“The king reflected and said, ‘Is this not Babylon the great, which I myself have built as a royal residence by the might of my power and for the glory of my majesty?’ While the word was in the king’s mouth, a voice came from heaven saying, ‘King Nebuchadnezzar, to you it is declared: sovereignty has been removed from you, and you will be driven away from mankind, and your dwelling place will be with the beasts of the field.’”

—Daniel 4:30-32a

When I was young, I had a big book of Bible trivia. It was as thick as a Bible, although not as tall or as wide, with a white cardboard cover with cartoon illustrations of amazing things that happened in the Bible. There were questions like “Who beat a chariot of horses in a race?” and “Whose donkey turned around and talked to him?” I guess I missed the flannelgraph lessons on those Bible stories because I was amazed that donkeys could talk and men could outrun horses.

There was also another question I thought was almost too crazy to be true— “Which Old Testament king lived as a wild animal for seven years?” At least the superhuman horse race and the talking donkey made a little sense (so said my little-kid mind). The job that needed to be done was beyond the prophet and the donkey, so God helped them out. But this was different. How was I supposed to believe that a king ended up less articulate than a miraculous donkey for seven years?

Back then I had no idea what mental health was, much less how to recognize what was really going on in Daniel 4, but turns out, it’s one of the clearest examples of how sin can have negative effects on us and our mental health.

So here’s the backdrop. King Neb is pretty good at his job. Under his leadership, Babylon is doing really well for itself—well enough that they can afford for King Neb to build a 90-foot statue of himself out of gold. The king has had a couple of run-ins with the Most High God, but he wasn’t too worried about Him… until a voice came from heaven and King Neb wound up dining with the donkeys. 

It’s a sudden change, but if we look at Neb’s choices leading up to the shift in his mental health, we can see an interesting pattern.

When we meet King Neb, he’s besieging the people of God in order to expand his empire. We get to learn a little about how he treats others when he has the smartest and strongest of Judah’s young men paraded before him like animals for his service and when he demands that someone tell him what his own dream was on pain of a violent and gruesome death. 

Then he builds the 90-foot statue of gold and demands that people worship it as if he were a god, threatening them with yet another violent and gruesome death if they refuse. At least we know he’s a man of his word when he enacts that violence on Daniel’s friends. And finally, even after being warned in a dream that things wouldn’t go well if he didn’t make a change, he decides to praise himself for all of his success instead of the God Who had put him in the position of power in the first place. 

To sum up, he thought way too highly and way too often about himself while ignoring the God to Whom he owed everything and the people he’d been given to serve through leadership. It was all about good old Neb.

Here’s the problem with that: our brains weren’t designed to focus on ourselves all the time. Recently the Mental Health Foundation put out an article (link below) called the “Kindness Matters Guide.” The entire article focuses on how finding ways to be kind to others can help our mental health.

In the article, the author writes, “Studies have found that acts of kindness are linked to increased feelings of well-being. Helping others can also improve our support networks and encourage us to be more active. This, in turn, can improve our self-esteem. There is some evidence to suggest that when we help others, it can promote changes in the brain that are linked with happiness.”

After our physical needs and our need to be safe, the three most basic needs humans have are to feel a sense of belonging and connection, to have a sense of esteem from ourselves and others, and to feel like we are becoming the best version of ourselves (link below). And this statement, backed by several different studies, touches on all of them. Our mental and emotional needs were designed to be met by caring for and focusing on others. Knowing that, it’s not quite as surprising that a king struggled mentally in the way he did.

Now, I want to be careful here. I want to make sure that I’m clear. Just because someone is struggling mentally, does not mean their struggles are a direct consequence of their sin or selfishness. Their struggles are not an indicator of guilt or shame. Mental illness is often just a reflection of the impact of living in a broken world. 

However, if we live a lifestyle that’s focused on ourselves rather than others, if we are seeking our fulfillment from anything other than God, we need to be aware that that’s not the way our brains were designed to function. We were literally designed by God to find fulfillment in Him and by finding ways to serve others. If we’re staying focused on ourselves regularly rather than caring for others, we should expect to not be in the best place mentally because we are operating outside of the purpose of our design.

The good news is, there’s a simple fix. For King Neb, the Bible says he raised his eyes to heaven and praised God as his mental health was restored before going back to serve the people of Babylon again. That’s a pretty good example for us to follow too. 

In fact, it reminds me of a couple of commandments Jesus said were really important: love God with all you’ve got, and love others. Those aren’t just rules we’re supposed to follow; they’re the simplified version of the manual on how to operate the human brain properly. 

So if you’re in a place where you’ve been focusing a lot on yourself rather than on God and others, let’s make a change this week. I can’t wait to see what God has in store for us when we decide to train our focus on Him.