Fed Up American  

People diagnosed with schizophrenia suffer from problems with their thought processes. These lead to hallucinations, delusions, disordered thinking, and unusual speech or behavior. Symptoms affect the ability to interact with others, and often people with schizophrenia withdraw from the outside world.

Q.  What's the difference between a Christian and a schizophrenic?                         

A.  One person hears voices and is convinced their thoughts and actions are known to some outside power.

They think the world was designed and created for them and that they are central to everything that goes on and they are sure they are part of a special divine mission.

They believe that ordinary everyday events have some special transcendent meaning visible only to them, sometimes speaking in babbling incoherent voices, and they believe supernatural forces are at work to influence their actions. 

And the other one, of course, is a schizophrenic.  

The Bible is filled with reports of people hearing voices and seeing visions. In the pre-psychiatric world that Jesus allegedly walked upon, these “miracles” were attributed to their God. Combine a superstitious person, which most of the day were, with a psychiatric disorder as serious as schizophrenia and you have a very volatile and dangerous situation.

A dangerous situation that has morphed itself into a monster centuries later. The Christian of the modern day, especially the devout Christian that believes that the voices and visions mentioned in the Bible are real, have accepted the schizophrenia and superstitions of the people of Jesus era.

They even go as far as to sing praises to this fairy tale God of theirs, with arms raised and vacant, glassy stares to the heavens, believing that there is a magical, mystical being that is looking down, approvingly at them.

There is a very big problem with Christian delusions accompanied by auditory and visual hallucinations. They live in a world of make believe that is responsible for centuries of fear, guilt, death and destruction of families. Christian atrocities throughout history include the crusades, the Salem witch trials and various episodes of torture all in the name of the Christian God and mass hallucinations and religious belief.

Politicians have been heavily influenced in basing their legislative decisions, ignoring the separation of church and state, on their religious beliefs and insurance companies have been using the “act of God” clause to get out of paying claims. People have been accepting these things for centuries and need to finally wake up and face reality.

Schizophrenia is a lifelong illness and will require medication for the rest of the patient’s life. They find comfort in church services and fellow Christians that share their same hallucinations and delusions, by their beliefs in things that can never be proven as real. This is a problem because they will revolve their entire lives around a make believe story. They will even go as far as believing that they are superior compared to a non-believer because they feel as though they are chosen or more enlightened.

Schizophrenia is a treatable mental illness and will undoubtedly get worse the longer it goes untreated. Trying to convince a Christian that they are suffering the symptoms is the problem. They don’t believe that they are sick and need medical treatment.

Look at it this way. Let’s suppose that I came to you one day and said that I was enlightened last night by an angel that told me that I will have “life everlasting” by simply believing so. The only condition is that I must always believe, even when evidence points to the contrary, or I will lose my life everlasting “gift.” The belief would be that I discovered that a story of Humpty Dumpty, complete with all the kings’ horses and all the kings’ men, was based on real accounts of a story by Mother Goose. I found these stories to be as real as the story Mother Mary and will not be told anything to the contrary.

Would you not find me as being a mental case?