John Swinton - Finding Jesus in the Storm

The spiritual journeys of those living with mental health challenges, wrapped in webs of clinical complexity, offer profound insight if we learn to listen deeply to their stories, rather than stigmatize and label them. In this remarkable book, John Swinton helps us unravel the tangled threads of psychological definitions, biological explanations, psychotropic medications, and the authentic faith experiences of Christian disciples, sharing the gifts and courageous journeys of these souls. With well-researched psychological insight and theological wisdom, this book should be in the library of every pastor, and at the bedside of anyone seeking to understand how Gods grace can weave through the disturbing pathways of those living with mental health challenges.

Wesley Granberg-Michaelson
author of Without Oars: Casting Off into a Life of Pilgrimage

Moving beyond the tired old language of illness and battles, Swinton invites us into the mental health journeys of a rich variety of people who speak in their own words, medically, theologically, and honestly. Focusing more on dignity than diagnosis, he shows that God works in all things, and healing comes in many forms. Sweeping aside the false dichotomy between science and faith, Swintons readers are invited into a more nuanced theological world in which they may find themselves unexpectedly and lovingly represented. This is also a rich resource for pastors, teachers, parents and anyone else who has a stake in brain health, because, in the end, who doesnt?

Lillian Daniel
author of Tired of Apologizing for a Church I Dont Belong To

Finding Jesus in the Storm first of all listens deeply, or, as John Swinton says, thickly, to people with mental health challenges and helps a reader see, broaden, and reconstruct both the ways that people of faith might walk with people with mental challenges as well as help people with mental health challenges explore the spiritual dimensions of their own journey. As someone who has both worked with others and my own mental health challenges, this felt very real. Using insights from psychology, sociology, theology, and other disciplines, Swinton once again breaks past multiple forms of stigma and unexamined assumptions to help readers enter a space where we can once again see each other as children of Godpilgrimsdoing the best we can to live into the embrace of Gods love.

Bill Gaventa
author of Disability and Spirituality: Recovering Wholeness

With the nuanced perspective of a theologian and ordained minister who is also a psychiatric nurse, John Swinton offers here a rich theology that drops down into the heart for people who live with mental health challenges. Refusing to reduce people to their neurons or to the labels that are assigned to them, he introduces us to the complex, lived experiences of real people as they live, wonder, worship, and love amid mental health challenges. In their close-to-the-ground stories, we find not only lament and loss but also joy, kindness, and grace. Finding Jesus in the Storm will challenge and bless all who care about the relationship between mental health and the life of Christian faith.

Warren Kinghorn
Duke University Medical Center and Duke Divinity School

In this remarkable book, John Swinton not only takes the spiritual lives of those living with mental health challenges seriously, he weaves together a beautiful, reflective theology of the cross and resurrection in the light of these experiences. This important and timely book is a must read for all of us who seek to live faithfully in the world today.

Paula Gooder
author of Body: A Biblical Spirituality for the Whole Person

Finding Jesus in the Storm is a masterful, wise, clear, and compassionate look at the experience of those struggling with mental health challenges such as depression, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia, and the thin ways these are often described by mental health professionals, Western culture, and the church. Helped by refreshing philosophical insights, we are invited to listen to thicker descriptions of who these people are in relation to a theological, as well as a clinical horizon, and to better understand biblical healingfinding joy in Jesus while suffering. This book should be widely read.

John R. Peteet, MD
Harvard Medical School

John Swinton has listened well to Christians who have struggled with the unrelenting storms of severe mental health challenges. He has heard them tell of their experiences of the presence of God, and of the seeming absence of God, and of faith that grapples with the tensions between the two. Finding Jesus in the Storm provides a thick description of Christian experiences of depression, schizophrenia, and bipolar disorder. Drawing on the authors experiences as mental health nurse, minister, and practical theologian, these accounts are engaged in conversation with both professional and Christian perspectives, scanning the horizons of mental health care, Christian Scripture, tradition, and church life. This book provides a unique, and hard won, account of journeys through deeply troubled waters. It is essential reading for all who are dissatisfied with superficial and second-hand Christian accounts of mental illness.

Chris C. H. Cook
Durham University

Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.

4035 Park East Court SE, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49546

www.eerdmans.com

2020 John Swinton

All rights reserved

Published 2020

Printed in the United States of America

26 25 24 23 22 21 20 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

ISBN 978-0-8028-7372-9

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Swinton, John, 1957author.

Title: Finding Jesus in the storm : the spiritual lives of Christians with mental health challenges / John Swinton.

Description: Grand Rapids, Michigan : William. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: Practical theology for Christians affected by mental health challengesProvided by publisher.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020012147 | ISBN 9780802873729

Subjects: LCSH: Mental healthReligious aspectsChristianity. | People with mental disabilitiesReligious life.

Classification: LCC BT732.4 .S955 2020 | DDC 248.8/62dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020012147

Unless noted otherwise, Scriptures taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version, NIV. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com The NIV and New International Version are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.

To my good friend Allen Walker, for whom the storms became just a little too powerful

T HERE ARE MANY PEOPLE I SHOULD THANK IN RELATION TO THIS BOOK . It has been a long time in the making, and its been a difficult journey. My family have as always been remarkably supportive and forgiving as I have complained, moaned, and wrestled with this book. They always saw the end point even when I could not. Id like to thank my friend and colleague Warren Kinghorn for his wisdom and insight, Katie Cross for her thoughtfulness in commenting on a later draft of the book, Joy Allen for her comments on depression, and Hannah Waite for her deep and personal insights into the important issues that this book wrestles with. I am grateful to Uli Guthrie for her guidance and insight, and I am thankful for the skills that Steph Brock brought to the project, and for her husband, Brian, whose constant encouragement has been a blessing on me for many years. Thank you also to the folks at Eerdmans, who have been extremely supportive and have encouraged me in times when I felt like finding something else to do! They have become friends, and I am grateful for all that they do. Thanks must also go to Michael Thomson for taking this project on before he moved on to Wipf and Stock. Thank you to Ronald Otto and the folks at Thresholds in Chicago (https://www.thresholds.org) for their help early on in the project. Most importantly, I want to thank the people who gifted me their life stories. This book is about you and for you, and I am thankful and humbled that you have trusted your stories with me. I only hope I have done your gifts justice. Finally, thank you to God for being gracious and kind and for teaching us that there is nothing in the realm of mental health and ill health or anywhere else that can separate us from Gods love. That is the blessing that keeps us all on track.