Depression: What About The Dark Night of The Soul?

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Welcome to Bible Bash, where we aim to equip the saints for the works of ministry by answering the questions you're not allowed to ask.

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Listen and enjoy this installment of Iron Sharpening Iron, as Pastor Tim answers your sincere questions.

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Here's Pastor Tim. On this episode of Bible Bash, we will be continuing our discussion on depression and answer the question, what about the dark night of the soul?

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Now many years ago I listened to a Q &A with John Piper and John MacArthur on ministry, and a pastor asked

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John Piper and John MacArthur what they did about depression, you know, sudden unexplainable depression, and so the pastor described a kind of situation where he was often crying for no reason and didn't quite know what to make of it, and he was asking

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John MacArthur how John MacArthur dealt with that kind of thing, and John MacArthur basically expressed confusion about the nature of the question, not ever having experienced that kind of sudden unexplained sadness that this other pastor was talking about, but then

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John Piper quickly assured this pastor that essentially this kind of thing was something that John Piper himself had went through at different points in his life and in different points in his ministry, and then this is a subject that Piper had written a book about called

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When the Darkness Will Not Lift, and it was a book that was basically addressing this topic of the dark night of the soul.

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So the psychologists have an answer to depression, which is essentially biological. So for the psychologists, depression is viewed as a quasi -medical illness that essentially is a form of crippling sorrow or despair that a person is completely unable to help, and basically the common solution to depression is going to be to be put on antidepressants, as far as that goes.

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Now, there are many Christian pastors, though, who are looking at this reality of depression, which is crippling and unexplainable, and then they're thinking about this category of experience that they're going to put in some sort of spiritual category of melancholy or the dark night of the soul, and they're going to lean on some of the

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Puritan language at this point to essentially describe that experience in a way that almost feels as if it's some sort of spiritual attack that bears little to no connection to the individual's actual actions, thoughts, or behaviors or desires at that point.

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And part of the reason why that happens is because I think in many ways, one of the things that we have failed to do is that we have failed to understand how idolatry in the heart actually works and how it can manifest itself.

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And so one of the questions we're trying to ask today is the question, well, what do we make of the dark night of the soul? Is there such a category of experience where godly people can suffer?

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So we can describe it in the therapeutic language, godly people can suffer from the dark night of the soul, or they could suffer from depression and it be inexplicable and not really tied to anything that they're doing or not doing.

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Now, John Piper, in his book, When the Darkness Will Not Lift, he has a variety of good checks that are in that book to basically help a person to diagnose or figure out what might be going on.

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But at the same time, he does make great allowance for that category in general as a category that is a valid category.

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And so we want to think through that kind of category and ask the question, is there such a thing as a depression, which is an experience which is utterly unrelated to the thoughts, the behaviors, the action of any individual?

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It's just something that fundamentally godly people might suffer from. Perhaps it's a demonic attack or something along those lines where the

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Christian is robbed of joy and unable to function at the level that you might be expected.

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What do we make of that kind of thing in general? Now, from my own observation, one of the things that I've seen is whenever I've heard many pastors who are appealing to this kind of category to describe some phenomenon that they themselves are experiencing,

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I've seen many pastors come along who are depressed and then who are appealing to this kind of category in a way that I'm looking at them,

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I'm looking at their lives, and I know something about their lives. And I'm thinking to myself that this appeal to this kind of category seems to be being made in a way that seems pretty illegitimate.

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And so the more that I know personally about these kinds of situations,

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I've never met the individual who is making an appeal to this kind of category where I'm looking at on the outside and thinking that this is a legitimate category to actually appeal to.

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When I look at their life, and I look at the things that are happening, and I look at the situation that's going on, there are many idols that I can look at and I can see that are coming to the forefront and coming to the surface, which would better explain their crippling despair and hopelessness that they're experiencing.

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Just let me give you an example. Just imagine that you're a pastor who has basically gone into ministry and had expectations of ministry that essentially were a bit unrealistic.

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You expected to go into a church and just have people who love the Bible, love the

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Scriptures, love theology, love church history, and that you're going to just be able to pour all this knowledge that you have developed over the course of years into these people, only to find that the people viewed you with suspicion, they're highly resistant and hostile to your ministry, and it seems like every single decision that you're trying to lead them in, they're fundamentally rejecting and essentially unhappy with the way you're leading, and many of them are leaving.

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You can imagine a pastor in that kind of scenario who basically is feeling depressed or discouraged, and significantly so, looking around and saying, there's no unconfessed sin in my life, there's nothing that I'm doing that I would think would contribute to this, it's just that I don't feel any joy,

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I'm feeling constant despair and discouragement and everything else, and then they say, it must be the dark night of the soul.

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But if you're a person who knows anything about them and you're looking at them on the outside, it might be that you're looking at them and you're saying, hey, you know what, you feel despair and you feel discouragement and you feel despondency because ultimately you're engaging in man -pleasing, and that's what's happening.

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You had certain expectations about what ministry were like, and the stark reality of ministry on the ground has essentially violated those expectations at every single point, and you're the kind of person who used to be praised your whole life, and then you look at ministry, you go into ministry, and you find that it's fundamentally a lot harder than what you thought it would be.

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You don't have a never -ending list of people who are praising you, you have a bunch of people who are criticizing you, and you never really had to deal with this basic reality of having angry people who are fundamentally hostile to everything that you're doing.

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And so, yes, maybe there is such a thing as this dark night of assault, there's something along those lines, but it seems more likely that this situation is exposing certain idols in your heart that you were unaware of, and this kind of discouragement or this kind of despair that you're feeling is better explained by other things than just some sort of spiritual attack or something along those lines.

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And so, in situation after situation after situation, when I personally have known pastors who appeal to this kind of category, me looking at it on the outside says that if Occam's razor means anything, perhaps there's a simpler explanation for what we're seeing than that.

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Now, the reality is that there are many godly pastors throughout church history who have been characterized by despair.

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John Piper is the kind of person who has described himself as being characterized by depression and despair throughout his ministry.

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John MacArthur, on the other hand, is the kind of individual who seems to not have been characterized by that same kind of thing, though he's had significant difficulties in the course of his ministry that he's had to deal with, including attacks from the outside and attacks on the inside, but then it seems like two different men are fundamentally approaching life in a different kind of way, which are leading to different kinds of responses in general.

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But one of the things that you don't ever want to do is engage in a kind of hero worship where you are judging these kind of men from a distance, and the only thing that you can imagine is that everything that's going on in their heart and everything that's going on in their mind is functionally viewed with rose -colored glasses.

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The reality is that pastors are men like everyone else, and there's plenty of pastors who have unconfessed sin in their life that weighs down on them in significant ways.

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When your family members and your friends are communicating to you that they are struggling with some sort of significant depression, we can come along and we can basically say, hey, they're a godly person.

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They seem to have their life together. It seems like in a lot of ways they're a better Christian than I am, and you can make all sorts of assumptions.

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But the truth is you don't know what's going on in their life. You don't know if there's secret sins in their life. You don't know if there's things that they're trying to keep hidden that are weighing down upon them in a significant way.

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When David was groaning around all day long in despair, no one would have guessed that he had committed adultery and that he'd murdered

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Uriah. But then if you look at him, you say, hey, this is a godly man. He's a godly king. You can look at it in some kind of simplistic way and say, well, it must be that he's going through a dark, negative soul, but you would have misread him.

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And I think in many ways one of the things to realize is that there are many people who you can look at on the outside and not really have enough information to know what you're looking at.

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Maybe there's something unconfessed in their life that's leading to this. Maybe you're dealing with a double -minded man in a certain way to where their actions appear one way in public and then their actions in private are very different.

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It may be that you're looking at a guy who basically he seems like he's a godly guy.

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He seems like he's a good leader, but there's fundamentally conflict within his home and conflict within his own family. I mean, just someone like John Piper looking at him on the outside, not trying to make any sort of definitive diagnosis about why he might have experienced depression to a greater degree than John MacArthur did over the course of his ministry.

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I mean, you look at his sons. He has two sons, one of which has fully apostatized and one of which seems to be in the process, if not crossing the line of apostasy.

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That would be the kind of thing that would weigh on a person over the course of their ministry, and it might not be that they are connecting the kind of depression and discouragement that they're experiencing with family dynamics that are happening at home.

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So one of the things you can't do is you can't just look at someone godly who appears to be godly on the outside and then in some simplistic way say, well, whatever depression they're experiencing or however they have handled life is necessarily a result of some sort of experience that they can't help when that depression kind of thing happens.

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And so, I mean, even just looking at the theology of John Piper in that way, I mean,

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I've known plenty of guys. I've known plenty of young guys who have basically adopted the

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Christian hedonism that is present within John Piper's framework and basically followed

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John Piper down this path of agonizing over is Christ my chief treasure and all -consuming passion and everything else.

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I've seen many people who basically have a low -grade depression that they're carrying around because they're tormented by some of the teaching of John Piper himself.

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And I can imagine how that could affect him and how that could make him respond to life and ministry a bit different than someone like MacArthur.

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And there's other things that you could think about that are related to those kind of things. And so the point here isn't just to say, well, it's obvious why someone like John Piper could experience depression on a regular basis.

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I have the answer. I'm not trying to say I have the answers as to all the reasons why John MacArthur's experience of Christianity is different than John Piper's experience.

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But what I am trying to say is you can't in some simplistic way just say, well, they're both godly so therefore they're both handling life in the same kind of way and they're both dealing with their own idols in their heart in the same kind of way.

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Therefore, this dark night of the soul kind of category is just some neutral thing that you just throw out there in a charitable way.

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The reality is you don't know unless you're intimately involved in his life and asking him very specific questions, you wouldn't know why someone like Piper has frequent experiences of depression in the way that he does.

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But then one of the things to realize is that I think one of the things that the church needs to do is we need to try to deal with these in a more comprehensive way.

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And often what's happening when you're dealing with someone who has this unexplainable kind of melancholy or sadness, often what's happening there, and I've never met a situation where it's not something like what

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I'm describing, but typically it's either unconfessed sin in their life, typically it's either there's an unconfessed sin, there's some kind of big problem like that, or it might be that they're letting a lot of things go and so ministry typically pushes people in a lot of different directions where you have desires to care for the church, desire to care for your home, it stretches you, it's a big time sink as far as that goes, and there's many pastors who can feel like this reality that they're not keeping up, they're treading water, they're constantly busy, and so ministry can do that kind of thing to where there's things that you're letting go that weigh upon you, things that are significant, taking care of your family, when you listen to pastors talk who are tempted in that kind of way, one of the things you're going to hear them say is that I wish,

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I'm discouraged, I'm not doing enough with my family, and not being as good of an influence with my family, so there's often sins of commission, there's often sins of omission that are leading to this despair, this despondency, there's often idols in a person's heart that are leading to this despair, and this despondency, if you have people -pleasing tendencies in your heart, if you have those kind of people -pleasing tendencies in your heart, one of the things you're going to find is that ministry can be very, very hard if you're looking to others for approval, ministry can be very, very hard, and it can lead to a lot of despair, or sorrow, or depression, if you're a perfectionist, if you have perfectionist kind of tendencies that you have, one of the things to realize is that ministry is going to push against that, and so, you know, whatever degree of perfectionism that's there, whatever degree that's there, you're going to come up against some hard realities in ministry that are going to lead to despair and to despondency, you know, if you're not going to be okay if everyone in your life isn't happy with you, and isn't pleased with you, you're going to deal with this despair, and you're going to deal with this despondency, and it may be that you have no idea why you're dealing with it, but you're just tired, and you're just worn out, and you're pushed in many different directions and everything else, and so, the point of this here today is just to say that there are many things that could be happening there, you know, you even have lazy pastors who basically don't work as they should, and they could be, like, one of the

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Puritan responses to despair and despondency is to throw yourself into work, and there could be a lot of pastors who are weighed down by laziness and sloth who are experiencing this despair and this despondency, too, and so, all

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I'm trying to say is that there are any number of answers to these kind of things, and it would be better if we wouldn't just, in some simplistic way, you know, we have a loved one or a godly person in our life who seems to be experiencing sorrow or despair, and just give them, you know, a complete pass, basically, for this, and basically just assume, in some simplistic way, just because they're godly, they appear godly on the outside, that there are not fundamental problems that are there that need to be addressed that might be contributing to this lack of joy or lack of thanksgiving or lack of stability in their life.

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So, there's many things that could happen as far as that goes, and, you know, myself, I'm pretty skeptical of this kind of category, and, in fact, when

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I see the kind of guys that I actually look up to and admire and want to be like in general, they aren't the kind of men who are fundamentally unstable.

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The kind of men that I typically look up to and admire and want to be like are the kind of guys like John MacArthur who seems to be weaned from the fear of man, who seems to be more stable, who seems to be driven, hardworking, and who seems to have a greater capacity for control of his emotions and everything else.

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And so, those are the kind of men that I want to follow, and I would just say, in the main, those are the type of men who you're not going to find this imbalance in their personality to where they're frequently tempted towards despair or despondency or everything else.

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So, maybe, perhaps, there's some sort of category for a spiritual attack on a person's emotions, but I would say that, in general, simpler solutions are probably better.