The Therapeutic Value of the Table
Working as a mental health therapist for the last 25 years, I can say with some certainty that present cuts in funding for mental health services, and for drug and alcohol abuse, are unprecedented. As supervisor for the Child Abuse Treatment Program at the Office of Education in Imperial County, I have watched as staff has been cut by 80%. While this makes it difficult for people to access help, I believe it presents the church with an opportunity and necessity to provide support to individuals and families in Jesus name.
In my experience, there has often been a stigma in the church attached to issues of depression, anxiety, mental disorders and different forms of addiction. Reports now suggest that 1 in 3 people have some form of diagnosable mental disorder or addictive attachment. In addition, to these embedded and ingested influences, our brothers and sisters frequently carry with them stressors from changing life circumstances and sorrow that accompanies grief and loss.
Too often our response in the body of Christ is to give a teaching on how to master a problem; and if that doesn’t resolve it, there follows a kind of quiet avoidance. I have been around Christians all my life and I do not believe the quiet avoidance is because we lack empathy. Because of our Savior, it is in our spiritual constitution to love, to suffer long, and to patiently stand with our friends as they carry their vulnerabilities. The Lord has done the same for us.
So it seems to me that the avoidance is a systems problem. We have attempted to address these issues in small groups, but as I have mentioned in a previous blog, most of our small groups quickly lose their initial vision rooted in love, authenticity, disclosure and support. Invariably, the groups trickle down into another teaching group or social forum. Sadly, many of us carry our brokenness and pain back into isolation and suffer alone. In the end, many of our Christian brothers and sisters often find it easier to hide their struggle from those who love them most, and opt for support in the secular helping community.
(Let me say clearly that I am not against secular psychiatric, psychological or self-help programs. I have profound respect and have accessed these helping venues and professional skills when needed… and please understand I am not demeaning or downgrading any church format or worship experience. We are each different and God has given us an array of venues in which to worship Him. I am grateful for all forms of worship where people can meet the Living God.)
But my point is that it is easy to underestimate our most valued asset as Christians; the power of a loving supportive community that is inherent in our DNA. Jesus called upon us to greet, care, encourage, support, honor, pray, forbear, forgive, and confess our faults to one another. We revel in the teachings of Jesus, and well we should, but so many of those teachings were the result of questions asked by His disciples as they sat around a table together after the day’s activities had concluded. Mark 3:14 And he ordained twelve, that they should be with him, and that he might send them forth to preach.
Dr. Bruce Perry is one of the foremost Child Psychiatrist working with traumatized children. He uses PET scans (Brain imaging) to see what is happening in the brains of traumatized children when they are presented with different stimulus. It is clear from his brain scan images that children who are severely traumatized have significantly diminished brain activity. But what Dr. Perry discovered over a couple decades of research is that the stimuli that increases brain activity, in traumatized children, is multigenerational interaction. (Another name for community)
In his studies he would take a child (Let’s say 5 years of age) and bring in another child 5 years of age to play and interact with them. As the children played you could see on the PET scan an increase of brain activity in the traumatized child. But playing with the same age child did not keep the brain activity elevated for long.
Over time, Dr. Perry found the resolution to the diminished brain activity in the following way: When the brain activity began to diminish in the child’s play with the other 5 year old, he would then send in a grandmother to interact, and after grandmother, a teenager to interact, and after the teenager, then the mother, dad, uncle or aunt; and then the 5 year old again. Dr. Perry’s conclusion is that nothing heals like active participation in supportive community.
The beauty of the Christian Community is that we not only have a host of caring, loving and supportive people in our communities, but we have the Holy Spirit who surrounds, hovers, nurtures, guides, prays, intercedes, comforts and heals. But too often our interaction with one another at the authentic level of our lives is limited.
Last week I attended the morning session in a conference in which I heard perhaps the most powerful teaching and message I have heard in my entire life. It cut me to the core and poured the grace of God into my spirit. (Again, this is not a slight on the structure of the conference. It was life changing experience for so many of us.) But like most conferences there was a 10 minute break and on to the next teaching. I didn’t need someone at that moment to pray for me; I didn’t need someone to interpret what I had just heard; I needed to give gratitude to Jesus and lay some things at his feet. Certainly, I could have found a prayer room or gone to a mountain to offer my sacrifices to the Lord, but I have found that there is a profound benefit in the agreement I receive from talking out loud, and offering my gifts and sacrifices unto Jesus in the presence of other supportive people. (Temple) I called my friend John and my son Scott and said, “Can you meet me at the Table.” I offered gifts of thanksgiving, sacrifices of surrender, and the Lord met us.
The Table is a simple format designed to allow people to process the reality of their experience and to practically participate in moving their faith from the cold corridors of the mind into the warm chambers of their heart. As we do, we find ourselves individually and collectively being fit together more fully into a dwelling place of God; and a healing community.
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