Christians and Depression: Unhelpful things they say | Episode: Depression

Depression Is More Than Feeling Sad

To it. But sometimes depression sounds like an unspiritual state, that if you admit that you're in this position that there's something wrong with you spiritually or there must be something wrong with you.

And then, of course, people always assume, well, you just need to think about all the benefits of life that you have, and they go down this list of every reason why you shouldn't be depressed.

Or it gets worse theologically, people are like, oh, you're depressed, well, don't you understand the sovereignty of God? Don't you trust the Lord? Don't you know that He's faithful and good and that He's going to work all things for your eternal good?

Don't you know that? And the answer to that question would be, yeah, I absolutely do know that, and I am still battling depression and despondency. What do you have for me?

Yeah, there certainly are a barrage of bad treatments out there, and again, as much as I can emphasize for the listener, something to be ever so mindful of is that depression often is not, I feel sad about this experience or I feel sad about this aspect of my life.

Considering my own experience, beautiful wife, beautiful children, beautiful home, during the time that I was going through my depressive state, there was very little in my life circumstantially that gave me good reason.

But if you mix some of the things that I was working through personally as well as some of the things, just the natural dispositions that I have as a person, it's so much more than just a feeling of sadness.

I do like the word despondency. I just often just felt numb. I would see something positive, and I'd be like, yeah, that's great, but I don't have this overly emotive response to things. And certainly, my day-to-day experience would be different.

There certainly would be some days that getting out of bed was just a struggle, and not every day was like that. So perhaps we can kind of pivot the conversation to, we've talked about this a little bit.

A Christian Perspective on Depression

Let's maybe kind of bring this to a more Christian perspective. What are some of the things that you find are very unhelpful in the ways that the broader Christian church, the broader evangelical church, treats depression, defines depression, and how they try to get people out of it, so to speak?

What do you guys find?

Yeah, I've been around this for quite a while now. With Theocast, we did an episode on this very early on in our first few episodes, and the correspondence that we received was very sad. It was depressing, to say the least.

We heard stories about people who were trying to work through lifelong battles of depression, and evangelical leaders in their lives, their pastors or counselors, were giving them advice that would only trap them, handcuff them, and even lead them into greater depths of despair because they were not listening or they weren't aware.

Medication, Trust in God, and Biblical Care

And there's even, within the whole biblical counseling world, the idea that you would ever allow some kind of medication for depression is sinful. And how dare you not trust in God's word and God's plan for God's word?

And that is, to me, so devoid of just being kind and considerate. There are pain medications that the side effect of, if I have arthritis, I take this pain medication. Well, the side effect of this pain medication is depression.

It is common, but yet I don't want to feel the pain, and so I'll have to take this antidepressant so that I can, one, be without pain and not be depressed. And to tell someone that that's a sin is, I'm sorry, but that is just not biblical.

So when we're talking about depression and medication, to immediately say, if you are taking antidepressants, then you are not trusting in God. I'm sorry, but that is just not a biblical perspective that you can argue from.