In this episode of Faith & Clarity, Mark Turman sits down with author Chris Morris for an honest and deeply hopeful conversation about mental health and faith. Chris shares his personal story of walking through mental illness—and how God met him in the midst of despair after a suicide attempt. Together, they unpack common misconceptions Christians often have about mental health, the value of therapy and medication, and practical ways to quiet anxious thoughts. They also reflect on the gift of humor, community, and long-term relationships rooted in grace and truth. Whether you’re navigating your own struggles or supporting someone you love, this conversation offers gentle wisdom and a reminder that God’s presence meets us even in the darkest places.
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Topics
- (01:27): Introducing Chris Morris
- (04:58): Understanding mental health myths
- (06:56): Holistic approach to mental health
- (10:22): The role of medication
- (17:16): Chris Morris’ faith journey
- (23:08): Taking every thought captive
- (30:40): Self-reflection and preparation
- (31:42): The role of humor in mental health
- (34:53): Mental health and sin: Untangling the connection
- (35:58): Understanding anxiety in biblical context
- (44:08): Finding the right counselor
- (50:27): Supporting long-term mental health struggles
- (55:23): Encouragement for those struggling
Resources
- Ask Us Anything: [email protected]
- How has Denison Forum impacted your faith?
- Chris Morris Speaks
- Chris Morris (@chrismorriswrites) • Instagram photos and videos
- Chris Morris Writes
- Resilient and Redeemed: Lessons about Suicidality and Depression from the Psych Ward
- Trekking Toward Tenacity: Your Family’s Roadmap to Stronger Mental Health
- By Faith: Strength and Hope for Life’s Challenges
- Perfectly Abnormal: Uncovering the Image of God in Chronic Illness
- Whispers in the Pews: Voices on Mental Health Illness in the Church
About Chris Morris
In 2020, Chris Morris experienced a life-changing encounter with God that transformed his struggle with mental health. After a suicide attempt, Chris heard God’s radical message: “I still love you,” which gave him the strength to rebuild his life. Today, Chris is a passionate author, speaker, and ministry leader, helping others navigate mental health challenges through faith and therapeutic tools. He leads a mental health ministry at his church, which launched with 70 attendees on its first night— reflecting the deep need for safe spaces to discuss mental health and spirituality. Chris has authored three books on the intersection of faith and mental health, sharing his personal journey and spiritual insights.
As a graduate of Northern Seminary, Chris is able to process deep theological concerns with creativity and faith. A sought-after speaker, he regularly presents at national conferences, including the Disability and the Church conference. With humor and authenticity, Chris makes tough conversations easier, encouraging others on their own paths to healing and hope. One thing Chris has learned along the way? It’s important to laugh at yourself. He’s a six-foot-seven guy who’s terrified of heights (ridiculous, right?), so he doesn’t take himself too seriously. Life’s tough enough as it is, and bringing humor and authenticity to hard conversations always makes them a little bit easier to navigate.
About Dr. Mark Turman
Mark Turman, DMin, serves as the Executive Director of Denison Forum, where he leads with a passion for equipping believers to navigate today’s complex culture with biblical truth. He is best known as the host of The Denison Forum Podcast and the lead pastor of the Possum Kingdom Chapel, the in-person congregation of Denison Ministries.
Dr. Turman is the coauthor of Sacred Sexuality: Reclaiming God’s Design and Who Am I? What the Bible Says About Identity and Why it Matters. He earned his undergraduate degree from Howard Payne University in Brownwood, Texas, and received his Master of Divinity from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth. He later completed his Doctor of Ministry at George W. Truett Theological Seminary at Baylor University in Waco.
Before joining Denison Forum, Mark served as a pastor for 35 years, including 25 years as the founding pastor of Crosspoint Church in McKinney, Texas.
Mark and his high school sweetheart, Judi, married in 1986. They are proud parents of two adult children and grandparents to three grandchildren.
About Denison Forum
Denison Forum exists to thoughtfully engage the issues of the day from a biblical perspective through The Daily Article email newsletter and podcast, the Faith & Clarity podcast, as well as many books and additional resources.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
NOTE: This transcript was AI-generated and has not been fully edited.
Dr. Mark Turman: [00:00:00] Welcome to Faith and Clarity. I’m your host, Mark Turman. This is a Denison Forum podcast and we’re glad that you’re following with us not only on this podcast, but in all of our resources at denisonforum.org. We want help you in every way to find hope beyond the headlines, to get some clarity in today’s cultural confusion, what some might even call cultural chaos.
We want help you live by faith, not by fear, in the full hope that Jesus gives us because of his love for us. So we’re going to jump right in today. And continue our conversation series about mental health. We’ve talked about this a number of times on faith and clarity, and we want to continue to do that because it is a pervasive issue in our culture.
I would suspect that everybody that listens to this podcast. Either experiences, some level of mental illness struggle, maybe some really deep and profound struggles. [00:01:00] If not you, I suspect somebody that you know and care about really has some of these issues as well. And we’re learning more and more all the time.
That’s the great thing about. Our culture in terms of healthcare and in terms of spiritual care we’re learning more and more about how these issues work and how we can lean into God’s love and grace and find redemption. So we’re gonna talk about some of those struggles today. With my guest Chris Morris.
Chris, lemme tell you a little bit more about him. His passion is to help people that are struggling with mental illness and then beyond that, to equip Christians to help people they know who are encountering struggle, encountering struggles with mental illness. In two, in 20,000 or 2020, Chris experienced a life-changing encounter with God through a struggle with mental illness that led him.
To attempt suicide. In the midst of that and beyond that experience, he heard God’s voice [00:02:00] saying to him, I still love you. And that simple foundational truth of the gospel gave him the strength to build, to rebuild his life. And today to serve as a passionate, author, speaker, and ministry leader in his church in Arizona, he helps people to navigate mental health challenges.
The combination of both faith and therapeutic tools. He’s an author of three books, a Graduate of Northern Seminary, and brings together through all of that, the connection between theological concerns, creativity, and faith. You can also find him not only on most major platforms, but you can find him speaking at conferences such as disability and the church conference.
And others. And then this last thing I wanna share Chris points out it’s important to laugh at yourself and we’re gonna get into that in a lot more. Chris, welcome to the Faith and Clarity Podcast.
Chris Morris: I’m so thrilled to be here, Mark. Thank you very much.
Dr. Mark Turman: Thanks for all the work that you have done [00:03:00] and for the vulnerability of your testimony.
Let’s talk off as we get going here for a moment. Talk a little bit about your understanding of the scope and scale of the problem of mental illness and things like anxiety and depression, that people are struggling. Some of the statistics can be staggering. When you think about just the, the problem that God has called you to minister into how do you think about the scope and scale of that?
Chris Morris: I think you hit the nail on the head, Mark really when you said that every single person listening to this podcast either has struggled or knows someone who has struggled with their mental health. I, I recently saw a statistic from the World Health Organization. It said that in 2020, now this was. COVID, so it’s probably escalated, elevated a little bit, but right numbers are coming out that say upwards of 85% of people reported a struggle with depression [00:04:00] or anxiety within the last six months in 2020.
That number is really staggering and it’s almost overwhelming.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah. And, and COVID really magnified a lot of those struggles brought more people into the struggle, I think. And then also people that were already struggling just had their experience magnified in a really, really big and strong way.
But this has been something that’s really kind of great, I think as a pastor for 40 years, that we’re actually bringing these struggles into the light. Of of truth into the light of the grace and, and mercy of the gospel and not hopefully seeing people isolate as much. That’s one of the reasons we wanted to talk about it on our podcast is to just.
To give people permission and confidence about stepping out, asking for help when they need it, asking for prayer, when they need it, asking for people to just come alongside of them. But that kinda raises [00:05:00] the question that there are still a lot of myths about. Mental health and about things like anxiety and depression that many Christians hold onto.
Has that been something that you’ve encountered? What are some of the myths maybe that are still pretty prevalent within the Christian community about mental health?
Chris Morris: So probably the number one myth that I see and experience in a lot of the churches and communities that I work with is this idea that.
Every mental health struggle has only a spiritual solution. Lemme explain what I mean by that. So someone comes to a pastor who is well-meaning and says, I’m struggling with depression. I have some suicidal thoughts, or maybe I’m struggling with anxiety. And the response to them would be almost like a, a spiritual assessment.
Are you reading your Bible? Are you praying? Are you in, are, are, are you serving somewhere? Like those are the top three questions that I find [00:06:00] that pastors respond to those who are struggling with mental health issues when they are honest and transparent. And look, I, mark, I don’t mean to denigrate those things by.
Any stretch of the imagination. I think prayer is meaningful. I think reading scripture is powerful and serving is what God calls us to do. But I would also include some other things that have been really valuable for me in the context of my sort of redevelopments of a foundation. I would include things like therapy.
I would include things like cognitive reframing. I would say that medication sometimes is helpful and having deep, transparent interactions with others, whether they’re in the church or outside the church. Mm-hmm. Your local body. Those are, those are four things that I would add to the, that, that kind of top three list.
So this idea that there’s only [00:07:00] spiritual solutions, it’s sort of it, it underscores an unintentional misunderstanding of. The way I believe that God created humanity. I think he made us as holistic beings. So what I mean when I say that is that our emotions are impacted and influenced by our physical selves, both of which are influenced by our mental selves, both of what, all of which are influenced by our spiritual selves right?
The way I like to sort of demonstrate that is the use of the, the word hangry. We, we, we all know that we’re not our best selves. When we’re hungry, we might have an emotional overreaction, but it goes deeper than just hangry. So what it, what that might look like is your sleep routine. If your sleep routine is really substandard, you’re getting 12 hours of sleep one day, and then three hours the next, that could really significantly impact your emotional wellbeing.
So having a good sleep [00:08:00] regimen is really important. That has nothing to do with spirituality, but everything to do with mental wellbeing.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah. And, and, and those things are deeply tied. A number of years ago in my church, I had a, a family that really illustrated that very deeply. They they had a college age son who they got a call one morning and he was several states away attending college.
They got a call from the school that their son had been not arrested but detained by a police officer because he was walking through a public park with only a pair of shorts on, and he was predicting the end of the world and calling people, you know, in this kind of strange way to repent. And this officer detained him and decided not to take him to prison, but rather to take him to a hospital.
And they thought that he was having basically a psychotic break. Mm-hmm. And what they did is they brought him back to his hometown and they found out after him being in the hospital [00:09:00] for about seven or eight days, they were able to get him to sleep on a consistent basis, to eat on a consistent basis.
And within 5, 6, 7 days, he came back to his, basically what we would call right mind. Wow. And what they found under further investigation was, is that he under, he was under so much stress as a college student wanting to perform well, that he wasn’t doing some of those basic things that you were talking about.
He wasn’t sleeping consistently, he wasn’t eating, he wasn’t fellowshipping with other people. He wasn’t taking breaks in order to rest. And those things led him down that pathway. And so it just really does speak to that idea of something that. We need to realize is that we are not compartments, but we are holistic.
We also, we had a recent guest who used the word heart that you know when you’re day or you’re weak or your life’s not going well, ask yourself, you know, am I hungry? Am I am I exhausted? Am I [00:10:00] angry? Am I resentful? Am I experiencing tension? You know, she had a whole acrostic for just that word. That’s, that’s beautiful to try to, to try to frame this for us.
That you know, we are both physical, spiritual, as well as mental and emotional people. And we have to consider all of those kinds of angles. Chris, I wanna come back for a moment. To just a little bit of your perspective on medication. It just seems in some ways we see all kinds of conversations about the use of medication, many of which are exactly what needs to happen.
I remember hearing a few years ago about the theologian Leonard Suite saying, you know, I had to come to the place where I realized. That God’s will for my life was this small little pill that the doctor told me I needed to take every day in order for my brain to work. Do you think that, have we gotten into a pattern where we’re too quick to medication?
What, what would be your recommendation about how people would approach that topic? [00:11:00]
Chris Morris: Oh, that’s a really great and insightful question mark. I love it. I guess the, the, the first thing that I would say. Sort of I, the way that I frame medication is I think about it as one of the, the common graces that God makes available to us.
Matthew five, Jesus talks about rain falling on the just and the unjust. Yeah. And there’s sort of a natural extension in my mind to anything that as humans we’re able to discover, create, develop. It sort of falls into that common graces category. So that would be the first thing that I would say when I think about medication is I always think about it as a.
As, as a common grace, I actually deal with a lot of communities where there is still a ton of negativity toward psychotherapeutic medication. Where there, there’s a, a staunch [00:12:00] dividing line if you’re diabetic, you can take insulin, but you shouldn’t take a medication. You shouldn’t take lithium if you’re bipolar.
Dr. Mark Turman: Hmm.
Chris Morris: So that, so that, that weird dynamic there. In terms of, do I think that we’re, we’re too quick to medicate, which was really your direct question. Sorry to go off script a little bit.
Dr. Mark Turman: No, that’s all right. It’s all right.
Chris Morris: My, my thought is we want to be careful. I have a friend, for example, who was diagnosed about a year and a half ago with a DHD.
Mm-hmm. She’s in her forties and has per, has built the architecture around her life. That has allowed her to function at a pretty high level. Mm-hmm. Despite her A DHD, she had a good conversation with, with her psych where she explained all these things and, and the, the, the psychiatrist said, it sounds like you might not need the meds, but I just wanna ask you a [00:13:00] question.
What would it be like for you if you didn’t have to have that rigid architecture? Because by the way, most people don’t need to have that kind of rigid architecture to stay on task For most people, it just happens. Hmm. What would it look like for you to not have to have that rigidity in your life, and is that something you’re willing to consider?
So she decided to go on an A DHD Med. After. She’s very much a, a natural naturopath leaning person, so it was a long mm-hmm. Decision where she talked with a bunch of people and initially was thinking she didn’t wanna do it, but she decided to do it after, after some time. And has found that not having to have that kind of architecture in her life has brought a lot of freedom and a lot of even security to her.
So I, I [00:14:00] think the thing that we need to avoid is taking on, taking a passive role. When we’re talking with a physician about a medication, we always wanna be actively involved in the conversation. My particular psych is great. He will say, you know, I. Mark. I failed something like 14 antidepressants before we found one that worked for me.
It’s actually a combination of two that worked for me. We were running out of things. Mm-hmm. Which is why it was so hard for me to find stability. But every time we would have that conversation, he would lay out for me. So here’s the mechanism of action for this particular med. Here’s the risks of what it might do.
He would have my other med, my other meds I, I am a diabetic, so he would look at blood sugars and I have a history of epilepsy in my family, though I don’t currently have seizures. So he would look at, [00:15:00] is it lowering the threshold of seizures? He would look at other side effects that maybe I might not want and say, does this sound like a medication that is worth the risk of these potential side effects to try?
And not every psychiatrist is as automatically open to that kind of conversation. Sometimes we have to create those conversations.
Dr. Mark Turman: Mm-hmm.
Chris Morris: But I would encourage folks to think about it from that perspective and ask those questions rather than just, oh, you want to put me on a med? Sure, why not?
Okay what are the side effects of this med? And if they don’t know, say no. And do your own research. The good news is that, you know, for something like a drug side effect, that information is readily available and easily accessible on the internet. Yeah. And that’s, and it can be fairly [00:16:00] trusted. It’s not like asking someone, you know, which political opinion is correct.
You’ll get 15 different answers. Drug side effects is much more black and white.
Dr. Mark Turman: And, and, you know, and it can be a little bit overwhelming if, if not frustrating to know that you need to be your own advocate when you’re in a a doctor’s office of any kind. Um mm-hmm. But that’s much more of the world that we live in and we would.
You know, we, some of us have lived with this idea that, you know, medically trained doctors of any kind, psychologist or other healthcare providers are kinda like magicians. They just do a few things and then they tell you, this is the thing you need to do, or this is the thing that you need to take. Medicine has never been that simple.
It’s never been that easy. And we always need to be very much engaged in our own understanding of what’s going on in our body. You know, I’ve, I’m currently taking a medication, it’s on a trial basis, not for a mental health condition, but for a digestive issue. And, you know, you just you, you constantly [00:17:00] have to be navigating these things with your healthcare provider because it’s, it’s not as simple and clean as what we might want it to be.
And that can in, in and of itself be anxiety producing and and overwhelming to us at times. Chris, talk a little bit more, help people understand a little bit of more of where your your ministry, your, your writing, your speaking, how did that come out of your own story? Tell us a little bit about your faith journey, and then where did your struggle with the things like anxiety and depression?
Where did those things start to emerge in your story?
Chris Morris: Okay my str I have been a lifelong battler with suicidality and depression. Specifically anxiety is sort of a late comer to my life, but I, I experienced a decent amount of trauma growing up. My dad was a fairly violent alcoholic.
Dr. Mark Turman: Hmm.
Chris Morris: So I had a lot of, I, you [00:18:00] know, a lot of negative things that happened to me.
Didn’t have a lot of encouragement growing up. Actually my introduction to Christianity, my introduction to Jesus came on the tail end of this great cosmic bet that I made with God that no one should ever do. It worked out okay for me, but not a good life plan. Yeah, I was, I was struggling with some vitality and I, I prayed this crazy prayer.
God, I don’t even know if you’re real. I don’t even know if you’re listening. You’ve got seven days to show up. I know where a gun is and I know how to use it and I will kill myself if you don’t show up. Wow. Through a series of really almost bizarre circumstances, I ended up being invited to a local church and that the youth pastor, I was 15 at the time, the youth pastor was talking out of Romans chapter eight.
If God is for us, who can be against us. [00:19:00] Which is still like a, a foundational verse for my life, probably because of where it came out of, right? Yeah. And then he, you know, he quoted the last couple verses, neither life nor death, nor angels nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor any other created thing shall be able to separate you from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus, our Lord.
He said, but if you’re not in Christ, then none of this applies to you yet. I found this was on day seven, by the way of my cosmic bet with God that I heard a gospel presentation. Wow. And as I was hearing that my, my, you know, I, I can now look at it and say the Holy Spirit was, was moving in my heart saying, this is the truth.
This is what you’ve been looking for. This is the answer. So I went up and I talked with the youth pastor and I accepted Christ. I would, I would love to tell you like the, the perfect Christian story, the happily ever after. [00:20:00] And then I never struggled with depression and anxiety and suicidality again. But like I said, lifelong struggler ruined that story already.
Yeah. I had about three or four years when I was sort of in New Believer states where all of that stuff sort of paused. Hmm. Wow. And then. It came back probably because I was a young married man with a stepson, 2-year-old son trying to make life work. You know, I was 20, my wife was 21. We had a 2-year-old, and we were just trying to make it through life.
I, I had went to school to go into pastoral ministry. For several different reasons that basically didn’t work out. Hmm. I just didn’t land in ministry, so I was just working a job, any job. And my wife was working a job, any job. Hmm. And when you’re working a job, any job new normally jobs like that don’t pay well.
So we had [00:21:00] financial stressors and I was trying to figure out how to be a dad to a 2-year-old when I was 20. You know, I didn’t have the nine months to sort of prepare. I had, you know. There was a lot that was happening. So my, my suicidality and my depression returned. I went and I talked to my pastor about this.
I write about this in my, in my book. I, I laid out for him, I have this history of suicidality and I feel it coming back again. I’m not a risk to myself right now, but I’m worried that I will be if something doesn’t shift. And he gave me, and he gave me, I first interacted with that myth that we were talking about.
He said, Chris, man, up and pray more. Wow. I didn’t know how terrible of advice that was at the time. ’cause I was 20 and I was believing the pastor. So I walked out of that going, I thought I was praying enough. I thought I was doing all the right things. I’m serving, I’m praying every day. I’m reading my Bible.
Wow. Am I not even a Christian? What [00:22:00] is going on? And it set me back for five, six years.
Dr. Mark Turman: Hmm. Yeah. It just speaks, speaks to the influence that other people like pastors have in our life, you know? Mm-hmm. And just how important, you know, I, as a pastor, I may have been, sometimes I wondered if I was too quick.
’cause I, I learned in my training early on, hey. Be real, be real quick to understand where your limits are and if you need to refer somebody on to somebody with some different kind of training. You know, ’cause most pastors are not trained obviously to be counselors or psychologists. That’s why we have other people.
And you know, sometimes I thought maybe I should spend a little more time with people, but I at least had the, the training of saying, Hey, recognize when somebody. Is expressing struggles that they need a different kind of care than what they might find. That doesn’t mean that the pastor and the church don’t become a part of that story.
We’ll get to that in a minute. But they also need to realize that they may need to call in other resources that, that [00:23:00] can be better equipped to handle those things. Chris, one of the things that that drew me to your story was you, you touch on in some of your work. One of my passages of scripture that I continue to try to unload and understand at a deeper level, which is this idea of taking every thought captive to Christ.
Mm-hmm. I recently heard an author talk about that we have something like 70,000 thoughts a day. The overwhelming majority of those thoughts are negative and potentially harmful to us. And some of that has been backed up by research. What are some of the ways that you have discovered that have helped you and that you’ve seen help other people for, for navigating these negative thoughts and redeeming them in a way that keeps them from becoming destructive in our life?
Chris Morris: Oh, that’s such a great question. Yeah. I’ve, I’ve done a lot of work with people in this area, in part because. Of the [00:24:00] way my anxiety presents itself, my anxiety and my depression tag team and a terrible team up. So my, I have negative thoughts that come at me, but they don’t come one or two at a time.
They come seven or 800 at a time.
Dr. Mark Turman: Wow.
Chris Morris: And, and you know, all the, all the catastrophizing what if thoughts. Mm-hmm. Making mountains out of molehill, all happening at the same time. And my initial response and what led me down suicidal paths was to sort of just curl up in the fetal position and just try and survive.
And I, I sort of stayed with that really ineffective, inefficient approach until after my suicide attempt. I found a new counselor and he, he gave me four questions that have really revolutionized the way that I deal. With these negative anxiety ridden, catastrophizing [00:25:00] thoughts, and I can, and I, and I really believe that these are, the way that I view it, is they are taking the idea of take every thought captive in Christ and sort of putting feet on it.
Here’s what this actually means on a Tuesday afternoon at 2 45. Yeah. Yeah. That The first question is this. Is this thing that you’re worried about necessarily true?
Dr. Mark Turman: Hmm.
Chris Morris: By the way, the answer to that is always no. It’s always no. There’s no way that this thing we’re worried about is necess. There’s no guarantee that anything is going to happen.
Mark Twain has this great quote. He says, I, I’m an old man now and I’ve spent many years worrying about things, most of which never happened. He had away with words. I love, I love quoting him because he’s just absolutely a brilliant wordsmith. So that’s the first question.
Dr. Mark Turman: Okay. Yeah. I was gonna say, what are, what are the [00:26:00] other questions?
Chris Morris: Yeah, that, so the first question, is it necessary? Is this thing now that I’m worried about necessarily true, the next question is, what else could be, could potentially be true instead of this thing that you’re worried about? Because there’s always other potentialities there. I’m gonna give you a great story, a fake example of what, how this all works out after I go through these questions.
Okay? All right. The, the third question is, what can or should I do about these potential problems, these potential scenarios? Now, the trick with that one. Is we have to almost think about it like this. What one or two things should I, potential should I do to prepare for these potentialities? Because otherwise we’ve just put ourself in a worse situation than we were before, right?
Because we’ve identified seven or eight different potential outcomes, [00:27:00] and now we have to prepare for all of them. That’s awful. If you’re an anxious person, that doesn’t help at all. Yep. And then the fourth question, this is where, where we invite spirituality to be a part of this. Directly, we ask the question as a prayer, what might God be doing in this moment right now?
Hmm. My experience has been, when I pray a prayer, when I ask a question like that, the answer isn’t usually directly related to whatever it is I’m dealing with. The answer is more like, Chris, I’ve got you even in this circumstance, I’m walking with you. Hmm. So then we circle back to the idea that you see in Philippians four where we, we pray, we make a request made known to God and the peace of God, which transcends all knowledge is made available to us.
Dr. Mark Turman: Hmm.
Chris Morris: Let me give you the, the story [00:28:00] that sort of explains catastrophizing. Imagine you’re at, you’re at work. On Friday around two 30, your boss comes to you and says, oh, hey, by the way, on Monday I need to talk to you about something. Come on, stop by my office.
Dr. Mark Turman: Hmm.
Chris Morris: How does that feel? What’s your initial response to that?
Dr. Mark Turman: This couldn’t be good. Yeah, this couldn’t be, you
Chris Morris: start catastrophizing immediately. So there’s a series of if then statements that are released in your mind. If my boss wants to talk to me, I must be in trouble. Then you might go to, if I’m in trouble, then I’m probably gonna lose my job. And then maybe you go to, if I’m gonna lose my job, I might not be able to find a new one in this economy.
And then you go to, if I can’t find a new job in this economy, I’m gonna lose my house. Then you feel if I lose my house, I’m not gonna be able to afford a new apartment and I’m gonna be homeless. And in about 37 seconds you’ve gone from, your boss wants to talk to you in three days to you’re homeless [00:29:00] on the street.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah,
Chris Morris: exactly. That’s catastrophizing. That’s anxiety, out of control.
Dr. Mark Turman: So then we can walk really skilled. Yeah. Many of us are really skilled at that kind of scenario. Playing for sure.
Chris Morris: Oh, I have advanced degrees in it. I have, I’ve done post-doctoral work in this topic. That’s right. Yep. So if we go back to those questions, because the catastrophizing is always about the multiplied if then scenario building, like you said.
Hmm. Yeah. It’s never just one statement. There’s a series of them. So if we go back to that first statement, is it necessarily true that your boss wants to talk to you because of something negative on Monday? No. No, it’s not. It’s a possibility. No, but it’s not necessarily true. And that derails that defangs, that’s the word I like to use.
It defangs, the whole catastrophizing situation. And then you start to do [00:30:00] some cr you, you have space to be a little curious. What else? What other reasons might my boss want to talk to me and we could brainstorm. Maybe he wants to give me a raise. Maybe he wants to give me a promotion. Maybe I missed an unimportant team meeting and there was a policy change that came out.
Maybe two coworkers got into a fight and you witnessed it, and they want you as an un, as an unbiased observer. There’s four things off the top of my head that have nothing to do with losing your job. And then we go to that question. What one or two things might you want to do to prepare for those potentialities?
This is where a little bit with this scenario, a little bit of self-reflection is good. If you can objectively say to yourself, you know, maybe I haven’t been doing a spectacular job at work. Maybe I’ve been coasting a little bit, then it might not be a bad idea to update your [00:31:00] resume if you objectively notice.
You know, I, I’ve been mediocre. Yeah. If you can objectively look and say there’s, I don’t think there’s any legitimate reason that I should be in trouble, then the answer to what should I do is probably nothing. Maybe relax, calm down. Yep. And then that fourth question. Yeah. Who knows what God might say in that moment, in that scenario, but it would be good news because he always brings good news.
Dr. Mark Turman: And maybe his message in that moment is just lean on me and yes, I’ll take care of this. You know? Yes. Trust, trust me in this moment. Absolutely. Yeah. Really, really helpful. Chris. I wanted to talk a moment about just the role of humor in our lives. The role of humor in mental health. I can remember going back.
Way into my early childhood my older childhood or young teenage years. One of the comedians during [00:32:00] that time was a guy named Jonathan Winters. Some of our audience will recognize that name. Other names like Robin Williams, many others. I, I love to hear a good standup comic if they have clean language, that type of thing.
But I also learned when my parents were telling me some of the story about Jonathan Winters and his background, that many comedians actually find their humor out of deep pain, out of some real struggles of sometimes trauma, certainly mental health and that kind of thing. And, and it seems like our culture in this moment is kind of watching comedians as the barometer.
Of what’s going on in our culture. Does that in any way make sense to you? Is that something that you’ve seen as well?
Chris Morris: No, I think that does make sense. And you know, one of the specific ways that has been one of the specific aspects of a sense of humor that’s been helpful for me in my own journey is learning [00:33:00] to.
Laugh at myself, learning to hold my ego lightly. Mm-hmm. Rather than think that everything related to me has to be so darn serious.
Dr. Mark Turman: Hmm.
Chris Morris: You know, even in my, some of my darker seasons, there would be silly things that would happen and my wife and I might just start rolling on the floor laughing at it, and there’s something that is.
There’s a release of energy, there’s a release of, of stress. There’s a release of so many positive things that come out of being able to laugh. Yeah. You know, I, I regularly watch YouTube or Facebook reels of comedians now, and just to keep myself in a lighthearted space mm-hmm. As a way to sort of protect myself from going back down into those deep, dark places.
And I encourage the folks that I work with in our, in my church to have an open mind [00:34:00] toward being able to laugh at themselves and even the struggles that they’re going through.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah. Yeah. And just, it’s still, you know, so true is what the book of Proverbs remind us reminds us, that a joyful, joyful spirit is good medicine in that.
Absolutely. One of, one of the ways we can kind of measure. You know, our health mentally and emotionally is, are we laughing? And are there opportunities to, like you said, not take yourself too seriously and to know that yeah, life is important, life matters, and sometimes life is really hard. But there’s always a place for joy, always a place for laughter.
Which kind of brings me around. Chris. We want to be really, really clear and I hope that we have been and will be that. Mental illness is not sin. But we kind of get these things kind of bound up together in our spiritual life and our faith in different ways. Could you frame for us a little bit your understanding of the connection between mental health and sin?
I could, [00:35:00] I could imagine an understanding in which somebody is making consistently really bad moral spiritual choices. They’re being disobedient to God, and that is in some way. Contributing to their mental health struggle. I, I also think about, you know, you mentioned Philippians a moment ago. We get these commands in scripture where Paul is inspired to write, where Jesus said, do not worry.
Mm-hmm. And do not be anxious for anything. And so I kind of have this understanding that if God commands it, then that means I can either choose to obey it or disobey it. And there will be outcomes, consequences that come by, whatever my decision’s going to be. Can you kind of pull this apart a little bit for us and talk about how we might get some clarity between mental health struggle and sin and how they, how they do interact, how they don’t interact?
Chris Morris: Absolutely. So let, let’s [00:36:00] start by talking about anxiety, because it’s probably the most challenging. Mental illness to sort of untangle from sin because we have Philippians four and Matthew five where Jesus and Paul both say, don’t be anxious or Don’t worry. The thing we have to remember is this, when both those dudes said that they did not have a DSM five in front of them, they did not have.
The idea of clinical anxiety or a panic attack or social anxiety in their head. Especially the, the passage out of Matthew five where Jesus is talking about worry. It’s really clear. He’s talking about things like food and clothing and housing base needs. Mm-hmm. And the big takeaway if you read that passage is [00:37:00] this.
What we’ve already been talking about. God is for you. He knows your needs. He will provide for you. So you go about seeking God and he’ll take care of the rest. Hmm. So the message there is very different than someone who might pull Matthew five, I think it’s verse 33 out of out of context. Jesus says, don’t worry, you’re worrying.
You have clinical anxiety, therefore you are sinning. No, no, no. Jesus didn’t have these diagnostic possibilities because he lived in 30 ad We’ve come a long way in our understanding of mental illness since then, and we live in a very different world. And when Paul, and so similarly, when Paul says. Don’t be anxious or don’t worry, but make your [00:38:00] requests made known to God.
The whole context of Philippians four has to do again with he said, I’ve, I’ve been well off and I’ve been without anything, and I’ve learned another misquoted verse. I’ve learned that I can do all I, I can survive on either one. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. I’m gonna divert for a second back to humor for just a moment.
I saw a coffee cup once that said I can do all things through reverse, taken out of context.
It’s one of my favorite, I I, I have too many coffee cups, but if, if I didn’t, I would’ve bought that coffee cup. ’cause that’s perfect. Absolutely. So I think understanding contextually what’s happening in those passages is really important. And understanding culturally what people had understanding of when those words were written is really important.
One of the key dynamics of. Hermeneutics, you’ll know this is how would the original hearers [00:39:00] of this letter of this book have heard this language? And if we are going somewhere where the original hearers couldn’t go, we’re taking a wrong turn. So if we’re looking at this and pointing to someone who has clinical anxiety and saying, the Bible says, don’t be anxious.
You’re in sin. We’re just taking a wrong turn. Now the flip side of that is this, can our mental illnesses lead us to make poor decisions that could be sinful? Yes. Yes, they can. Yeah. So a simple example would be if someone is so anxious about. What clinical anxiety, the thing that’s so terrible about it is it’s, there’s no root cause.
It just happens. You’re just anxious because you’re anxious because you woke up. Yeah. There’s no, there’s [00:40:00] no, that’s one of the differences between worry and anxiety is there’s usually a circumstance with worry, with anxiety, a lot of times it just exists and you don’t know why. So if you make a decision because you’re feeling anxious to.
You know, therefore make another poor decision. I can’t think of one off the top of my head because of that anxiety. Then your reaction, your response to the demonstration of your mental illness is leading you down a path that you should probably repent of.
Dr. Mark Turman: Hmm. Yeah. That’s good. Good. It’s sort of like an ex
Chris Morris: an an extension of Ephesians 4 26 says, in your anger, do not sin.
Yeah, that must mean that there’s a way to be angry and not sin otherwise. Paul is just a jerk who’s setting us up for failure, and I don’t think he’s a jerk.
Dr. Mark Turman: And then you also see, you know, the very person that was inspired to write Philippians four about not worrying [00:41:00] is also telling us in other places like Second Corinthians about his overwhelming concern.
About the churches, about how he is wor, you know, in a, in a sense, worried for them or anxious for them. Mm-hmm. You hear him say at one point in the Corinthian letters that he was, he was so stricken with concern slash anxiety. He says, you know, there were, there were battles on the outside and fears on the inside, and he got, he got to the place where he was basically paralyzed and couldn’t serve, couldn’t minister.
And the thing that helped him was when his coworker Titus came along. Mm-hmm. And, and gave him some new information. His presence was helpful in that moment. There was a lot of dynamics there that helped Paul to get through a really hard moment. And that, and let me flip that around a minute.
You said, you know, there are those cases in which our mental illnesses, our mental health struggles can lead us into sin. Can you flip that around and say that our [00:42:00] fallenness, our sinfulness, can actually exacerbate our struggles with mental illness challenges? Would that also be true?
Chris Morris: I think so, yes.
Because, you know, some people don’t like hearing this, but when humanity fell, it was, you know, our, our intellect fell too. Mm-hmm. A lot of people like to pretend that it’s just our emotions that fell. But our intellect has fallen as well. So that means going back to those, all those negative thoughts that pop into our head, we have to manage those and we sometimes do so poorly because of our fallen nature, and that can begin us down a path toward depression or toward clinical anxiety for sure.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah. So they definitely are dynamics. It’s just complex.
Chris Morris: There’s no single source. No, that’s one of my big things that I try and say to people is, you know, you [00:43:00] can’t, there’s no one size fits all when it comes to mental illness. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.
Dr. Mark Turman: Let’s, let’s see if we can get practical for a few minutes before we run out of time.
Chris I’ve heard you talk about some of your experiences with, with counselors both good and bad experiences. As a pastor who I, like I said, over four decades, I often recommended people go. And engage the assistance of a counselor. Sometimes I even told them, Hey, the biggest risk that you have in terms of vulnerability is that you may see me in the waiting room.
Because I may be there personally or I may be there with one of my family members. Because I made it very clear to the churches that I pastored, Hey, we have struggles as well. We have family dynamic structure. You know, family systems problems. We have our own struggles with anxiety and those types of things.
And so I made that very clear in the churches that I pastored and I, and I was serious when I told them, Hey, you could very well walk [00:44:00] in to the counselor’s office. I’m recommending to you, and you’ll see me sitting there waiting for my appointment. Talk a little bit about how. A person that is seeking help from a professional licensed counselor, that type of person how can they discern that this person would be a good fit for them?
Because as a pastor, I’ve also been frustrated where somebody comes to see me or we’re working through a situation, they’re like I’ve been to counseling. It didn’t help. And they’re like, yeah, I’m never trying that again. It’s like saying, I’m never going to the doctor again no matter how sick I get.
What would be some good tools, some good handles that you could give to us about how to discern that, Hey, this could be a person that I could work with?
Chris Morris: I think the biggest thing to keep in mind is this perspective. We wanna view our first interactions with a new counselor. Like the, the way you’d view a first date, [00:45:00] honestly, like Yep.
You know? So that means a few things. That means you’re not gonna dive in 10,000 miles an hour into everything that is happening. So why are you here today? It all started when I was seven. That’s probably a bad choice.
Dr. Mark Turman: That’s a little too much. Yeah.
Chris Morris: So that, that would be the first thing I would say.
And then related to that. We need to know that, that the must haves the non-negotiables for us. One of my poor counselors basically flipped out on me one time because I was expressing some frustration with one of the leaders at one of, at the church I was attending at the time. She went on a 25 minute diatribe monologue about how terrible Christianity was and how it was a crutch for the week, and that the, the best thing I could do for my mental [00:46:00] health was to walk away from that shoddy faith with those charlatans, on and on, it wins.
So I learned from that moment. One of my non-negotiables is I need someone who is open to my faith. Now where I landed, it might be different from where some other people land. Some other people might say I need to definitively have a Christian counselor. I, I didn’t find like my, honestly, my best counselor was a former Catholic priest who is a practicing Buddhist.
Wow. And he helped me with some cognitive reframing techniques. He’s the one that gave me those four questions that are so valuable. And he helped just settle me. And as I reflect on my interactions with Glenn, this is a good third thing to mention. I, I laid out for him in my first meeting. I, I’m just out of a psych ward after a suicide attempt.
I [00:47:00] have some depressive moments that I can’t seem to shake. My anxiety is sort of connected to that, and I can’t control the negative emotions that I’m feeling. I feel a ton of guilt because I attempted after I told my wife I wouldn’t do it again. I have a lot of reconstruction I need to do with my family and I need help to do that.
And I feel overwhelmed. And he looked at me and he said something like this, Chris, that sounds like a lot. I know that you’re not gonna be able to do that on your own. So the first thing he did was he sort of, he acknowledged my story. Which is huge. He acknowledged my story and then he said, I’ve been doing this for a lot of years.
He was an older gentleman. He retired actually about a year ago, unfortunately. So I’m on the search for a new counselor. Can’t believe how could he retire the nerve?
Dr. Mark Turman: How dare him?
Chris Morris: [00:48:00] Yes. He said, I’ve been doing this for a lot of years and I’m confident that I have some tools and I have the knowhow. I have the compassion and curiosity to be able to help you set your feet in the right direction.
I’ve done this before with other people and I can do it again so that, that combination of compassion and curiosity. Mm-hmm. Super important. Especially the curiosity. I, yeah. I did a Ted Talk on deep listening and I talked about the importance of. Having an attitude of curiosity toward people as opposed to judgements or trying to fix them.
Tell me more about what’s happening. Why do you feel that way? Asking those open-ended questions and actually meaning them. I know all counselors are trained. I’ll talk therapists are trained to do that, but some of them are really bad at it. I mean, some of them don’t care [00:49:00] and they’re just going through the motions.
Yeah. So the sort of that third element is I wanna give people permission to trust their gut. Man. If you’re feeling like the person that you’re seeing as a counselor isn’t working for you, don’t force it. Yeah. Don’t try and make something work that isn’t gonna work. This is why the idea of a date is helpful.
If you’re dating someone and they have some habits that irritate the snot out of you. It’s okay to say this isn’t working. Yeah. Like same concept with a counselor and, and the the last thing I would say is just be patient. Understand. It took me four counselors before I found Glen. Yeah. And the biggest mistake that I made is I made the decision after the third one like you were talking about, I’m never gonna see another counselor.
This didn’t work for me. I landed in a psych ward after a suicide attempt, is where I landed. [00:50:00]
Dr. Mark Turman: And it’s a, it’s a really important principle to know that one size does not fit all when it comes to the, the mental emotional struggles you may be facing and the counselors that may be available to you. It is, it is a unique relationship.
And you describe it. I, I think that’s important for people to understand. Chris, I think we have maybe a question for another a time for another question or two. So let me see if I can bring this so I don’t take up too much of your time. I heard the Christian commentator, Andy Crouch, say recently that in the Western Church we as Christians we are really good at solving and addressing acute problems.
We are not really very good at handling affliction. And he went on to give a really great explanation of what he meant by affliction. Affliction are those struggles that we really don’t get over. They may get better and we certainly want them to get better. We pray for them. But you know, you mentioned that you’re diabetic.
I have a close family [00:51:00] member who’s also diabetic. There, there are certain things that we don’t get over. I remember a really powerful sermon that my pastor preached three decades ago in which he talked about one of Paul’s coworkers, a guy by the name of Tro Aus Paul says of him kind of in an off-handed comment.
I left Hamus sick in a city called my elitist, and I can remember my pastor saying, sometimes Christians get sick, and sometimes Christians stay sick. And that can be true not only in a physical way, it can be true in a mental illness kind of way. Number one, do you agree with Andy Crouch in that way?
And how do you think we get better at learning as the people of God to walk with people when they’re not just simply having a moment of crisis, but they’re facing a life of challenging affliction? That they’re likely looking at struggling for a very long [00:52:00] time. How do we come along? Those people come alongside those people?
Chris Morris: First, I 10000% agree with Andy Crouch. I think he’s a, I think he’s so right. You know, you think about, oh, so and so had a situation. Let’s put a meal train together for two weeks. They, the grandma died. Let’s do a meal train for two weeks. Yeah. Then the third week you’re still struggling with your grief, but the meal train is over.
Why are you, why are you still having a hard time? Yeah. And then the person has to explain that’s not how grief works, which is a hard conversation to have. Yeah. In terms of how to get better, you know, I, it’s hard with the how transient our communities are. Because what it really takes is long-term, radically transparent relationships.
I have four or five people in my [00:53:00] life who have permission. If they notice anything is off with anything seems off kilter, they can come to me and they can say, Chris, you doing okay? I noticed you seem a little down. What’s going on? And these are relationships I’ve had. Like the, the youngest relationship is a nine year friendship.
Wow. So these things take time. One of ’em is one of my college roommates. So it’s literally 30 years of friendship. No, you know, I don’t think we get there without time. And it, so then the question becomes, how do you identify safe people if you don’t have those safe people in your life? That is, you know, again, I think we come back to curiosity.
You know, people who are asking open-ended, caring, careful, kind questions rather than judging, [00:54:00] you know, the person where when they say, how you doing? You say, I’m doing fine. And they go, no, really? Are you okay? Like maybe that’s someone, if you have some other commonalities with them, it might make sense to have a more honest conversation with them.
And in time that can develop into a long-term, radically transparent friendship.
Dr. Mark Turman: Hmm. Yeah. And that means, that means we may have to reorder our lives and our pace in some significant ways. Yes. Yeah. Margin is so
Chris Morris: huge. You look at, I, I, I heard a pastor about 15 years ago, preach on the interruptability of Jesus.
Dr. Mark Turman: It’s
Chris Morris: one of the few sermons I remember. You look through the gospels, everywhere he goes, he’s being interrupted by someone and he is never irritated. He’s never bummed out. He never says, I don’t have time for you. Now, part of that is ’cause he was an itinerant rabbi. I get that. You know, it’s easy when that’s your job, but [00:55:00] the idea of margin is something that we really struggle with, I think.
Dr. Mark Turman: Hmm.
Chris Morris: So I’ve been trying for the last 15 years now to build margin into my life so I can be interruptible for people when they need it.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah, absolutely. And you need, there needs to be room for God to reset your schedule at any point in your day, you know? Yeah, yeah. Chris, we need to wrap up, but let me just ask you right now to speak a pastoral word.
If somebody’s listening to this podcast and they know that they are struggling with some type of a mental. Illness, challenge, anxiety, depression. What word of encouragement would you give them today?
Chris Morris: I think I would say, remember that everything comes for a season. These seasons can feel so overwhelming and sometimes seasons last for a long time, but everything is seasonal.
There, there [00:56:00] is, even if you can’t see it, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. And sort of related to that, I would say I’m confident of this one thing. God is sitting with you and experiencing everything you’re experiencing. You might want him to rescue you out of your circumstances. And sometimes God does that, but sometimes he offers his presence in the midst of dark circumstances.
Dr. Mark Turman: Hmm. Yeah. Or he is. He is the God that suffers with us. Not just for us, but suffers with us. Yeah. So good. So good. Chris, thank you so much. Where can people follow you, follow your ministry and connect, get some of your resources, your books connect with other podcasts and, and speaking things that you’ve done.
Where can they find you on the internet?
Chris Morris: If you go to Chris Morris Wrights, W-R-I-T-E s.com, [00:57:00] that’s sort of my home base. And then I’m pretty active on Instagram. It’s at Chris Morris Wrights. Those would be the two best places to find me.
Dr. Mark Turman: Alright, Chris Morris writes, thank you. Thank you for today’s conversation and would encourage our audience to check out Chris and his work.
Really, really helpful on handling these issues. I wanna thank you also, if you’re listening just being a part of the Faith and Clarity audience, and if you look for more resources, you can find them www.denisonforum.org and we’ll see you next time on the Faith and Clarity Podcast.
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