Church Is Not a Mental Asylum

What this is about

The author of this site heard a sermon at an evangelical church and wrote down a passage from it. As he reports it, the preacher said: “The church is a hospital for a short time. People get right and go. Church is not a mental asylum. No, it’s not a permanent place. You don’t check in forever. You get into the hospital and then come out quickly.” Just before, the preacher had said that if someone or something was getting in the way of his closeness to Christ, he was going to “eliminate it.” He also said it is not true that “you have to help everybody.”

The preacher is not named here. These are a few sentences from one sermon, and a preacher may put things more carefully on another day. The page tests the sentences. It does not judge the man.

The author set down a thesis to be tested: “The Church is a hospital for sinners who need care for their whole lives, not a short-stay clinic for people who recover quickly.”

So there are two views of what a church is. On the first, it is where sinners are under Christ’s care for life. Everyone in it is a patient, the strong included, and nobody is sent away for needing help too long. On the second, it is for a short stay. You get right and move on, and a person who is still struggling after a fair time is in the wrong place. Both views want people well. They disagree about the person who is not well yet.

The short answer

The doctor at the dinner table

The picture of the church as a hospital goes back to something Jesus said. It helps to see where he said it.

He had just called a tax collector named Levi to follow him. Levi gave a big dinner, and his friends came. Tax collectors worked for the Romans and were known for cheating. The religious leaders were shocked. They asked the disciples, “How is it that he eateth and drinketh with publicans and sinners?” A publican is a tax collector.

Jesus answered: “They that are whole have no need of the physician, but they that are sick: I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”

So the saying explains why he is sitting where he is. A doctor is found with sick people. He does not say how long a doctor stays.

Notice who the “whole” are. They are not people who are really well. They are people who think they are. Luke says Jesus told another story “unto certain which trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others.” So the saying does not divide people into the sick and the healthy. It divides them into those who know they are sick and those who do not. Martin Luther said of Christians that “they are sick in fact but healthy in hope,” and that the worst thing for them is “the presumption that they are healthy.”

One correction to the author’s brief. Jesus said “physician.” He did not say “hospital,” because there were none. Christians invented hospitals about three hundred years later. Jerome wrote of a Roman woman named Fabiola, who died in 399: “She was the first person to found a hospital, into which she might gather sufferers out of the streets.” After that, preachers began to call the church a hospital. One of the first, John Chrysostom, told people who were ashamed of their sins to come back to church, because it is a doctor’s surgery and not a court of law.

Thirty-eight years

The sermon’s key word is “quickly.” So it is fair to ask whether the Gospels keep time. They do.

At a pool in Jerusalem Jesus met a man “which had an infirmity thirty and eight years.” The man told him, “Sir, I have no man … to put me into the pool.” In thirty-eight years nobody had stayed to help. Jesus healed a woman who had been bent over for eighteen years, and another who had been bleeding for twelve and “had suffered many things of many physicians.” A father brought a boy, and Jesus asked, “How long is it ago since this came unto him?” The father said, “Of a child.” A blind man had been blind “from his birth.”

In every case the Bible tells us how long. In no case is the length held against the person. The cures themselves were sudden, but that was Jesus’ doing. Nobody is told to hurry up and get well. When a synagogue leader objected that the bent woman should come on a working day, Jesus used the number against him: “ought not this woman … whom Satan hath bound, lo, these eighteen years, be loosed?” The long wait was his reason to hurry.

Some were not healed at all. Paul had what he called “a thorn in the flesh.” He asked three times for it to be taken away, and was told, “My grace is sufficient for thee.” It stayed. If church is where you get healed and then leave, the apostle Paul never left.

It is the same with sin, which is the sickness Jesus was really talking about. Peter asked how many times he must forgive a brother. “Till seven times?” Jesus said, “I say not unto thee, Until seven times: but, Until seventy times seven.” Then he told a story. A servant owed a king a huge debt. He begged, “Lord, have patience with me,” and the king forgave it all. The servant went out and found a man who owed him a little. That man said the same words: “Have patience with me.” The servant refused. In the whole chapter, the only person who is thrown out is the man who was shown patience and would not show it.

And nobody finishes. John writes to Christians: “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves.” In the Lord’s Prayer, “Give us this day our daily bread” is followed at once by “forgive us our debts.” Luther said that this life is “not righteousness, but growth in righteousness, not health, but healing.” A Christian is getting better. He is not yet well.

Three kinds of patient

The author asked a sharp question. Does growing in holiness give the strong permission to stop putting up with the weak? Paul speaks to the strong directly.

“We then that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak, and not to please ourselves.” “Ought” here means “owe.” Being strong is the reason for the duty. And: “Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.”

His fullest instruction is one verse: “Now we exhort you, brethren, warn them that are unruly, comfort the feebleminded, support the weak, be patient toward all men.”

That is three kinds of member and three treatments. The unruly are people who could do their part and will not. The word was used for a soldier out of line. They are to be warned. The feebleminded are not what that word means today. The Greek word means “small-souled”: people who have lost heart. They are to be comforted. The weak are people without strength. They are to be supported, which means held on to. Then one rule covers everyone: be patient toward all.

Only the first group gets a warning. Telling a person who has lost heart that her time is up is a warning. Paul orders comfort.

Paul goes further. He says the weak are needed: “those members of the body, which seem to be more feeble, are necessary.” None of these commands has a date on it.

Here are six church members, all made up. Which of Paul’s three treatments fits each?

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What the sermon gets right

The preacher had real texts on his side, and they should be heard.

People are meant to grow. The letter to the Hebrews says, “for the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need that one teach you again.” That verse does count time. But read on. The writer does not send them away. He says, “But, beloved, we are persuaded better things of you,” and goes on teaching them. Time raises what is expected of a person. It does not end the care.

Jesus healed people and sent them home. He told the man from the tombs, “Go home to thy friends.” That is true. But he was sending him back among God’s people, with a job to do. He was not sending him out of it.

Some people do not want to get better. Paul said, “if any would not work, neither should he eat.” But in the same place he adds, “be not weary in well doing,” and says of the lazy man, “count him not as an enemy, but admonish him as a brother.”

A pastor is only one person. This is the preacher’s strongest point, and he is right. Moses said, “I am not able to bear all this people alone.” Jesus himself left a town while people were still looking for him. Nobody is told to carry everyone.

But look at what was done about it. Moses was given seventy elders to help. When the widows in Jerusalem were being missed and the apostles could not do everything, they chose seven more men. Each time the load was too heavy for the helper. Each time the answer was more helpers. It was never fewer patients.

Who gets put out, and why

The New Testament does have a door out of the church. It says exactly who goes through it.

Jesus gave the steps. “If thy brother shall trespass against thee, go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone: if he shall hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother.” If he will not listen, take one or two others. If he still will not, tell the church. “But if he neglect to hear the church, let him be unto thee as an heathen man and a publican.”

Look at the reason. It starts with a wrong he has done. He gets three chances. What finally puts him out is that he will not listen. And the aim, from the first step, is to gain him back.

Paul’s hardest case was a man at Corinth living with his father’s wife, in a church that was proud of putting up with it. Paul said, “put away from among yourselves that wicked person.” Later he writes about a man the church had punished, who was now sorry: “Sufficient to such a man is this punishment … ye ought rather to forgive him, and comfort him, lest perhaps such a one should be swallowed up with overmuch sorrow.” So there is a time limit in these chapters. It is on the punishment.

There is one more case. The apostle John writes about a church leader named Diotrephes, “who loveth to have the preeminence.” He would not welcome fellow Christians, stopped others from welcoming them, “and casteth them out of the church.” He is one of the very few people the New Testament names as a bad example in a church, and his fault was deciding who could stay.

Here are six verses where a church is told to put someone out or avoid him. What reason does each give?

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“Eliminate it”

The preacher said he would eliminate whatever got between him and Christ. Jesus did say something like that: “if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee.” “Offend” meant “make you stumble.” On the face of it he is talking about a man’s own eye and his own sin.

The author’s brief treated it as a plain mistake to apply this to people. That needs correcting. Two great teachers of the early Church did apply it to people. Chrysostom said the eye and hand stand for someone you love who “hurts your soul.” Augustine said the right eye could be “a greatly beloved friend.” But both meant a friend who is leading you into sin. A person who needs your help is a different case.

Three things in the New Testament show the difference. First, Matthew records the saying twice. The second time, the very next words are, “Take heed that ye despise not one of these little ones,” followed by the story of the shepherd who leaves ninety-nine sheep to find one. Second, Paul uses the same picture about church members and says, “the eye cannot say unto the hand, I have no need of thee.” Third, Jesus says where he is found: “I was sick, and ye visited me … Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.” A sick brother cannot be standing between you and Christ, if Christ says that what you do for him you do for Christ.

The disciples often tried to clear people away from Jesus. “Send her away; for she crieth after us.” “Send the multitude away.” Each time he stopped them. “They need not depart.”

What about “you don’t have to help everybody”? The Good Samaritan agrees with that, in a way. He was on a journey. He could not stay. So he took the wounded man to an inn, paid, and told the innkeeper, “Take care of him; and whatsoever thou spendest more, when I come again, I will repay thee.” He had limits and he kept to them. But he handed the man on to more care. He did not leave him in the road, and nobody at the inn told the man he had been there long enough.

Here are eight sentences from the Gospels. Who is speaking?

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What the Church has said

The oldest Christian picture of the church is not a hospital. It is the inn in that story. Augustine preached that Christ is the Samaritan and we are the wounded man: “let us be carried into the inn to be healed.” He called the Church “the traveller’s inn,” where “the wounded is healed meanwhile.” Meanwhile means until the Samaritan comes back. Nobody at the inn sets the leaving date.

The Church was once asked the sermon’s question officially. In the year 250 many Christians gave way under persecution and later wanted to return. A strict group said they could never be taken back. They called themselves “the Pure.” The Church decided against them. In 325 the Council of Nicaea made the Pure promise in writing to share communion with those who had fallen and been restored.

Later writers said the same in their own words.

The last line is from John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. A man called Mr Feeble-mind offers to stay behind so that he will not slow the other travellers down. Their guide, Great-heart, will not hear of it: “I have it in commission to comfort the feeble-minded, and to support the weak.”

And Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German pastor, wrote in 1938: “The elimination of the weak is the death of the fellowship.”

In fairness, the Church has not always been gentle. Some of its punishments were harsh, and strict groups have appeared again and again. But each time the question was put officially, whether the church is only for those who have got right, the answer was no.

“Not a mental asylum”

This is the phrase people will remember. The preacher may have meant it only as a picture of a church where nobody ever changes. He may not have been thinking of mentally ill people at all. But the words he chose are the name of the place where mentally ill people used to live. Anyone in the room with such an illness, or with a son or daughter who has one, will have heard them.

The word “asylum” is Greek. It means a place of safety from which a person cannot be dragged away. For more than a thousand years a person who reached a church could claim that safety. So “church is not an asylum” says, by the plain meaning of its words, that church is not a refuge.

The Bible records who was called mad. Of Jesus, Mark writes: “And when his friends heard of it, they went out to lay hold on him: for they said, He is beside himself.” Others said, “He hath a devil, and is mad.” A Roman governor told Paul, “much learning doth make thee mad.” The Lord of the Church was once the person his family came to take away.

The Bible also keeps a place for people in the dark. Elijah sat under a tree and asked to die. An angel gave him food and let him sleep, twice, and said, “the journey is too great for thee.” Nobody gave him a deadline.

Christians have a mixed record here, and it should be told honestly. They chained the mentally ill and blamed them. But they also built the first hospitals. In the town of Geel, in Belgium, families linked to the church of St Dymphna have taken mentally ill people into their own homes since the 1200s, and still do. In 1796 a Quaker named William Tuke opened a house in York for the mentally ill that used no chains. The idea that such people are owed a refuge came into Europe through the Church.

Many illnesses of the mind last for years. They are like Paul’s thorn. A rule that says “get healed and then come out” does not ask such people to do something they can do. It tells them before they start that they are the wrong kind of patient. They will not argue. They will quietly stop coming.

Check it yourself

Five things. The first takes ten minutes. The last is the one that matters.

1. 1. Read Mark 2:13–17 and Matthew 18, the whole chapter. Where was Jesus when he spoke of the physician? In Matthew 18, what comes just before and just after the verses about putting a brother out?
2. 2. Read John 5:1–15, Luke 13:10–17 and Mark 5:25–34. Write down every number. Does anyone blame the patient for it?
3. 3. Read Romans 15:1–7, Galatians 6:1–10 and 1 Thessalonians 5:14. What do the strong owe the weak? Is there a time limit?
4. 4. Read 1 Corinthians 5, 2 Corinthians 2:5–8, Titus 3:10 and 3 John. For each person who is put out or avoided, write down what he did.
5. 5. Think of one person. Do this one. Think of someone in your church who has been struggling for a long time. Does anyone besides the pastor know their name and their trouble? What could you do this Sunday that would tell them they still belong?