Jeremy Jernigan [00:00:00]:
Welcome to the podcast. This is Cabernet and pray, episode 21. And this is a little bit different. This is one of those we interrupt your regular scheduled program type episodes. I have a actual backlog of amazing podcasts lined up, amazing interviews, and I squeezed this one in for the sake of timing. There's something that's been going around in a number of circles lately that I want to respond to, and I didn't want it to get too far delayed from when the events are actually happening, in case you've heard about what's been going on. So that's what we're doing today. It's a chance for me to dive into something and share some of my story that perhaps you haven't heard before.
Jeremy Jernigan [00:00:44]:
And we're gonna. We're gonna get into that today.
Jeremy Jernigan [00:02:01]:
This is cabernet and pray. So we're enjoying some good wine while we have these conversations today, I am drinking a 2019 Puerto de Plata from Spain. This is a riserva, and this is a blend of tempranillo and grenache.
Jeremy Jernigan [00:02:52]:
It's primarily tempranillo, which is a grape that I absolutely love. And as I have been enjoying this, I wrote down some tasting notes that I've got. I've got sour cherry, dried fig, vanilla and cinnamon. So I'm actually really digging this. This is a good early afternoon wine to enjoy if you're at your home, if you're in a cozy spot, if you're, I don't know, huddled around your phone on a campfire, I don't know what you're doing, how you're watching this or listen to this. Hopefully you've got a great glass as well, unless you're driving. So if you're able to, while you enjoy it, I hope you get to enjoy something as well. That's part of the fun of this podcast, is diving into really good wines that lubricate the conversations.
Jeremy Jernigan [00:03:40]:
And today is one that I might need a little wine for, because today is going to be a heavier subject. A heavier topic. And yet, it's something that my wife and I have been talking about a lot lately, and it's been a huge part of our lives, and she was actually the one that's like, you should probably say something about this. And so I'm going to do that. There's a clip that's been going around in the christian social media sphere. You may or may not be a part of this. You know, if you're not, and you have no idea the clip that I'm about to tell you about, hey, kudos to you. Maybe your life is a lot more simple than mine, but if your feed looks anything like my feed does, there's lots of people referencing this clip.
Jeremy Jernigan [00:04:28]:
The clip comes from a pastor named John MacArthur. I'm gonna set up a little bit about who John MacArthur is, and then I'm actually going to show you two, two different clips. I'm going to break it up and, and let you listen in on some of the statements directly from his mouth so that, you know, I don't want to. I don't want to put words in his mouth or say something that he didn't say. We'll hear it directly from him. And then we're going to respond and we're going to figure out, is this good theology? Is this how God really works? Now, who is John MacArthur? If you don't know who John MacArthur is, you may be newer to the faith or you may not be super involved in the christian world. Either way, John MacArthur has been a huge deal for a really long time. He has been the senior pastor of Grace Community Church in California since 1969.
Jeremy Jernigan [00:05:22]:
That is a long time to be leading in that role, and he has continued to do that. He's also the president of the master's university. So there's a whole lot of academic connections and to what John is doing as well. He has written hundreds of study guides and books. I mean, literally hundreds. I was originally attempting to put a number on this, and I'm thinking there's way too many. This guy cranks books out like few people I have ever seen. And so he has influenced so much of christian thinking and the way pastors think and often the way pastors share things, primarily because I think he's so prolific in cranking this stuff out, and a lot of people have had access to that, and he's been incredibly influential.
Jeremy Jernigan [00:06:07]:
You may know the name because he has a MacArthur study Bible. You may have seen that or heard of that. That study Bible has sold more than 1 million copies. Okay, so that's a Bible with John MacArthur's views on a lot of the different texts. And so again, as you understand the text, as you read the text, you're reading it through the lens of John MacArthur. I went to his website, and they said he's got more than 3300 sermons. Friends, think about how long it would take to preach 3300 sermons. This guy has been doing it for a long time.
Jeremy Jernigan [00:06:49]:
3300 plus sermons spanning more than five decades of ministry. And if you go the other way on this and you don't agree with what I'm saying, and you're like, I think that John MacArthur guys onto something. Those are all available for free download on, on his website. So there you go. There's. I'm giving you options. If you. If you really resonate with the clip that you're gonna hear in just a moment.
Jeremy Jernigan [00:07:16]:
John has been acknowledged by Christianity today as one of the most influential preachers of his time. And I would say as someone who has grown up in the church, who has been deeply in the church culture for the majority of my life, I would adamantly say John MacArthur has been a staple into the Christianity in America. And what we understand now, these days in particular, John often says things that make the headlines. It's very common. I'm going to quote a few other things to give context to that. But here's what I want you to understand as, as we get into the setup here, as we get into what we're going to talk about, he continues to represent much of Christianity today. So when we listen to what he's going to say, and if you're watching on video, you can see the clip as well. I don't want you to think this is some, you know, random person on YouTube that Jeremy found, and this is not indicative of anything.
Jeremy Jernigan [00:08:17]:
This is really someone who has a key seat at the table of American Christianity and has for five decades and has a huge ministry, a huge following and massive amounts of influence, which is why the things that he says matter. And so today, I'm not taking on John as a person. I'm going to look at the theology, the theology that John has and the arguments John is making, and we're going to wrestle with them. And I'm going to offer you something different that I think is much better than the way John presents us. But I want to acknowledge John represents a huge part of the christian culture today. So there, it looks like this was at a conference because you can see there's multiple people with him on stage, but he was talking about mental health. This is the umbrella that we're going to look at today. And so I've broken this up into two different clips so that I can respond to some of the specific things that he said.
Jeremy Jernigan [00:09:17]:
Here's clip number one. We will watch and listen together.
John MacArthur [00:09:22]:
There's no such thing as PTSD. There's no such thing as OCD. There's no such thing as ADHD. Those are noble lies to basically give the excuse to, in the end of the day, to medicate people. And big pharma's in charge of a lot of that.
Jeremy Jernigan [00:09:54]:
Okay, so now you have a little flavor of where we're going. Essentially, his argument is that there is no such thing as mental illness and that these are diagnosis diagnoses that are used to medicate people. And then he offers a little conspiracy theory in there as well. It's all run by big pharma. They're making these things up. These don't really exist. Now, you may have heard this argument in the secular world. You may have heard it in the christian world, and I have certainly heard this argument numerous times throughout my life and continue to hear this argument as you heard in the clip even today.
Jeremy Jernigan [00:10:34]:
Now, one of the things to have a little bit of understanding about John MacArthur and the way that he understands God, because, again, John MacArthur is a Christian. So we have to understand, where is he coming from? Which kind of Christianity does he adhere to? You have to understand that he has said this same type of argument, the same type of thinking about other subjects as well. So if you dive into John MacArthur's theology, you will find patterns, and you'll go, oh, okay. So these other topics are similar to him as his views on mental health. For example, at a conference in 2017, he famously said, no one is gay. That was his line, that no one is gay. That's not a real thing. And then he went on to explain, and this is a quote that's like saying, you know, I keep robbing banks, but I'm a robber.
Jeremy Jernigan [00:11:27]:
I'm a bank robber. What am I going to do? I'm a bank robber. If you are sensitive to the LGBTQ community, hopefully you have a reaction to that. Hopefully, you know people, or maybe you are the person that has experienced something different, and that is. That is a very offensive idea. Just to say to someone, that's not a real thing. No one is gay. And yet understand that there are christians, many christians, that believe that.
Jeremy Jernigan [00:11:55]:
That this is not real, that this is something you're choosing to do. This is a behavior, an action you're choosing to have, and then you are defining yourself, you are finding an identity in that. And that's where they say, yeah, just choose different things. Stop robbing banks. Right. And obviously, the insensitivity of comparing someone's sexual orientation to being a bank robber, there is. Is what's implied in that argument, as well. Another bit of context.
Jeremy Jernigan [00:12:23]:
A year later, it's 2018, he preached a sermon on racism that was also hotly contested in a lot of response to this sermon. Here's a quote from that. He said this. I don't know of any authentically evangelical church where people would be excluded or even disrespected because of their ethnicity or skin color. That's a crazy statement to make. According to John, who is deeply, deeply connected to the. The church culture in America, to lots of pastors in America, he's saying he doesn't know of a single evangelical church where there is any type of racism. Friends, I don't know how else to argue this other than these.
Jeremy Jernigan [00:13:14]:
These different viewpoints he had. They don't match with reality. So he says them. He says them very confidently with a lot of authority, and people go, oh, okay, I guess that's what Christianity teaches. I guess that's what we're supposed to believe. And then there's a lot of christians who are left with attention there, right where, hey, I have, you know, maybe a gay sibling or a gay friend, and sure seems like it's real. And yet I'm hearing this message that it's not. Or our friends who have, you know, different color skin than we do definitely have a different experience in the church than I have had as a white male in particular.
Jeremy Jernigan [00:13:57]:
And to say, no, I've never, I've never seen a church do that. I mean, these, these are just outlandish arguments to make, but they are consistent with the way that John MacArthur makes sense of the world and makes sense of his faith. But what I want to talk about is, I think this often happens in Christianity, and there's often this tendency where maybe you felt it, that maybe you're supposed to believe these things, that maybe if you were a better Christian or if you trusted God more or if you knew the Bible more, maybe you would believe these things, too. And that's really why I want to speak into this today and, and offer a different perspective, because these people who make these arguments have massive platforms, and these get shared very widely. It's why some people think that there is this inherent tension between Christianity and science, religion and science, you know, they don't go together. Well, if you have that view, it may be because your version of Christianity has to just negate things that you find in real, in the real world, in reality. And if you have this version of Christianity where you have to say, yeah, that's not real and that doesn't exist, and these are just made up, and you start saying that about some of these other topics, then other people look at you and go, no, we can see that these things are real, and we can see a different point of view than you. That's when we need to start thinking, what do we do then? How do we navigate through this? There is a lot in Christianity that has almost this bury our head in the sand refusal to acknowledge the world.
Jeremy Jernigan [00:15:34]:
And it's almost as if, if we do it enough and we are convincing enough, then perhaps we can make it real. Perhaps we can at least make it real enough in our community, in our circle, where those things won't affect us. And yet that is always to the detriment of others. There's always the detriment of vulnerable people and people who get marginalized for these very subjects that we're talking about. So let me share a little bit of my story that you may not be familiar with. Michelle and I have five kids, and we foster and adopted our littlest two. So we have experienced all sorts of things when it comes to parenting. As of this moment, our oldest is 15, and our youngest is eight.
Jeremy Jernigan [00:16:21]:
So that's. That's the span of these five kids. Now, I would say foster care alone, just foster care, is harder than just about anything else I had ever done. I mean, that was brutally difficult for a whole bunch of reasons. But what we have found is we fostered and then adopted the two kids that we have. The challenges didn't end once we adopted them. Once we brought them into our home permanently, it wasn't like, whoo, dodge that bullet, you know, check. Got you past the foster system.
Jeremy Jernigan [00:16:55]:
It's like, no, no, that was just. That was just the preface to many unique challenges that we're gonna have because of a very unique situation you had early in life that is different than a lot of other kids. And so we have walked this road. One of the statements that often gets said to foster parents, and this has been said to my wife and I numerous times, is people will say, wow, you guys are so amazing. I could never do that. And I just got to tell you, if. If you've ever said that to a foster parent, it may sound good. Like, you may think like this.
Jeremy Jernigan [00:17:33]:
I am being so loving. Like, I'm putting them on this pedestal. It doesn't feel good. What it feels like is, hey, you're this amazing parent, which we know we're not, so we don't believe you because we know what it feels like and we know our issues, so we're not convinced that we're this amazing parent better than everyone else. And then the line of, I could never do that almost makes us feel, as well, you're dumb that you did. Like, I would never do that. You know, I heard a comedian recently compare having kids to getting a face tattoo. And there's definitely moments like that, right? Like, you have gone all in on this thing, and you're not getting rid of it, like, the rest of your life.
Jeremy Jernigan [00:18:11]:
You gotta face tattoo. The rest of my life. I've got five kids, you know? Like, this is a thing that follows you. And other people are like, nah, I'm good. Don't. Don't need. Don't need the face tattoo. I'm just gonna be solo or just my spouse and I, like, we're good.
Jeremy Jernigan [00:18:25]:
And it's just kind of funny. I have a friend who got so tired of people saying this argument to him, and he is a foster dad as well. And he finally started telling people, yes, you could do it. You're choosing not to. And as you can imagine, that would always get a little intense there, right. Things would get a little bit tight. Right. And he just got tired of people saying this argument.
Jeremy Jernigan [00:18:53]:
And yet there's incredible challenges, and the challenges don't stop. And that has been true in our family as well. One of our kids that we foster and adopted has more recently been diagnosed with both autism and bipolar disorder. Both of those are serious challenges for a child to face by themselves. You put them together and we have seen them almost play off of each other and make things really complicated. Now, for about a year, it was getting very challenging to even have our son at home with us because of all the things he was not able to regulate himself and was not comfortable in his own skin. And again, not things that he can just choose, but like, he's just constantly having agitation and these really emotional outbursts to everything. And it was getting harder and harder for him to be in the home environment with us.
Jeremy Jernigan [00:19:57]:
And so we started reaching out to different agencies and support things from the state, and there's a ton of them. The problem is it's hard to navigate them. It's hard to know what you qualify for, what you don't qualify for, and it's hard to get in with them. So even if you, you find a good fit and they say, yes, you're a good fit. In some cases, we get put on a year long waiting list, like, hey, a year from now, we're going to be able to help you. And in the meantime, we were just dealing with this. And this was a really, really hard season for us. And there was a few months there where Michelle and I would just look at each other and we're like, we don't know how to do this.
Jeremy Jernigan [00:20:35]:
We don't know how to navigate it. One of the things we ended up doing is hiring a legal advocate. This is someone who comes alongside of a family and you hire them basically on behalf of your child and on behalf of your family. And you're saying, hey, can you help us navigate this system and help us get the help that we need for our child? And so we knew we're not getting anywhere. We don't know the right questions to ask. We don't know the right people to call. I mean, we were doing our best and we're very involved with it, but it wasn't producing the results that we knew we needed. For our son and for our family.
Jeremy Jernigan [00:21:12]:
And so we hired this legal advocate, and I'll never forget our first conversation with him. He says, hey, before we begin, I want to explain to you the divorce rate for marriages for couples going through what you're going through, who have a kid, who has the challenges that your kid has. I want to explain statistically what we've seen. The divorce rate is for couples in your situation. Now, I thought this was a bit of a weird way to start a relationship. Like, we just hired you, and this is the first thing out of the gate you're going to say. But I was like, all right, what, what's the divorce rate? He said 85%. 85% of couples from, from his experience who have a child with mental illness end up getting divorced.
Jeremy Jernigan [00:22:07]:
Why? Because there is such a thing as mental illness. This is not a conspiracy by big pharma. This is a very real thing, and it's incredibly difficult to go through. Now, I remember we were told this, kind of looking over at Michelle, like, okay, I'm not sure the right response when someone tells you statistically you're supposed to, you know, get divorced. But I was like, hey, I'm still in if you are, you know, like, I'm. I'm up to try, you know, are you, are you still good? Like, I think I'm still good. And we just kind of joked about that, and we've been navigating that together. But if you have a loved one, you have a family member who has mental illness, you know exactly what I'm saying.
Jeremy Jernigan [00:22:55]:
If you have a friend who has mental illness, you know exactly what I'm saying. And for many years, it was something we just didn't talk about. But it's getting talked about more, and now we're starting to see different reactions to all of this. Now, a huge part of the challenge is that you are in an environment where people don't believe it's real. So imagine trying to help your child deal with something when other people around you are saying, that's not a real problem, that isn't real. And that compounds the challenge. Now, I want to show you the rest of what MacArthur said in this clip, because as if the first part wasn't bad enough, it gets worse. And so just buckle up.
Jeremy Jernigan [00:23:38]:
This, this part is, it's hard to even listen to. But again, this represents the way a lot of people believe and the way a lot of people are taught, especially in christian circles. Here's the second clip.
John MacArthur [00:23:51]:
In regard to children, it's the most deadly thing that's been unleashed on children medication. We're trying to make clear to parents that behavior is essentially the result of choices that kids make. And if you parent them properly, they'll make right choices. But if you blame it on some, something other than their choices, and you identify them as having something they can't do anything about but medicate it, you literally are turning your child into a potential well, not only a potential drug addict, but maybe a potential criminal, because they never learn how to navigate life in a socially acceptable way.
Jeremy Jernigan [00:24:59]:
It's a lot to process. In that clip, let's unpack a few of the statements that are made there. Behavior is essentially the result of choices kids make. I have come to conclude the exact opposite of what John MacArthur teaches here. Our son has mental illness. He needs medicine just to help him try and regulate his body the way my body naturally is able to regulate, he needs a lot of extra support, and he's usually not even able or capable of making the kind of choices that John MacArthur thinks he should make, because he's got physical, emotional, and mental challenges that are all working together that make that very difficult. And here's what I will tell you. As his dad, I do not for a minute think that he is choosing this for fun.
Jeremy Jernigan [00:26:05]:
I do not think he has sat around and thought, hey, what would be the best course of action for my life? He has, has had to work through this. And if he could choose something different, I think he would readily choose something different. And yet that's not available to him. So for me, as a person who doesn't have the kind of challenges that he has, to say to him, hey, just make different choices, is incredibly insensitive when I am aware of the different challenges that he faces. And so parents of kids with mental illness are often in a very tricky situation. They, they know, on the one hand, that their kid isn't choosing to do this for fun, but they also know that their kid needs help and they need extra support and they need services that in some cases, the family is not a safe environment to do that. And so we started looking around, trying to figure out what would be the best for our son. And last November, we were able to find a facility to check him in that gives him an intense level of care and support that we were not able to do, and we had not been able to get him up to that point.
Jeremy Jernigan [00:27:19]:
And as of the making of this video, he is still in there today. So it has been months and months of him experiencing this facility and us trying to raise one of our children who isn't currently able to be in our home because of the challenges that he faces. That's an entirely different obstacle for families, because mental health and mental illness is a real thing. Notice what else Jema Carter said. And if you parent them properly, you'll make, or they'll make the right choices. This is such a massive amount of guilt to add to parents and families of people with mental illness that if you were raising them right, if you did a better job, they wouldn't have what, what they're what they have, and they wouldn't be making the choices that they're making because this isn't real. This is just their reaction to what you did. Notice it shifts all of this.
Jeremy Jernigan [00:28:28]:
This isn't real. It's actually, you're a bad parent and you haven't raised your child right. That's why they're doing what they're doing. And then he concludes that giving someone a diagnosis leads them to become a potential drug addict and a potential criminal. To acknowledge a child has problems because he's talking about children in particular, is. Is to cause them, according to him, to be a potential criminal and a potential drug addiction. Again, friends, I cannot disagree more with this perspective. I remember years ago reading a book called the Explosive Child.
Jeremy Jernigan [00:29:12]:
This was before we had the diagnoses. This was when I was trying to figure out, hey, one of our kids has a lot different challenges, a lot of different challenges than our other kids do. How do I do a better job being there for him, parenting him, helping him. Like, what? What do I do for this? And there's a line in there that I've always remembered. This is from Ross Green. In the book, the explosive child says, parents of behaviorally challenging kids get much more blame than they deserve for their kids difficulties. Now, that is an incredible statement in light of what we just heard from John MacArthur, right, who's saying, hey, if you just raise them right, parent them right, they won't do this. And what this parenting expert has found is no parents behaviorally challenging kids get much more blame than they deserve for their kids difficulties.
Jeremy Jernigan [00:30:08]:
Then the flip side is also true. Just as parents of well behaved kids get much more credit than they deserve for their kids positive attributes. See, we often want to say, hey, if a kid turns out great, must be awesome parents. If a kid turned out messed up, must be awful parents. And yet, check it with reality, check it with facts. Haven't you met a kid that you thought was remarkable, and then you look at the parents and you go, wow, that's kind of surprising. And haven't you seen the opposite? You see parents that are awesome, you see the kid and you go, huh? I don't know. There is not the correlation that we want to say that there is like, hey, if you just are a great parent and you do it the right way, you are guaranteed this.
Jeremy Jernigan [00:30:53]:
It's not how it works. And science and people who work in this field will tell you otherwise. I cannot even imagine the weight I would feel if I believed what MacArthur was saying here. If I believe the reason my son isn't at home, the reason my son has all these challenges, because I suck as a dad, I cannot even imagine carrying that weight with me. And yet, if you're a parent in his church, that is the conclusion you likely come to. I've got to work harder. I've got to be better. I've got to do something different than I'm doing.
Jeremy Jernigan [00:31:31]:
It's a tremendous way. Not to mention if I then also thought that was God's point of view, that actually John MacArthur is just representing God on this because that's how God feels about me. That is a debilitating amount of shame and. And guilt to put on a family of someone who has mental illness. Now, there's a passage that I've taught on recently, and when I'm thinking about this, this passage keeps coming to my mind because I think it's so simple. And yet there's something fascinating that the apostle Paul teaches us. This comes from two corinthians, chapter twelve. I'm going to begin reading in verse seven.
Jeremy Jernigan [00:32:12]:
Paul writes this. So to keep me from becoming proud, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger from Satan to torment me and keep me from becoming proud. Three times, three different times, I begged the Lord to take it away. And each time he said, my grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness. Okay, this is getting kind of funky logic here, but it gets even weirder. So now Paul says, I am glad to boast about my weaknesses so that the power of Christ can work through me. Wow.
Jeremy Jernigan [00:32:59]:
And then he says this. That's why I take pleasure in my weaknesses and in the insults, hardships, persecutions, and troubles that I suffer for Christ. For when I am weak, then I am strong. Now, if you're not a Christian and you're checking this out, first off, so glad you found this podcast. Glad that you're a listener or a watcher, so glad that you're here. If you are reading this and maybe you're reading this for the first time or hearing this for the first time and you're going, that doesn't make any sense, right? For when I am weak, then I am strong. That's like saying, for when I go up, then I go down, for when I turn left, then I turn right. I mean, these are statements.
Jeremy Jernigan [00:33:50]:
You go, what? Like that Paul, like, were you, were you smoking on something that day? Did you have a few too many glasses that day? Like what was going on? But Paul is sharing something here that we have apparently not fully grasped yet in the church culture that Paul says, when I am weak, then I am strong. Now, the greek word that Paul is using here is a fun word. It's the word skolas, which if you want to sound super cool at your next christian gathering or like party life group, I don't know, just start talking about like your recent prayer life over your skolops. You know, people will be super impressed. You have this word, right that Paul uses for the word thorn. Now here's what's fascinating. It's the only time this word is used in the New Testament. It's not a common idea, it's not a word that they all reference.
Jeremy Jernigan [00:34:40]:
This is something Paul is telling us about his own experience, his own journey with God. And Paul uses this image of scolops like you're walking on the beach, your barefoot and you step on something and it wedges itself, lodges itself inside your foot and you can't immediately get it out. So as you're walking back to your house or your car or wherever, every step you take, you can feel it. Now, it's not going to take you down, it's not taking your leg out, it's not going to kill you, but you feel it every single step you take. Or imagine getting a splinter in your hand and you can't get the splinter out. So until you can get it out, every time you touch something, you feel that splinter. It's just this annoying, aggravating pain. This is the way Paul describes whatever he was dealing with.
Jeremy Jernigan [00:35:30]:
Now, we don't know what Paul was dealing with. He never tells us. And scholars have pondered on this for thousands of years. We have no idea what Paul's talking about here. But Paul thought it was something that was hurting him, right? Like he pleaded with God three different occasions, look, Jesus, if you would remove this, I would be so much better. Like, things would be awesome if you would remove this. And three different times Jesus tells him, no, no, here's the thing, Paul, you're actually better because of that, because of this. You're actually better.
Jeremy Jernigan [00:36:06]:
And evidently, it took three different prayers for Paul to actually believe Jesus on that one. He didn't believe it right away. It took him a little bit of time. Now, notice, I want to make this theological aside here. Notice this thorn skolobs Paul is talking about didn't come from God. God did not send it to him. God did not afflict it, even though God thinks it's ultimately going to be for his good. This was, he says, a messenger of Satan, which is about as strong as you can say.
Jeremy Jernigan [00:36:36]:
It ain't from God, it's from the other guy. Like, this is not of God. And yet Jesus tells them, hey, I'm going to use this in your life. And so then Paul gets to this crazy conclusion, maybe. Maybe when I'm weak, maybe I'm actually strong. Maybe there's actually something God's going to do in the midst of that. Which leads me to this question. What would happen if we stopped shaming each other for our skolops, for our hardships? Just crazy idea.
Jeremy Jernigan [00:37:15]:
What would happen if, instead of creating culture where we shame people for things like mental health, what if we decided, hey, that's. That's something that's really hard for you. That's like a weakness, and I'm gonna support you, and we can ask God to take it away and maybe that will happen and maybe not. But maybe God's going to show up in the midst of that because you didn't do anything wrong and you weren't raised by bad parents, and it wasn't something that should have happened, that didn't. Like what would happen if we stopped shaming each other for our school ups. Now, one of the arguments that I sometimes hear, and there are whiffs of this in MacArthur's video as well, is the perspective that, you know, Jeremy, we didn't used to have these problems, and I normally hear this from older generations, right? Like, we didn't have this problem when I was growing up. Kids didn't have all these things. These are new things that you all have made up.
Jeremy Jernigan [00:38:15]:
And we didn't used to have autism or adhd. We didn't have these things that you guys have. Now, what we're saying when we say that is that people often went undiagnosed and suffered and had no idea why. That's what we're. That's all we're saying, that for generations, perhaps people didn't know what to call it, didn't know how to name it, didn't know how to acknowledge that this is a thing. And so, yeah, they didn't talk about it. They didn't know what it was to talk about. And we have now come to a point we can recognize.
Jeremy Jernigan [00:38:47]:
This is the thing we were getting better at measuring it, at trying to figure out what is it? How do we talk about it? How do we, you know, scientifically break it down into what it is and what it isn't? All of that continues to evolve. But, yeah, there was a lot of people who grew up, and just because you may have grown up and said, well, I never heard people talk about autism or all these other things, it just means that you grew up around a lot of people that were likely suffering silently and would have greatly benefited from the chance to get help, to get medication, to get support around what they need. And the fact that we're talking about it today in and of itself, is a huge win. But, friends, there's a lot of work left. There's a lot to keep doing. What I have come to painfully realize is that much in our world is not built for people with mental illness, that we have tried to figure out how to incorporate our son, how to help our son thrive. It's become so apparent that this world does not collectively make a lot of space for people who have different challenges than the majority of us do. And if you have this experience yourself or you have a family member, you likely know exactly what I'm talking about, because I hear this sentiment often.
Jeremy Jernigan [00:40:16]:
Not only is it difficult to adequately get the help that you need, but then you have people like John MacArthur who think you don't have a legitimate challenge in the first place, that this isn't real, and somehow you just need to get over it. And rather than creating a safe space to say, hey, I've. I've got something that's really hard, and I don't know how to deal with it. We create this culture where we say we don't want to talk about it, which is why I want to add my voice to any of you who are dealing with this for yourself or for someone you know. I mean, just today, I was having lunch with my wife, and she had went to see our son in the facility. And as she was waiting for him in the lobby, a woman in her probably fifties or sixties checked herself in. And when she got to the front desk, they said, hey, what are you here for? And she goes, I just need to check myself in. And there's a sadness to that.
Jeremy Jernigan [00:41:14]:
I also thought, what an amazing moment that this woman has figured out. I need help. I'm not okay. I need. I need people to rally around me and give me a support here. And we need to create a culture like that where instead of shaming people when they have a hardship, when they have a thorn that may be different than yours, right? I don't struggle with mental illness to the degree that my son does. So I can look at him and say, well, it's not an issue for me. Or I can empathetically say, you know what? This is something that's really hard for you, and how do I learn how to understand it better? How do I learn how to support you better? How do I learn how to help you get what you need to thrive? That's the kind of culture I want to create, and that's the kind of Christianity I want to see more of.
Jeremy Jernigan [00:42:01]:
And that's why I thought it's worth spending an episode talking about mental health, saying, you know what? There's a lot in Christianity that I think gets this really wrong. And so I want to add my voice to the minority of voices who are saying this, like, hey, this is real. It's worth acknowledging. And we need to stop shaming people and we need to start supporting people and learning to make this more okay to talk about. And so I want to thank you for hanging in there with me. On a heavier one, I want to close with a quote that I think is so, so beautiful, and it comes from my friend Jamie Torkowski. He wrote a book called if you feel too much. And he was the founder of Trite Love under Arms.
Jeremy Jernigan [00:42:46]:
And that's an incredible organization. But he has this quote that I think really nicely summarizes what we've been talking about and how I feel about all of this. Here's what he says. Reality is the best place to live. Reality where healing happens in the honest light and by the voices of our friends. We all have our past. We all have our pain. We will all know ghosts from time to time.
Jeremy Jernigan [00:43:22]:
But if our life is like a building, then we should open our doors to let some people see inside. Into our darkest places, into those rooms that hold our fears and our dreams. We will begin to go together, friends with hope. Like candles telling ghosts to go. Friends, if I can hold a candle for you today, offer a version of Christianity that's different than what you've heard before, that'll be a win. If you are struggling with this, you know someone's trying with this, or you just want to be more supportive and you want to live out of faith, that includes this. I want to be there for you. I want to encourage you in this.
Jeremy Jernigan [00:44:11]:
There's a lot of work to do, but Jesus is good and Jesus is with us. And I believe there's a better way to understand this than what we've been hearing lately. So for any of you who've been affected by this, again, thank you for hanging in through what could potentially be a very triggering and hard conversation to have. But I think there's something better on the horizon, and I think we can work to make it happen. We'll see you all in the next episode. Cabernet and prayer.
