Morality and Mental Illness

While visiting a Baptist church this summer, one of the deacons asked what I did for a living. I told him I had just graduated with a Bachelors in Psychology and was getting ready to start my Masters in Professional Counseling. He said that he believed all mental illness was the result of unconfessed sin.

I didn't say anything, but in my mind, I was thinking, "Well buddy you just committed a sin by judging wrongly, so you must have a mental illness!" Thank God I kept my sarcasm in check that time.

However, after 6 months of keeping up with news stories and especially the political back-stabbing, character assassination attempts, and the sexual habits of people in power, I'm beginning to wonder if he has a valid point in at least some cases of mental illness.

I've been thinking about whether there is a correlation to SOME, not all, mental illnesses and a warped sense of morality. I'm not advocating strict adherence to the 10 commandments, which no one has ever completely kept, but the higher morality of love towards self and neighbor.

But that raises the question as to whether absolute morality or relative morality is the more socially beneficial form of morality because love for self and others can only exist within the framework of a moral foundation.

Moral absolutes hold that we are accountable to a God of love for the way we treat one another and ourselves. Moral relativism is not accountable to anyone except the individual and their belief concerning morality. Love that is modeled by a self-sacrificing being who has the welfare of others in mind, and whose love is absolutely perfect in an imperfect society seems preferable over a love that fits the situation and possibly self-centered with ulterior motives.

Here is why there may be a correlation between SOME mental illnesses and morality. When we have done something wrong towards other people, it may create anxiety from cognitive dissonance, and in most cases creates guilt that can become toxic and possibly lead to anxiety and depression. These conditions can snowball into a break in functional communication.

In most cases of moral relativism, the individual is placed above society needs which may explain why we have such political and cultural turmoil in America, and in Western cultures in general.