The Age of Dementia

[pilgram]

Originally Posted by KeptByTheWord

Have you ever paid attention to the things that run through your mind? Wild, crazy things sometimes... The things that run through our minds sometimes would be things we would never want anyone else to know we are thinking....

We have a will that God has given us that allows us to ignore the things that run through our minds. Our will is the key that allows us to filter out the thoughts we think, whether they are thoughts to keep and dwell on, or those to boot to the curb, so to speak.

With dementia it is a disease of the brain, where the will has been separated from the mind, and basically the thought life is unfettered, loose, and without anything to rein it in. Without being in your right mind, or having your will to corral the wild thoughts that run through your mind, then those who suffer from dementia, are simply speaking what they are thinking, without the will to delineate good from bad thoughts etc.

With that understanding, imagine your mind unfettered without your will to reign it in. Would you like everyone to know the thoughts that run through your mind unchecked? Imagine that is the case with someone suffering from dementia, and understand that the difference between them, and you, is that they have lost their ability for the will to function as it should. This understanding should bring clarity to the situation, and hopefully sympathy that we should have with those who suffer from dementia.

Pertaining to your question, whether it is a salvational issue.... we have a God-given will that is given to us to make choices in life. When that will becomes separated from the mind, as in the case with dementia, the Lord would not hold anyone responsible for the condition of the mind without the will in its rightful place.

Hopefully that last sentence is the case bro.

[pilgram]

Originally Posted by votivesoul

Comfort the feeble-minded (1 Thessalonians 5:14). My grandma was saved about 6 years ago, but now has vascular dementia. She barely knows up from down. She thinks she's a child again. And in a certain way, she now is like a little child who doesn't know good from evil (Deuteronomy 1:39).

If God spared more than 120,000 crazy Ninevites because they didn't know their right hand from their left, I think God, since He is sovereignly choosing not to heal these people, would likewise have a similar mercy (Jonah 4:11).

But Ninevites were in the OT dispensation though. I certainly would like to think that God would show mercy to those that aren't in their right mind. My Grandmother didn't have the HG or was ever baptized did God show her that same mercy because she had dementia?

[votivesoul]

Originally Posted by pilgram

But Ninevites were in the OT dispensation though. I certainly would like to think that God would show mercy to those that aren't in their right mind. My Grandmother didn't have the HG or was ever baptized did God show her that same mercy because she had dementia?

Different covenant, but the same God. God's level of mercy didn't change. Even back as far as Exodus, He said that He would show mercy to thousands of generations to them that love Him.

His judgments are just and true, and ALWAYS tempered with mercy. To say more is beyond the limits of any mortal man.