Recently, while visiting the United States, I experienced an incredible providence. Through a series of remarkable events, I found myself talking on the telephone with the daughter of one of the first western Christian missionaries to Nagaland, during the time when the Naga tribes were still mostly animist.
Long ago, near the start of my personal journey with Jesus Christ, I purged at least two words from my vocabulary along with the concepts that they stand for. Those words are coincidence and luck. I am of the firm conviction that neither of those words accurately describes the forces that are at work behind the scenes in this world. When you come to understand the totality of the involvement of the almighty and sovereign power of God in the everyday lives of every individual on earth, whether or not they know or acknowledge Him, then you will more perfectly understand the following truth.
Health & Healing“In Him we live and move and have our being,” (Acts 17:28.)
It is impossible to draw a single breath that is not aided by the power of the Creator. It was God who breathed into Adam the first breath of life that caused inanimate clay to come to life (Genesis 2:7), and it is the same God who imparts life to each human being to this very day. God is just as in control of our everyday lives as He is in control of each breath that we breathe.
The prophet says, “I know, O LORD, that the way of man is not in himself, that it is not in man who walks to direct his steps,” (Jeremiah 10:23.) The wise man adds, “In their hearts humans plan their course, but the LORD establishes their steps,” (Proverbs 16:9.) God even directs the way we think and speak. “The preparations of the heart in man, and the answer of the tongue, is from the LORD,” (Proverbs 16:1.) God controls it all.
The odds of my running into a complete stranger on the streets of the vast United States who has been amongst the Northeast tribes (that not one in one lakh Americans have even heard of) are so slim as to make such a thing a virtual impossibility. And for this event to lead, in turn, to meeting and speaking with the daughter of one of the first missionaries to Nagaland, my newly adopted home, only serves to prove the existence of God. It certainly does nothing to strengthen the concept of luck, because the odds were completely against it. Luck and coincidence do not exist—period. To attribute anything to luck or to coincidence is to deny that God is an active and constant influence in the lives of those He died to save.
When my personal Christian experience grew to the point where I understood and accepted these truths, it did a lot for my mental and emotional health. You see, when you have an outlook on life that says there is a God, who loves you with a perfect love, and has all power in heaven and on earth, and is directing all the events of your life, then it is possible to have a peace that the godless man or woman can not understand.
When you understand that you do not have to rely on any such unpredictable force as luck for your protection or for your prosperity, then you can say with the Psalmist, “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil,” (Psalms 23:4.) You don’t need to fear evil because you know that luck has absolutely nothing to do with your life. You have an almighty and powerful God who “is able to keep you from falling,” (Jude 1:24). He will gladly “command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways; they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone,” (Psalm 91:11, 12.)
A personal knowledge of this almighty God and a knowledge of these saving promises is one of the most effective hedges against fearfulness, worry, dissatisfaction, or depression. How can you continue to entertain feelings of discouragement, or depression, or low self worth when you know how able and willing God is to work miracles and providences in your life? I can let you know from personal experience that when things get so bad in your life that you could even come to the place of considering suicide—when it gets that bad—you’ll have an anchor for your sanity when you remember that God has not allowed these things into your life to destroy you, but to make you a stronger person. If you endure to the end of each trial that God’s providences permit to come your way, with a firm belief that it has been permitted—even ordained—by perfect love and perfect wisdom, then there is nothing, absolutely nothing on earth that God’s grace can not carry you through!
Now increasingly, medical science is connecting the dots between specific nutrient deficiencies and mental or emotional imbalances. For example, bipolar disorder, also known as manic depressive disorder, has been linked to a biochemical imbalance in the brain that is totally cured by high doses of Omega 3 fatty acids found in many foods including flax seed and fish oils. And just last summer, an associate of mine who is a university professor in Korea, with both a Masters and PhD in public health, showed me new studies, and an older book by a medical doctor, positively linking paranoid schizophrenia to serious deficiency of vitamin B3. In fact, the psychiatric symptoms of vitamin B3 deficiency are identical to paranoid schizophrenia. Although the medical and psychiatric communities have largely remained ignorant or skeptical of these important findings, there are progressive physicians who are treating and curing schizophrenia with massive doses of vitamin B3.
And this is just the beginning. Medical pioneers have been proving a relationship between many other nutrient deficiencies and the mental or emotional illnesses they can cause for decades. Christian physicians are needed who will study and practice this critically important science of Orthomolecular Psychiatry. Nutritional prescriptions should be combined with prescriptions for prayer and the memorization of Bible promises that can preserve sanity and emotional stability in an increasingly insane and unstable world. If there is anywhere on earth where such Christian medicine should be practiced, it is in the wonderfully Christian state of Nagaland.
Which brings me back to the original providence I mentioned at the start of this column. As I already mentioned, through a series of remarkable events, I found myself talking on the telephone in the United States, with the daughter of one of the first western Christian missionaries to Nagaland, when the Naga tribes were still mostly animist. She told me the whole story of how he made his first converts. Somewhere in the course of his fishing, he baited his hook with the promise of taking some Naga youth to a school in Assam where they could learn more of the ways of the west which apparently had served the British very well.
I’m originally from the west. Being born in the British commonwealth, I carry British citizenship to this day. I’ve lived in both England and the United States. So I’m well acquainted with the attitude of western superiority that is so common in the nations that have sent many godly missionaries to the east. And it’s a sad part of the history that these wonderful missionaries didn’t stop at bringing the good news of the gospel. They also quite frequently seemed unable to differentiate between Bible Christianity and the western modes of thought and culture that were part of their own Christian experience.
But the truth is that Christianity was born in the east not the west. And in the final analysis, it is neither the ways of the west nor the ways the east that can claim either faultlessness or superiority. The Psalmist proclaims, “No one from the east or the west or from the desert can exalt themselves. It is God who judges: He brings one down, he exalts another,” (Psalms 75:6, 7.) So I think I can be excused for my conviction that ethnocentrism —which is a fancy word for the attitude that one’s own group is superior— is another type of imbalance that dwells in the minds of many.
As I’ve pointed out, some mental imbalances are caused by lack of specific nutrients. But much unbalanced thinking is caused by lack of specific truth. Just as bipolar can often be cured by large doses of Omega 3 fatty acids, so all attitudes of superiority, cherished by one group over another, could be cured by a good healthy dose of this truth: “No one from the east or the west or from the desert can exalt themselves. It is God who judges.”
Until next week, be wise, be healthy and God bless!
(Ian Anthony Jones is a health educator and missionary from the US now married to a Naga and residing in Dimapur. He will be contributing every Friday to the Morung Express under the column: Health & Healing. You may contact the Health and Healing columnist and give him feedback at: edenbarak.ngo@gmail.com)
Long ago, near the start of my personal journey with Jesus Christ, I purged at least two words from my vocabulary along with the concepts that they stand for. Those words are coincidence and luck. I am of the firm conviction that neither of those words accurately describes the forces that are at work behind the scenes in this world. When you come to understand the totality of the involvement of the almighty and sovereign power of God in the everyday lives of every individual on earth, whether or not they know or acknowledge Him, then you will more perfectly understand the following truth.
Health & Healing“In Him we live and move and have our being,” (Acts 17:28.)
It is impossible to draw a single breath that is not aided by the power of the Creator. It was God who breathed into Adam the first breath of life that caused inanimate clay to come to life (Genesis 2:7), and it is the same God who imparts life to each human being to this very day. God is just as in control of our everyday lives as He is in control of each breath that we breathe.
The prophet says, “I know, O LORD, that the way of man is not in himself, that it is not in man who walks to direct his steps,” (Jeremiah 10:23.) The wise man adds, “In their hearts humans plan their course, but the LORD establishes their steps,” (Proverbs 16:9.) God even directs the way we think and speak. “The preparations of the heart in man, and the answer of the tongue, is from the LORD,” (Proverbs 16:1.) God controls it all.
The odds of my running into a complete stranger on the streets of the vast United States who has been amongst the Northeast tribes (that not one in one lakh Americans have even heard of) are so slim as to make such a thing a virtual impossibility. And for this event to lead, in turn, to meeting and speaking with the daughter of one of the first missionaries to Nagaland, my newly adopted home, only serves to prove the existence of God. It certainly does nothing to strengthen the concept of luck, because the odds were completely against it. Luck and coincidence do not exist—period. To attribute anything to luck or to coincidence is to deny that God is an active and constant influence in the lives of those He died to save.
When my personal Christian experience grew to the point where I understood and accepted these truths, it did a lot for my mental and emotional health. You see, when you have an outlook on life that says there is a God, who loves you with a perfect love, and has all power in heaven and on earth, and is directing all the events of your life, then it is possible to have a peace that the godless man or woman can not understand.
When you understand that you do not have to rely on any such unpredictable force as luck for your protection or for your prosperity, then you can say with the Psalmist, “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil,” (Psalms 23:4.) You don’t need to fear evil because you know that luck has absolutely nothing to do with your life. You have an almighty and powerful God who “is able to keep you from falling,” (Jude 1:24). He will gladly “command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways; they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone,” (Psalm 91:11, 12.)
A personal knowledge of this almighty God and a knowledge of these saving promises is one of the most effective hedges against fearfulness, worry, dissatisfaction, or depression. How can you continue to entertain feelings of discouragement, or depression, or low self worth when you know how able and willing God is to work miracles and providences in your life? I can let you know from personal experience that when things get so bad in your life that you could even come to the place of considering suicide—when it gets that bad—you’ll have an anchor for your sanity when you remember that God has not allowed these things into your life to destroy you, but to make you a stronger person. If you endure to the end of each trial that God’s providences permit to come your way, with a firm belief that it has been permitted—even ordained—by perfect love and perfect wisdom, then there is nothing, absolutely nothing on earth that God’s grace can not carry you through!
Now increasingly, medical science is connecting the dots between specific nutrient deficiencies and mental or emotional imbalances. For example, bipolar disorder, also known as manic depressive disorder, has been linked to a biochemical imbalance in the brain that is totally cured by high doses of Omega 3 fatty acids found in many foods including flax seed and fish oils. And just last summer, an associate of mine who is a university professor in Korea, with both a Masters and PhD in public health, showed me new studies, and an older book by a medical doctor, positively linking paranoid schizophrenia to serious deficiency of vitamin B3. In fact, the psychiatric symptoms of vitamin B3 deficiency are identical to paranoid schizophrenia. Although the medical and psychiatric communities have largely remained ignorant or skeptical of these important findings, there are progressive physicians who are treating and curing schizophrenia with massive doses of vitamin B3.
And this is just the beginning. Medical pioneers have been proving a relationship between many other nutrient deficiencies and the mental or emotional illnesses they can cause for decades. Christian physicians are needed who will study and practice this critically important science of Orthomolecular Psychiatry. Nutritional prescriptions should be combined with prescriptions for prayer and the memorization of Bible promises that can preserve sanity and emotional stability in an increasingly insane and unstable world. If there is anywhere on earth where such Christian medicine should be practiced, it is in the wonderfully Christian state of Nagaland.
Which brings me back to the original providence I mentioned at the start of this column. As I already mentioned, through a series of remarkable events, I found myself talking on the telephone in the United States, with the daughter of one of the first western Christian missionaries to Nagaland, when the Naga tribes were still mostly animist. She told me the whole story of how he made his first converts. Somewhere in the course of his fishing, he baited his hook with the promise of taking some Naga youth to a school in Assam where they could learn more of the ways of the west which apparently had served the British very well.
I’m originally from the west. Being born in the British commonwealth, I carry British citizenship to this day. I’ve lived in both England and the United States. So I’m well acquainted with the attitude of western superiority that is so common in the nations that have sent many godly missionaries to the east. And it’s a sad part of the history that these wonderful missionaries didn’t stop at bringing the good news of the gospel. They also quite frequently seemed unable to differentiate between Bible Christianity and the western modes of thought and culture that were part of their own Christian experience.
But the truth is that Christianity was born in the east not the west. And in the final analysis, it is neither the ways of the west nor the ways the east that can claim either faultlessness or superiority. The Psalmist proclaims, “No one from the east or the west or from the desert can exalt themselves. It is God who judges: He brings one down, he exalts another,” (Psalms 75:6, 7.) So I think I can be excused for my conviction that ethnocentrism —which is a fancy word for the attitude that one’s own group is superior— is another type of imbalance that dwells in the minds of many.
As I’ve pointed out, some mental imbalances are caused by lack of specific nutrients. But much unbalanced thinking is caused by lack of specific truth. Just as bipolar can often be cured by large doses of Omega 3 fatty acids, so all attitudes of superiority, cherished by one group over another, could be cured by a good healthy dose of this truth: “No one from the east or the west or from the desert can exalt themselves. It is God who judges.”
Until next week, be wise, be healthy and God bless!
(Ian Anthony Jones is a health educator and missionary from the US now married to a Naga and residing in Dimapur. He will be contributing every Friday to the Morung Express under the column: Health & Healing. You may contact the Health and Healing columnist and give him feedback at: edenbarak.ngo@gmail.com)
