Imago Dei vs. Living Your Truth

Dr. Michael Brashears

I- I was talking to a clinician last week who was telling me about a client, a young guy, completely paralyzed by anxiety because he was trying to, quote, live his truth. And- and I told her, we have put this exhausting weight of self-creation on people. We tell them, you have to be the sole author of your own reality, your own identity, your own morality, and then we wonder why they have what I call trauma-related meaning wounds. It is- it is an existential fatigue that is just crushing people.

Steve Miskelley

Existential fatigue. Yeah. But- but Michael, when you say living your truth is a burden, for a lot of people, that feels like the only freedom they have left. If they do not define themselves, they feel like they are just letting everyone else do it for them.

Jill Miskelley

But Steve, that is exactly the trap. It- it is like having a faulty thermometer. If you have a thermometer that only measures what you wish the temperature was, it is completely useless. Our feelings- look, feelings are real, they are absolutely real, but they are not self-validating. If you rely on your fluctuating emotions as your only compass, you are going to spin in circles. We have to anchor people in something external, and for us, that is the imago Dei, the theological clarity that we are made in the image of God. That is an objective, non-negotiable spiritual fact. It- it does not change because you had a bad day or because you feel worthless.

Steve Miskelley

Okay, I get the theology, Jill, I really do. But practically, if someone is sitting in front of me, sobbing, telling me they feel utterly worthless, if I immediately jump in with, well, actually, Genesis 1:27 says you have divine dignity... I mean, does that not just feel like a theological slap in the face? Validation of their immediate, subjective pain is an act of empathy. We have to meet them in the ditch before we can pull them out.

Dr. Michael Brashears

But- but Steve, there is a massive difference between validating the *feeling* of being in the ditch and validating the *lie* that they belong there. The foundation of Christian counseling rests not only on clinical skill but on theological clarity. We need to avoid extremes of either dismissing the problem entirely or uncritically accepting secular understandings. If a client says, I am a piece of garbage, and we just sit there nodding, going, oh, I hear your truth, we are validating an emotional lie. We are letting them build a house on wet sand. We have to disrupt that cycle of self-condemnation immediately by anchoring them to the external reality of who they are in God. Their dignity is intact even when their brain is telling them it is not.

Jill Miskelley

Exactly. When we lost Ian, one of the hardest parts was realizing how much of the secular mental health framework just leaves families out, telling everyone to just validate, validate, validate, without giving them any solid ground to stand on. If you do not have that external anchor of the imago Dei, you are asking a drowning person to pull themselves up by their own hair. It is- it is impossible.

Steve Miskelley

So- so how do we draw the line then? Because if we are talking about objective reality, we also have to talk about the physical reality of the brain. When does a spiritual or existential struggle cross over into a clinical emergency?

Dr. Michael Brashears

It is a hard red line, Steve. We have to decouple spiritual distress from Serious Mental Illness, what the NIMH classifies as SMI. We are talking about schizophrenia, clinical psychosis, bipolar manic phases, severe functional impairment. I- I used to run Community Mental Health in Ottawa County, and I saw what happens when people try to spiritualize medical pathology. I call it the broken femur analogy. If someone walks in with a compound fracture of their femur, bone sticking through the skin, you do not sit them down and say, let us pray about your bitterness, or let us do some cognitive reframing on how you view your leg. No! You get them to an orthopedic surgeon immediately. But when the brain has a physiological break, people want to treat it solely with theological counseling. It is absurd, and frankly, it is dangerous.

Steve Miskelley

But hold on, Michael. If we- if we just draw this clinical boundary and say, oh, that is medical, we are hands-off, do we not risk abandoning people when they need spiritual community the most? A pastoral counselor or a church community should not just vanish the moment someone gets a psychiatric diagnosis. That presence, that spiritual reassurance, is vital during a crisis.

Jill Miskelley

Steve, nobody is saying abandon them, but we have to know our lane. When Ian was struggling, we felt so shut out of the process, and we saw how people, with the best intentions, would try to offer spiritual band-aids for what was a severe medical crisis. If a pastoral counselor tries to manage an active clinical psychosis, they are delaying life-saving psychiatric care. And worse, when the prayer or the counseling does not fix the chemical imbalance, the patient ends up feeling deep spiritual shame. They think, oh, I must not have enough faith, or God has abandoned me. That is- it is catastrophic.

Dr. Michael Brashears

It is a referral protocol, Steve. A strict, non-negotiable referral protocol. You can walk alongside someone, you can pray with them after they are stabilized, but during an acute clinical emergency, your primary spiritual duty is to get them to professional medical help. We have to honor the image of God in them by respecting the physical reality of the bodies and brains He created. We cannot let our theological zeal blind us to medical science.

Steve Miskelley

Yeah. I- I hear you. It is about humility, really. Recognizing where our expertise ends and where the medical community needs to step in to keep someone safe.

Jill Miskelley

Exactly. It is about saving lives first, so we can help them heal spiritually later. Well, I think that is a good place to stop for today. Good talking with you both.

Dr. Michael Brashears

Yeah, absolutely. Talk soon.