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Writer's pictureRobyn Cunningham

Schizophrenia and the Bible

Updated: Dec 31, 2019

Let's talk about a topic the church doesn't like to discuss because it's offensive. Mental Health.

Everyone knows someone that has suffered from schizophrenia, has met someone or has seen in some form somebody that has been afflicted by this disease. It's painful and it hurts to see anyone tormented by this. If you don't or haven't, then go down to a homeless shelter and hang out for a few hours, You're sure to meet someone with schizophrenia there. My Aunt was schizophrenic and she withdrew from our family and died with none of us there. One of my childhood best friends was afflicted by this disease and he took his life as a result.


Society has attached a stigma to schizophrenia and has ostracized people afflicted with this medical condition for millennia. As a result, people don't get help and feel alone and abandoned which causes more pain and anguish than what they already had been suffering. This has got to end.

Let me start by saying that I am not a doctor, nor do I practice medicine in any way. The purpose of this blog is not to draw attention to people who are afflicted, but it is to draw attention to the spiritual dynamics, causes, and cure for this disease. Put on your thinking cap, put away your rose-colored lenses and let's delve into the neglected history of schizophrenia.

Let's start with the name 'Schizophrenia.' This word is a combination of two Greek words that we see very often in the new testament. Schizo- meaning to split, divide, to cleave (either divide apart, or join together as one such as cleaving unto your husband or wife), or to tear. The next word is Phreno. This word means Your inner feelings and emotions; your mind or intellect. lastly, the suffix IA at the end of the word is the Greek way of saying of or belonging to. It has been theorized that this term came from the Hebraic mindset that IA, or iona and Alpha, is the Greek variant of the word Yah which indicated that all things were created and belonging to God. If you take the meaning of all three words in Greek and translate it into English it says, 'a mind divided from God or a mind belonging to division.'


The dictionary definition of schizophrenia defines it similarly by saying, "a long-term mental disorder of a type involving a breakdown in the relation between thought, emotion, and behavior, leading to faulty perception, inappropriate actions and feelings, withdrawal from reality and personal relationships into fantasy and delusion, and a sense of mental fragmentation."

Typically, people think of schizophrenia as dealing with multiple personalities and fail to realize that these people are suffering from emotional turmoil, differentiating from what is right and wrong and what is reality. That is not always the case. I have noticed that Christians typically think schizophrenia is multiple demons infesting a person but they only ever use one scripture about the man in the tombs without any explanation or understanding except for one aspect of the disease is multiple personalities.

However, if you look at the scriptures with a more broad understanding you can see where the man in the tombs may have been schizophrenic. Here is why I say that. You must remember that schizophrenia is dealing with a breakdown in the relation between thought, emotion, and behavior. If you look at the account of the man in the tomb in Mark 5:5 you will read this verse, "Night and day among the tombs and in the hills, he would cry out and cut himself with stones."

The Greek word for cry out is Krazon. Strong's defines this word as to cry aloud or to shriek. it is an onomatopoeic word that is used to describe the shriek or caw of a raven. This type of shrieking is one that comes from a person's inability to adequately express their emotional state in a concise manner. Here we see evidence of one aspect that the person may have suffered from schizophrenia because he was not only occasionally emotional torn and out of control, but he was frequently torn to the extent the villagers bound him in chains to keep both himself and themselves safe.

Next in the verse, we see that he cut himself. Typically people that suffer from schizophrenia are known to cause self-harm due to hallucinations, depression or catatonic excitement. In this sense, I believe this was a type of catatonic excitement that caused the man to self-harm.

In my own eyes, I believe we can identify that this person had schizophrenia. Unfortunately, that only diagnoses a problem. in the medical world, you could prescribe some medicine to someone to help them deal with the symptoms, but without taking care of the spiritual cause you won't be able to set the person free.

You have probably already guessed where I am going with this now. Yup, the spiritual cause of schizophrenia. let's look at Mark 5 again. "Night and day among the tombs and in the hills he would cry out and cut himself with stones. When he saw Jesus from a distance, he ran and fell on his knees in front of him. He shouted at the top of his voice, “What do you want with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? In God’s name don’t torture me!” For Jesus had said to him, “Come out of this man, you impure spirit!” Then Jesus asked him, “What is your name?” “My name is Legion,” he replied, “for we are many.” And he begged Jesus again and again not to send them out of the area. Whoa, wait a minute. Did you notice how it from the man speaking to a demon speaking to all the demons speaking?

To believe fully what I am about to tell you, you have to believe the Bible is completely true and right. The reason I say this is because a while back I heard someone say, 'anything they didn't understand back then they thought was demonic because they did not know medicine like we do today." I could have gone along with that mindset, but in doing so I would be saying inadvertently that Jesus didn't know everything and wasn't always right. Since I believe that God is always right and is infallible and that Jesus is God incarnate, then logically you can't say that Jesus didn't know that mental illness, in this case, schizophrenia, wasn't caused by a demon. Can you imagine correcting Jesus and saying, "Jesus, you flubbed up. That wasn't a demon, that was a mentally ill man." I dare to venture that Jesus would respond by saying, "Get behind me Satan." I also have to point out that the author of Mark specifically took note of when the man was speaking verses when the demons were speaking.

Even though a human could try to rationalize that it was just the man speaking, the author points out that Jesus specifically commanded the Demon to leave. He didn't address the man as though he were a lunatic. He didn't get scared and run away, he didn't even flinch. The demon threw the man at the feet of Jesus and begged for mercy and made a petition and request not to have to leave the country they were in. I find it interesting that a demon, or in this case several demons, would ask for mercy when they don't ever show mercy to anyone.

Do you know what else Jesus didn't do? He didn't make any accusations that the demonized man was at fault for being oppressed by demons. He didn't blame the man for not having faith or sinning somehow to allow himself to be demonized. This is something that the church could stand to take note of. The proper way to deal with a person that is not in their right mind is not to ostracize them and shut them away from society; It's to love them.

I can almost hear what people are saying to themselves now, "You mean to tell me that you think that all mental illness is caused by demons?" To put it quite frankly, that is not what I said, but I do believe that all sickness is the result of demonic influence over a person's life. However, that doesn't mean that a person is possessed by a demon if they are sick; It merely means that a demon is causing sickness to come on a person.

Sickness is not God's will. In the old testament sickness was the result of a person disobeying God's will and obeying the will of their master, the enemy of God. It isn't god's will for a person to be sick because that would mean that it was God's will for a person to sin against him just so he could make them sick. I would not want to worship a God that does that.

God only wants to prosper you and bless you. Jeremiah 29:11 says, " For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." The enemy tries to get Christians to believe that sickness is God's will because it gives him the ability to get you to have faith that you can get sick. Some may even call this an open door. well then, SHUT THE DOOR! YOU"RE LETTING THE WRONG RUACH IN!

Little do many believers realize that you must believe in your heart and confess with your mouth that you are not sick and that you can't get sick. People just see healing as something that Jesus did at the cross for that time and that healing is something that randomly happens as God sees fit and on the same note don't realize that they are saying God is contradicting himself by saying, "Sickness is God's will and He paid the price for us to be healed so healing is his will." What God do you worship that says he wants you sick and wants you healed at the same time? That's called double-mindedness and that's what keeps a member of the body of Christ captive in sickness.

Let me leave you with this one thing to ponder on. Jesus says in John 10:10, "The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life and that they may have it more abundantly." The word for steal is klepton which is where we get the word for klepto or kleptomania. The word for kill is thyse which means not just to kill, but to butcher something and to offer something as a sacrifice on an altar. Destroy in Greek is appolumi. This word is the worst one of them all. Here's what the Strong's concordance says about this word, "

"apóllymi; properly, fully destroy, cutting off entirely; violently/completely perish; implies permanent (absolute) destruction, i.e. to cancel out (remove); "to die, with the implication of ruin and destruction" cause to be lost (utterly perish) by experiencing a miserable end."

God's will is not for you to be violently slaughtered as a sacrifice to the devil; it's not to steal or take something from you that was adding to your life and his will is certainly not to cause you to perish. We know that not perishing is specifically his will because of john 3:16. If you're dying from cancer it is not from God. That cancer is designed by the enemy of God to cause you to be consumed and die. All sickness is the infant stage of death whether it be a mental illness that is causing depression leading to suicide, or causing you to fight and drive away loved ones, or it's a terminal illness or even a common cold.

I am not making light of mental illness. I am not saying that you are possessed by a demon if you are unhealthy in any form. What I am saying is that sickness is the enemy of God no matter how you look at it and as such you need to fight it as though it were spiritual warfare.

Years ago I was depressed and suicidal before I got saved. I got saved and then I got delivered. Before I was saved I was epileptic. Afterward, I got saved and I got delivered and have delivered others from that. As Christians, we have the total and complete access to the freedom from any form of spiritual bondage that the enemy pf God is keeping us in. Are you willing to take that freedom as yours? Good! Here's how you do it.

Step 1: Declare that you receive and believe this healing is yours because of what Jesus did through the brokenness of his body.

Step 2: Command that sickness and all of its friends to leave you and not to come back. Bind them and break their power over your flesh.

Step 3: Command your body to line up with the word of God which is total healing and wholeness.

From this moment forward you may no longer claim any sickness or mental illness as your illness. You must continually, every day, declare that you are healed and you are set free and tell your body that if it is acting up in any way that doesn't line up with the word of God that it will line up and it is healed in Jesus name. It's o.k. to say "I don't feel great", but to follow that up with, "I am not healed or I am sick, or they are such and such," is entering into disbelief. What you speak is what you get. If you pray and then speak out the opposite of what you just prayed, you will get the opposite of what you prayed.



I am not saying lie and tell someone that you are feeling OK when you are feeling like nothing is OK. I am saying if someone asks how you are that you can say, "I don't feel well, but I believe that I am healed by Jesus stripes." You must speak out your destiny and what you want to manifest in your life and no longer claim anything that isn't in line with God's will as your own. For more information on how to war in the spirit and see your prayers answered please click the image to get your free E-book, 'Battleplan to Victory.'

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