Depression: Looking Up from the Stubborn Darkness (14 page)

Pascal offered this wise summary:

Knowing God without knowing our own wretchedness makes for pride.

Knowing our own wretchedness without knowing God makes for despair.

Knowing Jesus Christ strikes the balance because he shows us both God and our own wretchedness.
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What do you see in your own heart?

Jane, who appeared at the beginning of the last chapter, was clearly not interested in hearing about God with depression raging, and the small group leader knew that. There would be another time to pick up that conversation.

That time came a month or two later, when the inner storm was quieter.

“Jane, do you remember when I asked you about your relationship with the Lord, and you become angry?”

“Yes, I remember.”

“Let’s not say, ‘that was the depression talking.’ Let’s just take it for what it was—there are times when you can get angry with the Lord. We don’t know why you get depressed, but we do know that depression, at least, is a test of your faith, and, this last time, your faith came crashing down.”

Jane was ready to hear.

One of the problems with the heart is that it is hard to know it. We can quickly list the circumstances of life that shape who we are, such as family, friends, and teachers, but the heart tends to hide, both from ourselves and others. Knowing about it and knowing it are two different things.

Here are a series of questions we can ask to discover what is in our heart.

What do you love? What do you hate?

What do you want, crave, hope for?

What is your goal?

What do you fear?

What do you worry about?

What do you feel like you need?

Where do you find refuge, comfort, pleasure, or security?

Who are your heroes and role models?

What defines success or failure for you?

When do you say, “If only ...”? (e.g., “If only my husband would ... .”)

What do you see as your rights?

What do you pray for?

What do you talk about?

What are your dreams or fantasies?

When do you get angry?

When do you tend to doubt Scripture?

Where in your life have you struggled with bitterness?

What or whom do you avoid?

Do you feel guilty at times?
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Under ordinary circumstances we rarely ask these questions of ourselves or allow them to take us to the spiritual core of our lives, but depression is not an ordinary circumstance. Depression unveils our hearts.

Isn’t it true that suffering reveals us? While prosperity allows us to hide, hardships peel off masks we didn’t even know we were wearing. During the better times, we can be happy, unafraid, confident, and optimistic, but the lean years reveal the best and the worst in us. Put a dozen relatively like-minded people into the same crisis and you will see a dozen different responses. Some are heroes; others are cowards. Some are leaders; others are followers. Some are optimistic; others despair. Some shake their fist at God; others quietly submit. You don’t really know who you are until you have gone through suffering. We can measure our spiritual growth by the way we behave under pressure.

Throughout history, God has used hardships to reveal people’s hearts, and this unveiling has had a purpose. It is an essential part of the process of change. You have to see what is in your heart before you can set out to change it.

Notice how those who have medicated away their hardships with illegal drugs, alcohol, or sex can seem immature. They may look forty-five, but they have the character of an adolescent. Find a person who has weathered storms rather than avoided them and you will find someone who is wise.

Personal growth and change are not always easy, but they are essential to true humanness. It is simply how we were built. They are the Creator’s intent. You can see it taking place in animals, plants, and people. Everything alive grows. The difference with human beings is that we grow physically
and
spiritually.

When we grow in the right direction, it is right and good. The Hebrew word
shalom
captures it: peace, wholeness, realignment rather than dislocation. Spiritual growth just feels right. In fact, it is a blessing that can make depression feel less oppressive. Depression can feel like the severe pain of someone dying of cancer, but it can also be like the pain of surgery, which indicates that we are getting better. If both pains could be physically measured, they might be identical in their intensity, at least to a researcher. But the pain from surgery will seem less severe to the sufferer than the pain of cancer. The pain from surgery is making you better; the other is a sign that you are worse.

When we see something of our own hearts, we are in a position to grow and change. However hard it is to have our innermost being exposed, it is a necessary part of the path of blessing.

This unveiling might yield other benefits as well. It might reveal things in our hearts that have contributed to the depression itself. There is no way to be certain that our hearts are the primary cause of our depression, but when we work on the issues that depression reveals, the pain can sometimes lift because we have found one of its causes. In other words, the problem behind depression is not always physical. Many depression experts have come to a similar conclusion.

For example, one popular approach to depression is called cognitive therapy. It focuses on the way people think. Is everything white or black, all or nothing, an opportunity or an obstacle? These ways of thinking lie relatively dormant during calmer times, but they are unmistakably active during depression. The goal of cognitive therapy is to identify these “thinking errors,” change them, and, in so doing, hopefully alleviate the depression. This school of thought suggests that these thinking errors are not just
revealed
by depression; they actually
cause
it. Therefore, when you change your thinking, you change your depression. Brain scans even show that we can bring about significant physical changes in our brains simply by thinking differently.

My point is that we are taking a path that is not far-fetched or implausible. It bears similarities to the better known theories about depression. It is not unusual to think that depression can reveal us and that we bring something to depression. What is unique about what we are saying is that we are going even deeper: we are going beyond thinking errors to consider errors in the way we know God.

The principle that suffering tests us and reveals our hearts is one that appears throughout Scripture. You first see it when the Israelites leave Egypt, a key episode in biblical history. Here God demonstrated that he was not simply a local tribal god. He was the Creator God who rules over all things, including Egypt and its Pharaoh. To emphasize this point, God used Moses, an unqualified orator, as his representative, and delivered Israel from Egyptian bondage without a warrior unsheathing a sword.

Before the people were given access to the land God promised them, Moses led them across a desert wilderness. It was not an easy trek, but God’s purpose was to reveal his patience, kindness, and care. He also intended to test them, to see—or have them see— what was in their hearts.

Remember how the L
ORD
your God led you all the way in the desert these forty years, to humble you and to test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands. (Deut. 8:2)

The people failed the test repeatedly. When water supplies were low, they grumbled against the Lord rather than trusted him. When they were eager for meat and bread, they grumbled against the Lord rather than trusted him. In trial after trial, they failed to trust. But it wasn’t until they refused to enter the Promised Land because they feared its inhabitants more than they trusted God that God extended their stay in the wilderness for forty years.

From then on, the wilderness or desert theme recurs in Scripture as part of the journey through which God guides nearly all his people. During this journey, people’s hearts are revealed. Abraham, Joseph, Daniel, and many others went through the desert and were revealed as people of faith. They trusted in the Lord during their wilderness journeys. Aaron, King Ahaz, and Jonah trusted in themselves.

The desert biographies of Scripture climax when “Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil” (Matt. 4:1). He replicated the Israelites’ desert journey (one day for each of their years) and exceeded their hunger by his forty-day fast. Jesus then was taken through the most rigorous trials and testing by Satan himself. The outcome, however, was never in doubt. Jesus’ heart never wavered. Regardless of the physical pain or the temptations before him, Jesus trusted in his Father to deliver him. In doing so, he becomes our model, our hope, and our power when we are in the desert. When we fail in our desert trials, we can point to Jesus’ success in his. His victories are ours through faith, so his story becomes our own when we trust him.

It is in the context of desert trials that the book of James says this:

Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. (James 1:2–4)

Joy and suffering are wedded together. At first glance it looks like an impossible marriage, but James is not the only one to speak about hardships with a hint of a smile on his face. Other Scriptures concur.

Now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith—of greater worth than gold ...—may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. (1 Pet. 1:6–7)

Before Jesus came, wise people willingly endured difficulties because they knew God was with them. After the cross everything was transformed, including perspectives on suffering. Pilgrim travelers still encounter suffering as much as ever, but suffering is now viewed as the pains of childbirth rather than pain that is purposeless and random—mere accidents. Since Jesus came, suffering is redemptive. When we keep Jesus in view, the one who “learned obedience from what he suffered” (Heb. 5:8), we can begin to understand how James could encourage us to have joy in the desert trek.

If you think that Scripture is not up to speed on real life—that saints spend their time thinking about the next life rather than dealing with the present—then read the book of James. James is highly practical; he is familiar with suffering and persecution. He is savvy about real life. His counsel is given not to mystics who shun the world but to ordinary people who have to face it.

Notice why he is excited about trials: trials, he writes, have a purpose. They test our faith. They reveal what we worship, what we trust, what we love. From James’s perspective, this is evidence of God’s fatherly care. It is essential to our spiritual welfare. It would be a tragedy to go through life with a nominal faith we
think
is genuine but isn’t. God’s love is behind the trials that reveal the true condition of our faith. His desire is that we become “mature and complete, not lacking anything.” In other words, when our faith is refined so that we learn to trust God in all things, we will be satisfied in him above all else. We won’t need the traditional accoutrements of life. Christ will be enough. For James, this growth process is so glorious that it can provoke us to joy.

Listen to other wise teachers who have suffered:

In heaviness we often learn lessons that we never could attain elsewhere. Do you know that God has beauties for every part of the world, and He has beauties for every place of experience? There are views to be seen from the tops of the Alps ... but there are beauties to be seen in the depths of the dell that you could never see from the tops of mountains ... Ah, said Luther, affliction is the best book in my library, the best leaf is the leaf of heaviness.
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This has dramatic implications for the struggle with depression. James does not naïvely assume that our hardships will be over this side of heaven. He assumes that they will continue. People will be depressed, and they might become depressed again. But James presents an emotional experience that is difficult to describe: joy, he writes, can be present during any wilderness experience. Joy wasn’t as accessible during the Israelites’ original journey because everything was new and uncertain. They didn’t understand the ways of God, and they weren’t confident in his goodness and power. But the cross can wipe out any doubt. Now, on this end of history, we can actually sing songs with joy when we are in the wilderness.

Joy is not the opposite of depression. It is deeper than depression. Therefore, you can experience both. Depression is the relentless rain. Joy is the rock. Whether depression is present or not, you can stand on joy.

Does all this seem unattainable? Are you more hopeless when you read it? If so, treat these verses like the Psalms: even if they don’t capture your present experience, let them be a vision for what lies ahead. This is what God wants to give you. Pray that this passage would more and more be your own. Pray that God would receive glory by giving you joy in the midst of your trials.

Your simple prayer can be, “Search me.”

Search me, O God, and know my heart;

test me and know my anxious thoughts.

See if there is any offensive way in me,

and lead me in the way everlasting.

(Ps. 139:23–24)