and we're talking about anxiety, we're talking about what the DSM describes as clinical depression, which is depression that now we realize, which we should have known for a long time, is not from the chemical imbalance, right?

01:26:02

So, we're talking about, like, a depressed mood for a two -week period of time that is not better explained through some appeal to some medical category at that point.

01:26:14

Does that make sense? Yeah. All right. So, that's the kind of depression we're talking about. We're talking about clinical depression.

01:26:19

We're not talking about any sadness in general. That's not what we're saying. And we're talking about anxiety. We're not talking about any anxious feelings that a person might have because they have, like, a legitimate medical thing wrong with them.

01:26:32

We're talking about DSM -5 anxiety or DSM -5 depression in that way.

01:26:37

Now, repeat the question again. Is that basically prosperity to say that a person should have some expectation of being able to turn from that?

01:26:48

Yeah. Like, without, you know, the drugs. Oh, all right. Well, the drugs don't work.

01:26:54

The drugs have significant side effects. The drugs are not performing better than a placebo. The drugs are highly addictive.

01:27:00

The drugs are, you know, just turning people into –

01:27:05

Mind -altering. Mind -altering, you know. They're not doing what you think they're doing. They're not medicine, you know.

01:27:11

All that aside, like, I don't know what the fruit of the Spirit is if not love, joy, peace, long -suffering, gentleness, meekness, kindness, faithfulness, self -control.

01:27:26

I don't know what that is if you have a category for an individual who has, like, sorrow, right?

01:27:37

Yeah. Destabilizing sorrow that has become their reason not to handle life that is not grounded in some medical problem.

01:27:45

And so, what you have is, like, a rejection of faithfulness because, like, this destabilizing depression that's keeping them from being able to handle the basic issues of life, this debilitating mood of sorrow or hopelessness is everything the

01:28:01

Bible says shouldn't be characterized by a Christian. So, the Bible says that we don't grieve as those who have no hope.

01:28:08

We're not held captive by the fear of death. We've been set free from the power of guilt and shame in our life.

01:28:15

Like, we are to be individuals who are filled with love, joy, peace, long -suffering. Whatever that is, it's not love.

01:28:20

Whatever that is, it's not joy. Whatever that is, it's not peace. Whatever that is, it's not long -suffering. Whatever that is, it's not faithfulness.

01:28:28

And so, like, this idea that you can just be a Christian who is embodying all the anti -fruits of the

01:28:35

Spirit, right? Which are the works of the flesh. Like, this is a list of the works of the flesh, like your classic

01:28:42

DSM -5 depression diagnosis or your classic DSM -5 general anxiety disorder.

01:28:48

These are a list of the… You could just take the diagnostic criteria in either one, put it alongside the works of the flesh, and you can contrast it with the fruit of the

01:29:00

Spirit, and it's exactly the opposite. And so, what you have is you have a situation where the

01:29:05

Bible tells us what the fruit of the Spirit looks like, and the psychologists tell us that if an individual has none, they can't help it because it used to be there must be some chemical imbalance in their brain, and now it's like, well, we don't know anymore.

01:29:21

It must be their environment, right? Right. And I would just say, well, what are we doing? Like, the Bible says, be anxious for nothing, but in everything, with prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God.

01:29:30

Like, I don't know what we do with that. Why do you worry about your life if now you have a label which came about by atheists who wanted to deny everything the

01:29:39

Bible says and give you an alternative explanation of what's going on? These just look like the devil's excuses to me to not have the fruit of the

01:29:46

Spirit, right? Right, right. So, this isn't the prosperity gospel, this is the actual gospel. So, we've been predestined in Christ for good works which

01:29:55

God has prepared before the foundation of the world that we should walk in them, right? We are confident that God who began a good work in us will be faithful to complete that work.

01:30:03

We understand that when we're saved, we're devoted to God in holiness and he's began a good work, he's going to faithfully complete that.

01:30:11

If you're a Christian, you're not going to be able to stop the fruit of the Spirit in your life. That's just the way it is. Part of the problem, though, is that we're just not able to make basic distinctions along these lines with what we're even saying, and there's just such a pervasive assumption that when you see an individual who has no fruit of the

01:30:31

Spirit, it must be medical and problem. And not only so, I mean, with individuals I've interacted with, there's an expectation that you must withhold and suspend judgment indefinitely because it may be that at some point, somewhere along the line, we discover some new genetic thing or something that's causing it.

01:30:51

So, basically, you just have an entire ceasefire that's put on the fruit of the Spirit, and I'm looking at it and I'm just saying,

01:30:57

I don't know what to do other than just, like, maybe we should just, like, if it looks like a dog, smells like a dog, barks like a dog, you know, maybe it is, like, that's what it is.

01:31:07

You know, call it what it is at that point. Yeah, yeah. So, in short, no, it's not prosperity gospel.

01:31:12

No, it's just Christianity, man. Right. It's just – that's just – That's just a Christian life, yeah. A Christian life.

01:31:18

And now, even in a case like where someone has cancer, you know people who have cancer who are filled with love, joy, peace, long -suffering, gentleness, meekness, kindness, faithfulness, self -control, though they feel awful.

01:31:32

Right. And you know those with cancer who they have none of those, right, and they feel awful.

01:31:41

Yeah, yeah. And so, like, the thing is, even if there is some legitimate mental disorder that is sapping your energy and you don't – like, there's nothing to stop you from being filled with love, joy, peace, long -suffering, and all that.

01:31:54

And I don't – like, I mean, frankly, I just – I don't know the situation where the person has come to me and says they're anxious or worried, and I look at their life and I say, oh, fruit of the

01:32:04

Spirit, man. Like, I see all the opposite of it, you know? And so, even if you feel terrible, even if you can't get out of bed, like, what should be on your tongue is the fruit of the

01:32:13

Spirit, you know? And that's – Yeah. But it's not, you know, in these cases. And so, what we're asked to do is we're asked to, like, deny that evidence in 99 .9

01:32:23

% of the cases because of the rare possibility that maybe somewhere along the line has all the fruit of the

01:32:30

Spirit and they really do have something really wrong with them. And it's like, I just haven't met that person, man.

01:32:36

But I'm sure that that person can exist, but in the main, that's just not what we're talking about. And let's not, you know, let's not be obtuse.

01:32:43

Sure. That's not what we're talking about in the main. Alright, final question. Got it. I've – so, in this last week,

01:32:51

I've interacted with some people who, you know, typically when I'm interacting with people online,

01:32:57

I try to avoid the people that are just blatantly and obviously aggressive and just, you can kind of tell there's no conversation to be had there.

01:33:08

But then you do get a lot of people who are genuinely, even if they don't agree with you, they are trying to just ask you questions and at first try to understand what it is that you're saying.

01:33:22

And so, I interacted with some people this last week, and inevitably, whenever you talk about this type of stuff, you're going to get a lot of people who are actually on antidepressants.

01:33:33

And so, I wanted to tell you, I wanted to describe two situations that were to me, and then

01:33:41

I want you to tell me if they convince you that you're wrong with your stance on antidepressants, okay?

01:33:48

And I don't know why you're laughing. This is serious. This is serious. Alright, scenario number one.

01:33:55

And by the way, both of these are – someone else is telling me this is their current situation.

01:34:03

So, I'm not making it up. I'm not exaggerating. This is what they told me, and I'm taking them at their word.

01:34:10

So, situation number one, you have a person who deals with depression and anxiety, and they tell you, hey, look, the meds work because I'm on 11 antidepressants right now, and I don't feel like I'm overwhelmed with depression and anxiety anymore whenever I'm taking all of those medications.

01:34:39

Does that convince you? I'm convinced, man.

01:34:46

An hour and a half. I should have started with that. That was enough, man.

01:34:52

I need to go home and rethink my life. Alright.

01:34:58

So, the person on 11 antidepressants, that did it for you, huh?

01:35:03

That did it. Throw everything you just heard out the window. Alright. Man, but that's so sad.

01:35:10

I mean, when you think about that, that is so sad to the point where like –

01:35:16

I'm pretty grieved over – I mean, can you imagine what that's like just being on that many –

01:35:23

I mean, taking all those pills? The quality of life that that kind of person has, the ability that person has to think, to process, to engage in any kind of meaningful conversation with anyone, that's the thing that is just so disturbing about this.

01:35:40

And what happens is you have people who – because you're told that they work, right?

01:35:47

And you get put on one, like what happens is you get put on one drug, and at the beginning there's the placebo effect, there's the effect, like the sugar pill high, it's like, well, there's this hope that this will fix it, right?

01:36:01

This will fix it. And so, what happens is for a few weeks you feel better because you have an object, anything that you hope in is like – but then it starts going down, like the sugar pill, the novelty of it, like effect that starts to wear off, then you go back to a doctor and you need something else, and what ends up happening is like then you get on different drugs, and then what's happening is you're getting put on multiple drugs to manage the side effects from the other drugs.

01:36:30

Right. And so, then pretty soon you're on like 11 different drugs or something like that. I mean, that's more of an extreme case, but you're on like 11 different drugs because they're all trying to manage different side effects for different drugs at that point.

01:36:41

You're just – and then like, if you can imagine trying to get off of them, what a nightmare that would be.

01:36:46

Yeah. For sure. And we're laughing about it, but I think like we're laughing, but then it's not really funny in the sense of like laughing at that person, right?

01:37:02

It's funny in the sense of just like how ridiculous that sounds.

01:37:08

Because if we were talking about anything else, any other type of, you know, anything like that, and you're saying, hey, look, this is how many it takes and it works.

01:37:19

It's the same kind of thing with the vaccine. Right. You know, you have like the person who is like taking their third booster who is wearing their who's, you know, quadruple vaxxed and double boostered and then gets

01:37:33

COVID twice in the span of a few weeks. Because everyone else didn't get their four boosters when we thought that the vaccine was supposed to be the all -purpose cure.

01:37:43

Right. Like, and so then we're wondering what – this isn't a vaccine anymore or whatever like this in the normal sense of the word.

01:37:50

But it's that kind of absurd scenario to where like you're looking at, you know, a generation of people who – and, you know, for an individual like that, it's because their brain is fried at that point, right?

01:38:02

Right, yeah. But it's the same thing happening with the COVID stuff. It's just like you're unable to see that like if this was a real vaccine, like it would work.

01:38:13

You know what I mean? Right, yeah. And so you're not laughing. You wouldn't have to take four. You wouldn't have to take four and then wear four masks and then be mad at the people who don't.

01:38:20

Like that we're talking – it doesn't seem like it works, man. And, you know, even with that, it's like you're not laughing at the president because it is –

01:38:28

I mean, especially at his age, I mean, it's like a pretty serious thing actually to get

01:38:33

COVID, right? But then you are laughing at like the – they're still sticking to this, you know, the same old lines.

01:38:42

Not only are they sticking to it, they're doing so with threat of like destroying your livelihood and their job and your ability to do – like so like and that's the same thing that's happening in the psychological drug realm.

01:38:55

It's like this is a threat, like lay off, right? Yeah, yeah. And it's like what this is –

01:39:01

I don't want people to be on 11 drugs like you're the counter example. You're the – you're, you know, every evidence we need to say like don't go down this route, right?

01:39:10

Like you're not the positive test case for this. This is what we're trying to warn people about. Okay, scenario number two.

01:39:17

A person tells you that the antidepressants work because they deal with – they deal with depression.

01:39:25

They face anxiety on a daily basis and they don't tell you how many antidepressants they're taking but they tell you that recently they for one reason or another ran out of their prescription and couldn't get it filled for a day or two.

01:39:44

And so the first day that they had no medication they were completely bedridden and unable to do anything all day long.

01:39:54

And then the second day they managed enough – just enough strength to be able to get out of bed and struggle to get to the store and finally fill their prescription again.

01:40:07

And then on day three they have their prescription, they take it, they're back to normal.

01:40:13

Are you convinced? Well, I admire you and your ability to calmly relay these facts over.

01:40:23

You know, it's definitely one of those things where this is – you can't have your cake and eat it too, you know?

01:40:31

And so part of what's happening is you're being told multiple irrational things all at once and that's part of the problem.

01:40:37

And so you have to hold, you know, several contradictory ideas in your mind. So if you're a person who'd come along and say, hey, these things have massive side effects, you know,

01:40:46

I can – everyone knows. I mean, you're not allowed to say it, but I mean, everyone knows that there are massive side effects that are associated with this kind of stuff.

01:40:53

Yeah, just listen to the commercials. I mean, those guys say I'm so – there's so many of them that it still takes like 30 seconds sometimes.

01:41:02

They're talking as fast as our intro, faster maybe, you know? But you have to think about that, like how unsettling that is to the fact that like, you know, this drug may cause erectile dysfunction, you know, and cancer and, you know, like permanently, you know, cripple your ability to walk, you know?

01:41:24

It may render you paralyzed forever, you know? And then people are like, whoa, I want to try it, you know? Yeah. It's like, wait a minute, wait a minute.

01:41:30

Ask your doctor about. Yeah, and they say it in such a nice tone of voice that – but it's just like, man,

01:41:36

I don't want any of that, you know? But that shows you how desperate people are in general, like just as a side note, like people are that desperate to – and that should be sad,

01:41:48

I mean, that people are that desperate to, you know, get the worry and the shame and the guilt and the condemnation and the sadness to go away that they'll latch on to, you know, poison in order to do it, you know?

01:42:01

So, but, you know, what you're told is you're told, like, you know, they're not that bad and, you know, you're exaggerating and whatever else, but then like these are the kind of stories that I'm aware of on a regular basis, you know, of individuals who are –

01:42:17

I mean, you know, I know that many people I know and I know many people who, you know, even relatives who have been on this stuff and it's fundamentally messed with and changed them in different ways and you can tell, you know what you're looking at, you can tell like that there are all these side effects, but then part of the way – what's so pernicious about the lie, and this is what's so pernicious about it is like you're told by faith like that,

01:42:44

Nick, you have to trust by faith, science is spoken, these things work, right? Yeah. And so, then you take them and they work for a little bit and then they stop working and it's like you need more or you need different types and you need – and so, it's just like you're getting hooked on – like the 11 example was like an extreme example, but a lot of people were on multiple meds trying to manage the side effects from other meds and so – but then like so, then it doesn't dawn on them that like the medicine isn't fixing it.

01:43:14

They put their faith in the doctors and trust in the doctors and the medicine and there's nothing you can do to persuade them that it's not working.

01:43:23

And then what happens is once they come off, they feel crazy, right? Right, yeah.

01:43:28

They feel nuts and like that's all the evidence that they need that like this medicine is working because when

01:43:37

I don't take it, I feel nuts. Yeah, I can't even get out of bed. I can't even get out of bed, but what actually happened is you're a drug addict now.

01:43:44

Right. And so, we have comparable situations with caffeine. I mean, just try to get off caffeine when you're addicted to caffeine and you'll see not that you have some sort of caffeine deficiency in your body, right?

01:43:56

Like you will see that you're entirely mastered by it and now like your body is even adjusting the way it processes based on the regular introduction of this drug in your body.

01:44:08

Your body is changing the way that you think and the way that you feel, you know, to compensate for this.

01:44:14

Now you're totally mastered on it and when you come out, you can barely see, you know? Like when you come off caffeine, you can barely see and you can barely think and you might have a splitting migraine for days, you know, and want to like take a power drill to your head, right?

01:44:28

But that isn't because you – like the issue is that's not because you have a caffeine deficiency or something like that. That's because you're mastered by an addictive substance that's highly addictive.

01:44:38

And what people – what doesn't dawn on them is like what you're – you're suffering from drug withdrawal at this point.

01:44:44

Like this isn't normal for you. And so, the same thing happens with caffeine. Like you only get to normal after you get clean of the caffeine for a significant period of time.

01:44:56

And then you realize what normal is actually like, right? Yeah. And so, like when you're mastered by caffeine, like what happens is like you think the caffeine is giving you energy.

01:45:07

Well, no. What's actually happening is caffeine is restoring you to normal function. And after you become significantly addicted to a while.

01:45:15

And so, when you don't have caffeine, you're constantly on a downer. But that's a downer induced through drug addiction, right?

01:45:22

And the same thing is happening with like these kind of drugs. Like when you come off of it, like you think, well, now

01:45:29

I'm feeling normal because I don't have drugs. No, you're experiencing withdrawal, right?

01:45:34

That's what you're experiencing. And you're equating that with normal. But what you realize is once you get through the withdrawal stuff, then you'll figure out what normal is and you'll realize you don't have to take it.

01:45:44

Does that make sense? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And I would just say as a side note, pray for those people because that's really concerning that they're,

01:46:01

I mean, it messes, those are obvious examples that it messes with you. And so. Well, part of what's hard about it is like you want to have just an unreserved compassion for that kind of individual where you have the response that you're having to say, pray for them.

01:46:15

But then part of the other, the difficulty though, is that they're using that experience as a club to basically bash anyone who's criticizing the medicine at all, right?

01:46:29

Right, yeah. So like with the COVID cult, like part of the problem is that you have these people who are like,

01:46:36

I've seen Twitter accounts where they're just like so held captive to this fear of death, to where they've had their four vaccines.

01:46:48

Not only have they had their four vaccines, they've given their kids the vaccines. And then when they give their kids the vaccines, their kids have basically kind of had bad reactions to that and now their kids can't even walk and everything else.

01:47:01

It's an objectively sad situation. And then they think they need to give them another one, right? Right. And it's like your heart goes out to them in that situation, but then for whatever reason they're so, like this is their way of managing life, but then they're wielding their own experience as a club to force everyone else to follow them down this destructive rabbit hole, or at least to approve of it, right?

01:47:27

Right. And so at that point, like there has to be some kind of like, hey, I feel bad that you are held captive by the fear of death and you refuse to go to work anymore and you're trapped in your home and you can't even go to your mailbox without adopting

01:47:43

Sharia law or whatever else. I feel bad for you that that's where you're at. But when you're taking your fear and you're turning that into a demand that the entire world refuse to operate in a normal way anymore and that we take everyone's job and everything else, at that point, it's like there's two responses.

01:48:05

Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah. It's like, on the one hand, it's like, I'm sorry for you, but hey, we have to point out that this is lunacy.

01:48:13

Does that make sense? Right, absolutely. And then in the case with the psychotropic drugs, when you have someone who's on 11 antidepressants or whatever, and that's irrefutable proof that they, like the drugs work, it's like, you're a cautionary tale.

01:48:27

You have to understand you're a cautionary tale and like you can't use your experience as like a club that you're going to bash everyone over the head with and basically say, you must agree with me, you must affirm me, you must validate me or else you're a villain.

01:48:39

It's like, no, wait a minute, you're the, like, we need to pray for you, but like we also have to have the ability to step in and say, hey, like, that's not reasonable, right?

01:48:50

Right, yeah. Well, we've gone way longer than I thought we would, but I was glad to.

01:48:59

I think it's been a pretty good conversation overall. So, Tim, is there anything you've got to say in closing? Oh, I mean,

01:49:05

I'm sure that there's plenty more to say on this subject, and you know,

01:49:11

I'm not sure that we're going to be able to say it all. Right, yeah. Maybe that's a good place to end.

01:49:18

Yeah, I think that's a good place to go, to leave on.

01:49:24

And so, it's fun to be able to sit down and have these conversations and talk through it all, because I really do think that, especially, so, you know, we live in a town where there's a liberal university in our town, and depression and anxiety,

01:49:45

I mean, those are probably two of the most common things that you'll talk to students about here, and you know, the suicide rate is really high.

01:49:58

They're turning to the therapeutic animals. Yeah, right. And so, yeah, no, they literally do, yeah, they do actually do that.

01:50:06

It's pretty wild. There's all these issues, and then you look at the solutions provided by psychiatrists and whatnot, and they just don't seem to be working overall.

01:50:19

And I know so many people that have been on these things for years and years, and then they tell you, like, it's funny, because they almost kind of get, they get a little mad at you for talking about their depression, and they basically respond with, well, hey, what do you know that I don't know that, you know,

01:50:39

I've been the one dealing with this for years and years, and nothing's worked, so what is it that you know that I don't know? Which is a pretty interesting response, because, you know, you're kind of admitting that you don't actually, like, know what to do with your depression or your anxiety at that point.

01:50:58

And so, I really do encourage everyone who's listened all the way through this conversation to just have an open mind and humble yourself and realize what the scriptures say, and just like last week,

01:51:12

God's given us a pretty clear response to these things, and so hopefully that's encouraging for you and doesn't just drive you to despair for some reason, and you find that you can actually trust in those things because we can trust in those promises, and so.

01:51:31

Jared That is a good place to, like, think about, you know, as an ending too, is that, like,

01:51:36

I think there does have to be some kind of reality brought to this discussion to where if the

01:51:41

Bible says do not be anxious about anything, right? Pete Right. Jared But with everything, with prayer and supplication with Thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God, what you are being asked by our society right now is to put a moratorium on repentance and obedience to that verse.

01:52:00

You know, for 20 % of your women, of the ladies right now are basically, you know, on some kind of antidepressants, and, you know, so, like, you think about all the

01:52:16

Bible verses that apply and you're being told that, you know, 20 % of the population really can't obey any of these

01:52:23

Bible verses, and that should be disturbing, and you do have to go back and say, who am I going to believe? Am I going to believe

01:52:29

God or am I going to believe the psychologist at this point, right? When the Bible says don't worry, right, and the

01:52:35

Bible says don't be anxious about anything, when the Bible says we, you know, essentially should be filled with the fruit of the

01:52:42

Spirit, like, I do think you can look at this subject and it can get rather complicated, but your trust should just be in the

01:52:49

God of the Bible that He knows what He's saying and you don't have to overthink it. Just trust what He says.

01:52:55

Trust in the Lord with all your heart, lean not on your own understanding and all your ways, acknowledge Him and He'll direct your path. Just realize that He wasn't saying words that, you know, a large percentage of the population were totally and completely irrelevant to, right?

01:53:13

Pete Right, yeah. Jared Not only like today, but for thousands of years, like as if somehow we've gotten to some place where, you know, so many people are being drugged by so many different types of drugs, you know, because they can't do the basic things the

01:53:26

Bible is saying, and at some point you just have to say, well, I'm going to call, you know,

01:53:31

I'm going to look at this and I'm not, I have to trust God more than I trust whatever you're saying. Pete Right, absolutely.

01:53:38

So, in closing, you know, hopefully our hope is that you are encouraged by this conversation and that you can, those of you listening can understand that there is actually a way to defeat depression, to overcome anxiety, and God spells it out clearly.

01:53:56

And not only does He spell it out clearly, but He makes promises, right, that if you, you know, if you dwell on things that are righteous, if you, you know, take your concerns to God, if you are in prayer with Him, if you are constantly pursuing thankfulness, then

01:54:16

He promises that peace will be with you. And so hopefully that's an encouraging thing that helps you understand that there is a way to defeat these things.

01:54:25

So, we want to thank all you guys for listening. We thank you for just supporting us and letting us, you know, talk about these things and be able to spell them out clearly for you guys.

01:54:41

And our hope is that you are taking the things that you're learning here and you're applying it not only in your own life, but you are using it to help disciple the people that God has put around you, has put in your life.

01:54:55

And so our hope is that you are taking this out and you are discipling others with scriptures.

01:55:02

And I think this is definitely an area that we need to be very firm in and very strong in. So again, thank you guys, and we look forward to having you on the next one.

01:55:29

So, if you would like to be

01:55:43

Bible Bashed personally, then please know that we also offer free biblical counseling, which you can take advantage of by emailing us.

01:55:51

Now, go boldly and obey the truth in the midst of a biblically illiterate world who will be perpetually offended by your every move.