101 Quotes and a Short Review of "Lies My Therapist Told Me" by Greg Gifford

Lies My Therapist Told Me: Why Christians Should Aim for More Than Just Treating Symptoms by Dr. Greg Gifford is a new release that, in my opinion (though I could be wrong), will be a classic biblical counseling book for generations to come. It's also a book that I predict will get heavily criticized by people who won't actually take the time to read the claims Gifford is making (Prov. 18:13). Others will speak on his credentials as a reason why such a book isn't valid. For instance, at the initial announcement of his book on Facebook, someone exclaimed:

"'Dr. Greg Gifford is not a psychologist, but a certified fellow and counselor with the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors (ACBC) and an ordained pastor. He is Assistant Professor of Biblical Counseling at The Master’s University.' Just saying."

What does this have to do anything? So you mean to tell me that Gifford has to partake in the corrupt industry that he is critiquing in order to speak on its corruption? That's like saying someone has to actively be involved in a pyramid scheme in order to speak on deceit and corruption that happens within the pyramid scheme. Makes no sense. We need to stop promoting the idea that the practices of psychologists, psychiatrists, and mental health therapists are untouchable. There is much to critique, and this book exposes it with thorough research. The first 20 quotes from his book that I will list below are from prominent (non-Christian) psychologists/psychiatrists who speak out on the corruption and deceit of the mental health system.

Early on in the book, I found myself thinking "that's a quote" over and over, so I decided to rack up 101 quotes which can be found below. Yes, 101. I know that's a lot, but I probably could have listed more (it's that kind of book!). Keep in mind, I am not trying to make a summary of the book out of these quotes, these simply are 101 quotes that stood out to me. Don't read these and think you have read the book; there is much more that he says that I have not put in this blog. You need to read it for yourself, let these quotes be a preview.

A Few (Minor) Weaknesses

Before sharing the strengths of the book by way of the 101 quotes, I will share just a few areas that could potentially be improved. First, Gifford is a tad bit redundant. Though I think this is a weakness, it might be helpful for others. After all, he is sharing information that Christians may have never thought of before, so redundancy may be helpful to solidify in the readers mind the truthfulness of his claims. And I'm sure if I tried to write a 250+ page book, I would be redundant as well at times.

Second, I think Gifford might agree that his thesis (at least in part) falls somewhere in the realm of "this mind is not the brain." This could be expanded I am sure, but it seems to at least be at the core of what he is attempting to drive home to the reader. This statement alone is going to shock people. However, In his doctrinal statement on the mind and the brain, he writes "The brain and the mind are intimately connected in their operation." (p. 85). If it were me, I might have put this doctrinal statement at the front of the book so that readers understand that he does actually believe the mind and the brain are connected, though different from one another. So for the reader, I personally would read the entire doctrinal statement first before reading the book so that you can have a clear understanding of Gifford's position on certain issues at the outset. Also, try reading the entirety of the book first before making any judgment about his claims. There are times where I thought to myself "but what about _________?" when reading a chapter, only to discover that he addresses it in a later chapter.

The strengths of this book far outweigh the weaknesses (just read some of the quotes!). As a matter of fact, I would go so far as to say this is one of the best Christian books on the topic of the mind because it critiques with heavy research the current mental health construct (by using lots of secularists to do so), clarifies the biblical position on mind/brain interaction, and gives hope that Scripture is 100% sufficient to transform and renew the Christian's mind. He doesn't just knock down the mental health industry; he also provides the way forward through Christ Himself and the biblical teaching of mind renewal. There's also about 50 other things he addresses, but those are just a few strengths. Enough talking, here is quote #1.

Quote #1

1. "[Maybe] you have heard this since you were young, and now mental health/illness is a large part of who you are and the way you function in your daily life - including your self conception. I don't want to minimize any of that. I know that your struggles are real, and not only real, but painful." page 26.

Why do I have this separated from the remaining 100? Because many have and already will falsely accuse Gifford of thinking the suffering that our culture calls "mental illness" is not real. Throughout this book, he is not denying the serious suffering or distress. He is a seasoned biblical counselor who has worked with hundreds (if not thousands) of people, he knows the symptoms that make up mental health diagnoses include real suffering. He is simply critiquing the notion that immaterial problems of the mind find their etiology (cause) in the body, and that Scripture offers better explanations for these problems.

And here are 20 quotes from (non-Christian) psychologists and psychiatrists, speaking out about the inadequacy of our current mental health construct:

20 Quotes from Prominent Psychiatrists and Psychologists on the Current Mental Health Construct

2. "Thousands went to bed without an illness but upon publication of the DSM-V they woke up sick." - Dr. Allen Frances, Former Chair of the DSM-V, page 11.

3. "The very idea that you can change the definition of something [i.e., mental illness] without anything in the real world changing and with no new increases in knowledge or understanding is remarkable, until you realize that the thing being defined does not exist. It is completely easy - effortless, really - to change the definition of something that does not exist to suit your current purposes." - Eric Maisel, American Psychotherapist, page 11.

4. "Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) merged imperceptibly into the worries of everyday life. And the DSM-5 will make that diagnoses not only much more unreliable (it's very hard to get agreement on it) but it will open up the floodgates so that ayone who has the slightest bit of worry has a mental disorder of GAD." - Dr. Allen Frances, Former Chair of the DSM-V, page 13.

5. "The weakness of the DSM is lack of validity. Unlike our definitions of ischemic heart disease, lymphoma, or AIDS, the DSM diagnoses are based on a consensus about clusters of clinical symptoms, not any objective laboratory measure. In the rest of medicine, this would be the equivalent to creating diagnostic systems based on the nature of chest pain or the quality of fever. Indeed, symptom-based diagnosis, once common in other areas of medicine, has been largely replaced in the past half century as we have understood that symptoms alone rarely indicate the best choice of treatment." - Dr. Thomas Insel, Former Director of the National Institute of Mental Health, pages 14-15

   
   

6. "Unlike diabetes or cancer there is no medical test that can provide a diagnosis of mental illness." - National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), page 15.

7. "It is . . . still not clear what these disorders exactly are. There are no objective tests or measures to establish the presence of a mental disorder, nor are there clear thresholds for when a patient has a disorder and when not." - Pim Cuijpers, Professor of Clinical Psychology at the Department of Clinical, Neuro and Developmental Psychology, Amsterdam Public Health Research Institute, page 15.

8. "The insurance system is crazy. Insurance companies do this [pressure clinicians to rapidly find a diagnosis] because they think it will restrict costs, but it has the perverse effect of forcing people to make premature decisions that often will result in more costly treatment . . . The system is counterproductive; the more time we spend upfront with people in their evaluation process, before diagnosis and before treatment, the few diagnoses will be necessary, the less lifetime treatment will be needed." - Dr. Allen Frances, Former Chair of the DSM-V, page 30.

9. "Has evangelical religion sold its birthright for a mess of psychological pottage? In attempting to rectify their disastrous early neglect of psychopathology, have the churches and seminaries assimilated a viewpoint and value system more destructive and deadly than the evil they were attempting to eliminate? As a psychologist and churchman, I believe the answers to these questions is in the affirmative." - O. Hobart Mowrer, Psychologist, page 42.

   
   

10. "Thirty years later [since the 1980s] and we still have no biological tests for psychiatric disorders, and none that is in the pipeline. Instead our diagnoses are based on criteria in a book, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (often called, derisively, the 'bible' of American psychiatry). It has gone through five editions in the last 70 years, and while the latest edition is almost 100 pages longer than the last, there is no evidence that it is any better than the version it replaced. None of the diagnoses is defined in terms of the brain." - Dr. Marco Ramos, Assistant Professor in the History of Medicine and Department of Psychiatry at Yale University, page 55.

11. "It is now increasingly clear to the general public that it [psychiatry] overreached, overpromised, overdiagnosed, overmedicated, and compromised it's principles." - Dr. Anne Harrington, Professor of the History of Science, Harvard University, page 57.

    
    

12. "What I've been talking to you about so far is mental disorders, diseases of the mind. That's actually becoming a rather unpopular term these days, and people feel that, for whatever reason, it's politically better to use the term 'behavioral disorders' and to talk about these as disorders of behavior. Fair enough. They are disorders of behavior, and they are disorders of the mind. But what I want to suggest to you is that both of those terms, which have been in play for a century or more, are actually now impediments to progress, that what we need conceptually to make progress here is to rethink these disorders as brain disorders." - Dr. Thomas Insel, Former Director of the National Institute of Mental Health, page 148.

13. "All other medical professionals look directly at the organs they treat, but psychiatrists are taught to assume what the underlying biological mechanisms are for illnesses - such as depression, ADD/ADHD, bipolar disorder, and addiction - without ever looking at the brain." - Dr. Daniel Amen, Psychiatrist and Brain Disorder Specialist, page 150.

14. "Although diagnostic labels create the illusion of an explanation they are scientifically meaningless and can create stigma and prejudice." - Dr. Kate Allsopp, Honorary Research Associate, University of Manchester, 150.

15. "Perhaps it is time we stopped pretending that medical-sounding labels contribute anything to our understanding of the complex causes of human distress or of what kind of help we need when distressed." - Dr. John Read, Clinical Psychologist, University of East London, page 150.

16. "In other words, the available psychopharmacological agents [psychotropic medications] offer a great deal of symptom relief, which in turn has the potential to be of life changing importance to many patients - but they are not disease specific and often are used across diagnostic categories, their discontinuation often is associated with disease relapse, and they have shown little evidence related to their ability to change the trajectory of psychiatric disorders." - Dr. Iliyan Ivanov, Professor of Psychiatry at the Ichan School of Medicine in New York and Jeffrey Schwartz, Psychiatrist, page 283, footnote 23.

17. "Scientifically speaking, there never was a network of validated hypotheses capable of sustaining a full-blown, global chemical imbalance theory of mental illness." - Psychiatric Times, page 157.

18. "Psychiatric drug development programs have demoralizingly low success rates, placebos seem to be just as effective." Dr. Gary Wenk, Psychology Today, page 160.

    
    

19. "My claim that mental illnesses are fictitious illnesses is also not based on scientific research; it rests on the materialistic scientific definition of illness as a pathological alteration of cells, tissues, and organs. If we accept this scientific definition of disease, then it follows that mental illness is a metaphor." - Thomas Szasz, Psychiatrist, 180.

20. "I'm convinced that calling addiction a disease is not only inaccurate, it's harmful." - Marc Lewis, Clinical Psychologist, Neuroscientist, page 211.

21. "Brain disease may be a useful metaphor for how addiction seems, but it is not a sensible explanation for how addiction works." - Marc Lewis, Clinical Psychologist, Neuroscientist, page 211.

    
    

80 Thought-Provoking Quotes from Greg Gifford

As if the previous 21 quotes weren't mind-blowing enough (no-pun intended), here are 80 more from Gifford himself that will either make you shout for joy (I wrote "facts!" in the margin of my copy), get angry, or seriously consider that what you might have been told about the mind has been largely false all along. I encourage you again, be willing to have your preconceived notions corrected. And you can always do what Gifford himself says to do (I can't remember where, it was on some podcast), which is to check his research. Here we go:

22. "The Bible is not one additional form of knowledge to add to an otherwise accurate world. Rather, the Bible is the authoritative source of knowledge that directs how we understand the world (John 17:17)." page 175.

23. "The issues we face are indeed real, but they are often not true illnesses. It is time to end the myth of mental illness, and to that end we must replace the terminology with a biblical view of our inner-man problems." page 181.

24. "If you are experiencing symptoms of what we refer to as a mental illness, make sure you see a physician and get a blood test. Make sure your thyroid is functioning and that you are getting adequate vitamin D, exercise, and sleep." page 106.

25. "Eating more rapidly than normal? Feeling uncomfortably full? I don't want to brag, but I've done that at least twice this week - maybe three times. (There's an all-you-can-eat sushi place in town that knew my family until it closed. RIP.) The criteria [for Binge Eating Disorder] have become so fast and loose that many of us would be diagnosed if we were to see a psychiatrist." page 14.

26. "Maybe you have been told your whole life that you have a so-called mental illness. But because these are not pathological brain conditions, you can in fact change, to the glory of God. you are not stuck with this arbitrary diagnosis or the treatment plans that correspond to it . . . God brings us renewal and transformation of our minds (2 Cor. 4:16)" page 195.

27. "In the Bible, there is clearly an interconnection between the mind and the brain . . . to say that the mind and the brain are different is not to say that there is zero interplay between the two. It is only to say they are not the same thing." page 90.

28. "The body can create feelings that influence the mind to have thoughts that are sad, listless, hopeless, guilty, not wanting to live, and so forth. Can the brain through lack of vitamins encourage you to have symptoms of depression? Yes. But ultimately, can the brain make you hopeless, as a Christian? No. Christ is our hope no matter what we feel, and no matter what time of year it is." page 103.

29. "A good steward of the body doesn't worship the appearance of the body, but seeks to keep it healthy for the sake of the Gospel (1 Cor. 9:27). (I lost the page number).

30. "Your mind is still fully operational even without your brain, because you will have complete cognition in the intermediary state, awaiting the inauguration of Jesus's return (Rev. 9:11-16). Consider this: The faculty of cognition is within your mind and will continue to exist after your brain is dead." page 100.

31. "Semantically, it is confusing to talk about our immaterial components with medical terminology . . . however, because the brain and mind are connected, and often conflated by secular therapists, and since some believe that you can have a physical problem with the mind, it is especially confusing to use health when were talking about our mind." page 129.

32. "Don't use [the term] mental health; say mind renewal." page 232.

    
    

33. "It would be clearer to say that a truly 'healthy' mind comports more to what the Bible would called the 'renewed' mind (Rom. 12:2)" page 131.

34. "Theologians would say that the nature of man is a complex unity, or a psychosomatic unity. There is no "dualism" within the nature of man, as if it were the body verses the soul in a battle royale." page 91.

    
    

35. "If the mind is the initiator, then to focus on brain health exclusively when people are suffering from issues like anxiety and depression is to misunderstand biblical anthropology". page 91.

36. "The brain can also effect the mind, although it would be wrong to say that the brain causes the mind to act. This would not be what the Bible teaches. In fact, the better term would be to say that the brain can influence but not cause . . what the brain cannot do is control your mind, l so that you decide to go to the bar instead of going to church." page 92.

37. If someone does have a real medical issue that is affection their brain, then of course medication and other treatments make sense." page 193.

38. "Good stewardship of the outer man does not equate to being mentally well - a healthy body may be home to a mind that is hardened in its own corruption and needs renewal. You can be a superfit immoral person." page 135.

39. "You should steward the outer man while recognizing that your mind is only influenced by your outer man, not determined." page 171.

40. "The mind cannot be made new through a salad or a vacation or a nap - and I really enjoy two of those." page 136.

41. "Psychotropics cannot renew your mind." page 153.

42. "A psychotropic is not going to fix a problem in your mind. It simply won't. However, the psychotropic will potentially alleviate symptoms so that you can focus on the deeper issues of your mind. So, it is possible to use the psychotropic to help focus on the true problem, which is the mind." page 156.

43. "I recommend that if it seems the medication is helping, then stay on the medication . . . a person can take psychotropic medications in a legal, God-honoring way." page 230.

44. "Some biblical counselors have communicated that any such use of [psychotropic] meds is a compromise of one's faith, and that is not true. Sure, in some cases people are making medications their god. But in other instances it's much more pragmatic. The meds seem to help. A person can finally sleep again." page 231.

45. "The [psychotropic] medication is affecting the brain, but the mind is immaterial. Think of the brain as the filter through which the mind expresses itself. The mind is affected only by the filter. Thus the mind is influenced because the brain is influenced. However, the mind is not necessarily helped." page 235.

46. "It is not a sin to take psychotropics, but psychotropics are not treating the real issue. They are like Tylenol, a symptom relief that can sometimes even mask the real issue." page 157.

47. "Sometimes we lose a loved one to psychotropics, as they become sleepy versions of themselves." page 161.

48. "Going off psychotropics cold turkey is an absolutely dangerous and horrible idea . . . If you are thinking that it is time to wean off, then do so under the proper oversight of your general practitioner." pages 162-163.

    
    

49. "When our body takes in information through the senses, that information goes through our brain, and our mind responds to it. If you burn your hand on the stove, your senses detect the damage to your body and your brain may cause you to pull your hand back instinctively, but whether you become angry or use profanity is based on the condition of your mind, not your brain." page 100.

50. "When we consume food, our bodies take the nutrients and substance of the food and break it down into fuel and material for activity, maintenance, and growth. What we ingest affects our bodies, and our bodies, of course, can influence our minds." page 97.

51. "If you are physically run-down, don't be surprised if that influences your mind. Being overweight, eating poorly, and sleeping inadequately are signs that you may need to work on stewarding your health." page 255.

52. "When a mind is darkened and distorted, no medical treatment will fix it. God, through HIs word and Spirit, is the only one who can truly heal the mind." page 81.

    
    

53. "According to the Bible, the mind is not unhealthy, it is darkened. It is futile, and in need of renewal apart from salvation by Christ alone. The mind is depraved in its natural state. Opposed to God. Hardened. Salvation [then] has everything to do with the mind." page 109.

54. "It is quote noteworthy that, when we go to unsaved psychiatrists and psychologists, we are seeking help for our minds from someone who has a darkened mind." page 120.

55. "When a person's mind is depraved, darkened, futile, and corrupt, what will yoga do for it?" page 164.

56. "If I were to give you parenting advice, most likely you would want to know if I have godly kids. If I were to give you home ownership advice, you'd want to now if I successfully owned a new home, right? Yet many Christians go to secular therapists for help with their minds, when the therapists themselves have minds that are distorted, corrupted, futile, and nonoperational. Where is the sense in that?" page 121.

57. "We do not receive salvation by attending church, being baptized, or repeated specific words after a pastor in prayer, but by being reconciled to God through repentance and faith. And repentance, at the moment of salvation, changes the mind." page 110.

58. "Repentance has everything to do with the well-being of a person's mind." page 112.

59. "Without salvation we are not in need of slight tweaks here and there. Our need is far deeper than behavior modification, symptom relief, or having fewer "unhelpful thoughts." Rather, we are in dire need of total restoration." page 115.

60. "Any conversation about the 'health' of the mind must include conversation about salvation, because no mind will be genuinely and thoroughly well apart from salvation. Salvation is not only about how you stand before a holy and just God to receive forgiveness and the imputed righteousness of Christ . . . It is also the beginning of your restoration, in which you are being re-created into what you were designed to be - a clearer and clearer reflection of Christ." page 122.

61. "If you are given 'mental health' holidays, then take advantage of them, and see them as opportunities to serve the Lord, spend time with Him, and work on being renewed in the Spirit of your mind (Eph. 4:23)." page 139.

62. "If you are looking for practical ways to renew your mind, then you should start with each of these, one by one. Start with Bible engagement and church attendance. When those are habit, move to biblical thinking and prayer. When those are habits, move on to giving. If you are not strong in these habits, the renewing of your mind will be greatly impaired." page 261.

63. "Often we associate the mind with the organ of the brain, which in turn leads us to believe that the mind is located within our cranium, where our brain is located. Yet the BIble does not make this a clear distinction, as if the mind were only a part of the organ of our brain. Rather, the Bible simply speaks to the mind being an inner-person faculty and does not relegate it to a certain part of our anatomy - like the cranium or the brain." page 75.

    
    

64. "Calling autism a mental illness when it is really an issue of the brain is sloppy categorizing." - page 190.

65. "Is it possible for the mind to affect the body? Yes, of course - The Bible teaches that the inner man and outer man affect each other (2 Cor. 4:16-18). But the mind is not the brain and the brain is not the mind. The war for America's mental health is being fought by those who don't understand the true nature of people." page 51.

66. "Do the brain and body contribute to insanity in any way? . . . My answer is yes, because the senses are not functioning as they should and they will in turn affect the person's behavior. For instance, consider sleeplessness. A person who goes long enough without sleep will start to hallucinate, struggle to discern between reality and non-reality, and even begin to hear things." page 208.

67. "If there are sensory issues, then let's address those with medical treatment. However, if there are times when a person seems to have their senses functioning correctly, yet their rationale is wacky, then you need to focus on the renewal of the mind through the truthfulness of Scripture." page 209.

68. "Malfunctioning senses may correspond to a mind that is darkened and genuinely cannot (or refuses to) understand the truth. 'Seeing they do not see' (Matt. 13:13). You're not going to fix that with word puzzles, medication, yoga, or sudoku. This is because the brain, as an organ, cannot make the immaterial mind well or sick." pages 209-210.

69. "Psychotropic medications cannot treat the mind, only the brain." page 147.

70. "If a person is entertaining dark thoughts about death, that is a mind issue. If they are prescribed antidepressants, it might affect their brain, but the brain is not why they were thinking dark thoughts that lead to depression. No, the depression is a symptom. The dark thoughts of the mind are the true cause." page 150.

71. "Jesus is not an addendum to your therapist. He doesn't just offer positive encouragement while the psychologist or psychiatrist does the real work. If Jesus' only role in your life is to save you for Heaven and be worshipped on Sunday morning, then you are missing out on so much more." page 239.

72. "Medicalized understandings and diagnoses of the inner person cannot compare to the work of Jesus Christ in a person's life. Would it not make sense to go to the One who created the mind for restoration of the mind?" page 140.

73. "The local church is the most important organization on Earth." page 244.

74. "This feels like one of those carnival rides, where we move very fast, and don't go anywhere. The Social Security Administration says you cannot work because you have a non-verifiable mental illness. And the way we know you have a non-verifiable mental illness is from a book that has stigmatized normal behavior and destigmatized abnormal behavior." page 37.

75. "Psychiatry is a field of "medicine" (I’m using that term very loosely) that does not have verifiable proof that mental illnesses are medical issues." page. 57.

76. "What is interesting is that she [my psychiatrist] was willing to provide antidepressants after no blood test, no labs, no taking of weight or height, not a single question about my nutrition, and never taking one of my vital signs . . . How can a medical doctor not practice anything medical with my body and offer medication as a remedy?" pages 61-62.

77. "Mental illnesses are diagnosed without any evidence of pathological illness. In an effort to understand people rightly through a secular, materialist lens, researchers have created medical-sounding labels for spiritual problems of the immaterial mind." page 181.

    
    

78. "It's time to end the myth of mental illness. The struggles we call mental illness do exist, but they are not truly illnesses of the mind." page 181.

79. "Jettisoning mental health terminology does not mean that you are rejecting genuine brain diseases. Rather, you are being more precise with your language in describing the inner and outer man aspects of who we are." page 198.

80. "Psychiatrists are pastors who can write prescriptions. They make worldview decisions with no medical proof of their decisions and perhaps even prescribe medicine throughout the process. And how could there not be a mental health epidemic when we have medical doctors employing arbitrary diagnoses to "help" people while lacking any medical proof?" page 62.

81. "I need to remember that my perceptions are straight-up wrong and remind myself that the Bible is right (2 Pet. 1:16). To meditate or attempt to be mindful apart from the Bible is never helpful. In fact, it is damning. Over and over again, the Bible warns us against human wisdom and calls us to embrace the wisdom of God (1 Cor. 1:20, 25)." page 175.

    
    

82. "Mental health has become the secular therapeutic catch-all phrase to deal with the inner person, thus sidelining the Bible's perspective on care for your inner person And are we better for it? With one out of six people being diagnosed with a mental illness, obviously not." page 127.

83. "The CBT therapist is a secular pastor. Without an authoritative source of truth, each therapist is subject to counsel by their own schooling and by their own personal worldview. What do you think a CBT therapist is going to share with you? Truths from the Bible? Most likely not. As a Christian, you are going to a secular pastor to get help with your mind when the secular pastor is offering advice based on not only a different, but an opposing worldview!" page 167-168.

84. "In instances like addiction, it really comes down to what caused what. Does the brain cause addiction, or is the brain affected by the abuse of illegal substances? . . . What leads a person to use illegal substances in the first place? What leads a person to reach for their first illegal substance, before they have ever tried drugs of any type? You can probably guess, it's the mind. Can the brain be damaged because of drug use? Of course! But what started it all? The mind." page 212.

85. "In meeting with many Christians for counseling, I can say that a person who has repeatedly misused drugs or alcohol will have stronger cravings that really do affect the choices they make. The Bible would definitely support the idea that the body can influence the inner person , to include that of physical cravings for substances. In this way, a brain is making it hard for the Christian to say no." page 224.

86. "The brain may cause you to experience symptoms of withdrawal, but it cannot make you call your drug dealer. These are sins, motivated by deep desires and idols in your mind, to be repented of, not sickness in need of mere medical treatment." page 213.

87. "What you choose may be influenced by your brain, but not determined by it. The Christian, through the freeing work of the Holy Spirit, can choose to live a life that is honoring to God (Rom. 6:19)." page 215.

88. "So for a Christian, what does renewal of the mind also bring with it (Eph. 4:23)? A healthier brain." page 224.

89. "The secular therapeutic culture, as medically savvy as it presents itself to be, is bankrupt. God has better answers than what secular therapy has to offer, answers that are found within the pages of the Bible." page 66.

    
    

90. "God's goal is not for us to merely have better behavior, or feel better about ourselves. God's goal in salvation is that we be transformed." page 113.

91. "When your disorder becomes your identity, you fossilize in unfaithfulness. You stop striving for progress towards sanctification." page 197.

92. "One of the pitfalls of secular therapy is that it often prizes self-esteem, happiness, and feeling better as a key standard of success, rather than obedience to Scripture." page 154.

    
    

93. "You may desensitize yourself to a traumatic memory, but that is not genuine mind renewal. You may lessen the negative emotions associated with the traumatic memory, but that doesn't mean you've learned to interpret what happened through the lens of Scripture, I find it odd to say that we are truly helping the mind if we are only alleviating negative emotions." page 173.

94. "We have the sufficient, capable, dynamic Word of God that allows us to address not only the symptom but also the cause. We don't have to settle for shallow fruit-swapping with those who truly don't understand the mind - or worse, whose own mind is still darkened (that is, the secular therapist)." pages 178-179.

95. "The Bible helps you understand anxiety, depression, and PTSD better than the world's wisdom can. In fact, the Bible can help frame what is really going on and how to respond to these so-called mental illnesses. The Bible offers more than a description of symptoms; in many cases there is also a clear articulation of what the source of the issue is - something the secular world cannot offer." page 191.

96. "The West is facing a modern mental health epidemic that started over a century ago and has reached a turning point. We treat the mind as if it needs medical solutions - thus 'medicating the mind' - but fail to see that the mind is not the brain. Now we have created our own problems and called them 'mental disorders/illnesses.' Furthermore, we have created the solutions to these problems, resulting in a modern-day epidemic." page 10.

97. "My point in all of this is not that medical doctors are bad - not even close. Rather, I’m saying that while the world has limits on what it can heal, Jesus does not. Secular therapy, even with all of its confusion between the mind and the brain, can sometimes treat our symptoms. But Jesus can save and completely transform our minds." page 238.

98. "Take the symptoms being described with mental health terminology and then reinterpret them through the lens of Scripture." page 197.

99. "Salvation doesn't take a mind that was 'already running' and simply advance it. Salvation, rather, takes a mind that is broken-down - the tires are flat, the engine is missing, and the transmission is busted - and transforms it into something that actually functions." page 113.

100. "Your capacities have changed if you have experienced salvation through Jesus Christ. Your mind was dull and hardened before salvation. After salvation, your mind is now softened, functional, ordered, and able to see the glory of God." page 118.

     
     

101. "Instead of seeing the Bible as having some pat Sunday school answers, commit yourself to learning the Bible and how it teaches change." page 242.

     
     

     I pray these quotes have been beneficial for you, and that they would stir you up to read Lies My Therapist Told Me.

     
     

     In Christ, Justin Daugherty