US Colleges New Mental Institutions

We were made to harmonize with God—actually to be possessed by the Spirit of God.  But when the Spirit of God is rejected, another spirit takes up residence—the carnal spirit; the spirit spawned by Satan. 

The final destination of life’s journey and the nature of the process we experience along the way are dictated by the spirit that resides within us.  If the spirit is God’s Spirit, one will have life and life more abundantly—even bad times become good—and ultimately, eternal life in Christ Jesus.  If the spirit is Satan’s carnal spirit, expect a life out of harmony—full of irreconcilable trouble—and finally, eternal, cognizant damnation in the Lake of Fire. 

The decision of which spirit should reside within a person should be simple, but the blind refuse to see. 

What about you?  Have you yet to be born again?  Are you ready to choose God’s Spirit to reside in you?  Are you ready to see your sins and shame washed away by the blood of Jesus Christ?  You can harmonize with God today.  Click onto “Further With Jesus” for childlike instructions and immediate entry into the Kingdom of God. NOW FOR TODAY’S SUBJECT.

GOD SAID, Genesis 3:1-6:

1 Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?

2 And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden:

3 But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.

4 And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die:

5 For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.

6 And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.

GOD SAID, I Corinthians 1:20:

Where is the wise? where is the scribe? where is the disputer of this world? hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?

MAN SAID: When Christians go to church, they need to check their brains at the door.  Christianity is for the poor and ignorant. 

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In the Garden of Eden, Eve—the mother of all living—was confronted by a second voice in God’s garden: Satan’s voice.  The discourse is recorded in Genesis 3:1-6.   Again, the passage reads:

1 Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?

2 And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden:

3 But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.

4 And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die:

5 For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.

6 And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.

Three rational thoughts buttress Eve’s decision to cast off the Words of God:

1. “The tree was good for food.”  Limited knowledge separated from the God of all knowledge is a dangerous place.  The fruit that appeared to be “good for food” was, in fact, the doorway of sickness and death.  That kind of rational thinking placed many unclean foods and drinks on man’s supper table: pork, GMO foods, refined sugars, partially-hydrogenated oils, alcoholic beverages, and droves more.  They appear to be “good for food,” but after serious investigation, are found to be life-shortening. 

2.  “Pleasant to the eye.”  Beauty separated from God is a dangerous place.  One is reminded of Hollywood: lust, fornication, pornography, nature-worship, etc. 

3. “A tree to be desired to make one wise.”  Knowledge separated from God is a very deadly place.  Consider philosophical positions such as the “free love” movement of the 1960s, which is foundational to the absolute moral decadence of today.  By the way, “free” it is not.  How about the vacuous dogma of evolution or President Obama’s suggestion that it “doesn’t matter who you love” in support of homosexuality?

Man has separated God from his pursuit of knowledge and the results, as always, are deadly.  The headline in the October 2015 feature in Psychology Today reads “Crisis U,” and the subhead, “Step by well-meaning step, colleges are being transformed into something more akin to mental health wards than citadels of learning.”  Excerpts follow:

“Problems are more urgent than ever,” says Philip Meilman, professor of psychology at Georgetown University and director of its campus counseling center.  When he took his first post after earning his doctorate four decades ago, he says, counseling centers mostly saw collegians struggling with developmental issues—homesickness, relationship breakups, lack of life direction.  “That’s not what we see today,” he reports.  “Students have more overwhelming concerns: ‘I’m cutting.’ ‘I’m anorexic.’ ‘I’m suicidal.’ ‘I’m an alcoholic.’ ‘I’m bipolar.’ Or combinations thereof.”  Developmental problems have not gone away, they are just masked by more pressing turmoil. 

Nationally, 22 percent of collegians now seek therapy or counseling each year, reports Daniel Eisenberg, an economist at the University of Michigan whose Healthy Minds Study annually samples 160,000 students around the country.  The number of those in counseling varies from campus to campus depending on its culture—10 percent at some large schools, nearly 50 percent at some small, private ones.  The figure has been steadily growing for two decades and shows no signs of slowing. 

According to Benjamin Locke, associate director for clinical services at Penn State, one in three students now starts college with a prior diagnosis of mental disorder. 

Eisenberg’s Healthy Minds Study indicates that 19 percent of all college students regularly take psychotropic meds—antidepressants, anxiolytics, and stimulants such as Adderall. 

Distress on campus takes a variety of forms, but far and away the leading cause of concern in 2015 is anxiety—54 percent of all college students report feeling overwhelming anxiety, up from 46.4 percent in 2010, according to the latest semiannual survey conducted by the American College Health Association.  That wasn’t always the case. 

“For 47 percent of clients seeking counseling—which is available in seven languages—anxiety is the primary complaint.  Students feel overwhelmed.  They can’t manage.” 

Self-harm is a staple of dorm life, and Eisenberg finds that nearly one in five students engages in cutting, burning, or other form of self-mutilation.  According to the 2014 CCMH study, 24 percent of students purposefully injure themselves without the intent to kill themselves.  The number is slowly increasing, up from 21 percent in 2008. 

Experts find it difficult to pinpoint why.  It may be that lacking the ability to emotionally regulate themselves, students feel things especially intensely—beyond their ability to articulate their feelings.  In general, says Paul Grayson, head of counseling at New York’s Marymount College, “there’s more acting out of distress.  Earlier cohorts were more internally tormented.”

In addition, lives are now presented publically, stripped of the anxiety that churns beneath.  “It’s generational,” says a Brown University student.  “We are obsessed with social media.  But it magnifies the comparison factor.”  At a school with so many talented students, she says, almost everyone is stuck in negative self-evaluation—trapped in a hall of mirrors.  Social connection is as necessary as air for health.  But “we have to acknowledge it now has a dark side,” says Gregory Eells, director of the campus counseling center at Cornell University. 

MAKE NO MISTAKE: Drinking has long been a part of campus life.  But drinking has moved beyond beer to hard liquor, which is such a staple of campus life that more than a dozen universities, from Alabama to Wisconsin license their logo to Kraft, Jell-O’s manufacturer, to market insignia-embossed molds for making tasty shots. 

A 2013 survey conducted by 34^th Street Magazine, the arts and culture arm of Penn’s Daily Pennsylvanian, revealed that 71 percent of Penn students get blackout drunk at least once in college; 28 percent get blackout drunk at least once or twice a month.  For 24 percent of students, blacking out is the goal. It’s an inverted world in which the path to pleasure is passing out.

Students are often fully aware of the risks of mixing alcohol with sex. “We struggle with relationships,” says the Brown student.  “It’s especially difficult for women.  Lots of women students want respect and a stable relationship.  But they believe that hooking up is what you do. Then they get depressed.  You wake up on a Saturday morning and you feel empty, regretting what you did the night before.” 

Step by well-meaning step, campuses are being transformed into something more akin to mental health wards than citadels of learning.  Colleges are already the largest employer of psychologists in the country.  But now, personnel and administrators from all walks of campus life are conscripted into the business, subjected to training in how to spot students who could cause trouble, to themselves or others. 

As colleges cater to their charges, some interventions in fact abet the very psychic frailty that is transforming campus life.  Much has been made of “trigger warnings,” attempts to shield students from material that may rekindle trauma memories or otherwise offend vulnerabilities, in which case they can retreat to designated “safe rooms.”  At Rutgers, one student cited the “disturbing narrative” of “suicidal inclinations” in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, the “gory misogynistic violence” in The Great Gatsby, and more.  Students at campuses from the University of California at Santa Barbara to George Washington University have called for such warnings, and schools have complied by developing official policies on them. 

Lifestyle boosts are also popular: At Cornell, a school known for its campus cuisine, chefs will prepare students gluten-free nibbles at any hour.  Then there’s “puppy day,” a now-common event on American campuses, aimed at relieving stress during finals.  Administrators arrange for local residents or animal shelters to provide puppies for students to pet.  Two thousand students turned up at one such event at UC Davis, the second largest gathering there for any cause in recent years.  “It provides the comfort of something you might normally get only at home,” says a student. 

All the fragility and coddling notwithstanding, few of those who tend to the recurring distress of students think them inherently disturbed.  “I’m concerned about everything being pathologized,” says Missouri’s Wallace.  Even students whose crises merit diagnostic labels and prescriptions can learn coping skills for life.  “We’re pulling people out of the river when we need to be stopping them upstream.” 

But no one yet knows what the essential ingredients are for a program that will enable students to thrive.  [End of quotes]

Psalm 111:10:

The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom: a good understanding have all they that do his commandments: his praise endureth for ever.

This is where wisdom begins and trying to climb up some other way just won’t work. 

GOD SAID, Genesis 3:1-6:

1 Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?

2 And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden:

3 But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.

4 And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die:

5 For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.

6 And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.

GOD SAID, I Corinthians 1:20:

Where is the wise? where is the scribe? where is the disputer of this world? hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?

MAN SAID: When Christians go to church, they need to check their brains at the door.  Christianity is for the poor and ignorant. 

Now you have THE RECORD.

 

References:

Authorized King James Version

Marano, H.E., “Crisis U,” Psychology Today, October 2015

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