If you hate people based on the color of their skin, you are called a racist. If you hate people based on their gender you are either a misogynist or a sexist. If you hate homosexuals, transsexuals, bisexuals, etc. you are a homophobe or intolerant.

If you hate people because of their religion you are intolerant, anti-Semitic, anti-Catholic, anti-Mormon, infidel etc. If you hate people because of their political ideology, you are called a ‘libtard’, ‘teabagger’, ‘right-wing nut job’, commie, ‘pinko’, fascist, Nazi, etc.

The list goes on and on. We find lots of ways to separate ourselves, and pour negativity over everything and everyone.  Healthy, respectful debate is beneficial to everyone, but too often these days, debate is replaced with name-calling and accomplishes nothing, other than creating further division.

Positions on issues divide us, as they always have. Moral relativism and secular humanism have done this to a great degree. There is, however, a Truth. It stands firmly in the face of any enemy, philosophical or otherwise. Jesus Christ is that Truth.

A non-believer may callously throw this Truth out the window and embrace the ideology that has become somewhat popular today called 'yolo' (you only live once). This is the modern way of saying 'do your own thing'. All you have to do is read up a bit on the works of Nietzsche, Voltaire, or Camus and you can see that this thinking is not new. Epicurus and hedonism were around long before this current iteration of permissiveness came along. Even the Bible mentions it.

Isaiah 22:13
New International Version (NIV)
13 But see, there is joy and revelry,
slaughtering of cattle and killing of sheep,
eating of meat and drinking of wine!
“Let us eat and drink,” you say,
“for tomorrow we die!”

Yolo.

1 Corinthians 15:32
New International Version (NIV)
32 If I fought wild beasts in Ephesus with no more than human hopes, what have I gained? If the dead are not raised,
“Let us eat and drink,
for tomorrow we die.”

Yolo again.

There is sober Truth.  We can divide ourselves as much as we want.  We can be vile and offensive and gross as much as we want.  The Truth is, though. these things are still not right.

There is another form of discrimination that no one wants to talk about.  It has been there since the time of Jesus and persists into our modern era.

Mental illness.

Is it demon possession?  Is it a politically correct term for criminal?  If a person admits they have a mental illness they are almost always discriminated against.

Lock them up in a padded room.  Lock them up and away from society.  Imply that they are somehow imperfect and worthy of derision.  Mental illness is frequently characterized as the impetus of criminal behavior, proven or not.

If someone has diabetes, cancer, or heart disease, the body is treated.  If someone has a mental illness like bipolar disorder, the brain has to be treated.  This medical reality is lost on much of our society and world.  People who are not bipolar do not understand the daily struggle there is to keep it together.  Medications like lithium and Lamictal treat the symptoms, but there is no cure.  These people are trapped by an illness that can't be cured and a world that views them as a ticking time bomb if they know about it.  There is, of course, a reasonable concern that these types of medications are prescribed too often and irresponsibly, but that does not negate the fact that at times, these medications are necessary.

Yolo and other similar flawed philosophies cannot accommodate mental illness.  Living with a mental illness does not always give a person the world as it is.  There are harrowing highs and crushing lows, and a very real potential for despair and suicide.  Living only once is in itself sometimes the burden.  Simply trying to live in the world and society we are in becomes the challenge of life.  Medication and therapy, prayer and faith, these are the only ways to treat this illness.  The mentally ill are shunned by society, despite the fact that is millions of people with a mental illness.

Mentally ill people are not shown much mercy or compassion by this world.  They are judged severely by people, who even knowing what the condition is condemn mentally ill people for not being like all other people.  They are not.  Just like a paraplegic in a wheel chair, or a deaf person with a hearing aid, or a person with AIDS from birth, their condition is not their fault.  In most cases, they are born with this illness.  Mental illness can run in the family.  Before they knew what they had, some mentally ill people "self-medicated" with illegal drugs and/or alcohol.  Sometimes mentally ill people do not realize they have a problem until they get help for their addictions.

Mentally ill people are not all whacked out, crazies.  Some are, but most aren't.  Will any civil rights leader come forth to defend them?  No.  How about the compassionate liberal?  No.  How about the compassionate conservative?