#shelly garlock hamilton

[wutbju]

This is ... strange.

[wutbju]

Cleveland Baptist Church

Shelly Hamilton shares her powerful testimony of God's goodness in her life. God is always only good.

Shelly Garlock Hamilton made a brave statement last week at Cleveland Baptist Church. The summary is that while God is always good, Christian people are often dangerously terrible at doing what they think is God’s work.

At 13:17, she introduces her story: 

I want to tell you a story about our oldest son....Jonathan came down with mental illness when he was 18.

Jonathan’s trouble started, Mrs. Hamilton admits, started when a dermatologist put him on Bactrim for acne.

The problem with mental illness is, from her slides, three-fold:

Not talked about

Not understood

Not counseled well

These misunderstood illnesses include:

schizophrenia

bipolar

anxiety disorder

dementia

Down's Syndrome

Alzheimer's

Parkinson's

As she tells Jonathan’s story, Hamilton continues:

We brought 3 different counselors to the house to try to help him. All the counselors told us that they felt Jonathan had a spiritual problem (21:05).

We took him to Dr. Ted Harris who put Jonathan on an antidepressant which only made him worse. Dr. Harris referred Jonathan to a Christian psychiatrist (21:21).

Nine years he suffered. He tried to commit suicide four times. He was hospitalized in a mental facility 3 different times for 5 weeks each (23:50). They finally found out he had schizophrenia (27:56).

Mrs. Hamilton is up in Ohio at a Hyles-Anderson church laying out the problems of a young man raised in fundamentalist royalty, describing the utter lack of professionalism, experience, or care within that world. 

The life-threatening lack of professionalism.

As we’re all listening to BJU’s show of care during the Core Conference on Gender, Sexuality, and the Church this week, Mrs. Hamilton is showing us the reality of that world. 

Which will we believe? The credible personal experience of a mother? Or BJU’s desperate attempt at branding.