By Phil Anderas
Depression and inwardness are a deadly cocktail. In fact, depending how you look at it, depression and inwardness are the same thing. The soul “curved in upon itself,” as Martin Luther put it, not in giddy pride but in self-loathing despair. Or the self stuck with itself, stuck inside itself, stuck being an insecure, wretched, yet self-obsessed self gnawing on its own inadequacy, with distraction (temporary) or death (permanent) the only possibilities for relief (Kierkegaard, Walker Percy). It’s awful.
Sometimes, Christians make it worse.
For one thing, there are the dark thoughts churning inside your broken psyche. If you’re depressed, well, it must mean there’s something spiritually wrong with you. I don’t believe enough, love enough, hope enough; if I did, I’d be happy like the well-adjusted people on the stage. I am not gifted, not needed, not wanted. I don’t belong: don’t have a place where I fit; a home. This (latest) round of mental agony is the punishment my sins deserve. I am unloved and unlovable – an ugly, misshapen, miscarried excuse of a human being. I, I, I … not-enough, not-enough, not-enough … round and round the gyre of the bleeding soul turns, a ruthless, centripetal spiral.
God loves others, I’m told, but apparently not me. If he cared for me, why doesn’t he hear my prayers and heal my soul?
Perhaps I’m one of the unfortunate reprobates of Calvin’s nightmare, damned to be this lousy me from before the foundation of the world.
Perhaps there is no God at all …
That sums up our modern evangelical hell on earth: there is no God – and He is against me!
To make matters worse, if the depressed Christian goes to church he is confronted with beautiful people who have their stuff together and ask no hard questions about God. If they could see the chaotic darkness in his soul, they’d scream like Edvard Munch. But they can’t see, or won’t. So they smile. They chit-chat. They sing.
They feel … and their wonderful feelings ooze right out of them. Quite straightforwardly, these emotions are their experience of God. And, since their emotions are positive, they know that God is with them and for them and that he loves them and wants them to be happy.
The lights dim and the real Christians slow-dance with Jesus: but your feelings are frozen and you hardly move.
The lights come back on, the good-looking preacher moves centerstage, a spiritual TED talk commences. He’s witty and charming and the gnosis he peddles massages the robust egos of the successful who surround your failed self.
Another song, the benediction – but your life is cursed, and you wish you could die.
Is there a remedy for such a soul?
There are many; too many to account for in this brief piece. The suffering brother or sister needs trusted, caring friends and a wise, caring, trust-worthy counselor. He may need to see a psychiatrist and begin taking an anti-depressant. He probably needs a homecooked meal, and a walk in the forest, and an evening gazing at the sunset and the stars. He could also use, when the time is right, a loving infusion of biblical truth about a whole host of things: the goodness of the Maker, the worth of his own image-bearing soul, the impossibility of justifying his existence through either works (moral/spiritual) or work (academic/professional), the redeeming love of Jesus Christ, the forgiveness of sins and gift of righteousness, the deep hiddenness of the Spirit’s best work, the meaningfulness of suffering in union with Christ, the chief end of man in eschatological communion with the triune God, and so forth. A faithful friend and a wise pastor will see to it that the brother receives them all, and all in their good time.
But there’s one thing the depressed Christian needs more than anything: the promise of gospel, given to him objectively in the Word and the sacraments.
First, the promise – or better still, the gospel in the form of a promise. There’s no use telling a man at the end of his rope what he needs to do to save, fix, adjust, or heal himself. You might as well tell a man on his deathbed to cure his own cancer, or a man on death row to secure his release. No, what our brother needs – desperately – is to hear again the promise: “God is with you; God is for you; the proof is the nails, the blood, the scars; redemption is yours; your destiny is eternal joy in the kingdom of light.” And to hear this promise again, and again, and again … until he begins, slowly, to believe it.
For that to happen, he needs the promise delivered to him in a way he can receive it, being the kind of creature he is. Not an angel or spirit, but an embodied, relational, serotonin-deficient soul. It can’t well up from the inside: nothing escapes that black hole but despair. It has to come from the outside. Not through the emotions – which are busted – but through the senses, which still work.
He needs a pastor to hear the jumbled tale of his soul, to help sort out what is sin from what is suffering, to lay his hands on his addled head, and – by the authority of Jesus Christ – to speak the grace that sets him free: “I absolve you all your sins, in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.”
He needs to learn to fight the world, the flesh, the devil, and depression with the last thing he thought could help: water. To put his fingers in the font, make the sign of the Cross, and repeat the promise spoken over him in his baptism: “I have been baptized and I belong to God!”
He needs to hear that same ordinary pastor tell the truth about how shot-through with evil this old dying world is, how it’s normal to suffer afflictions, how in the end Death will bury all our achievements in oblivion – and yet, and yet! That Jesus Christ has triumphed over all, and given his victory to us. And his love. And the love of his Father.
He needs to eat bread and drink wine with defiant trust in the promise of Jesus: “This is my Body, given for you; this is my Blood, shed for you. Whoever comes to Me I will never cast out. Eat my flesh and drink my blood and you will never die.”
Call it the good news of objectivity and outwardness. You don’t need to feel forgiven, just the water splashed on your chest. You don’t need to feel loved: just the gentle hands on your head. You don’t need to hear an inner voice; the absolution will do the trick. You don’t need to pretend you aren’t aching, empty, and starving. You don’t need to pretend you’re “fine.” You don’t even need to pretend to believe.
Just receive the gifts and trust the promise they embody: that despite it all, Jesus Christ is indeed … yours.
Phil Anderas (PhD, Marquette) is a Lutheran pastor in Roanoke, VA. He preaches the Word, cares for souls, looks for lost sheep, and writes at apostolicum.substack.com.
