in the vast majority of circumstances, suffering cannot be inherently good. So mental illness cannot be a good thing. It is one of many tragic features of a fallen creation that can only groan until it is redeemed and restored. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. There is an irrationality to it – as there nearly always is with evil – an absurd pointlessness to its corrosive, energy-sapping pain. More than that, suffering far exceeds the capacities of human understanding. We simply cannot know what it is all about.
