I wonder if James was referring to what we know today as Neuroticism.
James 1:5-8
5 If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him.
6 But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed.
7 For let not that man think that he shall receive any thing of the Lord.
8 A double minded man is unstable in all his ways.
@frederick, your post went up just as I was finishing up writing mine. I found I couldn't argue with any of the substance of what you wrote; you and I, in my mind, just disagree in our ultimate conclusion about
@Julia Mykaele's analogy.
I think that it's insightful. In the mental health pantheon, mental health difficulties are basically broken down into four categories: psychosis, neurosis, personality disorders -- and then separate from these is being on the spectrum. The psychoses are primarily organic, in that they relate to chemical imbalances and/or some type of physiological defect in brain function or nerve wiring. The neuroses officially have counterparts among the psychoses, but that's misleading, because to say that being melancholic is on the road to depression is to fail to recognize that melancholy is not just a small case of depression. Personality disorders are
not organic; one is not
born with a personality disorder; they are
developed in response to either being raised by someone with a psychosis or an unaddressed serious neurosis (or another personality disorder) -- and, if you recognize this, they all make sense, because they are self-preservation adaptations to living within circumstances within which the normal rules don't apply.
Psychoses are not curable, any more than being autistic is curable. Personality disorders are extremely resistant to cure, and neither those who possess them nor those who live with them nor those who work with them professionally tend to be willing to do what is necessary to free these people from their mental prisons; pretty much every personality disorder
could be overcome, but it very rarely occurs. More incurable psychotics master their psychoses with medication than those with personality disorders ever do much more than learn to coordinate their mental health challenges with their environment.
Every neurosis is curable, on the other hand, and why I appreciate you identifying the neuroses with James 1 is specifically what is spoken in :06: wavering. More than anything else, the neuroses are forms of overwhelming
worrying; it doesn't matter as much
what the person is worrying too much about; what matters is that the worrying has overtaken their existence. To say that someone is neurotic is to identify the person as someone who is making a mountain out of a molehill. People can fetishize anything, and worry is one of the most debilitating fetishes of all.
And what is worrying but being unable to trust that things are a certain way and make sense that they are that way. The person defined by worry is
always wavering; s/he rarely wavers all the way to complete peace, and almost just as rarely wavers all the way to complete panic and chaos -- but is likely to spend more time flirting with panic than approaching peace. The wavering worrier lacks peace, because the wavering worrier lacks faith. That probably
primarily manifests as lacking faith in God -- some have very reasonably suggested that
any worry is demonstration of lack of faith in God -- but it's certainly evidence that one doesn't trust that one has been endowed with the tools to manage what may lie ahead.
Personally, I would now assert that the wavering worrier is likely wavering between faith in our Creator and faith in His Adversary. James is admonishing his audience to trust in our LORD, and in my experience most of those I've known who were properly diagnosed with a neurosis (as well as pretty much all the people I've known personally who allow worry to dominate their lives) have been weak in their faith, to the point of it rarely even occurring to them that they could stand to trust Him a great deal more strongly.
I say, "Kudos, Julia."
