Presup & Schizophrenia
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In this quick clip, Matt Slick and Jimmy Li briefly respond to how presup and pastoral care can be applied to someone who has a mental disorder and suggests that such disorders can prevent one from ascertaining truth and certainty.
- 00:00
- question. How should I respond to the objection that because of my schizophrenia I can't trust my own perceptions that contradicts the belief that I could know reason and logic for certain because of God's image?
- 00:14
- How should I respond to the objection that because of my schizophrenia I can't trust my own perceptions that contradicts the belief that I can know reason and logic for certain because of God's image?
- 00:26
- I'm not sure if the question makes sense, but if you can kind of jive with what he's asking, or she's asking, how would you interact with schizophrenia and the issue of certainty and logic and reason?
- 00:41
- Well, I would start saying the reality of God's existence and logic is not dependent on whether or not you have schizophrenia or do not have schizophrenia.
- 00:50
- And so you need to understand that the truth of this statement presupposes the universality of the laws of logic, which is independent of what you are.
- 00:58
- Therefore, you can know truth, even though your schizophrenia might get in the way of really accepting and believing it.
- 01:05
- And so what I would do is try and set a pattern apart from their schizophrenia of the universals that are there and already from that position.
- 01:14
- That's one of the ways. Anybody else? I think
- 01:20
- I'll jump in real quick. Just with our church, we do have a high... I go to a small church, and I think this video
- 01:26
- I'll probably share with some of our guys. We do have a high population of those with mental disability and various challenges.
- 01:35
- Pastorally, with those that are schizophrenic, I often mention that even just this question presupposed that we're in a fallen sinful world.
- 01:43
- So Genesis, I think empirically, sin is very real and the brokenness in our world, and it really fits in with the gloves of Scripture as interpreting all this.
- 01:54
- So even with that, I often pastorally just mention that all of us, even believers that people would say is right in the head, quote -unquote, like socially speaking relatively in that cultural or social context, even then we often have various challenges of things that we don't believe correctly about ourselves.
- 02:12
- We could be prideful. We could assume our capability higher. So I think in light of this, the commonality of everyone with or without schizophrenic is we live in a fallen world, and in light of a fallen world,
- 02:24
- I often would try to emphasize pastorally this is where we got to hold to the gospel. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.
- 02:31
- I do think in light of even this question, when the reality and what's not reality is something that goes back and forth easily,
- 02:38
- I also want to say God's coming grace, besides the Word of God, is also sometimes often the community within the church also as well.
- 02:47
- That we're there, that we're also sounding board for what's our view of various people or things that they want to do or things.
- 02:54
- I think this is where God's coming grace is the Word and also with the fellowship. That's all based upon a biblical worldview.
- 03:02
- Excellent. Thank you so much for that. That's interesting because that's a difficult question to kind of address.
- 03:08
- I mean we don't really think of mental disorders and how we kind of interact with that from an apologetic standpoint.