On October 28, 2021, Daniel Whitehead made this presentation to Telecare BC entitled "Being Seen and Loved As We Are."

Daniel Whitehead, is the CEO of Sanctuary Mental Health Ministries - an international charity that equips the Church to support mental health and wellbeing. 

In his talk, Daniel unpacks a relational vision for humanity, while emphasizing the importance of being seen, loved, and valued as we are. Daniel also explores the importance of creating space and taking time, to let love take root and grow.

This video is a a 4 minute segment of the talk. If you want to read along, here is a rough transcript of this segment:

True Wellbeing with Daniel Whitehead

When we look to the ministry of Jesus, we see that he wanted to extend his kingdom beyond the religious systems that existed in that day. These systems simply couldn't contain God's kingdom. They weren't big enough. And of course, Jesus paid the ultimate. For establishing a vast vision of God's kingdom for all people everywhere.

Similarly, for ourselves, I would suggest that our personhood can't be constrained to neat and tidy siloed approaches, where we are spiritual on Sundays physical. When we do exercise psychological, when we do our work and biomedical, when we're not being spiritual enough, I'm of course being slightly facetious, but for many of us.

At least those of us who've grown up with our Western worldview. If we're really honest, we have lost the sense in which we are holistically made to be biological, psychological, social, and spiritual all at the same time. And in this way, we lose the sense in which every aspect of our being is made by God and is good.

We are knowing me commit the era of jewelry. Where we play the different parts of our personhood against the other. Does God view the aspects of our lives hierarchically or does he see us in all of our complexity and say, wow, my image bearer, look what I've made you see. I believe God has made us relationship.

Our personhood is defined relational. We are interconnected. We need all of these aspects of who we are to be attended to so that we might know true wellbeing, true Shalom. All of which is to say that interdependence is a much higher goal than independence. Now this is certainly not a cultural truth, but I would argue that it is a gospel truth in a world that seemingly wants to turn people into.

That wants to see a person's worth, according to what they do or what they have or how self-sufficient and autonomous they can be. We have to present a different vision for humanity. And this is all very important in the mental health conversation. And for people in crisis, being a human in relationship has nothing to do with what we do or don't know, or how much we have or what we can do.

But instead it's about how connected we are. What if we, as a society valued the ability to give and receive love over productivity, who would we idolize in our culture? If we did that, would it be the richest, the strongest, the most outwardly attractive, the most intellectually accomplished? I suspect not, you know, in the gospel of John.

Chapter 15 verse 15, we see the changing of our identity. We are no longer servants of God. We are friends. And it seems to me that the gospel is preoccupied in redefining this relationship of how people should relate to God and therefore how people should relate to. And Sue to put it quite simply friendship.

Biblical friendship is critical to our knowing well being because biblical friendships, suspends our differences. And instead of firms, the other friendship, isn't supposed to serve a purpose for us and our ability to climb up the social ladder. Biblical friendship is about committing to others who are not.

And seeing their innate value and worth just as God has done with us.

Sanctuary Mental Health - https://www.sanctuarymentalhealth.org