Welcome to Emotional Wellness Daily. We're going to further explain the importance of spirituality and religion on mental health. Rav Wolbe says
(again, quoting from his essay on psychiatry and religion, page 88 to 89) that he knew a person who suffered all his life with mental illness. Then, when a relative passed away, the person started coming closer to religion. He started to visit his shul, to visit rabbis, and to pray a little bit. And he said that this changed him. When he started to pray, he had less despair. When he started to pray, he had more meaning and purpose in his life. His suicidal thoughts went away as he began to pray, and he said that religion gave him meaning and purpose.
This is an important point: another thing that human beings need in life is meaning and purpose. When I was in the McLean hospital in Boston, one of the therapists there, a self-proclaimed atheist, admitted that it's really hard to have meaning and purpose when you don't believe in God, when you're just a little speck of dust in the huge cosmos, flying through time in a haphazard way. He said that's why it's becoming more popular, this concept called spirituality. Because it's an excuse to have spirituality without religion.
(We're not going to get into exactly what that is, because it's really not important. Our focus is on religion.) He even showed me a book that was called Spirituality Without Religion. That means they're looking to create a system where you can have the psychological benefits of religion without actually being religious. That's why sometimes you hear people say, that person's very spiritual. There is something called being spiritual, but that's not enough. That's really the Kuzari’s discussion with the Rabbi. The Rabbi says to him, “It's not enough to have good intentions. You have to follow certain rules and regulations.”
Religion is about certain behaviors and activities. We're not promoting spirituality without religion, but it's possible to have religion without spirituality. Religion by definition, has in it different aspects. Certain people are, what we call, culturally religious.
They belong to a community and think it's nice. They go to shul and put on talet and tefilin and light the menorah... It's all part of the culture. Then there are people that are religious in their behaviors. They like the religious behaviors, they give structure to their life.
The last piece is meaning and purpose. Torah gives us meaning and purpose. We're here in this world to get to the next world. That's the main meaning and purpose. That's the beginning of Mesilat Yesharim. We're here in this world to do acts of kindness. There are a lot of things we're here for, but we're here for a purpose.
We get up in the morning with a purpose and reason to live. That's very important. That's why people who retire sometimes become depressed. That's why a mother who has an empty nest may start getting down. She starts questioning What's my meaning? What's my purpose? But we, people that have Emunah, understand that there's meaning and purpose in all situations, because if Hashem put me in this situation, it’s exactly what I need.
A person could be in a deep depression, and still find meaning and purpose in that in itself. As Rav Wolbe says, The highest level of human maturity is that a person is able to be Sovel et Sivlo, to tolerate the difficult, literally to to hold the load as we spoke about in tolerance, to hold the load without being broken, in whatever your situation is in life.
And he says that needs Emunah Amuka Meod/Very, very deep Emunah.
This is why somebody who has a chronic mental illness needs a Rabbi or a great Baal Emuna to give the person meaning in his challenge.
The story is told that Rav Yosef Chaim Sonnenfeld ztl used to visit an old lady once a year. She was close to 100, and she was weak and sick. She had an aid that used to come once a week to clean her. She had lived a very difficult life. And yet, every year before Rosh Hashana, she would ask for a beracha for a long life. They asked her, Why you want a long life? Her answer was that, once a week after her aid cleaned her, she was able to make a beracha, and it was worth it to live, to be able to make a beracha.
There’s also a story about Rav Yehezkiel Abramsky, when he was in Siberia. He was chopping wood, his hands were bleeding, he had no Gemara, no tefilin, he had nothing.
One morning he got up and said, What am I getting up for? What am I saying Modeh Ani for? And he said, I'm saying Modeh Ani that I can say Modeh Ani, that I can recognize that there’s God that gave me meaning and purpose, even in Siberia!
That is what religion does for our mental health, when we are mentally healthy. And even when a person is in a deep chronic mental illness, Rav Wolbe says, it's still possible to find meaning and purpose in the illness, if you have Emunah.