There but for the grace of God
Humility in the face of great evil
The first time I received inpatient care, I was struck by my fellow patients and their various symptoms. I remember thinking to myself, “These people are really hurting.”
Then, without missing a beat, I realized I was one of them. I was really, really hurting.
And so began my journey of humility.
Like most people, for most of my life I looked upon people who heard voices and saw things that weren’t there with fear, even making jokes about them. I couldn’t understand what kind of relief someone was searching for when they would engage in self-harm. The idea of multiple personalities was something from the movies, something that seemed dubious.
I remember being in a psycho-education group on PTSD, something I had recently been diagnosed with. The facilitator was listing symptoms and I was shocked as these words that had previously seemed to be applied only to the most insane, people who needed to be locked up, suddenly could be applied to me. Paranoia, dissociation, memory trouble, flashbacks, etc..
The second step in my journey of humility was honestly accepting a phrase I had heard often in a twelve-step program: There but for the grace of God go I.
There are few things more humbling than realizing that you’re hearing voices. Even typing those words, it’s difficult to share because of the amount of stigma around it.
But yes, I hear voices. They can sometimes be loud, mostly they’re confusing. They are different parts of my own mind that are divided and talk about different fears, desires, and interpretations of the events of my life. In order to be productive, even to read a book, I need to have some sort of sound in the background to occupy my subconscious enough to actually be able to think and function.
Before, I used to see the homeless person muttering to himself at a business’s entrance and think, “What did he do to get himself there?” Now, I think, “There but for the grace of God go I.”
It’s somewhat terrifying to realize that the only thing keeping me from being homeless, or an addict, or extremely resentful, is the grace of God. But it’s also the most assuring reality because there is nothing I trust more than God Himself and His desire to give me the grace I need to fulfill His plan.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently because Indiana resumed executions for those on death row this week. Just last night, Joseph Corcoran was put to death by my state for a quadruple murder, although it is presumed that he killed his own parents in addition to the murders for which he was convicted. Obviously evil, obviously heinous crimes.
I often see people critical of others, whether the sexual orientation they identify as, their choice to end a pregnancy, or casually saying that someone should “get the chair” for their crimes. These are signs of a soul that has resolved to see people as “other,” who has not come face-to-face with the reality that he is capable of great evil.
Of course, you never want to believe that you would be capable or even think about ending the life of your own child or that you would never be attracted to someone in a way opposed to your religious beliefs. But to honestly believe you could never perpetrate such evil is to fail to understand the wretchedness of your own sin.
It is so, so difficult, but humility requires me to admit: there but for the grace of God go I.
Much of the conversation around Joseph Corcoran was about his mental capacity because he is someone who exhibited signs of paranoid schizophrenia. He claimed the guards in prison were torturing him with soundwaves and broadcasting his thoughts to the entire prison, although he never used this as an excuse for why he shouldn’t have been put to death.
I don’t have a strong opinion on Corcoran’s case specifically, but I do know that reading about his illness, I thought about myself. I thought about my own unpredictability, about the things that I have done during a mental health crisis that I would never do when I am in my right mind.
Nothing has come close to what Corcoran did, and yet I can’t help but think: there but for the grace of God go I.
Now, in just my last newsletter I wrote about stigma, and this touches on a huge source of stigma: that mentally ill individuals should be feared because they are intrinsically dangerous.
This is a tension that is necessary to hold when honestly discussing the reality of serious mental illness. Treatment is important not only for public safety, but for the dignity of the person who is suffering.
Because the reality is that if we took mental illness and its treatment seriously, if we dedicated the same resources to it that we dedicate to many physical illnesses, it’s possible that there would be absolutely nothing to fear surrounding people with mental illness. Not only would these individuals benefit from receiving relief from their illness, but society would benefit as they’re able to meaningfully contribute in a way. that would be impossible without evidence-based treatments.
Sadly, there is so much we don’t understand about the brain and the human mind. Most of the medications that actually help me are off-label uses because the pharmacology companies don’t think getting a medication approved for treatment for psychological treatments is worth it.
Coming face-to-face with the evil that people are capable of perpetrating, regardless of whether or not they are fully culpable for it, is absolutely essential for understanding humanity’s need for a savior.
We are deeply broken by sin and death, each and every one of us. We are so broken that only God himself can save us from ourselves.
There but for the grace of God go I.
Thank you for reading and for supporting my work as I work out some of the ideas I hope to include in my forthcoming book on living as a faithful Christian while experiencing serious mental illness. Today’s post is quite vulnerable for me, but was an exercise in walking a careful line between stigmatizing mental illness and being honest about the seriousness of the experience.
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