Created to Create, Part 1: Image Bearers

~ D. R. Meriwether, Ph.D. ~ Leave a comment

Header image credit: me // Featured image credit: Michelangelo (public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)

What makes humans special?

Humans have probably been asking that question for probably as long as we’ve existed. For much of that time, I imagine that question focused on a particular variation: what separates us from the animals? Language, consciousness, problem-solving, and tool use are some of the more convincing answers, but not convincing enough. We needn’t look far into the animal kingdom to find sophisticated communication, self-awareness, clever solutions to problems, and the shaping and use of tools.

In recent decades, the arguably more pressing variation of the question is a technology-focused one: what separates us from the machines? Or, phrased differently, what makes human intelligence different from artificial intelligence? I’ll address the first question in this post, but you’ll have to wait for part two to hear my rant about—I mean my answer to the second.

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A Christian Approach to Mental Health, Part 3: Is Mindfulness Unbiblical?

~ D. R. Meriwether, Ph.D. ~ 1 Comment

Header image credit: me // Featured image credit: Dingzeyu Li (freely available via Unsplash)

It’s been a while because…life. But I’ve got a bunch of drafts in progress, so more to come soon. But first, time to finish this little series. And since it’s been so long sin the last one, a tiny recap: in the first part of this three-part series, I discussed why I believe there is tension between psychology and faith. The second part expanded on this, addressing how this tension has led to a particularly strong stigma around mental illness in the Christian community and proposing what an integrated approach to mental health should be. In this third part, I’ll discuss various mindfulness practices, how they apply to mental health, and whether or not they’re biblical and are things Christians can or should practice.

I wrote about mindfulness—what it looks like, what benefits it confers, and even Scripture verses that describe mindfulness—in a previous post, so I won’t go into much depth on the well-being benefits of mindfulness here. Instead, the focus of this post will be more about the spirituality of mindfulness.

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Little Life Lesson: Winsome Witness

~ D. R. Meriwether, Ph.D. ~ Leave a comment

Header image credit: me // Featured image credit: Helena Lopes (freely available via Unsplash)

While on a lovely walk this afternoon with some friends around a local lake, we were rather rudely interrupted by a lady’s asking us if we were signed up for a rally.

The curtness of my immediate, “No” in response caught even me by surprise, and I’ll admit that it was perhaps too brusque. However, as I continued to ponder over this brief exchange throughout the day, I began to feel more convinced that my response corresponded appropriately to the disruptiveness of her interruption. And I began to realize why it was so off-putting.

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A Light in the Darkness

~ D. R. Meriwether, Ph.D. ~ Leave a comment

Header image credit: me // Featured image credit: Ivanić-Grad (freely available via Unsplash)

I get the appeal of suicide.

Don’t get me wrong: I am not suicidal. I have never harbored such ideations, and I feel safe in saying that I never will (by the grace of God). Also, my life belongs to the King of Kings; it is His to take—not mine—when He deems the time to be right.

But, I get the appeal.

I get being in a darkness so suffocatingly oppressive that it chokes out the memory of light’s warm touch. I get experiencing a night so despairingly long that you’ve lost all faith that the sun will ever rise again. I get feeling like your life is so burdensome and valueless that, like George Bailey, you think it’d be better for everyone if you’d never been born. I get being utterly and completely hopeless that life will ever get better that you’d rather it just end.

At least this life, that is. But thank God this earthly life isn’t the only one.

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A Christian Approach to Mental Health, Part 2: Faith, Stigma, and Mental Illness

~ D. R. Meriwether, Ph.D. ~ 1 Comment

Header image credit: me // Featured image credit: Marcel Strauß (freely available via Unsplash)

In part 1 of this series, I discussed how the mind and body are inextricably connected, each one affecting the other, and how the mind is the battleground for our great mental and spiritual battles. I concluded by arguing that a proper approach to mental health must be comprehensive (i.e., must acknowledge this reality) and by hinting that a failure to do so, accompanied by a misunderstanding of what faith is, is a likely cause for at least some the stigma surrounding mental health in the Christian community.

In this second part of the series, I’ll lay out a very basic theology of mental illness that addresses the role of faith in healing and the purpose that our struggles serve. I won’t go into a theology of why it happens (perhaps in another post), but long story short, it’s because we live in a broken world.

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A Christian Approach to Mental Health, Part 1: The Mind and Mental Health

~ D. R. Meriwether, Ph.D. ~ 1 Comment

Header image credit: me // Featured image credit: Marcel Strauß (freely available via Unsplash)

Since May is mental health awareness month, it seems like a good time to talk about a faith-based approach to mental health. This is an important topic not only because mental health is vitally important to our well-being as individuals and as a society as a whole, but also because mental illness is arguably more stigmatized within the Christian community than it is within the broader community. And that stigma seems to be based on misguided views of how mental health works and of what the Bible actually says about mental health practices.

There is a contingent within the broader Christian community that views mental health issues as a sign of a lack of faith and that considers mindfulness and other psychotherapeutic techniques as unnecessary at best and as heretical at worst  My goal is to show that the exact opposite is true: mental health issues are a sign of a broken world and are no more to be stigmatized than are physical health issues (i.e., not stigmatized at all; just a brokenness that needs to be fixed, a hurt that needs healing); and not only are mindfulness and psychotherapeutic practices necessary for a healthy life, but they are actually supported—no, more than that, mandated—by Scripture.

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The Happiness—and Holiness—of a Life Lived Joyfully

~ D. R. Meriwether, Ph.D. ~ Leave a comment

Header image credit: me // Featured image credit: cmophoto.net (freely available via Unsplash)

“Don’t try to add more years to your life. Better add more life to your years.”
Blaise Pascal

With no disrespect to Pascal and his genius, while I agree with the latter part of his above assertion, I don’t agree with the first part. Yes, it is far more important to fill our years with life than it is to fill our life with years, but that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t try to add years. There are lots of things we can do to promote longevity, and, by all means, let’s do those things; let’s do what we can to live longer. But we must beware of confusing quantity with quality. We mustn’t focus so much on lengthening life that we forget to enjoy life for however long we have it.

After all, joylessness might just be the most innocuously damaging sin we didn’t know we were committing.

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A Potentially Unpopular Perspective on Body Positivity

~ D. R. Meriwether, Ph.D. ~ Leave a comment

Header image credit: me // Featured image credit: De’Andre Bush (freely available via Unsplash)

Okay, here comes the unpopular perspective: the body positivity movement might be doing more harm than good.

There I said it.

Now, before anyone jumps down my throat, hear me out.

Let me begin by saying that I have no intention or desire to shame anybody or any body type. I do not want to promote a one-size-fits-all approach that suggests that beauty is limited to a certain few kinds of appearances. Quite the opposite. I believe that everybody—and every body—is a beautiful creation and worthy of being honored, regardless of size, shape, color, ability, or any other characteristic.

But, here’s my concern: when we focus too much on body positivity, we risk normalizing and turning a blind eye to unhealthy habits—habits that will destroy the bodies we profess to honor.

That doesn’t sound like love. And it doesn’t sound very positive.

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From the Heart No. 2: Heart-Healthy Eating (or, Freedom from Food)

~ D. R. Meriwether, Ph.D. ~ 2 Comments

Header image credit: me // Featured image credit: Julian Hanslmaier (freely available via Unsplash)

There’s so much information available on the Internet about what healthy eating looks like; so, being no nutritionist, I’m not going to presume that I have much to add to that discussion (though I might relay some of that discussion some day). But, having a background in psychology and a nearly lifelong, unhealthy relationship with food, I do have something to add to the discussion of what a healthy approach to eating looks like—at least for me.

In line with that, this post is about having a heart-healthy diet not in the literal, cardiovascular sense of “heart-healthy”, but in the metaphorical, emotional sense of the term—which, I would argue, is the more important of the two. After all, having an emotionally healthier attitude towards food can make it easier to have a nutritionally healthier diet, whereas changing what you eat may not as potently affect how you feel about what you eat. At least that’s been my experience.

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A SMART Way to Smash Your Goals

~ D. R. Meriwether, Ph.D. ~ Leave a comment

Header image credit: me // Featured image credit: me

As cliché as it might be to write about goals in January, it’s also an appropriate time: with New Year’s resolutions on everyone’s minds, I might as well write about how to be more effective—that is, how to be SMARTer—about making those goals and with sticking to them. Among other tricks and techniques, one simple way to be more effective in your resolutions is to make them into SMART goals.

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