DEPRESSED OR NOT TRYING?
Sloth is laziness. When the Bible frowns on sloth it isn’t frowning on someone who’s suffering from fatigue or some form of emotional drain and unable to work. Even less is it frowning on people that we think are lazy because we think they’re capable of throwing off some condition that we think they don’t want to deal with. No, when the Bible opposes "sloth" it’s opposing an attitude and a response that isn’t to be approved or nurtured. It doesn’t address someone that can’t work but someone who won’t work. Some people are (at least temporarily) physically disabled and can’t work and some people are (at least temporarily) emotionally disabled.
We tend to think that a broken bone is real but a broken heart is "all in the mind" and therefore not real. When we say of someone’s disabling condition, "It’s all in her head" we’re usually being dismissive and not taking the matter seriously. We think she could easily do something about it if she wanted but she obviously doesn’t want to, so we think sympathy is inappropriate. We think she can "pull herself together" because we have known people with similar difficulties and they did it. [Okay, so she lost her husband but so did Teresa and she got over it. We presume they experienced the same thing but this is far from clear. She isn’t Teresa and that makes it altogether different and her relationship with her husband wasn’t like Teresa’s and that makes it different. It’s only on the surface that these experiences look alike.]
If she had a compound fracture of her leg and a skull fracture resulting from an accident she’d get all our sympathy, flowers, chocolates and hospital visits however long they’re needed. If the bones refuse to heal quickly we feel disappointed for her. But if she has a compound fracture of the heart or spirit we give her a lot of advice and expect her to move on within a very short time. If her emotional fractures don’t heal quickly we feel disappointed in her and (often) we soon run out of patience with her.
People are too quick to think they know a lot. Medicine is no exact science but we know a lot more about the healing of a broken bone than about healing broken spirits. We know how to put a bone in splints or screw pins into it but the other is way too complex for simple cures. [Of course, sometimes there is a simple cure but the patient with the broken spirit often doesn’t know what the problem is and neither do those who care. In that case the challenge to help begins with diagnosis.] If our friend has a skull fracture we leave her to the professionals but we feel more than capable to fix the broken spirit though we’re often completely ignorant not only about the causes but the approaches to a cure and our own limited wisdom and commitment.
It’s a difficult area to work in. Some deeply religious people are clinically depressed because they wrestle with hidden and recurring sins. They live in fear of exposure and consequent loss. They live in fear of God and consequent damnation. They live with a degree of emotional exhaustion that comes with having to pretend everything is fine with them. They live in self-loathing at their "hypocrisy" when they continue to attend church, engage in worthy endeavors and otherwise act "like butter wouldn’t melt in their mouths". The "cure" here is simple enough though very complex. This person needs to come to believe a rich development of the gospel and find forgiveness and peace while they struggle by God’s grace to overcome the sin that debilitates them. (This might well involve confession and the grace of God via friends and family who will assist in the overcoming of the sin.)
These people need to be assured that there’s a profound difference between a failure and a fraud. It’s one thing to be a hypocrite and another to be a genuine struggler toward the light who fails a lot.
But I’d suppose that while such cases [those that are chronically depressed over sins committed] are not uncommon they are definitely in the minority. Still, though in the minority they need to be taken into account and the people given assistance.
There are too many complex reasons that lead people to suffer from deep depression to allow us to stick them all in the same category and offer the same banal advice. And then there’s this—some professional counselors are not equipped to truly help. They have neither the patience nor the will to put up with the challenge that deeply depressed people can present. And some of them are plainly not competent. I won’t rehearse a long list of horror stories of situations seriously misconstrued by inept counselors or the even longer list of superficial advice and five-step-cures they’ve offered to complex cases. It's more than unfortunate that this kind of counselor gives the other kind a bad reputation.
But there’s a danger for the patient in going even to a competent and caring professional. If they’re not "cured" by such a person it compounds their feelings of despair (an element that always hovers around the chronically depressed). They feel they’re incurable and at the same time they fear that their friends will think they don’t want to be cured.
Many of the people I’ve known down the years that have suffered from deep and prolonged depression understood that they were sources of irritation. They saw themselves as bores. They understood why people finally grew tired of the "down" look and tone and speech. They had heard the usual well-meaning advice over and over and over again and it didn’t "work" so they found it increasingly difficult to listen to it again. This meant that they were closing doors and further isolating themselves because people didn’t know what to say to them, were afraid to laugh in their company and would begin to experience compassion fatigue and become a bit resentful toward the sufferer. With all this going on it isn’t surprising that if they didn’t sink lower they certainly weren’t climbing out of the pit of despondency.
And if the depressed person is a sensitive believer it often makes matters worse. "Everybody knows" that God can do more than we can even imagine and that Christ can make us strong to do anything. And as "everybody knows", God is eager to say yes to all our requests and give us what we ask. All that being true, how’s it possible that someone can remain an emotional cripple month after month and year after year? The problem can’t lie with God! The problem can’t lie with our view of God (because we have that all neat and tidy)! So it must lie with the sufferer. They must lack the will to be better or the faith that God can make them better. It all sounds so simple that even the sufferer half-believes it, and that deepens the problem. They come to believe that their depression is ongoing sin against God, so what right have they to pray? More isolation enters and now they're isolated from the one person they had been pinning their hopes on.
Then there’s the medicine that’s dished out by doctors. I don’t say doctors have an easy profession—far from it. They’re human like the rest of us and they’re tempted (or is "locked into" the right phrase?) to keep writing prescriptions for the same drugs that deal with symptoms and never underlying causes and that’s a dangerous business. Warnings come thick and fast from medical watchdog sources about over-prescribing, about addiction and the accumulating side effects of such medicines. And those among us who suffer no serious difficulties in the emotional area are quick to point this out and, anyway, "we should be relying on God rather than drugs." This last remark is notcompletely off target and that’s what makes it so injurious to some of the chronically depressed among us. It has truth in it but it isn't truth well used in this case.
Even those who research and write books on depression, its causes, cure or control—even they maintain some modesty and admit uncertainty and the limits of their understanding. Surely the rest of us should do likewise. For healthy and richly blessed people to bully others with biblical generalizations and verses barely looked at before they’re used as a whip—that’s a disgrace.
I’m one of those that think if the human family hadn’t rebelled and maintained that rebellion against God we wouldn’t have the chaos and loss that we now experience. That shouldn’t be controversial (though it is in some quarters), but if it’s true then it has ramifications for all our illnesses—including clinical depression—they wouldn’t exist if sin didn’t exist. Our chaotic world is one grand proclamation that the human race—apart from Christ—is alienated from God and is suffering because that’s true. Even the innocent children and the righteous share in the pain of a human family gone astray.
Some of our depression can be traced to chemical and hormonal imbalances, to genetic disorders, to the high-strung natures that many among us have inherited and other such factors that are not the fault of the individual sufferer. Some of our depression manifestly arises from early abuse, unending financial pressures, loss of jobs, physical abnormalities, loneliness, squalid and threatening environments and more, or any one of these or a combination of a number of them.
Some of our depression arises from expectations that are too high and (for whatever reasons) we simply don’t take into account the tough realities of life and our limits. Forgive me for my bluntness here, but some of our depression is generated because we want things we shouldn’t want in the first place! There are relationships that are forbidden to us and because we can’t take pleasure in them we begin to sink. There are "things" we think we can’t live without and if we were not as greedy as we are we wouldn’t want them and the lack of them wouldn’t create gloom and dejection. [Those of us that have enough money to spend on the "things" we want would no doubt applaud that last point. But then because we can get what we want within reason we don’t feel the hunger for many things we don’t presently have.] We see this "gimme spirit" in passing and at a lower level around Christmas time in many children. They want things that are unreasonable, the pressed parents can’t get them and the child pouts at what it gets. Of course many of the children don’t realize what they’re asking but we expect (and in some cases should expect) adults to be more realistic and controlled. I think some of us have a perpetual case of the "blahs" because we want too much, because we aren’t satisfied with what we’ve got and because we can’t see the beauty or fineness in what we’ve got. We live hectic and anxiety-filled lifestyles and work too many hours to get what we can easily live without and lose out on what we need the most. If we were more mature spiritually (what does that mean?) we’d be less prone to debilitating disappointment, discontent and depression. And it’s because there are some of us like that that we hear silly people including everyone in that category that’s depressed.
But while I’m sure there are people that are deeply depressed because they’re too self-centered I don’t think I should speak as though God gave me a special gift of discernment that I can look and spot them without fail. Whatever we say we think, we continue to believe that we know when someone is making a mountain out of a molehill and I don’t think we’re always wrong! Nevertheless, we might be making a wrong call, so if in the end we feel compelled to make such a call we’re not to make it as if it were an oracle straight from heaven! We need to maintain a bit of modesty.
I’ve read a number of books in this area, spoken to a number of competent counselors and been counseled myself more than once. I can only give you my impression at this stage in my life. Beyond some very specialized areas I don’t think counselors have a lot to offer that a wise and devoted friend can’t offer. (I’m going to let that claim stand as it is even though as soon as I read it, the statement begs to be developed.) Too many committed professionals are confessing the limits of the enterprise and so much depends on the self-knowledge of the patient for us to expect too much of professional counselors. And so much depends on the inner capacity for the struggler to carry out the sound advice given to them.
So, should we all wring our hands in despair and pass out the diazepam, amitriptyline or prozac? I don’t know a sure cure for depression that can be easily appropriated by sufferers. Bless me, if I did, wouldn’t I be a billionaire? But this I know—my depression doesn’t mean God loses! My depression doesn’t mean Christ has been dethroned. My depression no more obliterates God than clouds obliterate the sun. Somewhere in all our working with human anxiety and loss we have to learn to balance the two truths if they co-exist. I’m depressed and God is my Savior! Even if I can’t emotionally fully cash in on that truth about God I need someone to help me keep it in view. I recognize that that’s a tall order, but because the task is difficult does not give me the right to refuse to take it on. Let's continue to feed people rich, profund truth about God's unchanging commitment, let it soak in and we'll see what happens. In the meantime let the healthy-minded and emotionally well-adjusted thank God that they aren't burdened as some poor souls are. Maybe if the depressed become fully persuaded that we care about them then they'll be able to hear us better when we speak challenging truth to them.
©2004 Jim McGuiggan. All materials are free to be copied and used as long as money is not being made.
Many thanks to brother Ed Healy, for allowing me to post from his website, the abiding word.com.