Why should churches seek to integrate people with mental disorders into the body-life of the church? To begin with, all of us, in our own ways, are thoroughly disordered. Jesus is the only person post-Fall who has been perfectly ordered in psyche, personality, and affections. So integrating individuals with disorders into the life of the church is not optional, and it begins with our own disordered selves. Secondly, though all of us are cracked, we’re still mirrors, reflecting the God of the universe. As C.S. Lewis points out, a “mere mortal” has never walked in our midst. Even the person on the furthest end of the “cracked spectrum” is still a reflection of God, retaining immeasurable worth and beauty.
In light of this Imago Dei reality, integrating someone with O.C.D. into a small group shouldn’t be viewed as an inconvenience or a bother, but as a privilege, a way to make the group more functional. By incorporating the mentally disordered person into your group, you’re implicitly acknowledging that the person has something to offer. You’re admitting the deficiency of your church, indeed of yourself, and asking the O.C.D. person to bring their portion to the communal feast, that everyone’s meal might be better because of their contribution. Mysteriously, God is in the business of bringing order from disorder and dignity from depravity.
While we may cognitively recognize the necessity of integrating the differently-disordered into the body-life of our church, we often lack the motivation to do so. An evening Bible study with close friends feels much more comfortable than opening our home to a manic-depressive woman who needs space to process. Joining a softball league sounds like more fun than taking meals to the families of those in long-term psychiatric treatment centers. What should be our motivation for putting ourselves in situations so rife with conflict and pain? The answer, in a word, is love.
On the surface, comfort feels more loving than conflict. Yet, the Bible shows us that to avoid conflict is to miss out on love. After they sin, Adam and Eve avoid conflict, they hide. The first pair would have happily stayed in isolation, avoiding the pain of conflict with God, but God was not content to leave them in there hidden, isolated state. Instead, He approaches them. He kills an animal with which he covers there nakedness and shame. He enters into the brokenness of his creatures, pursuing love at the expense of comfort and ease. Independence, isolation, and privacy are all tertiary to love in God’s economy.
Being in a church is a daily decision to sacrifice comfort for love. On Sunday mornings, our alarm goes off and we choose the conflict of the cold wood floors and bright light over the comfort of our blankets and cozy darkness. We then choose the conflict of awkward greetings and conversations over the peace of isolation. We choose the conflict of confessing our sins to one another over the peace of privacy and anonymity.
If we as a church were called to comfort, to toleration, our job would be easy! To tolerate the A.D.H.D. teen in our church consists of giving a friendly smile, wishing him well from a distance, maybe contributing a few bucks for him to go to camp. But to love him involves the conflict of awkward, lengthy conversations in the church lobby when you want to be on our way to lunch. The inconvenience of making sure he has a ride to Sunday school because you genuinely care not only for his social network, but for his spiritual growth and maturity. In other words, we are not a “Babel” people, scattered and left to our own selves and languages. No, we are a “Pentecost” people, given the Spirit of understanding and unity, the Spirit that pushes us toward the uncomfortable, toward the different, toward the other.
Why should we seek to make our church more hospitable to people differently-disordered? We do so because we’re a people shaped by the word which brings order and comfort to the lost and confused. We’re a people fed by the bread and wine meant only for the hungry. We integrate the differently-disordered into our churches because we are followers of the Savior who left the comfort of heaven to endure the conflict of His Father’s wrath, dying as a substitute for His disordered people. We follow Him down the road of the awkward, the uncomfortable, the confrontational, because it is the narrow road of love. Few will take the journey. Each are given a cross to carry. But all who make the hard choice of walking down this uneasy road will find beauty in the brokenness and peace in the pain.
Dustin Messer is a graduate of Boyce College, Covenant Theological Seminary, and is currently pursuing his M.Th. in Historical Theology from University of Glasgow. Dustin and his wife Whitney live in the Dallas area and worship at Christ Church-Carrollton, TX.<>
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