romans 8:5-8
for “pastoral care and mental illness” at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, November 2018.
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Grace and peace to you, beloveds of God.
This excerpt from Paul’s letter to the Romans sets up a duality of flesh and spirit. Flesh is meant as aspects of the body; short-term gratification; an inward focus. Spirit is meant as of God; an outward, spiritual focus; balance. Paul is not using these terms as a Greek mind-body separation, as two distinct parts of one person, but instead as two types of people. We all have flesh and we all have spirit, intertwined, and what defines us, in the words of the letter, is which aspect we set our minds to. Leaning into the flesh puts the Spirit to death, while leaning into the Spirit brings abundant life.
Paul’s epistles serve as instructions – best practices for specific, dispersed, Christian communities to live as Christ did. In his letter to the Romans, he is writing to a church that is a mix of Jewish and Gentile members, and historians suggest that there were multiple churches in Rome at the time, so this letter was written across congregational differences. I want to reiterate that Paul is writing about where we put our energy. It is impossible to separate flesh from spirit, and God coming to us in a body, in Christ, points to a centrality of the flesh, in a physical sense. The same word has been used in the Eucharistic language of The Gospel of John – this is my flesh, given for you.
Flesh has also been translated as ‘selfishness’ in the Common English Bible. Referring to humankind, fleshy-ness is a risk of self-involvement at the expense of the Kin-dom of God. It is allowing worldly structures and systems of alienation to control our lives. The solution to these death-dealing forces, according to Paul, is to instead, “set the mind on the Spirit.”
And that is true. Leaning into the Spirit, the abundance given by the grace of God, witnessed through relationship, growth, moments of tenderness, can counteract the forces of flesh that are rampant in our world today. I would much rather put my energy into the Spirit, and the promises of the Kin-dom of God. Promises that everyone will be fed, everyone will be cared for, and everyone will know that they are made in the image of God, and made good.
Those promises are life-giving, in contrast to the scarcity mentality we are surrounded by – that we aren’t enough, that we need to do more, make more, be more. Messages of scarcity are embedded into every aspect of our day-to-day life, and it can be hard to push them aside for the promises of the Kin-dom, when those promises don’t always answer our immediate survival needs.
That’s why Paul’s statement, that we have agency in setting our minds on either flesh or spirit, that we choose either an attitude that is hostile to God or an attitude that is welcoming to God, feels simplistic. If it were simply a matter of individual choice, and that individual choice is literally a matter of life or death, why are the forces of flesh and death so strong?
Paul recognizes this tension earlier in his letter to the Romans. In verse 7, he writes, “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do, I do not do, but what I hate, I do.” This points to a more complicated theory than individual choice in the matter of flesh and spirit. There are external factors that impact how we make choices, and how effective those choices are in taking root in our bodies – how many of us have tried to change a habit that was less-than-life-giving, only to fall back into our unhealthy patterns less than two weeks later? Despite wanting so deeply to change, to move closer to God?
The tension between wanting to move closer to God in our lives, and the factors that prevent us from making that move away from flesh, is similar to the relationship between mental illness and recovery.
It’s estimated that one in five people either currently have, or will have, a mental illness diagnosis in their lifetime. With the increasing rate of climate change and degradation, those numbers are only set to get higher. Our brains and spirits are impacted by the world we live in, and it often feels like we are tied to the flesh, despite yearning for the spirit.
I have a clinical depression diagnosis, and the symptoms that come with a depressive episode are very much in the flesh. It is nearly impossible to center God’s goodness in creation when getting out of bed and leaving the house takes up half of your energy for the day. When every news report about a new cruelty, a new repeal of basic human rights, a new decline hits you in the chest. For me, panic often accompanies my depression, and I feel deeply Paul’s frustration at doing what you hate instead of what you want to be doing. I am acutely aware of how the lens and impact of mental illness can alienate me from God, because it is sometimes hard to feel God’s presence when the world of the flesh is so strong, even as I deeply believe God is present.
It’s impossible for an individual to choose turn away from the flesh to the spirit alone. To recover. If it was up to me, I would choose to never have another depressive episode or another panic attack, but that’s not how it works. And I have a relatively privileged relationship to my mental illness. I grew up in a cultural context that didn’t stigmatize therapy, with a mom who is a mental and behavioral health professional, and have had reasonable access to sliding-scale and insurance-based healthcare.
Yet I still feel the pressure to choose to be well. To choose the spirit. Fully knowing that there are environmental, biological, and social factors that inhibit that choice. Sam Dylan Finch, a transgender, mentally ill writer, often reflects on the pressure to be a ‘good’ mentally ill person. One who presents as ‘high-functioning’, as ‘well’, as ‘in control’ of their mental health. Adapted to our text today, it’s the pressure to recover, and to be of the spirit. Oftentimes, if friends or the medical system thinks you aren’t doing ‘enough’ for your recovery, you are written off as non-compliant. As ‘choosing’ the flesh. This binds us into oppression, treating those who aren’t ‘model minorities’, who aren’t making the choices we think we would be able to make, as lesser. When in reality, in the middle of a rough patch, when symptoms are so severe that it impacts the day-to-day, there is nothing that you want more than to feel God’s healing presence in community, instead of present suffering and judgment.
Recovery is not easy. It takes real work, and systemic change, beyond a simple choice to ‘be well’. The work of the spirit is not easy. It also takes real work, and systemic change, beyond a simple choice to ‘set [your] mind…on the Spirit.’ And yet that’s often how we respond to illness and flesh, by offering surface advice, by asking people to jump through the hoops we think they need for wellness, to pressure people to ‘just choose to be happy’. Full-well knowing that individual choice only takes us so far – again, I think of New Years Resolutions and how many of those fail.
We can learn from mental health recovery in our reach towards the Spirit. God is with us, even in flesh. God loves us so deeply, and wants us to live abundantly, and so asks hard things of us for the sake of transformation. Encourages us to be accountable to our communities, ourselves, and Godself. Knowing that we cannot simply choose to break out of toxic systems, but also knowing that we do have agency in our lives. It isn’t all personal choice or all external, it’s both. In my experience of depression, it doesn’t help when I try to wish myself out of it, but it also doesn’t help when I sink into thinking I have no control.
Because it takes community, and mutual accountability, and supportive systems to lean into the Spirit. In a way, Paul is laying out a framework where we all need to practice recovery tactics from the sinful, fleshy structures of the world. Just as we cannot dismiss those whose embodiment and experience of mental illness doesn’t match what we consider a ‘good’ mentally ill person to be, we cannot dismiss those deeply engrained in the flesh. For some, yes, they are willfully choosing the flesh, and that requires a more challenging response. But for many, being stuck in the flesh is accompanied by reaching towards the Spirit, trying but never making contact. In a depressive cycle, reaching towards recovery, always falling short.
God is found in relationships. Relationships that are based on the Spirit, that enable us to collectively move away from the flesh, while honoring our bodies as holy. Relationships that encourage us to affirm each other’s healing and liberation. God has made us in their own image, to work towards the Kin-dom. The personal and structural are entangled, and God calls us to push both towards the Spirit.
And if you are just beginning or not yet ready to move towards recovery? If the real-life survival implications of the flesh-systems have what feels like an impossible hold on your choices and agency? God is with you and calls you beloved. Stay tender, stay accountable, and stay reaching for the Spirit.
Reed Fowler 