I’ve written about this topic before. Sadly I have to write about it again. While some born-again Christians are wonderful, caring people, many are not. And one of the areas where they do the greatest amount of damage is when they believe they can “cure” sufferers of depression and other mental illnesses by praying over them and casting out demons.
Sadly, another case has come to light where a born-again Christian named Joyce took it upon herself to care for a distressed woman who had been sexually assaulted and now suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder. This afflicted woman was also caring for her demented and aged mother without any outside care and she was struggling badly.
Joyce would visit for an hour or so at her convenience and tell this woman that Jesus would love her and save her. In her desperation, the woman believed her. This is not to say that Jesus would not help her, but certainly the flesh and blood help of a human being is a very powerful healing aid, and born-again Christians in particular should be aware of this.
Joyce even decided to bring along one of her acolytes, a woman who was a reputed “Christian counselor” but had no formal qualifications. The latter woman offered to do anything she could for the sick woman, and said she would help her in any way. She gave out her cell phone number and told her to ring her. When the depressed and desperate woman did this, she was told by the so-called Christian counselor that “God has given you this burden. It is your job to work through it.”
I’m pretty sure that God does not instruct individual men to rape women as had happened in this case – that would go against what God stands for, so this woman was seriously misguided in what she tells her “clients”. Fortunately, the sick woman did not take this on board but did report the incident back to Joyce who expressed some surprise but did nothing. This is where harm is done. Here we have an example of a blatant disregard of the active damage being done to vulnerable people by arrogant “carers”.
Sadly, the tale gets worse and we will look at what Joyce did in our next blog.
Related articles:
Mental Health through the Lifespan