More common : Difficulty with speaking , drooling , loss of balance control , muscle trembling, jerking, or stiffness , restlessness , shuffling walk , stiffness of the limbs , twisting movements of the body , uncontrolled movements, especially of the face, neck, and back .
Less common : Blurred vision , dizziness , headache , inability to move the eyes , increased blinking or spasms of the eyelid , nervousness , pounding in the ears , slow or fast heartbeat , sticking out the tongue , trouble with breathing or swallowing , unusual facial expressions .
Now I ask you in all sincerity. Is this the way Jesus solves our problems? Show me the verse that says perfect Prozac casts out all fear and I am on board but until then to pretend that this is right is simply wrong. Perry tries to do his final sell:
What I am saying is this"The church has used, "pray and read your Bible more" as a "cure" for anxiety and depression for far too long. And we have placed people who use medication to treat the issue in a category that is way less godly than those who do not use it.
I am not sure I agree that this is true but if this has been the church answer I would agree it is wrong. The answer is not as easy as reading your Bible more and pray, although those are always great starting points. As for the charge of treating some people as less "godly"; well the church does that as a whole on so many levels and it is wrong on every one of them. Those admissions of course lend no credibility to the position that psychotropic medication is somehow a good or godly thing.
I do not wish Perry Noble any ill will. I wish he would realize his grievous errors and correct them and repent. Perhaps then he would find spiritual relief instead of medicated relief. I wish I had all of the answers and I can tell you that the feelings of anxiety, panic and depression are very real. What I do know is that the Bible does have all of the answers even of we do not apply them:
Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ. - Galatians 6: 2 (ESV)
The sad truth is that we do a very poor job of bearing each others burdens. We would rather say - "I'll pray for you" - than actually stopping our lives to pray with our brother and sister. We pay lip service to loving one another but shrink back when it requires heavy lifting. I have heard pastors defend medication for mental illness because they simply did not want to deal with the problem anymore. No discussion about spiritual warfare. No discussion about demonic attacks. I heard a pastor once say that a woman saved over 25 years who had attempted suicide did not suffer from demonic attack - just mental illness. With such a poor understanding of the spirit realm, is it any wonder that now we have a pastor leading a flock of 26,000 people openly pushing psychotropic drugs? When Jesus confronted the man who was dealing with demons that caused him to cut himself with rocks did He fall back on the p harmakeia of His day or did He cast out the demons? Why is it that if any Christian has as much as a hangnail we all respond with a chorus of "by His stripes" but the second someone says they are depressed or anxious we send them off into the Babylon system seeking the Babylon solution?
