Why Get Depressed?

The above has been a topic of some confusion and speculation that I've heard on different occasions. Why have so many preachers and missionaries struggle so much with depression? What are their reasons? What brought it about?

I offer two possiblities, two reasons why people who are closer to God might be drawn into depression - and not because of bad things. It's kind of interesting: Our sin nature can twist all the good things God made and use them for evil; but God can always straighten them out again and use them for good. But that's a different topic.

1) They took sin seriously. Look at the Apostle Paul, how much he hated what he had been, and the many things he said about himself. Chief of sinners, wretched man. I believe that the closer people are to God, the more seriously they take sin, the more they understand just how awful it is - the more they see it the same way that God does. They see themselves more clearly and therefore, they see more sin within their lives, and they see sin as far more terrible a thing than most. The world downplays sin, says it's not evil, laughs it off or even applauds it. Sadly, Christians have a tendency to become calloused to sin, and the only remedy I can see is a close relationship with God. Walking with Him makes a person see things more and more as they are and less and less with the blindfold of a sinner's eyes. As they draw closer to God, the Light of the world illuminates and the scales fall away.

Whether this applies to their personal lives and failures or frustration with their ministries and the lack of commitment from those around them or the flippancy with which sin is treated in the world and in the church, is irrelevant. The point is that when we see things as they are, it's easy to be overcome with the extent of depravity and fall into depression. For Martin Luther, a man who possessed a very sensitive conscience, this was a struggle.

2) They loved God. Consider, if you will, that feeling of absolute joy and gratitude that filled your heart when you first believed. Consider the happiness and the flood of love that was so overwhelming and think about how much that love spurred you to want to give your all for the Christ Who saved you. Now He gives you a task and you're excited because you're loving Him with all your heart and strength and mind. And you reach out to do that task. . . and you fail utterly. You think of the disappointment you've just caused Your Father; you mull over the great price that had to be paid for that failure; you consider how grieved the Spirit is, how much you have (or could have) hurt those around you, those other ones who are precious to the Savior, how your action or inaction has brought shame to the body of Christ and pulled down the work of God.

Inevitably, you grieve. You confess. But there is a danger. Not with the grieving, I don't think. Being sorry, truly, deeply repentant, is good. Grief can cause determination. Grief can lead to a closer walk with God, a better rein on the sin nature, a more prayerful life, a better attitude in service. Real, true repentance followed by the joy of God's forgiveness is the initial burst of flame that ignites a Christian's heart in the first place. Holding your failures in front of your eyes is a good reminder to be watchful, to be careful not to think that you stand on your own - to remember that it's through Christ's strength and by God's will that we do this or that.

But that danger I mentioned comes, I believe, from the inability to accept God's forgiveness when asking for it, when confessing, when grieving for the sin. It becomes, "Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord!" Instead of drawing nearer to God in the warmth of forgiveness and the renewed state of fellowship, the rift remains because we feel unworthy or because we feel defeated. Then, the lack of fellowship sends us into a spiral of depression. Depression debilitates and leads to apathy.

And those, I think, are two reasons why people who are close to God, who we might think should not have a problem with such things, could very easily struggle with depression. Men who are outwardly successful in their ministries, men that we look at and admire for all they accomplished for the glory of God. It is interesting that no matter how close we get in our relationship to God on this earth, that there is always a level for sin to enter in. The Christian who is far from God and close to the world may experience the sin of apathy and a flippant attitude toward sin; the Christian who is striving to serve God with all they are falls prey to the sin of depression because they hate themselves for failing.

We are never safe in this world, but something was very simplified for me in church this morning. I knew it, but not like this, not this clearly, and I certainly had never realized that Christ had said it. And I, being a lover of simplicity, found it quite a lovely thought.

"If ye continue in My Word, then are ye My disciples indeed; and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." - John 8:31-32 What I hadn't realized before in this way was that continuing in the Word is what reveals the truth, which is what makes us free. In other words, when we stray, we fall. When we follow, we're free.

How simply Christ said things. How complicated we sometimes make it.