Theology & Life

Have you ever considered if secular psychology doesn’t have everything right? Have you ever wondered, for example, if there’s a type of anxiety or depression that is actually caused by chemical imbalances?

In his timeless work Blame It On The Brain?: Distinguishing Chemical Imbalances, Brain Disorders, and Disobedience, published by P&R Publishing, author Ed Welch shows readers that psychological issues, such as depression, anxiety, PTSD, and ADHD, aren’t so simple.

At the foundation, regardless of the brain/mind issue, Welch makes himself clear by saying we can’t ever say “the brain made me do it.”

A person whose brain has been altered by disease or drugs cannot excuse sin by saying that the brain or the drugs “made me do it.” A dysfunctional brain can make it very difficult to understand what is going on, but it can’t create sin. It can only reveal things that were previously hidden in the heart. And the reason these things were hidden was that circumstances were never intense enough to expose them (we tend to see our hearts when trials are intense), or the person had the mental self-control just to think something but not actually say it.

It’s also important to understand, as Welch notes below, that’s there no psychiatric problem that Scripture doesn’t provide needed assistance to.

You will never find a psychiatric problem where biblical counsel —counsel directed to the heart—is anything less than essential. At the very least, psychiatric problems usually indicate that the diagnosed person (and the family) is suffering in some way. And on the problem of suffering, Scripture is the expert. Through it, God offers hope, compassion, and the power to grow in faith and obedience in the midst of the suffering. For families, it provides practical guidelines on how to love and serve the person who is struggling.

Additionally, like mentioned above, even though this version of the book was written nearly two decades ago, Welch was already voicing the concern that chemical imbalances do not exist, or do not cause anxiety.

The brain is simply too complex and is sustained by too many chemicals for us to be able to pinpoint chemical imbalances with our current level of knowledge. The most we can reliably say is that psychiatric medication may minimize some symptoms, but it is not necessarily treating a chemical deficiency.

None of this means we don’t have issues in our brains and minds. Just like our physical bodies can get injured and sick, the same is true with our brain/mind. But the popular notion that some of what we suffer from is due to chemical imbalances has proven to be wrong.

Welch does a masterful job of showing compassion to sufferers yet holding firm to what the Bible teaches about the heart. I highly recommend this to anyone who wants to learn about this topic from a biblical perspective.

I was given this book for free in exchange for an honest review.