Citing recent studies ABC News says that our high school and college age youth are facing increasing mental health risks. Cindy Liu, PhD, and lead author of one of the studies told ABC News “one particularly nuanced strength of the study: it pinned down conflicts with self-identity.”

Those who are sexually active are at risk.

Liu went on to explain, “For example, those who identified as a sexual minority tended to have the highest rates of mental health diagnoses. Gay, lesbian, and bisexual students reported thoughts or actions related to killing themselves two to three times more often than heterosexual students. Transgender students, meanwhile, were among the highest in reported mental health diagnoses and suicidality.”

Of course there are those who would agree with Dr. Ulysses Burley that “social rejection, bullying, discrimination and intimate partner violence” are the blame for the increase of mental health problems among our youth.

It is a typical mental health perspective. Our mental health issues have nothing to do with our own actions, we simply blame others and how they treat us for our problems.

We live in a post-Christian, post-truth culture.

We live in a post-Christian culture. By that I mean the Christian worldview is not longer the dominate perspective and practice in our society. And a post-Christian culture is a post-truth culture. We reject the truth of reality to embrace our fantasies. A man thinks he is a woman and a woman thinks she is a man.

Do we really believe the decline in the belief and practice of biblical morality is unrelated to the decline in the mental health of our youth?

I wonder what the suicide rate is among those who remained sexually pure before marriage, and then married and remained faithful in a heterosexual relationship? I think the incidence of suicide in such relationships is virtually non-existent. I haven’t read any studies on the mental health risks of sexual purity.

Whether we care to accept it or not man is a spiritual, mental and physical being created in God’s image. Even if we choose to ignore that truth it doesn’t cancel out real life consequences. We know that mental stress can affect our physical health, why should we think that ignoring spiritual truth would not affect our mental health?

We have been warned in the Scriptures.

This is why Paul warned us, “Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, this he will also reap,” Galatians 6:7. We live in a cause and effect universe and this principle that governs the physical realm we inhabit has its counterpart in the spiritual realm. We may think we can live as we please with impunity, but that is not the case.

God is not a killjoy, He created us and gives us His word for our own wellbeing; we ignore it to our own detriment. We cannot break God’s law without it breaking us.

Though our situation is dire when we willingly break God’s law, we are not left without hope. Sin is the cause of our misery, but Christ is the cure.