Martin Luther Rocked Compassion! Who Knew?

During my presentation at ACBC and at the Faith Biblical Counseling Training Conference on Mental Illness and the Church, I noted that: 

One of the failures of the modern evangelical church is our tendency to start over from scratch each generation. We fail to glean from the wisdom of the ancient path of those who have gone before us and faced similar issues in ministry. Perhaps this is because we think that we are the first generation to face what society today labels as “mental illness.” That is not true.     

I then explained: 

There are many places we could look in church history to uncover how God’s people have always been about the business of helping hurting people. Today we’ll focus on Martin Luther. 

Martin Luther: Care and Cure by Charity and Company 

Winfried Schleiner studied 500 years of history from the Renaissance through the Reformation in his journal article “Renaissance Exempla of Schizophrenia: The Cure by Charity in Luther and Cervantes.”[1]  What’s fascinating is Schleiner’s conclusion that during this 500-year era in the treatment of schizophrenia and psychosis “medical writers of the period rarely show any sympathy for such delusive (delusional) conditions.” Instead, “one must look to theologians … to find sympathetic treatments of the condition” (of schizophrenia and psychosis).  

When treating people who thought they were a clay jar or a rooster with flapping wings, rather than care and cure, the medical writers of the day treated them with ridicule and disdain. Schleiner’s study of Luther, however, presented a very different, a very compassionate, approach. Schleiner even entitles his section on Luther as “Cure by Charity and Company.” 

Listen to what Schleiner’s says about Luther’s compassionate care: 

If, then, a certain kind of psychotic case tended to attract medical ridicule … we may have to look elsewhere in the Renaissance for a glimpse of what has become so strikingly obvious in our times: that a knowledge of the patients’ histories, empathy with their condition, and endeavors to understand their particular thought processes are important in the treatment of psychotics, whose suffering and pain are beginning to be fully recognized (p. 163). 

It wasn’t in the medical doctors of the day where the mentally ill found compassionate care. It was in Luther. And how did Luther care like Christ? Luther emphasized knowing the patients’ histories—listening well. Luther focused on empathy with their condition—working to understand their inner turmoil and feeling with them in their agony. And Luther endeavored to understand their particular thought processes—seeking to diagnose heart issues. Luther took their symptoms, their situation, and their soul seriously. 

Do we care like that? 

Schleiner notes that medical doctors were content to map out diagnostic categories (sounds familiar, doesn’t it?), but only in Luther did he find someone manifesting “an encompassing sympathy for the psychotic.” 

Do we do that—practice an encompassing sympathy? 

Regarding Luther’s ministry to the mentally ill, Schleiner summarizes by saying that compassionate care was a major part of the cure: 

“Indeed it can be said that this sense of caring becomes a vehicle of therapy.” 

Can that be said of us as biblical counselors? Do we only dispense truth? Or, do we dispense truth in love. Do we just preach or teach at counselees, or do we lovingly listen to and interact with fellow strugglers? Is our Christlike relationship a vehicle of care and cure? 

Compassionate Relationships 

What sort of strugglers does Luther interact with? One was a “melancholic who refused to eat and drink and hides in a cellar. He rebuffs any charitable helpers with the words ‘Don’t you see that I am a corpse and have died? How can I eat?’” 

Talk about “hard cases.” 

Here is a person who is both depressed and psychotic—thinking he is dead. In a second hard case, Luther dealt with another melancholic (depressed person), this one who thought he was a rooster “with a red comb on his head, a long beak, and a crowing voice.” 

What was Luther’s care and cure for these two individuals? Schleiner says the two elements common in every one of Luther’s cases were “the consideration of the psychotic’s past and the role of societas (company, relationship) in re-integrating such a person into the community.” 

Reintegrating the soul through compassionate relationships was an essential element in Luther’s soul care. He used his personal relationship as a way of encountering another person on behalf of God so that the other person’s image of God and relationship to God could be altered in ways which brought integration to their personality. In fact, Schleiner even labeled Luther’s approach “compassionate reintegration.” 

When someone comes to see us as a biblical counselor, do we counsel like Luther? Do we listen well to their past—to the history of their struggles and suffering? Do we reintegrate them into the Body of Christ? Do we use our relationship with them as a bridge that helps them to encounter Christ? Do we embody truth in love? 

In his conclusion, Schleiner writes: 

Luther shows none of the dehumanizing amusement that often animates even learned physicians when they report certain kinds of cases. The “cure” is brought about not by trickery but by friendly persuasion, by appeal to common humanity, by company. The entire story is informed by a strong sense of sympathy for a patient who becomes stigmatized by society. 

Wow! When someone comes to see us as a biblical counselor, do they leave telling others that they received from us a strong sense of sympathy instead of being stigmatized? Do they receive from us, as they did from Luther, friendly persuasion, an appeal to common humanity, and caring company—reintegration into the Body of Christ? 

Renewing the Mind through Redemptive Relationships 

Schleiner discussed a third hard case that Luther addressed. The person was labeled a “voluntary retentive”—someone who refused to urinate. In most Renaissance cases like this, no history was taken or given. Not so with Luther. In talking with this person, Luther traced the beginning of this “disorder” to a sermon this person heard about works-righteousness. The person came to believe that if he could perfectly control his body and soul, that he would be accepted by God. 

Having gleaned this history, Luther then gives an etiology or cause as he calls this person a “iustitiarius”—someone attempting to justify himself by works rather than by faith.” His cure was redemptive or gospel-centered—pointing the person away from works of righteousness to the righteousness of Christ. His interactions with the voluntary retentive person helped him to see that his behavior was rooted in the pride of self-sufficiency. Luther also helped this man see that he must put on renewed images of God in Christ as a God of grace. 

When people come to us, do they experience redemptive relationships? Do they experience us caring deeply, listening compassionately, and then wisely bringing to bear specific ways that the gospel of Christ’s grace relates to their life struggles? 

Clearly, we are not the first generation to be called upon to address the hard cases that our world would describe as mental illness. We can be a generation that addresses those cases with the winsome wisdom, with the redemptive relationships, of a Martin Luther. 

The Rest of the Story 

You can download for free the entire document by clicking here: Mental Illness and the Church. You can direct others to this free resource with this shortened link: http://bit.ly/MIandChurch  

Join the Conversation 

How does our compassionate care for those diagnosed with mental illness compare to Luther’s compassion? 

RPM Ministries: Equipping You to Change Lives with Christ’s Changeless Truth