Categorizing Satan’s Tricks Of The Mind

Today I was reading a psychologist’s blog post who categorized what biases we have in thinking, and called them “cognitive biases”.  This psychologist, which will remain unnamed, listed several ways that people make the wrong judgements about things so that they are fooled by one thing or another.

He first begins by saying that with all the thoughts running in our heads that “our judgment would be highly accurate but that’s far from the case.”

It seems to me that this man does not know God and is exactly why I jumped out of psychology wondering how I would pay the student loans back.

Forgive me God, for my sin of thinking man’s accurate opinions of why we act and think as we do is something we can “cure” right off the bat or prescribe meds for.  A few sessions and you’re done and that’s all it takes, is what I thought.  If one wanted to heal and improve themselves, just giving the time of day to a therapist is the cure… admitting one’s mistakes, doing writing assigments or journaling, or some therapy or other and telling the therapist secrets and emotions one is having will help cure a person.

Certainly having friends to talk to in an emotional time can be helpful.  But friends are not what cures.  Only Jesus can. 

Here are some Scripture verses I found quickly doing a google search of bible verses about mental health.  I am sure there are many more than these:

The LORD makes firm the steps of the one who delight in him; – Psalm 37:23

Your word is a lamp for my feet, a light on my path. – Psalm 119:105

in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your path straight. – Proverbs 3:6

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not to your own understanding. – Proverbs 3:5

In this article, there are 13 types of bias that cloud the thinking.  As I said, this is written by a man studied in the world of man-made psychology, who studied like I did, wanting to know the inner workings of man’s mind, and try to heal it.

Some examples the psychologist used to describe biases in one’s thinking are:

The decoy effect, where one makes choices by judging an extreme, then taking what’s in the middle, when they know it costs too much, as a rationale for allowing themselves to buy an expensive thing that they normally wouldn’t have.  The example in this case is when a car dealer shows you a much more expensive car than you would be able to buy and rationalizes that the mid-level, but yet still too expensive car that costs less isn’t so bad a buy.  So you buy the mid-range car, instead of buying a less-expensive car that would be more in line with your budget.

The affect heuristic effect, where we base our decisions on our emotions.  He gives an example of a number of people who have died due to a disease as seeming more horrible than given as a percentage, which was not a clear picture of the number of deaths as the number 1,286 was.  The number of dead people aroused much more emotions in people than the percentage did of 24.24%.  People couldn’t picture that percentage as much so didn’t have the higher emotional response.

These are but two examples of the catagories he has given to some biases poeple have.  Of course, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) that people use to diagnose mental illness in people is a catalogue of symptoms people can report over a long period of time. 

The DSM is full of changing diagnostic attributions or symptoms, called “disorders”, making its way through time as social standards and ideas of acceptable behaviors, feelings, emotions, ways of identifying oneself, calling them “traits” which may be deleted with new versions of the DSM or can change in degree of importance and accuracy over time.  Diagnostic “V” codes can be added or subtracted, depending on how many people on deciding boards who edit the DSM into new versions every so often are convinced that a thought process, or some kind of issue a person has, should be categorized as being “not-normal” and relates to mental illness.

The problem as I see it is; unless it is an organic problem, it is a tumor that makes a person act strange, then the mental health diagnostics used are based on man’s ideas or concepts of what mental illnesses are.

They do not have the guidance of God; it is a Godless industry, created by man.

The bible did not have Jesus diagnosing mental illnesses.  He said the person was inhabited by demons or upset tummies were treated by drinking a little wine to settle the stomach.  There were not categories of how sick a person was, no variety of types of mental issues.  There was sin and there were the demons and everything else would have been a medical condition causing a person difficulty; people have sores, the lame, the blind and the like.

Everything was healed by God; Jesus healed many but not all, but he showed that he was God.  He performed healing miracles and brought people from the dead to life with people witnessing these things.  He proved he walked as one with the Father who created mankind and universe.  See my Basic Gospel No One Told Me When I Was A Non-Believer.

I have come to know Jesus and have followed the path of belief and trust in His wisdom, and it seems He is appealing to me that the field I got into and practiced as a mental health clinician was sadly wrong, and not the right path for the mind.  A favorite passage I refer to is;

For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind. – 2 Timothy 1:7

Everything else is man’s concept of the reality of life and is not the way of God, and the field of psychology cannot know the wisdom and reality of God’s wisdom, power and healing strength.  It just falls short and may have been invaded by Satan’s lies.  In fact, I’m a believer that it is the realm of the devil now and has no basis in the reality of what may be happening to a person’s mind – and health.

Mental health has been a real interest of mine, but as I have said before, when I entered the field I had no concept of the Lord Jesus Christ, really.  I may have wanted to help poeple heal and I had a sympathetic heart, but I needed God to show me the reality of a person’s soul.  They are not saved and so will fall into eternal judgment and God’s punishment.  They need to know God; the Lord Jesus Christ, who really heals and promises a sound mind through His Holy Spirit who resides within us; true believers of Jesus Christ.

Prayers are needed that more will come to the reality of God and the Son who walked the earth for us, to save us from our sin and from being bought, led, and taken over by Satan.