Article March 23, 1968 Issue

Signs of the Times

with contributions from Charles W. Stewart

The Reverend Dr. Charles W. Stewart Professor of Preaching and Pastoral Theology, Wesley Theological Seminary, Washington, D. C. in The Journal of Pastoral Care Kutztown, Pennsylvania

The relationship between religion and mental health is one of vital concern to the church....Jesus went about preaching and healing, and his healing was a sign of the breaking into human life of the powers of the kingdom of God and of the dethroning of the powers of evil. His healing, therefore, was not simply of the body or the mind, but a radical reorientation of the whole person toward God and toward his fellowman....

Health, therefore, is not complete simply in the absence of illness nor in the reestablishment of some homeostatic balance or balance between pain and pleasure, nor is health completed in the adjustment that one makes to a society which hold within itself the ambiguities and evils of past generations. Health is rather the presence of new being, physical, emotional, and spiritual, which enables the individual to have the courage to become the self which his creator has intended him to be.

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