Affliction: Mental Illness and the Absence of God

Spiraling Up

I am on the sofa.

My body works with effortless poise; my legs are strong; my arms supple; my head feels light.

I am writing for an audience in the Philippines, thousands of miles away from my Massachusetts home. My breath is deep and strong—ideas come as I bring air in through my nose, and expel it through my mouth.    

I argue: culture doesn’t exist; religion is a heuristic category that has no objective content. Culture and religion both are Western constructs, nothing more than mental placeholders; they are elaborations on coincidence, created by academics to make the world understandable, comprehensible, endurable.

I wonder what the priests and seminarians will say to this as they sit in their white cassocks a conference center on Bohol Island, off of Cebu. Maybe a bishop or cardinal will be there too—listening, rapt in attention. Perhaps they will experience my talk as an invitation to deeper intellectual freedom: a freedom from the need to believe in that which does not exist; a freedom that comes with realizing that everything is a creation of our minds, and our wills.

It is very late—or very early—and the darkness comforts me as I write: no distractions. I will sleep later on, maybe even never.

Claiming the Empty Throne

I’m still on the sofa, sitting without straining, keeping my focus. Images and thoughts are carried in a current that flows from my head through my arms, hands, and fingers to the keyboard. Writing has never been this easy, this smooth, this authentic. I gaze at a watercolor of a mountain over the piano—the curving slopes look like they are caressing the summit.

A couple of hours have passed my computer says, but they feel like minutes, which must prove I’m not a computer. I am almost done writing so I allow myself what I admit is a flight of fancy: I need more ties. I should try some six-fold Kitons in royal blue or bright red. They’d be nicely complemented by a Mariano Rubinacci jacket: Rubinaccis go for three thousand dollars new, but I’m thinking I could get one for half that price on EBay. I know the size to look for—46 regular because Italian clothes run small on me. Some Manolo Blahnik double-buckle monk straps would complete the ensemble nicely. I scan websites, looking for the right color palate that will make me look as young as I feel.

My mind is a staccato symphony of insights and ideas. I remember a summer seminar I attended at Calvin College: “Religion and Postmodernism.” The consensus among the participants is that postmodernism remains incompatible with Christianity because postmodern academic approaches deconstruct truth. And if you deconstruct truth, there can be no revelation; no claims about the salvific centrality and uniqueness of Jesus as Christ.

Jesus, in this deconstruction, becomes the quintessential good guy—nothing more. But also nothing less, I am thinking. There’s nothing wrong with simply being a good guy. I am a good guy.    

But what if we see deconstruction not as a threat, but as an opportunity—an opportunity to push past and beyond the limits humans have unreasonably set for themselves. Our minds can’t freely explore the cosmos if God is sole ruler of the heavens.

John writes in Revelation (4:2): “I was in the Spirit, and behold, a throne was set in heaven, and One sitting upon the throne.”

But there is no one–no One–sitting on the throne.    

The throne is empty, waiting to be claimed by any of us, by all of us.

Questions and Confessions

I am outside my doctor’s office. My body is tense; my legs are cold; my arms stiff; my head stoically faces the door. My doctor arrives, clad in plaid from head to toe. I smile. He says, “I’ve always liked plaid,” and grins back, adding, “it’s frigid outside, the ear flaps really help with that.” We close the door and sit down face to face—the office is small, claustrophobic.

“How are you doing?” he asks. I say, “The depression hasn’t lifted—it’s deeper now than ever.” “Well, you and your family have been going through a lot this year.” He continues: “Do you feel depressed all the time?” I say, “There are moments when it does seem to lift—and I can lock in on whatever I have to do. But then the depression returns.” “How’s your libido?” he asks as he writes notes. I stammer, “I, um, it’s…” My doctor pivots and chooses a different tack. “Ok, well, have you been buying things that you ordinarily wouldn’t?”

I have to think for a moment. My doctor’s desk is piled high with papers, a plastic bag with used napkins and utensils lies on top of it all. At length, I say, “Actually, I’ve become quite fond of silk ties—I go through these phases of buying lots of them. I’m trying to work on my appearance—my wife says I look sloppy a lot of the time when I go out.”

“Buying high-end fashion–that’s kind of new.” He’s still writing as we talk.

“Yes,” I say.

“Tell me more about your academic work,” his tone is even, but caring. There’s good eye contact.

“Well, I just wrote a ten-page paper for a conference. It’s actually pretty good—maybe not publishable, but it’s close.” I say this without intending to brag.

“How long did it take for you to write it?” He’s set his pen down now.  “About three hours—start to finish,” I say.

“Is that unusual for you?” He’s looking at me, not with professional appreciation, but with concern—I can see it in his eyes. I explain: “Most of the time, I have to do a lot of revisions—so it is unusual for something to come out so quickly.”

“When did you write the paper—I mean, what time?” He’s detail oriented.

I’m telling the truth: “Between 2am and 5am, then I continued with my day.”

Psychiatric Perspectives

“Anything else?,” my doctor asks.

I say, “The strange thing really wasn’t that it only took me three hours to write a paper; the strange thing was that I hadn’t even read the books I was referring to—that is, until I started writing the paper. It was three hours total, everything—research and writing.”

I know what’s going on now. I ask straight out: “Are these symptoms of Bipolar Disorder—Bipolar II maybe?” I’m trying a measured tone to hide my fear.

“It does sound like hypomania,” my doctor’s voice doesn’t lose its clinical cadence. I ask, “What’s the difference between hypomania and mania? I’m not gambling away my house or thinking that I can fly.” I hear a plaintive quality to my voice.

“Hypomania is a level below full mania—and it can be quite pleasurable: people feel creative, they’re charismatic, highly functioning most of the time. But it’s still a pathological state—especially when spiraling up comes with spiraling down.”    

“So, I’m bipolar?” The words sound like a life sentence to solitary confinement.     

“Maybe—possibly—but I think it’s the new med I gave you. Maybe it triggered low-level mania and accentuated the underlying depression. I’m sorry you’re going through this,” he says, sincerely.

“What’s the therapeutic response?” I ask—my tenor is clinical now too.

He says reassuringly, “Let’s take you off that med and see what happens. We’ll check in together soon—you have my personal cell number.” Then he adds: “In the meantime, wait a couple of days if you feel the urge to buy something.” There’s a slight smile on his face.

I admit to myself: it would be nice to write so freely all the time—I didn’t buy 100 new suits, but I coveted suits I couldn’t afford. I didn’t think I could fly, but I felt as though I were flying. I sigh, shrug my shoulders—something like that—because I realize that the ecstasy comes with its own price tag—literally and figuratively—that eventually has to be paid in full. As for the costs of despair—they’re beyond calculation.

In Romans (8: 25), Paul puts the question: “for does anyone hope for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we await in patience.”

I guess that patience is all that’s left for people like me: people who haven’t seen—who cannot see—a firm ground between spiraling down and spiraling up.