I know what it feels like to find Christianity oppressive and guilt-inducing.
It is true that certain people within the church often seem to think that the main goal of Christianity is to make others feel condemned. But those who struggle with undiagnosed depression don’t need anyone else’s help to find themselves trapped inside guilt’s dank catacombs. We typically discover ourselves wandering throughout guilt’s labyrinth without any outside assistance.
The unhealthy tendencies of a fallen mind (and everyone’s mind is fallen since Genesis 3) can discover a variety of creative ways to turn the gospel of God’s grace into a script for endless self-accusation.
Here is another excerpt from a message on depression I gave to students at Calvin College years ago:
“For much of my life, knowing Jesus was not an experience of grace or forgiveness. Neither was it a confrontation with authentic guilt. Rather, it was predominately an experience of failure and accusation where nagging, anonymous guilt became a never-ending state of mind.
“Being a Christian was like falling through the rabbit hole with Alice in wonderland. I was chasing after something that was always just around the next bend in the tunnel. For years of my life, from the moment my eyelids opened in the morning till they closed at night, I would be filled with the gnawing feeling that somehow or another I had let God down. I didn’t know how; I just felt it.
“Each day unfolded beneath the thick, dark shadows of an anonymous cloud of accusation, never tied to anything specific but always there accusing me of unrelenting failure.
“I once told a friend that life was like a huge jig-saw puzzle, and somehow or another my part of the puzzle was missing a few pieces. Try as I might, I could never seem to find those missing pieces. God knew where they were. He was waiting for me to figure out what I was missing, but I could never find the answers. And He would never give me any hints.
“Have you ever heard the Christian chorus, “The Joy of the Lord Is My Strength”? I always hated that song. Whenever we sang that song at my childhood church or my high school youth group, my insides would tie themselves in knots because it never, never made any sense to me.
“As far as I could tell, the joy of the Lord was a hoax. There was no such thing, at least not for me.
“Knowing the Lord brought duty, challenge and unbelievable expectations, but in all my life I couldn’t remember a single time when knowing Jesus had brought me joy or gladness. It just didn’t happen for me; and try as I might, I couldn’t find the 10 easy steps that would change my experience on that score. I knew all about the power of positive thinking but trying to believe in that power only added to my guilt because it was just one more thing I could not do.
“That guilt drove me for much of my life. It drove me to be the very best student I could be, because maybe then Jesus would be satisfied. It drove me to be the best Inter-Varsity staff-worker I could be. It drove me to become the best pastor that I could be. It drove me to try to grow the biggest church that I could grow, because maybe then I could wake up in the morning – just once – with a sense of peace, feeling that Jesus was finally satisfied with me. (Let me tell you, working to become the best at something does not make anyone the best at anything. I know that too, as a staff-worker, graduate student and pastor).
“Does any of this sound familiar? I suspect that many people may recognize themselves….
“I now know that my struggle with this particular breed of spiritual depression was hopelessly (in my case) intertwined with my psychological, clinical depression. So, I want to emphasize two lessons I was able to learn anew once counselling and medication started helping me to see my life from God’s real perspective (not my warped, false perspective).
“First, I slowly began to understand that Jesus was living through my depression with me.
He was not condemning me. He was grieving with me.
“I could know this because the New Testament tells me that Jesus had experienced depression, too. He had even lived through my anxiety attacks, first hand. (Have you ever had one of those? Not fun.)
“The gospels tell us that on the night he was betrayed, Jesus went into the Garden of Gethsemane to pray, and “he was terror-stricken.” (That’s what the language means). He was “overwhelmed with fear and anxiety.” In fact, he told his closest friends, “My soul is so overwhelmed with grief that I feel like I am being crushed to death” (Mk. 14:32-34). That is a perfect description of depression with panic attacks.
“When Jesus finally hangs on the cross, he feels himself to be wholly abandoned by his God, thrown aside like a rag-doll by his own heavenly Father. He groans in agony, “My God, my God, why…why have you turned your back on me now?” Jesus experienced the unquenchable despair of a failing sinner’s groping for a God who is always somewhere else. He knew my desperation and my anxiety.
“Secondly, I began to see with new eyes why Jesus had died.
“I recognized that for years I had unwittingly read the gospels as if I was hearing the story of a Savior who loved me in spite of myself, in spite of my failures. Now, with new eyes, I was beginning to see that Jesus had not died for me in spite of my sins. No. Jesus died for me because of my sins.
“Jesus didn’t look at me with all my struggles and say, “Oh, well, I guess I’ll love him anyway.” NO! He sees me in my struggles and says, “Oh, he needs my love and forgiveness!” And Jesus really, really, really does love me (and you!) just exactly the way that I am. I now know that I really, really, really am fully and completely accepted by Christ Jesus just exactly the way that I am.
“And I’ll tell you something: He really, really, really loves you just exactly the way that you are, too. Jesus Christ did not die for you in spite of your sins, either. Jesus gave his life for you on the cross because of your sins. Remember this, for this is the gospel of grace.
“For some of us, learning to reorient our thinking towards the acceptance of Christ’s unconditional love can become a significant step towards the healing of spiritual depression. “But some of us can’t seem to shake our depression no matter how hard we try to adjust our attitudes or our thought patterns. We need something more…”
I will talk about what that “something more” was for me next time I write about Christian faith and depression.
The Holy Spirit is not the only force influencing a person’s relationship with Jesus Christ. There is a fraternity of mysterious, internal actors known as neurochemicals that exercise incredible force over everyone’s spiritual life, whether we know it or not.
God made us physical, material beings. Our physical make-up actually appears to monitor our spirituality in ways that we are only beginning to understand. I will talk about the human body-Spirit connection and how dealing with my own depression led me into exploring this area in my next post on this subject. In the meantime, ask yourself this:
Can the Holy Spirit be a neurochemical?
