When he has tried thy soul with sadness
Several years ago, friend and former parishioner Bob Waters gently cautioned me about something I said about depression in a sermon. I have not stopped thinking about what he said, and the issue in general.
I have come to very much agree with him. Telling a person suffering from depression to “cheer up” – or worse, telling him that he is sinning – is like telling a homeless person, “Get a job.” An awful lot of factors have led the person to that point, and hurting people need help, not rebuke.
So, what does depression say about one’s faith? The way it is sometimes presented (even, I fear, in some of my former sermons), depression indicates a lack of faith. This makes it difficult for a Christian suffering with mental illness to seek the needed help (which ought to include proper pastoral care). Waters wrote about what a seminary professor taught him:
He emphasized that it is essential in dealing with depression that it not be treated as a moral issue. One does not help a person deal with hopelessness by telling them that it’s a moral failure, for the same reason why one doesn’t preach the Law to a person who has already been crushed by it.
In depression, one is called to cry Kyrie eleison! Could a season of sadness be sent, or simply allowed, by God to chasten and purify His child? That’s the way LSB 750 (“If Thou But Trust in God to Guide Thee”) seems to read; here’s stanza 4:
God knows full well when times of gladness Shall be the needful thing for thee. When He has tried thy soul with sadness And from all guile has found thee free, He comes to thee all unaware And makes thee own His loving care.I’ve been thinking about this particularly in light of tomorrow’s Gospel, Lazarus and Dives (Luke 16.19-31). Was Lazarus depressed? Did he struggle with anxiety and despair while lying in the dirt, dogs licking his sores? (Yes, I realize it’s [probably] a parable.) As the story is painted, the answer must be “yes.” Who wouldn’t? In this story is hope for those afflicted with depression, anxiety, despair, or simply physical suffering: Deus caritas est, and His deliverance is coming. The road is dark, the gravel stabs at the ribs, hope seems gone – but God has demonstrated His love for us in the death of Jesus. He is coming, and will “make thee own His loving care.”
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Nicely said, thank you.
Pastor, this is helpful. I have a friend that is going through very hard times. Her ex-husband abuses their 7-yr-old daughter, when he has visitation rights. She is very depressed about it, and although she’s gone through all the legal channels, she doesn’t know how to make it stop. She fears for her little girl every time she has to take her to his house, and she doesn’t see God as any source of help anymore. I have no idea how to comfort her. This is an online friendship, but I still hurt so much for them all. What would you say when someone is suffering from that kind of depression?
The trouble with depression is, it’s a self-fulfilling thing, and it’s a deathward spiral. even when it comes and goes, falls and lifts.
No one asks for it anymore than they ask for body-type or birthplace. Who knows if it comes from within, like a carbuncle, or strikes like a virus from without.
When it visits, it brings along guilt, its necessary companion, so that is stands a better chance of abiding and doing its dirty work. It makes the host susceptible to so many things, but chiefly to not seeking help, but riding it out alone. Guilt makes the host assume responsibility for its own suffering, confines the host, and prevents it from sharing what will probably look like just a bad mood or an unhappy time, or even a bout of self-absorption, when it’s really a time of worthlessness, and unbelief, and untold shame on account of all of that.
Even when you believe, you do not believe; true as well for the most cheerful of people. Even though we’re declared innocent, we have to have been guilty first, or the declaration is meaningless.
The trouble with depression is, the guilt wins, even if only for a moment–and depressed ‘moments’ last a very long time. The guilt reminds you that, though Christ died to make you innocent, you were guilty as sin before that, and you’ll be guilty again, and this is what you’ll know until the day you die.
So the law doesn’t work because the law has already done its work. It’s produced nothing but death, or a state very nearly like it. The law has no medicine. Christ loving me–black and alone and guilty as sin–is of course THE medicine. But depression and guilt combine to make Him hard to find.
I wouldn’t point a person to a therapist. They’re pretty much dispensers of law themselves: no cure, but some of that self-absorption you figured it was anyways, some advice (more law), and perhaps a prescription.
For the believer, it’s only Christ for all the moments, else we’re all just glory-seekers who think He expects nothing more of us than to ‘Have a nice day,’ and make Him proud.
I couldn’t disagree more with Susan about therapy. Cognitive therapy in particular aims at helping a depressed person transcend his hopelessness and see the world realistically. In the hands of a Christian therapist (or even a non-Christian therapist who respects the Faith) it can serve as a form of apologetics that removes obstacles (in this case, biochemical ones) that stand in the way of a person actually hearing the Gospel.
Becky, Luther had that kind of depression. You can’t “fix” it by anything you say. But you can continue to point her to Christ; the Holy Spirit has to do the rest.
But given the status of depression as a biochemical issue, I wouldn’t rule out pointing her to a good therapist for some
cognitive and perhaps medicinal apologetics as well.