Chapter #2

CHAPTER 2

Conceptualizing Suffering & Depression

“No temptation (ordeal) has overtaken you but such as is common to man; but God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you’re able to bear, but will with the temptation make a way of escape, that you may be able to bear it.” (1 Cor. 10:13)

Are you mentally ill, deranged, or just an inadequate personality type? Is the pain you experience an abnormality, a product of an unhealthy childhood? Or are you a sinner, and is your pain a potential path to reconciliation with the Light?

How we understand suffering and mental health issues is key to the answers we seek and ultimately find and even how we feel about ourselves. Few of us have been left untouched by the insights of Western, secular psychotherapy. These insights have permeated our thinking to such a large extent that we see the world through its lens. We need to understand how this lens colors our vision and also to see how the lens of Biblical understanding gives us an alternative vision.

Secular clinical practice and philosophy fail to provide an adequate basis for respect, hope, and an appreciation of the meaning and depth of human experience. It’s out-of-step with human reality. People struggling with depression and other life-controlling problems struggle with guilt and shame. Therefore, the therapeutic setting has to provide respect. The therapist has to also be able to see beyond the failure and illness of the client and to convey a vision of hope. However, these are the very things that secularism can’t provide if it’s going to be true to its own colors.

To understand this, we have to see what secularism is. Secularism either represents a denial of a transcendental reality or spirituality or their neglect. This means that “what you see is what you get.” Reality is reduced to what can be felt, seen or touched. Consequently, the secularist has no philosophical basis to believe in the essential value or sanctity of all human life. The distinctions among people are glaring. Some are beautiful, others ugly; some are lovable, others not; some are productive, others a financial drain; some are moral and valued by society, others a detriment; some are considered mentally ill, others not. Lacking a transcendent perspective, the secularist is necessarily bound by philosophical materialism to dictate what she perceives about her client. Admittedly, often what we see is not very pleasant nor respectable. However, for the secularist, there is no other dimension from which she can draw. Philosophically, there is no basis for respect if the client is not respectable.

Nevertheless, the client must be affirmed and respected, but the way the client is actually regarded is very different. This leads to schizoid practice. While the secularist explicitly practices “unconditional positive regard” and superficially conveys respect, something else is implicitly being conveyed. If all you see is what you get, then there are vast differences in worth among people. How much worth can a terminally diseased man have if he is comatose and will die tomorrow? It could even be argued that he has a negative worth upon his family and society. He is a liability. Yet we all know that we can’t treat people solely based upon their temporal value, especially if we want to enter into a healing relationship with them.

What then must the secularist do? Bite the bullet! Although she knows that she has to treat her dysfunctional client in a way that suggests that the client is just as worthy as others, the secularist belief system doesn’t cooperate. One way to live with the inconsistency is to merely tell yourself, “Life is filled with inconsistencies. We just have to learn to live with them and to go with what works.” When truth and pragmatism collide, pragmatism generally wins out. Pragmatism gives the immediate rewards, but with the diminution of truth comes the diminution of substance and meaning. But what are the long-range results of such a “victory?” Where practice collides with theory, one of them will eventually give way.[1]

Christian revelation provides a perspective that allows us to see others through a majestic lens. We were created in His image,[2] which means that we all possess a worth that transcends our circumstances, performance, and appearance. Even the infirm and the rejected possess a worth that’s eternal. This is a lens through which respect and hope are clearly perceived. This is a respect and a hope that aren’t manufactured for the situation to manipulate the client into wellness. The hope is a real hope, one that looks beyond the pain and failure of our mangled lives into the nurturing embrace of our first Parent.

The Christian perspective allows us to confront the fact that we’re all “sick.” None of us are good, according to Paul.[3] We’re all infected with the same virus that contorts both mind and body into rheumatoid lumps. It involves both cognitive and affective dysfunction. Christian revelation starts with the assertion that we’re all created in the image of God, but we weren’t satisfied. We rejected intimacy with a divine Being in favor of autonomy, truth in favor of immediate gratification. In order to deny the primacy of truth and the desperate cries of the conscience, we’ve had to resort to self-justification, the willful distortion of our mental processes to enable us to see what we wanted to see and to avoid the obvious. We came to hate the light and love the darkness.[4]

Although it had been hard to see things this way, I eventually found this message liberating. Yes, I was a “loser,” as I always knew I was, but everyone else was also a “loser.” I no longer had to be ashamed around others. Admittedly, the Bible paints a bleak portrait of human beings, but we can find great solace in this portrait if we already have an inkling of its truth. It gives us permission to stop running and hiding, to stop putting on our front. It allows us to relax and to accept ourselves, the compromised person that we always knew was us, and to say “goodbye” to the exhausting preoccupation with image management.

I always get a uniformly positive response from my classes when I say, “There are only two types of people—the jerks and those who don’t know that they’re jerks.” Everyone giggles knowingly. They now see themselves as jerks, as their own worse enemy. However, there was a time when everyone else, apart from themselves, was a jerk.

We might be sick or jerks, but we’ve been commissioned to serve within a drama, the most central and meaningful drama of all human history, serving the greatest Force, the Source of all truth and love. In this drama, it doesn’t matter what our limitations are. In our weakness and sickness, we’re made strong by our King who is able to compensate for any of our failings. Nor do we need be concerned about what others might think of us. Truly, they may see us as valueless or degraded, but there is only one opinion that matters. Paul assured the Roman church that they shouldn’t be concerned about the opinions of others. No one could bring a charge against God’s people.[5] Any basis for a legitimate charge had long been removed. Only God’s opinion mattered.[6]

It’s okay to be broken or sick. A Christian can say this, mean it and have reasons for it. For the secularist, sickness is the opposite of health and ultimately of value and significance. It has no redeeming value. It’s to be avoided as a plague. Seeing the larger narrative, the Christian can affirm pain.

DEPRESSION DOESN’T MEAN THAT SOMETHING HAS GONE WRONG.

Jeremiah, the Prophet who had been called from the womb, had stated, “My grief is beyond healing, my heart is broken.”[7] He had been called to be God’s right-hand man. Although it is truly ennobling to directly serve the ultimate source of all love, truth, and power, Jeremiah also found this calling to be extremely painful, so much so, that he cursed the day he was born and had cursed those who had brought the message of his birth. God’s call doesn’t mean instant happiness. Instead, we’re promised that the road to glory is a painful one.

King David is known as the man “after God’s own heart.” However, this didn’t result in favorable treatment. David had to suffer all the more because of it. Favored status has its costs. In despair, David cried, “O Lord, how long will you forget me? Forever? How long will you look the other way? How long must I struggle with anguish in my soul, with sorrow in my heart every day?”[8] Depression is more than normal. It’s the mud with which God makes His building bricks.

Some might protest that David needlessly suffered because of his sins, and if we would not sin, we would not have to suffer. Indeed, sometimes we do bring needless suffering upon ourselves because of our sin. The same David had written, “I am on the verge of collapse facing constant pain. But I confess my sins; I am deeply sorry for what I have done.”[9] Clearly, David recognized that his suffering in this instance was the result of sin, but is all suffering the result of sin or our defects? Certainly not!

Jesus had suffered as much as anyone but not because of His own sin. “Filled with anguish and deep distress,” Jesus took three of His disciples with Him to pray. He confided, “My soul is crushed with grief to the point of death. Stay here and watch (pray) with Me.”[10] Sometimes no amount of faith or confidence in the future can stem the pain. We’re human beings. Pain goes with the turf.

Anita once coaxed me, with bribes of head-rubs, to ride the roller coaster with her. I was assured that I’d exit this amusement ride alive, but while I was on it, I screamed for my life. My horror wasn’t the result in any deficiency in faith but a reflection of the fact that I have another nature that was screaming “bloody murder.”

Sometimes we punish ourselves with the thought that, “I should be doing better or at least responding with less upset. After all I have learned and experienced, I can’t understand why this problem is getting me down.”

In the midst of His suffering in the Garden, an angel came and strengthened Jesus. Certainly, after such supernatural ministrations, Jesus would have been able to proceed without such anguish. Instead, afterwards, the account reads, “He prayed more fervently, and He was in such agony of spirit that His sweat fell to the ground like great drops of blood.”[11] Jesus knew better than to reprimand Himself for not feeling more relieved after the angelic visit.

We too often respond as secularists, failing to see the hand of God. However, the more that we realize that this experience of suffering, depression, and despair is normal,[12] the quicker we can cease punishing ourselves and accept our experience as part of a divine plan. In conjunction with this, it’s so important to understand how this suffering is accomplishing great things in God’s hand.

SUFFERING AS A HEALING TOOL

God inflicted Paul with blindness, striking him down from his horse during his venture to persecute the followers of Jesus. Meanwhile, God was informing a follower named Ananias to go to lay his hands upon Paul so that Paul would regain his sight. Ananias protested that Paul was the man who was killing Christians, but God reassured him, “Go, for he is a chosen vessel of Mine to bear My Name before Gentiles, kings, and the children of Israel. For I will show him how many things he must suffer for My Name’s sake.”[13]

Preparation for divine service demands suffering! Paul would not be able to serve God faithfully without this preparation. No pain, no gain. First, Paul had to see that he had been blind. Physical blindness might have reflected the fact that he was also spiritually blind. Suffering then reorients our vision from the darkness of complacency to light.

Serving God means trusting Him fully. However, we can’t trust God until we learn to not trust in self. Insofar as we trust in self, we fail to trust in God. The two are mutually exclusive![14] Here’s the rub--our entire sense of security rests upon our confidence that we can handle life’s problems. Living without this sense of security is utterly painful and disorienting, but it has to go in order to make room for God. How can we pray to God with any earnestness while believing that if God doesn’t come through, we can handle it just fine on our own? Instead, when we come to see God as our only hope, prayer becomes a lifeline.

Paul writes about going through such trials that he “despaired even of life.” We have this erroneous idea that if we are living right, good things should happen. Fortunately for Paul, he didn’t share this fiction. He accepted his experience knowing that there was a reason for it. Suffering and failure didn’t destroy his hope but resurrected it. He writes, “We had the sentence of death in ourselves so that we should no longer trust in ourselves but in God who raises the dead.”[15] Christianity doesn’t deny that there’s a lot wrong with us. It acknowledges that the malady is also the cure, and that despair can be liberating. Under the scalpel of God, the disease is His manure to grow roses. What had brought shame has now become the seedbed for strength and beauty.

UNDERSTANDING THAT GOD IS IN PERFECT CONTROL PRODUCES PEACE AND HOPE.

God is the perfect craftsman. He can use the most unlikely circumstances to produce His desired effect in our life. It is so easy to believe that our decisions, mistakes, or sins can take us outside of the parameters of God’s love and power. We become certain that we’ve blown it and fall into despair. This is why God has to reassure us that not only is He able to work all of our circumstances in accordance with His divine plan for our lives, but this is what He actually does. If we know this, we can even rejoice when it hurts.

“…We also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance, and perseverance character; and character, hope. Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit…”[16]

Everyone recognizes the need for hope and meaning. Without these, we can barely get out of bed in the morning. Even Friedrich Nietzsche, the avowed enemy of Christianity, pointed out that “He who has a ‘why’ to live for can bear almost any ‘how.’” Christ provides the ultimate “why”—eternal glory with God in heaven! What was Nietzsche’s “why?” --a “freedom” that culminated in his insanity, a “power” that ended with death. Nietzsche’s belief system was incapable of producing hope. He denied the existence of any purpose outside of ourselves. There was no higher Truth to which we could aspire. We were completely free to create our own reality, but that put all of life’s challenges and pains upon our own back. There would be no supernatural rescue, no Power to give meaning and hope within the context of pain. What is the “why” of secularism? --a vague, undefined concept of health that no one ever realizes.

Victor Frankl wrote about his experience in a Nazi death camp.

“The prisoner who had lost his faith in the future—his future—was doomed. With his loss of belief in the future, he also lost his spiritual hold; he let himself decline and become subject to mental and physical decay.”[17]

Although many of us have experiences that have born out the truth of this observation, it’s difficult to manufacture meaning where we have none. Frankl recommended that the inmates establish their own “why” by determining to find their loved ones after this ordeal or by becoming a living witness to the horrors of the death camp. As worthy as this “why” might be, many of us confront such unspeakable horrors of our own “death camps” that only a God-infused “why” could possibly suffice.

Secularism can’t provide hope. It just adds to the burden. If we only go around once, and if life isn’t enjoyed to the fullest, then we’ve lost out. A life of sorrow and depression can have little redeeming value even if we recognize that we learn and acquire sensitivity and empathy through it. It all ends with our last breath. Although many secular therapists would like to inject meaning into the sinews of human experience, even into the painful ones, they find themselves blocked by their philosophy. Consequently, many have gravitated toward a Buddhist philosophy, which affirms the existence in an afterlife, albeit an impersonal one. Equipped with this understanding, they can affirm that depression is an opportunity to learn and thereby to escape from the illusions of this material world.

Arthur Deikman, a psychotherapist with a strong Buddhist orientation writes,

“Human being needs meaning. Without it they suffer boredom, depression, and despair…Western psychotherapy is hard put to meet human beings’ need for meaning, for it attempts to understand clinical phenomena in a framework based on scientific materialism in which the meaning is arbitrary and purpose non- existent. Consequently, Western psychotherapy interprets the search for meaning as a function of childlike dependency wishes and fears of helplessness…”[18]

For Western psychotherapy there is only pathology and the lack thereof. It has no “why.” It merely encourages the client to find his own meaning, while suspecting that this is just another manifestation of his pathology. There’s nothing to affirm. Everything is flat. There is no honor, integrity, or courage; there’s just self-interest.

For instance, we might still be touched to see DiCaprio sacrifice himself for his beloved in the movie “The Titanic.” However, if we are to react consistent with our secularism, we need to reprimand ourselves for such a reaction. “What a jerk! DiCaprio experiences chemicals secreted into his inter-synaptic cleft and neurons firing. He likes those feelings and he kills himself because of these chemically induced feelings. He stupidly believed that there was something more than chemistry going on, that his feelings represented more than the chance movement of chemicals but some higher truth, and this foolishness killed him.” At best, we find ourselves stretched between two very different responses. We are moved emotionally, but our minds say, “baloney!”

We can’t divorce the way we feel from the way we believe. When I was 19, I embraced a secular ideology and proclaimed my complete freedom from any “truth” or higher reality. When I saw someone give a couple of dollars to a street urchin, I scorned the giver. I felt that there was something so insincere about it. He wasn’t giving the money because of some higher truth, which didn’t exist, but because it enabled him to feel valuable. The act of giving convinced him that he was a good person. As such, he used the urchin for his own selfish purposes. If everything was selfish and self-centered, and I was convinced that it was, it represented a greater “truth” to be openly self-gratifying than to play sanctimonious games by superficially helping others.

However, this philosophy didn’t accord with human nature and proved to be unlivable. By rejecting my natural human instincts of friendliness and service in favor of the life I wished to create for myself, life rejected me, and I slid deeper into the jaws of depression. Nihilism proved to be dehumanizing, depriving me of the God-given appreciation of the depth and meaning of human experience and of any non-self-centered concept and experience of love, honor, integrity, and self-sacrifice.

Our lives have to count for something. We are more than just sensory creatures, craving new and more exciting feelings. We also have mind and conscience, and these must be holistically coordinated with our feelings if we are to find peace. I’ve often seen movies that had fantastic acting, sets, and special effects, and although my feelings were highly stimulated as I watched, at the end I was left very dissatisfied. I might have found it morally offensive or intellectually unsatisfying, non-illuminating and poorly crafted. My teenage nephew informed me that he loved “The Matrix” because it opened up a new and fresh way of seeing things. He found it intellectually satisfying and placed it #1 on his list. We can’t profitably divorce ourselves from the perspective of meaning and truth. David Karp, a sociologist who himself has battled the ravages of depression, writes in Speaking of Sadness,

“We’re built to seek significance, a significance and a purpose that transcends experience and feelings alone. Secularism tells us that there is no moral truth or ultimate meaning out there. We have to invent it’ and this we do according to our needs or psychological script. Therefore, there is nothing out there to seek. It’s just a matter of determining your needs and fulfilling them.”

For life to have meaning and purpose, Karp recognizes that experiences must be more than mere experiences. They have to serve a greater purpose. Even those things that we esteem least, our hurts and brokenness, need to be invested with a higher significance if we are to accept our unseemly failings. It’s not enough for us that our stories are a chance, chaotic collections of unintegrated events. They have to be vital parts of a grand, defining story, but such a story requires a divine Story-Teller. There’s no way around this.

I’ve recently noticed that many of the themes of popular movies include providential elements. An improbable hero is meant to lead the rebellion to save mankind and, unbeknownst to him, nothing can stop him, although the forces of evil are desperately trying to do so. Why is this concept of “inevitability” so appealing, and how can we seriously embrace it without also embracing a Being who makes our story inevitable? We want to believe that there’s a controlling power, but scurry for the dark when it becomes evident that this Power must be a personal and righteous God. We can’t have it both ways. If we opt in favor of meaning and truth, we’ve opted for a found truth, not one we’ve created, but for a God who created that found truth.

However, even if brokenness serves some eternal purpose, it’s not enough to know this. We continue to fumble through life, making wrong decisions and finding that we lack what it takes to take advantage of the lessons that pain might teach. I was convinced that if left to my own to change or to learn certain lessons, I’d fail. There might be an eternal purpose, but I would fail to grasp hold of it and to appropriate it successfully into my life. I just didn’t have what it took to connect with God.

While I lived in Israel for two years starting in 1970, I began to search for God, at least in my own way. I asked questions of everyone who professed to have a religion. I used to torment friends and acquaintances with my questions about God. Finally one annoyed friend told me that she couldn’t answer my questions, but that the Lubavitchers could. They are a Hasidic sect with centers both in Crown Heights, Brooklyn and Lod, Israel. They welcome Jewish people who are searching.

The next day, I was knocking on the door of Kfar Chabbad, their headquarters where they had a Yeshiva, their seminary. The Rabbi immediately found me a bed at the Yeshiva dormitory. There were three beds to a room, and I was informed that luckily one had just been vacated. I readily agreed to go along with the program that included study and religious practice. It was like feeding corn to a hungry pig. Even their daily ritual of stomping through the halls while banging on a pot to wake up the students I found acceptable.

Many of the others there were like me. They too were young American Jews who had come to Israel searching for something. However, unlike myself, they appeared to have found what they were looking for, so much so that they talked with a Yiddish accent and gestured like Jews from Poland. However, I was impressed with their fervor. Instead of talking about where they had been what they had done, they were consumed with Talmud and living the Jewish life. They smoked like chimneys and yelled like Met fans, but it was all about Talmud. Although I couldn’t understand what made them tick, I was among my own. I no longer had to feel like the ugly duckling. Here were others, Jews, who had the same concerns as I had. At least they didn’t look at me as if I was crazy when I asked my questions.

“How do you know God exists?…Who is He?…How does He affect your life?” I queried. I stayed up late asking my questions. Although I found many who were willing to give me an answer, I had a hard time processing the answers and was often left unsatisfied. One evening, an American came up to me.

“Danny, I know exactly what you’re going through. That’s because a year ago I was going through the exact same thing as you are now.” I was all ears.

“There is a Tzaddik in Tel Aviv who can open up the Torah for you and prove to you beyond any shadow of doubt that the Torah is God’s Word!” Many Jews believe that there are only 49 Tzaddiks in the whole world at any one time, and that it’s their prayers that hold the world together. They were intermediaries between God and us. I was excited. This was exactly what I was looking for! I would have one very important piece in the puzzle.

David made the arrangements, and the next evening we were aboard a bus heading for Tel Aviv. I was surprised at myself. My heart was beating as if I was going to my own wedding. This was an evening that might change my life.

We wandered through the back streets of Tel Aviv, David leading the way as I panted along behind him. We climbed the stairs of the backside of a building in an alleyway. Surprisingly, it opened into a great hall filled with black attired Hasidim excitedly milling around waiting for their Rabbi, the Tzaddik, to emerge. Evidently, David had been here numerous times before. He informed one of the Hasidim of our arrival and of our appointment with the Tzaddik. We were informed that as soon as the Tzaddik was ready for me, we would be informed.

Meanwhile, the Hasidim (the faithful) were making ready the table for a feast. Every meal with their Tzaddik was a feast. He was God’s representative among them and everything they did reflected this fact. He would commence the bread and the wine, and they would have the privilege of eating after him. Everything that the Tzaddik did revealed heaven’s wisdom, and none of it was lost upon the Hasidim. I watched their preparations spellbound as my heart entered into their own excitement.

Finally, a Hasid came and informed me that the Master was ready and led me back to see him. The Tzaddik sat at a narrow table and silently motioned me to sit down across from him as he studied me intently. The silence continued for some time as he continued to study me. My excitement grew. With his long beard and deep sunken eyes, the Tzaddik had a profound otherworldly appearance. He wasn’t embarrassed to stare at me. He was well beyond such considerations, and I comforted myself with the knowledge that I was in the presence of a real Master. Not only would I have the answers that I was looking for, but I would also have a personalized answer.

I watched him, not wanting to do anything to interrupt his concentration. However, as I continued my vigil, he began to shake his head from side to side. This unexpected gesture disturbed my reverie.

“You’re not ready,” he informed me shrugging his shoulders.

“Excuse me,” I responded trying to maintain my composure.

“You’re not ready,” he repeated. “Ready for what?” I thought, fearing the worst. I was at heaven’s gate, and it seemed as if I was being told that I couldn’t enter.

“You’re not ready to study Torah,” he added. “There’s too much tension in your life,” waving his hairy hand in the air as if to dispel the tension. My heart sank. I knew that he was right, but I also knew that there was little I could do about it. I had tried many times. Who wants tension anyway? I had hoped that maybe, if there was a God, God could do something about that, but according to the Tzaddik, I had to get my act together before God could help me. I was the ugly duckling, a leper, cast away from the gates of Eden and condemned like Cain to wander endlessly.

“You need to go to a Jewish Kibbutz and live the Jewish life and then come back in a few months and we’ll talk again.” It sounded like the end of the interview. I was worth less than a minute of his time. I didn’t even get a chance to ask one of my questions, and I was being dismissed and sent out into the outer darkness. I knew that his Kibbutz recommendation wouldn’t work. I had already spent a lot of time on several Kibbutzim, and I was as tense now as the day I had started.

“You have the impertinence to not even hear a single word from me, and you’re passing judgment upon me! You aren’t even as smart as you think you are. If you were, you might have anticipated this outburst of mine and handled the situation differently,” I thundered.

Even though I thought that he was absolutely correct in his assessment of me, I felt so hurt, I vomited forth my desperate cry in the only way I could. Nevertheless, this didn’t change the verdict, the verdict that I had believed for years, the verdict that he had merely confirmed. If there was a God, I certainly lacked what it required to get to Him. A God who was there to merely help me wasn’t God enough. I needed a God who would jump into my brokenness, take me by the hand, and lead me all the way. He had to do it. I couldn’t.

ACCEPTING BROKENNESS

We all have a self-concept. We continue to scrutinize self and others to obsessively readjust this concept. When we perform well, we tend to feel worthy of love and secure within ourselves. When we don’t perform well or aren’t popular or lack whatever it is that our performance expectations might consist, we feel unworthy, unlovable, and uncomfortable around others.

I needed to be convinced of two things. I needed to know that there was a greater power than myself, a Power who could make up for all my deficiencies, a Power who could cradle me in His arms and take care of my every need and failing. I also had to know that this Power would not be turned off by my constant failure to meet performance expectations.

We also tend to project our personal standards upon God. If we aren’t performing to the level of good works that we have deemed adequate or have determined that we’re not spiritual enough, we become convinced that God doesn’t love us, or at least doesn’t love us enough. As our performance improves, we suppose that we become more beloved by God, and as it falls, we become very uncomfortable with our relationship with God and may even begin to resent Him for holding us to such an unobtainable standard.

I imported my self-mortifying performance standards into my newfound faith. As long as I was meeting my standards, everything was OK. However, God loves us too much to leave us with our self-righteousness, which constitutes a denial of the sufficiency of His righteousness.

The more that my own righteousness deteriorated in my own eyes, the more desperate I became to prop it up. I began to make “visits of mercy” to the elderly at nursing homes and the infirm at hospitals. I assured myself that God would be happy with this and that I’d be able to “earn” my way back into His graces. However, a labor of fear isn’t a joyous one. I wasn’t visiting out of love for the residents but rather an oppressive fear of the consequences. It was a job, and they were merely objects I was using to earn relief from fear.

I’m sure that the objects of my mercy marveled at my appearance. I didn’t display any of the signs of love and concern, which characterize people who devote themselves to this type of ministry. Instead, fear and great discomfort oozed from my pores. They were clearly enduring my visit, patiently awaiting the length of time I’d have to spend with a patient before I’d feel justified to flee to the next.

Self-righteousness kills. It represents the failure to accept brokenness, the truth about ourselves and the all-surpassing reality of grace. It’s a denial of God’s righteousness in favor of our own performance and the sense of superiority it offers. More people have died at the hands of those who felt that they were self-righteously entitled to subjugate others because they had attained to some exalted level of righteousness than from all the combined forms of criminality. Christians who have fallen prey to “salvation by guilt-induced charity” flee from this distortion in several different ways. Some join “Christians Anonymous;” others reinterpret the Bible in such a way to relieve their guilt: “God doesn’t expect us to be ‘goody-two-shoes’.” Both solutions fail to address the problem of our deeply ingrained self-righteousness.

Recovery is a three-step process. We have to recognize that God calls us to the same standard of righteousness that He lives by. Second, we have to despair of attaining this righteousness through our own performance. Lastly, we have to see that God loves us in spite of our failures, especially in our despair and brokenness. We call this faith.

BROKENNESS IS BEAUTIFUL

For God, brokenness is beautiful. This is so counter-intuitive but so clearly true. Isaiah surprises us with these words: “I dwell on high and holy place with him who has a contrite (broken) and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones.”[19] Isaiah is speaking about those who are so crushed by life that they need to be “revived.” He is speaking to the loser, the failure, to the ones who know they don’t have what it takes even to follow God, to those on the point of despairing, even of God. This is so unexpected. The verses that assert that those who sow will reap and that God blesses those who are faithful tend to resonate with us.

Shouldn’t those who are performing well be the ones that are experiencing a greater closeness with God? However, Isaiah insists, “But on this one will I look: on him who is poor (in spirit) and of a contrite spirit, who trembles at My Word.”[20] Isaiah is not alone in this message. The Psalms continually echo the same hope to the broken and despairing. Jesus reiterates this same theme in the Sermon on the Mount, proclaiming the blessedness of the “poor in spirit” apart from any achievements on their part.[21] This is a perplexing message on several accounts. What’s to become of the “contrite” after they become more assured of God’s mercy and no longer need “revived?” It’s unthinkable that God would lose interest in us once we become more assured of His love and begin to crawl out of our hole. Similarly, how do we reconcile the assertions that God blesses the faithful and the counter-assertions that God blesses the broken and struggling? How can His blessings extend to both groups?

Once we experience brokenness (perhaps for long stretches of time) and come to receive the mercy of God, we come to realize through this mercy, even as we grow in faithfulness, we remain “broken” and utterly dependent upon God. We may no longer experience clinical depression, but we come to know that all good things come from God and that the moment we flatter ourselves into believing that we can succeed without God, we set ourselves up for a giant fall.[22] We also come to see that whatever good we find in our lives is a gift from God, and therefore, we’re in no position to look down upon anyone. We stand by the mercy of God alone. In this we come to affirm without hesitation our poverty in spirit even as we live faithfully.

This might sound depressing, but it is such a blessing to be able to live comfortably with this “poverty.” If I can truly accept this brokenness, I can accept everything else about myself. If I can accept the painful, I can also accept the comfortable. I can drop all pretence, all image management, the endless labors of trying to impress others, and the burden of trying to be someone else. It’s so liberating to find that we can laugh at ourselves, even about those things that had brought us intense shame.

All of this is made possible because the God of the universe is willing and desirous of loving us at our worst, even to the point of dying for us while we were His enemies.[23] Paul reasons from this that if God loved us so much then, at the cost of His own intense suffering, how much more now!

This is brought home very poignantly to me when I consider others who unknowingly spoke a hurtful word against me. Although I seldom sought revenge, I found that I’d positively delight myself in their misfortunes. How uncharacteristic is this of our suffering God who continues to lovingly pursue His enemies.

WHY BROKENNESS IS SO PRECIOUS TO GOD

Why must we go through life-choking suffering? Why can’t He be pleased by something a little easier to endure? Are we to be pleased as we look upon the suffering of others?

The tears of brokenness serve as a prism through which we can begin to see the light of God. Any meaningful relationship must rest upon a foundation of truth. I learned this the hard way. When I was 14, I established my own religion with myself as god. The dividends were excellent, at least at first. I would stand in front of my mirror and perform sacred worship, telling myself how well I looked. (I used to have a much better build.) Even more than that, I’d convince myself that I was better than others in just about every respect and that I could handle anything that life threw at me. These devotional speeches worked for a while, giving me a sense of superiority and confidence. However, I wasn’t able to take account of the enormous price I was paying for the privilege of being god.

As with any drug, I was receiving diminished returns for my investment. As time went on, I found that I couldn’t obtain the buzz of the initial “highs.” Desperately, I searched for a more potent fix. The fix had to be potent enough to set me back upon the throne I had established for myself. I found that I could also achieve a small high by putting others down. At least, comparatively, I could still achieve some semblance of god-ship. However, I had condemned myself to a life of obsessive comparisons between myself and others.

It’s hard to be god. Along with the glory come certain responsibilities. I had to prove to myself that I rightfully deserved my office. I then needed the fix of god-like performances and successes, at least a level of performance that exceeded that of others. I had to hit a home run each time at bat and was unable to accept failure when everything within me was so craving the confirmation of my worth. It shouldn’t be any surprise that with such personal requirements, I resented those who succeeded where I failed.

Friendship was a very fleeting luxury. It is said that two people can’t walk together unless they are agreed. My life repeatedly bore out the wisdom of this statement. The way we see ourselves must coincide with the way others see us if we are to enjoy a harmonious relationship. I think we subtly emit messages about ourselves that are either affirmed or negated. When negated, we experience dissonance and isolation. Unknown to myself at the time, I was “demanding” that others see me as I saw myself with my grossly inflated self-estimation.

It is possible to find others who will “worship” us, at least for starters. But eventually, reality sets in, and my newfound friends became increasingly unwilling to grant me the higher status I so craved. Of course, there were never any explicit demands, but eventually our hearts’ demands impress themselves uncomfortably upon our relationships.

If the parties can’t agree, an uncomfortable feeling of distance results. Anita had just finished painting our apartment. She had labored mightily and had done a magnificent job and understandably wanted to hear expressions of my appreciation. I did appreciate what she had done, but my feelings were more mixed than hers. It was a long and painful experience for me. It had disrupted my life, and that had been my primary concern, and I wanted her to appreciate all the discomfort I had experienced. While I wanted to give her the affirmation that she desired, I didn’t feel that I could honestly affirm her work to the extent she wanted. We had a series of uncomfortable negotiations until we fortunately arrived at a common understanding.

A meaningful friendship with God must also be built upon mutual understandings of whom we are and whom God is. Self-righteousness is a denial of the necessary common ground for a relationship. The religious leadership held a very different set of definitions than did Jesus. Luke grants us a telling account of their dissonant exchanges.

“The Pharisees, who were lovers of money,….derided Him. And He said to them, ‘You are those who justify yourselves before men, but God knows your hearts. For what is highly esteemed among men is an abomination in the sight of God’.”[24]

The Pharisees were “esteemed among men.” Their delusions were socially shared. Others also believed that they were truly superior human beings and conferred that respect upon them. This made their delusions especially resistant to change. Nevertheless, somewhere in the marrow of their bones they knew the truth about themselves and vainly tired to justify themselves and to reassure one another in the face of Jesus’ charges against them, charges that would eventually lead Jesus to the Cross.

Their attitudes were an “abomination in the sight of God.” It wasn’t that the Pharisees were worse sinners than everyone else. In fact, in terms of the external performance of the requirements of God’s Law, they out-shined all the rest. When Jesus would cast doubts about their relationship with God, His own disciples were startled. If the Pharisees weren’t saved, who then could be!

Instead, the Pharisaic problem was one of the heart. Their self-concept and God-concept were an offense to God, and they hardened themselves in their self-righteous attitudes as Jesus pounded upon their doors. They refused to wake up, smell the coffee and repent. Jesus didn’t love them any less than He did the others despite His harsh words against them. These harsh words were words of love. Later, while looking over Jerusalem, He exclaimed His hearts desire to make them His own children, but they continually refused.[25]

Had Jesus instead showered His blessings upon them while they were in their hardened state, He would have enabled them to remain with their delusions. Had I found friends who would have been willing to consistently shower me with praise and respect, I would have become hardened in my delusions and would have become more resistant to change. Why change if my lifestyle is paying me healthy dividends?

In contrast to the Pharisees, Jesus painted us a portrait of the type of character He was very ready to bless and embrace.

“Then Jesus called a little child to Him, set him in the midst of them, and said, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, unless you are converted and become as little children, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever humbles himself as this little child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.’”[26]

For the Jewish people of Jesus’ day, this was a radical message. Little children hadn’t yet accrued any merit before God. They were takers, not givers, but in their favor, they knew that they didn’t deserve anything. They knew that the good that they received was merely because someone loved them. They therefore were without any pretensions that they deserved anything from God. God could gladly bless them without any concern of enabling them to believe in their own self-righteousness or deservedness.

Relationship must be based upon truth. To put it plainly, the truth about humanity isn’t pretty. Just look at the way we crucified the Son of God and all the other prophets of God. As far as we know, all of the Apostles died a martyr’s horrible death. Look at the incessant warfare, greed, xenophobia, and self-centeredness. It’s hubris to think that we’re any different. God requires that intimacy must be predicated upon a true accounting of who we are and who He is. Before all else, repentance and confession is a process of coming to terms not only with God but also with ourselves.

It is a delight to give when the recipient receives it as an act of love rather than something that they think they deserve. God is a giver who seeks “little children” who have the humility to truly be takers.

We need to know that we’re truly beautiful. Many of us have relationships that convey this to us. However, if we’re honest with ourselves, we know that there are many parts of ourselves that aren’t beautiful, parts that we’re even ashamed of. However much we try to bury these parts or to convince ourselves that these parts are really OK, on a deeper level we know better.

Therefore, to know that God loves us and always will despite our ugliness and that He’s even drawn to us in our brokenness is the assurance we need when the mirror tells us otherwise. This understanding can free us from self-contempt and self-absorption. It can make us jump up and down and cry out with joy to find that we’re no longer the ugly duckling. In the next chapter, we’ll continue with how brokenness and depression is used by the Master Craftsman.

EXERCISE:

1. How has your perspective affected the way you feel about yourself? About God?

2. What type of perspective are we called to have? Why?

3. Has your brokenness and depression led you to believe that something was desperately wrong with your relationship with God? How?

4. Is it important to understand the usefulness of our problems in Gods hand? Why?