Recently, while talking to a close friend of mine I was reminded of how powerful a weapon set faith and guilt can be against a person. Growing up in a fundamentalist church, I heard repeatedly that we just have to trust God and He will heal someone, or - "oh that poor soul, if they would only really trust God, they would be free of their mental illness / addiction / disease."
This theory fails to take into account the mixed blessing of free will. God created us as independent beings, free to make our own choices and follow our own paths. He does have a divine plan in which we all play a role, however we are free to muck about with our lives as we see fit, for the most part. The result of this, also called "our fallen state" in churchese, is that God won't fix everything.
Mental illness, disease, addictions, these are a result of the choices we have made as a human race. We have created the mess we live in and we own that. It is a shared blame on humanity, not God. That being said, He is willing and able to see us through challenges, but that does not mean that He will remove the challenge. There is a huge difference between deliverance from adversity and serenity through the adversity. God's power shines the brightest when we are willing to accept the challenges in our path and reflect His grace and peace through and despite the challenges.
The trap mentioned previously comes when we forget that bit of truth and think that there is a level of holiness that can be attained that is sufficient to prevent any ill befalling us. This cross thinking results in guilt for all adversity since it must be our spiritual shortcoming that lead us there.
more on this later ....
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