Part 1 CHRISTIANITY

AND

DEPRESSION & DESPAIR

CHAPTER 1

A Biblical Orientation toward Suffering & Depression

If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things? Romans 8:31-32

This verse joyously trumpets the fact that it’s not about us but about God. It’s not about our strengths, skills, or any aspect of our performance; it’s about a God who intends to shower us with blessing. It’s not about our clawing, climbing, or earning our way into His presence; it’s about a Redeemer who reached down into the lowest slime pit to draw to Himself those who despised Him. This gives us license to say “goodbye” to past failures and rejections, inabilities and the sense of unworthiness. It beckons us to turn away from inadequacies and the scars of past insults, injuries, and childhood traumas. Truly, if the master of this entire universe is lending His muscle to our lives, what need we fear?

Nor does He leave us dangling over the precipice of our fears of failure and rejection. He’s bought us; we belong to Him and amazingly, we’re “in Him.”[1] This means that our self-image is who He is; our significance is a matter of this Redeemer’s own worth. Against our every perception otherwise, we’re told that we are clothed with the righteousness of God Himself.

However, we often find that we can’t even lift our head high enough to drink in the comfort of these assurances. Years of defeat, despair, and depression have shriveled our expectations and hopes so that our palate rejects such food.

I suspect that this had been Moses’ experience after 40 years in the desert. Forty years earlier, he had put God first, identifying with His slave people, Israel, rather than the comforts of Egypt and his royal privileges. He was going to lead Israel to freedom. Moses gambled and lost everything. He was rejected by the very people he sought to liberate. Having no other recourse at this point, he fled to the wilderness empty handed. At the end of the forty years, God appeared to him in a burning bush to offer him the very mission Moses had so enthusiastically undertaken 40 years prior.

However, this time around, it was different. Moses declined the appointment claiming that he lacked the ability. His humiliation and despair had probably been too crushing. In response, God tried to reassure him that it wasn’t about Moses’ ability but God’s,[2] but Moses wasn’t buying any of it.[3]

It’s difficult to hear the words of the Lord after years of defeat and depression. For so many years, I watched as I saw my personal defects bringing about one failure after another, heightening my sense of isolation, alienation, and shame. As hard as I would struggle against my sins and defects, employing all the prescribed spiritual disciplines, the more bitter and depressed I became. I was struggling against quicksand. The more I struggled, the deeper I sank. On top of everything else, I was now a failure and had to cope with the accompanying shame of being an inveterate failure. I’d resent others who’d experienced success in overcoming the types of things that continued to rub my face in the mud.

THE SAILBOAT ANALOGY

A friend residing in Maine took Anita and me for a ride in his sailboat. The wind was with us, and it carried us to the far end of the lake. I thought that we’d have to wait for the wind to change in order to return. To my great surprise, I found that it didn’t matter from what direction the wind was blowing. Our friend was able to harness the wind and to use its energy to carry the boat in whatever direction we wanted. He might have to zigzag a bit to get there, but getting there wasn’t a problem. The important thing was that there was a wind. Without any wind, we wouldn’t be able to move.

The same thing is true about the “winds of our life.” God can harness these winds to take us in any direction He so chooses. Our weaknesses and inadequacies constitute no problem for Him. He isn’t limited as we are. He can mold us into anything that He wants as a potter can mold his clay into any shape he so desires.

This was the very thing that was so hard for me to see. I suffered daily from childhood-induced trauma. I didn’t see any redemptive good in any of it. Because of this perspective, life looked bleak indeed. It was a place of pain and despair. I thoroughly subscribed to the secular understanding of the day: pain equals defeat and shame, while happiness is equated with success, friendship, and attractiveness. I was on a downward spiral--the more shame, the worse my performance, the worse my performance, the more shame.

It would be a mistake to close our eyes to how childhood influences cause suffering. It’s part of our lives and it exerts a profound affect upon all our thinking and doing. Nevertheless, we need not be trapped within this perspective. There’s a greater perspective that comes into view as we turn from the temporal and look to the Divine where we see God harnessing these “winds” or afflictions to create a beautiful mosaic out of our lives.

Sometimes, He beckons us to merely watch. “Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth!”[4] Sometimes we’re called upon to be proactive in the assurance that He is leading the way.[5]

Moses had taken a big hit. We don’t know what his perspective had been. Had he been blaming himself? Perhaps there had been some deficiency in his coddled existence in the courts of Egypt that had led him to make such an unwise gamble, one that left him destitute? How could he have made such a wrong assessment about those ungrateful Israelites? Perhaps it was some insecurity that had prevented him from being content with his lot at Pharaoh’s court, which made him seek his sense of significance through a higher moral calling? What was the matter with him that he couldn’t find satisfaction in the things in which others found satisfaction?

From our mountain top perspective, we can see that such musings, although they might contain some truth, miss the point of the greater narrative. Whatever the causes, Moses was suffering, but it wasn’t for naught. He had been adopted by Pharaoh’s daughter and had been groomed for power.[6] His forty years in the desert hadn’t been a relaxing vacation. We get this impression from the name he assigned to his firstborn, “Gershom,” meaning, “I have become an alien in a foreign land.” He had to eat “humble oats,” but this experience was a hurricane harnessed by God to produce great humility in Moses,[7] a trait that would later serve him well.

God uses every wind, weakness, and infirmity to create a glorious story. He’s promised to work all things together to accomplish His loving plan for our lives.[8] As ashamed as I have been about my weaknesses and brokenness and as much as I have wanted to be thoroughly rid of them, I also know that God uses all my afflictions for good purposes. Fear can be one of the most difficult things to live with. It can totally entrap us within a virtual nightmare. However, God has used fear, in this lazy man’s life, to make me more careful, to exercise more forethought, and to prepare better-crafted lessons for my students. Teachers have to be very concerned about what they say. I enjoy the creative part of writing and putting together lessons, while I detest and avoid the corrections and the rewrites. However, the fear of failure and humiliation prevent me from taking the easy way out and “shooting from the hip.”

Anger can so powerfully take command of our thinking and distort our perceptions. Anger had often convinced me of the righteousness of my cause when I wasn’t right at all. It had also led me to do foolish and costly things, even at an early age. At the tender age of six, returning home from school with all sorts of pent up discomfort, I strained to open our heavy front door, which was on a spring. It slipped out of my hand and sprang back upon my thumb, resting within the doorframe. I screamed in pain. However, instead of removing my thumb, in anger at my unpardonable mistake, I again pulled the door back and this time intentionally slammed it upon my thumb. Through tears and anger, I repeated this process until my nail fell off.

Self-punishment isn’t a good outlet for anger. However, anger does serve useful purposes. Jesus became angry and allowed that anger to express itself in a righteous way.[9] Perhaps you’ve known people who don’t experience much anger. Have you noticed that they ignore problems that should be addressed and that these problems have a way of growing?

God can use anything that we bring to Him. He used Moses’ humble shepherd’s staff to bring mighty judgments upon the nation of Egypt. How much more can He use those emotions that He had instilled within us! He can even make use of our depression and despair to bring us to the spiritual, intellectual place of His choice. Moses had despaired of himself. He didn’t think himself able to fill the shoes God had set before him. Had Moses thought that He was adequate for the task, he would have fallen. He wouldn’t have had the dependence upon God that made his ministry possible.

Depression can kill, but in God’s hand, it has a way of reordering our priorities, stripping from us everything that we had thought we needed, to show us that only one thing is important.[10] This is something noted by even Buddhist psychotherapists. They see depression as an opportunity to escape our old mindset, to get out of the rut of physical existence. However, their goal is very different. For them the answer is to come to an awareness of “oneness,” that reality is one, that we are all one, and that distinctions are illusion.

Jealousy even has its appropriate arena. We are told that God is a jealous God. He is so concerned about His people that He doesn’t want anything to negatively impact their welfare. God can also redirect our jealousy so that it too might become a wellspring for love.

Let me anticipate your challenge: “That’s fine for God’s jealousy or perhaps someone else’s jealousy, but my reactions aren’t very pretty. There’s nothing redeemable about them.”

GOD CAN HARNESS ANY WIND

Jeremiah lived in a tumultuous time of impeding destruction. Continually, he had the unenviable task of carrying a message of “doom and gloom” to his people and experienced unceasing heartache as a result. On top of this, he had to tell them that it was their entire fault. God told Jeremiah to inform them,

“’Because your fathers have forsaken Me,' says the Lord; 'they have walked after other gods and have served them and worshiped them, and have forsaken Me and not kept My law. And you have done worse than your fathers, for behold, each one follows the dictates of his own evil heart, so that no one listens to Me. Therefore I will cast you out of this land…’” [11]

It seemed to Jeremiah that there was no hope left for either himself or for Israel. God told him to go observe a potter and how the potter was able to do whatever he wanted with the clay. God then gave Jeremiah the interpretation: God could also mold His people into models of trust and obedience.[12]

Our Master Potter is also molding us according to His master plan. He made us just the way He wanted and even determined the length[13] and even the details of our lives.[14] To accomplish this, our Potter doesn’t require our strength, our spiritual successes, or even our health and wholeness. In fact, He prefers it when we’re utterly weak and sick[15] so that we wouldn’t be tempted to take credit for His workmanship.

God had commissioned Gideon, a very ordinary man, to militarily rescue Israel from her oppressors. However, it had to be done God’s way.

“And the Lord said to Gideon, ‘The people who are with you are too many for Me to give the Midianites into their hands, lest Israel claim glory for itself against Me, saying, 'My own hand has saved me.'’”[16]

God eventually whittled down Gideon’s 22,000 man army to a mere 300 to make it plain that it wasn’t about their valor, but about God alone. He wanted them to understand that the victory would be His alone.

If we were truly able to embrace this truth in every corner of our being, we wouldn’t feel so ashamed of our brokenness and weaknesses. Instead, our most shameful parts become doorways into glory. How much more do we come to esteem God’s righteousness when we see the utter inadequacy of our own! God’s forgiveness in view of our own unworthiness! Paul came to understand that if he was going to rejoice in anything, it’d have to be his brokenness and weaknesses because they are God’s glorious materials, not our successes and giftedness.

THE EXAMPLE OF MARTIN LUTHER

Much has been written about the great saints of the Church from a psychological perspective. Martin Luther has been analyzed with microscopic scrutiny. I’ve found some of the results quite interesting and perhaps revealing of the struggles of this giant of the faith. However, if these pebbles are investigated apart from the enormous edifice they’ve served to build, they loose all their significance. They only find their meaning as a part of the greater structure. It would be like trying to enjoy reading Brothers Karamazov by trying to enjoy each word in isolation of the rest. Any word only assumes its full meaning in context. Without context, there can be no meaning.

From all indications, Martin Luther, the great reformer, emerged from the confines of his family carrying a crippling assortment of battle scars. His father was overbearing and highly critical of young Martin. There was nothing he could do to please this tyrant of a father of whom he lived in fear.

As a young man, he finally escaped the clutches of his father to devote his life to the service of God as an Augustinian monk. But even there, his wounds festered. He writes,

"When I was a monk I thought that I was utterly cast away, if at any time I felt any evil motion, fleshly lust, wrath, or envy against any brother. I went to confession daily, but it profited me not...I could not rest but was continually vexed with these thoughts: 'This or that sin thou hast committed; thou art infested with envy,...and other such sins; therefore, thou art entered into this holy order in vain.'"[17]

He perceived that his infirmities had rendered him unfit for godly service. Even worse, he had been presumptuous to think that he was spiritual enough for the Augustinian order and now his presumption was apparent to all.

Elsewhere, Luther wrote about the Vicar of his order, Johann Von Staupitz, to whose confessional he continually resorted hours each day. Not knowing how to counsel Luther in a way that would alleviate his inner turmoil, he finally told Luther to just love God and to not worry about the rest. To this Luther exploded, "Love God? I hate him!" Luther had a father whom he could not please. Now he served a God who had even higher standards! How would Luther please Him? He was driven to utter despair.

In a very real sense, Luther's scars made him unfit, unfit to counsel others, to teach, even unfit to praise God. Fortunately, Luther had only one place to turn in his desperation. He writes,

"Although an impeccable monk, I stood before God as a sinner troubled in conscience, and I had no confidence that my merit would satisfy Him...Day and night I pondered until I saw the connection between the justice of God and the statement, 'The just shall live by his faith.' Then I grasped that the justice of God is the righteousness by which, through grace and sheer mercy, God justifies us through faith. Therefore, I felt myself reborn and to have gone through open doors into paradise. The whole of Scripture took on a new meaning and whereas before, the 'justice of God' had filled me with hate, now it became to me inexpressively sweet...This passage of Paul became to me a gate to heaven".[18]

Luther's scars, rather than rendering him unfit for service, had led him to rediscover for the Church it's most precious yet most easily corrupted truth—“salvation by grace through faith alone.” What had caused Luther great suffering and bondage led to his ultimate liberation? Had Luther been more successful at the impossible task of trying to earn God's favor, he would have contentedly remained an Augustinian monk and the advent of Protestantism, with its message of grace, might have had to await the coming of another broken and tormented soul, unable to find comfort in a "good works" theology of salvation.

Ironically, it seems to have been his infirmity that most qualified Luther to fulfill his ordained task of rediscovering the depths of God's grace. Who more wholeheartedly would have rejoiced in God's forgiveness than a man so consigned under His wrath.[19]

Indeed, we can, in some regards, understand Luther’s life from the perspective of past influences. However, if our understanding stops there, we miss the big picture, the real narrative. The real narrative begins with a plan and a dream. The plan is God’s--to redeem a people and to prepare them for an unimaginable eternal glory. The dream is ours--to find ultimate love and significance. However, this dream has become marred, and we grope blindly trying to fulfill it in all the wrong places. In the course of this groping, we suffer and despair of the dream. Meanwhile, Destiny is fulfilling it in greater ways than our dream can fathom. In the next chapters, I’ll discuss the role that depression and despair play in His plan.

EXERCISE

How do you feel about your suffering, weaknesses, and afflictions?

Do you now see how they might have some redemptive significance? How?

Seeing that they do have a redemptive significance, does that change your feelings towards them? How?

How might you encourage others based upon these insights?