Depression: Is Depression Real?

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Christ therefore forfeit any hope of salvation, any hope of heaven.

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They will hear his words, they will not act upon them, and when the floods of divine judgment, when the fires of wrath come, they will be consumed and they will perish.

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

We're your hosts, Harrison Kerrig and Pastor Tim Mullett, and today we seek to answer the age -old question, is depression real?

So Tim, why don't you start us off by answering that title question, is depression real or is this just some boogeyman that we've all made up in our own minds?

Yeah, well this is definitely one of those questions that I get on a regular basis, and normally it's coming from maybe a church member if I've been speaking to issues related to psychology or speaking to issues related to sanctification in general on some of these topics like this that are off limits.

And so if I'm trying to give some sort of biblical response to ADD and telling people how to glorify

God and honor Him with their actions or something along those lines, with many of these psychological disorders, people will come up to me and they'll basically say, so you don't think depression's real, do you?

That kind of thing. And so that's the common question I get, basically.

So you're trying to say it's not real. You think we're all just making this up, right? Yeah, pretty much.

And it's one of those questions that's pretty interesting because it's the type of question that I don't really know how to respond to.

So they say, you don't think it's real, do you? And then my follow -up question to that is, well, what's it?

What are we talking about? So they're saying depression, you don't think, is depression real?

And the problem there is that essentially what that question reveals is there's a different question that they're actually asking.

And so when someone asks a question along those lines to someone like me, what they're asking is essentially, and they're not wording it this way, but what

I'm typically trying to do is I'm trying to encourage people to take responsibility for their depression.

And so whenever I'm trying to get people to take responsibility for that and to turn from these feelings of despair or hopelessness or try to give them some sort of biblical answer to that, essentially this question comes about, and the assumption behind it is essentially, so you're saying that there's no such thing as a medical problem called depression which functionally isn't the person's fault and they can't do anything about, essentially.

Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah. So what they're trying to ask me when they're asking a question like that is they're basically somewhat scandalized by the fact that I don't believe that there is like a quasi -medical illness called depression, which is totally not their fault.

But what I'm not trying to deny is the reality that essentially people are, they do have crippling despair or hopelessness.

I mean there's obviously a lot of people out in the world who have despair and who are hopeless and they are hopeless or they despair to such a degree that it becomes crippling and they refuse to take care of the basic issues of life.

So there's no disagreement on the reality that there are people who are dominated by despair and there are people who are dominated by hopelessness and excessive guilt and shame and everything else to such an extent that they are unable to function in life.

I mean those people obviously exist. I mean one in five women right now are taking antidepressants in order to deal with life.

There's obviously many people who have despair problems who have hopeless problems, but then the issue is where does it come from?

Does that make sense? What's causing it? So what is the cause of these feelings of despair or hopelessness or guilt and shame and everything else?

And that's, you know, psychology does have an answer to that.

And then I think the Bible has a different answer to the source of that, and that's where the discussion is.

Like what is the source of this despair that characterizes so many people, if that makes sense.

Yeah. Now we're going to be talking about depression a lot in this episode, obviously, and so it might be helpful,

Tim, just to kind of give us a solid definition for depression.

What are we talking about? Yeah, so we're all kind of on the same page, because I think this is kind of a word that really just gets thrown around in so many different ways, and probably even in ways that most secular people might disagree with.

You know, I know so many people who just flippantly kind of say, oh, I'm just depressed, you know, but then they're not even really facing depression in the way that the secular person might define depression.

So it seems like there's just not a uniform use of the word in our society, so maybe just give us a definition so that we all know what we're talking about throughout this episode.

Yeah, I think that's the very difficult thing to do is to try to define a word like this, because there's a sense in which everyone, and I say it's difficult, but there's different approaches, and I'm going to try to explain why it's difficult, but it is difficult, because this is the type of word that I think everyone, you know, everyone in some sense intuitively at the very least knows what depression is.

So everyone knows what we're talking about. Everyone has some experience with like these ideas of sorrow or despair or hopelessness or guilt or shame.

Everyone knows, you know, everyone can kind of, everyone knows what you're talking about, and then at the same time, the problem is the word itself.

It describes such a wide range of phenomenon that, you know, it's hard to nail down what an individual is talking about when they say that they're depressed itself.

I mean, I don't go into that kind of... When I hear someone say that, I basically kind of assume

I have no idea what they're talking about in order to make myself ask more questions to figure out what they're talking about.

I mean, I have a good idea, but I don't want to read my understanding of that word into what they're saying, actually.

But then part of what you're saying is that there is this... It relates to just, you know, kind of... It's become this pop psychology kind of word that people can use for a wide range of phenomenon, right?

So, like, let's say that you're going to Taco Bell or something like that, and the nacho fries have been taken off the menu, right?

Right. That triggers my depression. You get to the drive -thru.

All right, man, it's just some fries. Menu change, right? But then, you know, you're just... You're so depressed because, you know, your time...

So, I mean, it could be used in as trivial of a way as that, right?

I mean, it could be used as the menu item that you have been dreaming about and fantasizing about for the past few days or whatever is just gone.

They took it away. They didn't even notify you. But that kind of thing. So, I mean, it can be something like that.

It could be an individual whose parent died recently, and so they're having trouble moving on.

They're having trouble knowing how to function. They're in that dazed, disoriented, shell -shocked kind of state, and they describe it as they're depressed.

Now, that wouldn't be a clinical definition of the word as far as that goes.

But then, what I'm trying to say, though, is in common usage, you have a word like this.

In common usage, it could describe a whole range of different things. Does that make sense?

Yeah. But then, go ahead. No, no. I was just going to ask you now that we have that, what is your definition of depression that you're operating on?

Well, I guess maybe I have a definition of depression, but maybe it's helpful just to talk about the clinical one first and then contrast mine with that.

Okay. Yeah. So, when you think about what the clinical method of diagnosing depression, essentially, you have basically a list of criteria in the

DSM that is going to be used to evaluate a person's thoughts and behaviors.

And so, essentially, in order for someone to be categorized as having depression, essentially, in a clinical sense, basically, what you need is you need five or more of the following symptoms to be present during the same two -week period and represent a change from previous functioning.

Okay? So, five symptoms. You need five of the following, essentially, to be categorized as having depression.

Okay? All right. So, of these, you need a depressed mood or loss of interest and pleasure.

At least one of them has to be a depressed mood or loss of interest and pleasure. But then here are the, essentially, eight criteria, and you need five.

Okay? So, basically, you need depressed mood most of the day, nearly every day, as indicated by your subjective report, meaning you feel sad or empty or made by other people's observation of you, if that makes sense.

So, like in children, they can have an irritable mood, and you can look at that and observe that.

They may not be able to communicate that, but that could count, essentially. So, depressed mood every day for a two -week period.

Does that make sense? All right. Marked diminished interest and pleasure at all or almost all activities most of the day, nearly every day.

And this can also be indicated by your own subjective account or someone else looking on the outside.

So, depressed mood, diminished interest and pleasure. The third is either weight loss when not dieting or weight gain.

Okay? So, fourth, either you sleep too much, you sleep too little.

Five, psychomotor agitation, meaning you look slow.

And this has to be observed by other people, that you appear to be moving slower, you appear to be weighed down, that kind of thing.

And then you have fatigue or loss of energy nearly every day. Feelings of worthlessness or excessive or inappropriate guilt.

And then, diminished ability to think or concentrate. Indecisiveness nearly every day, either made by you or others.

And then, reoccurring thoughts of death or suicide. So, basically, you need five of these symptoms for a two -week period at least every day.

Does that make sense? And so, it has to be a change from how you normally function. So, that's kind of a clinical diagnosis.

And one of the things you'll notice about that is that nothing medical is happening at all in that kind of diagnosis.

You're just asking people questions about their thoughts and behavior, right? Yeah, it kind of sounds like when you're talking to kids, they get hurt and you ask them how bad it hurts on a scale of one to ten.

Right, right, right, right. Very subjective. Right. Now, what that tells you though, so you're asking me what my view of depression is.

Well, you kind of have to deal with psychology's view. So, psychology's view,

I mean, this is described as a mental illness, right? And the way it's determined is by talking to people about their subjective impressions of their thoughts and feelings as far as that goes.

And then some of them have some sort of check on it. It has to be observable by others. But, I mean, there's nothing scientific that just happened there, right?

Right. But then the end result of that is that this is considered basically a mental disorder. And in the minds of most people, it's basically considered a quasi -medical illness, right?

Mm -hmm. So, when someone says they have depression, essentially what they're saying is that it's almost like as if they're saying that they suffer from or they're suffering from depression.

I mean, it sounds very much like the same kind of medical language as someone would say I'm suffering from cancer or something along those lines.

Right, right. So, basically, you have this quasi -medical category that feels as if it's representing some kind of organic problem in a certain way that basically has to do with guilt, despair, and hopelessness.

Does that make sense? Mm -hmm. Right. But then the way

I would describe it, I'm going to look at these same things and try to give a biblical definition of this or give some sort of – put that language into biblical terms, right, as far as that goes.

I would describe depression as a debilitating mood, feeling, or attitude of hopelessness, which becomes a person's reason for not handling the most important issues of life.

Does that make sense? So, notice how that kind of definition puts personal responsibility on the person itself.

So, it's a debilitating mood, feeling, attitude of hopelessness, which becomes the person's reason for not handling the most important issues of life.

So, when a person is – so, I'm describing clinical depression in that way as a decision to give in to this despair or hopelessness or give in to these debilitating moods to the point where you just refuse to handle life anymore.

Does that make sense? Mm -hmm. So, that would be my understanding of what depression actually is.

So, like, something that basically causes you or, I guess, maybe tempts you to just say or shirk all of your regular responsibilities.

Is that what you mean? Yeah, I would just say whenever a person, like, is so dominated by guilt, shame, hopelessness, or despair that they choose to quit handling life,

I would say that, okay, you know, you might – that's what people are describing as depression.

Does that make sense? That's what people are describing as depression or you are describing as depression?

Depression is not a biblical term. Right. So, I don't have any vested interest in – Yeah, there's no thou shalt not be depressed.

Right, right. So, it's not a biblical term, but – so, you can't just say, well, here's what the

Bible says, you know, depression is. What that clinical definition of depression is describing is describing the kind of situation where a person is so weighed down by guilt, hopelessness, and shame that they refuse to deal with life.

And so, like, the classic depressed person in the clinical sense is the person who, you know, they haven't taken a shower for three weeks or something like that.

They're laying in bed all day long, right? They, you know, they're just curled up in a fetal position, unable to move, don't want to – they stop going to work.

They stop taking care of themselves. They stop – so, basically, they basically just waved the white flag of surrender and said,

I give, uncle, right? Right. And so, that's the classic depressed person.

But – so, what I'm trying to say is, you know, how I understand what's happening is that, like, depression is the excuse that the person gives for not handling their life.

Right? So, they're blaming their decision to not move on with life on this word depression, right, itself, instead of, you know, actually handling their life as far as that goes.

Okay. So, in other words, the secular world is kind of using this term depression to sort of recategorize certain aspects that the

Bible does actually talk about, but then try to, I guess, maybe repurpose the words to almost be something else that essentially takes the responsibility away from the individual.

Sure, sure, yes. Yeah, let me give you an example of this. So, I mean, I did counsel – I counseled a guy. We're going to call him Richard, just for the sake of protecting the guilty.

But, you know, he was a 28 -year -old guy, and this is not uncommon. I mean, I can give you plenty of stories like this, but this is just one

I use on a regular basis. But, I mean, there's a guy, Richard, 28 years old. He's living in his parents' house, and, you know, he spends all day long playing video games.

You know, he doesn't have a job and everything else. You know, he says he doesn't have a job because of his

ADD. He can't hold down a job, but he can concentrate all day long on his video games and everything else.

But then, you know, he comes to counseling, and you say, well, why are you coming to counseling? And then the answer is because he's depressed.

Does that make sense? And so then if you try to encourage him to, you know, read his

Bible, if you try to encourage him to go out there and get a job, you know, he can't do that because he's depressed.

Do you see what I'm saying? So this label, in the way that people are using this label, this label becomes the excuse, the all -purpose excuse to not actually live a productive life.

So they blame it on the depression, right? But then, like, so then if I say, well, the

Bible commands, the Bible basically says, you know, if a person doesn't work, don't let them eat. And then, you know, give them scriptures that apply to their situation.

They don't want those, and they say that they can't follow those things because they, I don't understand.

You know, I just don't understand. What do you not get? I have depression. I can't do all this.

And so in that way, depression does become the club that's used to banish all personal responsibility.

Does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah. Now, you talked a lot about people viewing depression as an illness.

And you mentioned, you know, the doctors really sort of arbitrary.

I don't know, is it doctors or is it psychiatrists who you're going to, who are going to run those tests on you?

Yeah, there's significant overlap at this point. I mean, someone, we've been teaching this at the church, and someone came up to me today, essentially, and told me that they went to the doctor because they were experiencing some physical pain, and when you go to the doctor, you have to fill out a questionnaire, essentially, of certain things that you've, your medical history, as far as that goes.

And one of the things you check on that is, have you ever experienced depression or something like that? And so this individual, they went to the doctor, and they checked, yes,

I've experienced depression before. But then the doctor, essentially, they didn't run any medical tests on this person.

Zero medical tests were run, but then the doctor just assumed in some,

I mean, they just asked him a few subjective questions about their thoughts and behavior. They didn't even go through the whole list, you know.

But then the doctor concluded, without running any medical tests whatsoever, that they had depression and that they were going to be put on antidepressants.

And then the person from our church essentially saying, hey, I don't feel depressed, and I used to be depressed.

I'm not depressed anymore. Wow. That's not happening. But then they were basically, no, you are depressed.

That's what's happening, and here's the antidepressants. I don't want the antidepressants. But that's essentially, yes.

So that's kind of what's happening. These categories have been collapsed as far as that goes to where now doctors are prescribing antidepressants for everything.

I mean, that's part of why 20 % of women are on antidepressants. And I mean, if you're a person who doesn't know how to interact with that kind of discussion, and you have a doctor you're supposed to trust who's just telling you you have depression, and that sounds very much like you have some sort of medical problem, it sounds like you have a medical illness, then a person can go into that.

I mean, I prepared church members to go into those situations and to know the kind of – to have a thought process to understand what's actually happening.

But I mean, you can imagine a person going into that and being told by a doctor, you have depression, here's the antidepressant.

They're like, well, I don't feel depressed, but the doctor knows best, right? Right. Here's your drugs, you know, as far as that goes.

And so, but there's – yeah, I mean, on a regular basis, that's kind of how these things are worked out.

And these diagnoses are being made without any medical tests being performed at all, you know.

Yeah, it seems like, you know, like if you break your arm, you're going to go in and they're going to take an x -ray of your arm.

And they'll either be able to see some kind of deformity in the bone or they'll see that you're – the bone is perfectly fine.

And then they'll be able to tell either the arm is broken or it's not broken. But then that doesn't really seem like what's really going on here.

But then, you know, I have heard a lot of people say before, hey, so there are actual physical explanations for depression.

One of the more popular ones being, you know, chemical imbalances in the brain being a cause of depression.

So what are your thoughts on that? Yeah, you know, the chemical imbalance theory is a theory that is essentially really being abandoned by the secular academy at this point.

And it's one of those theories that really is almost impossible to prove. And so it's the kind of thing that is – it's basically when you think about this discussion in general, one of the things that you realize is that there's basically a chicken and egg problem that's happening as it relates to this discussion.

And so one of the things that you see when you read through the Bible is that David is – you know,

David says when he keeps silent about his sin, his body wastes away, as far as that goes. And so the

Bible also says that envy makes the bones rot. And so one of the things that you realize is that there is a connection between the mind and the body, meaning our physical state at times does affect – our mental state at times does affect us physically even.

So, you know, if you're weighed down by – I mean, everyone knows what it's like to be weighed down by guilt and shame and condemnation.

I mean, you could give yourself a stomach ulcer by worry and stress. And, you know, stress manifests itself in very physical ways in the body itself and affects bodily processes and everything else.

And so the question about depression is one of – it's a chicken and egg kind of discussion.

It's, you know, what comes first. Related to like the chemical imbalance there, let's just assume for the sake of argument that there is some sort of chemical imbalance in the brain that is related to depression.

Well, one of the questions you might ask is, well, which comes first, the despair and the hopelessness or the – so does despair and the hopelessness produce like a chemical reaction in the brain or is it vice versa?

And there's no way to really figure that out through science. Does that make sense? Yeah. Now, that's one problem with it.

But then another problem with it is – I mean, there's many problems with the chemical imbalance theory, which is why people are chucking it.

But, you know, another problem with that is that no one who goes to the doctor is having the chemicals in their brain being tested to determine the appropriate amounts.

Because they don't have some mechanism to drain all the chemicals out of the brain to figure out, you know, is there enough serotonin and everything and all that.

So no one's doing that. Like they're not running any medical test. And so there's no way to know what the appropriate amount of chemicals actually are.

And there's no way to know how much chemicals are actually in the brain as far as that goes. It's a theory, you know.

And now it's a theory because – and one of the reasons why this theory became popular is because one of the things you realize is that chemicals do affect us.

Obviously. So chemicals affect us. So if you – for instance,

I mean, if you put a bunch of alcohol on a person, alcohol is going to affect a person's thoughts and behavior.

So you can put chemicals in a person's body. You can put – you know, give them hallucinogens and that's going to do something.

You can put alcohol in a person's body, which is depressant. That's going to do something. Like there's all – caffeine's a stimulant.

That's going to affect the way a person thinks. Like if you drink enough caffeine, you're going to feel jittery. So the fact that chemicals influence us doesn't mean – so like if I drink a lot of caffeine, no one would assume – and then all of a sudden

I feel jittery and I have more energy. Or something like that. No one would assume that I have some sort of, you know, energy deficiency or something.

Caffeine deficiency in my body or something along those lines, right? So no one would assume that.

I mean, no one – but then like the theory has been that if you basically give someone a tranquilizer with an antidepressant or something like that, the assumption is, well, then, you know, that has to correspond with some sort of deficiency in the brain.

But then – I mean, obviously, yeah, you give someone a tranquilizer, that's going to affect them. It's going to tone down the feelings that they experience.

But that doesn't mean that they were missing, you know, certain chemicals in the brain that they need. It's just to say that that's going to affect them to some degree.

But the thing is with the chemical imbalance theory, this is really largely like bad science at this point.

I mean, it was bad science to begin with, but most people aren't really going there. But then that hasn't really caught up to people in a popular level.

But then one of the things that's happened, though, related to that kind of discussion is that people are starting to realize that these antidepressants don't work.

They don't perform in clinical trials statistically much better than a placebo.

And then they have a lot of side effects. And then there's a lot of people who are just tired of being drug addicts, man. And so, you know, a lot of the – like, people are still – like, you still have 20 percent of the women who are on antidepressants.

But we're turning to other things now, like diet and nutrition, because there's a lot of people who are just sick of it. They're sick of being drug addicts.

And it's really kind of a hopeless thing. I mean, you put someone on a pill, they're going to be on a pill forever and ever. They're stuck on it.

It's not like you're going to come off. And then if you do try to come off, it's – what happens is if you do try to come off of an antidepressant because your body is so chemically dependent upon it, then you feel crazy, right?

And all that does is kind of reinforce in a person's mind that you need the drug. But that's not actually what's happening.

What's happening is you become chemically dependent on this substance now.

And so now you can't even function without it. But they do mess with people in a very significant way.

I mean, to the overall question, though, I mean, is depression real?

I mean, there is certainly people who are hopeless, who are given over to hopelessness, who are given over to despair, who are filled with guilt and shame.

The question, though, is one of ideology, is one of origin, like what is causing it. And so is there some biological mechanism that is causing it, or is it essentially a spiritual problem?

And that's where the discussion needs to go. I would say that by and large, most of what we're talking about when we're talking about depression is our spiritual issues, essentially.

Okay, so yeah, basically like moral issues that require us taking responsibility in some way.

Is that what you mean? Sure, yeah. Okay. So if that's the case, then why does it seem like even

Christians are opposed to that idea and they subscribe more to the idea that depression is just something that we're left to deal with?

You know, like it's a virus attacking the body as opposed to an actual moral issue that we need to take responsibility for.

Yeah, we all like to blame shift. So, I mean, if someone comes along and gives you an excuse to just give up, right, if you have a ready -made excuse just to roll over and not handle life anymore, there's a lot of people who will take it.

So, I mean, I know many people who just, I mean, life's hard, you know. Life is difficult. It has challenges.

And, you know, you've got to work every day, you're underappreciated, can't get that promotion, you know, having trouble getting married, want to get married, want to move on, you're stuck in a dead -end job.

You know, you look at your life, it's not what you want it to be, there's no hope, you know, maybe you're stuck in a bad marriage. I mean, there's plenty of people.

I mean, life's hard. It's difficult. It has challenges. And, you know, sin has infected the world.

So, I mean, obviously, if someone comes along and tells you that you can just give up, there's a lot of people who will take them up on it.

So, I mean, part of it's that. I mean, it does provide an all -purpose excuse just to, not only to just give in to despair, but to gain moral sympathy from everyone around you for giving in to despair and all that.

So, if you get that label, then everyone expects that that person will be shown sympathy and basically coddled at that point.

And there's a lot of people who will take it. I say we have a stunted view of sanctification in the Church, too, to where we haven't really taught on these things.

And so we really don't know how to deal with these kinds of issues, you know, from a biblical perspective.

We don't know what the Bible says on that. We don't really have a whole lot of experience and or help, you know, when it comes from the

Church and actually dealing with what's going on in our heart as far as that goes. And then you're living in a world that basically doesn't know, has a competing worldview with the

Bible, which psychology is, which is basically just brainwashing everyone to think that this is a medical problem.

I mean, all the language we use to talk about this problem is medical language. I mean, you know, you can watch infomercials on TV, are you suffering from depression, right?

I mean, if you say that enough, I mean, that's the way it's demanded in our society that you speak that way, right?

So it's demanded that you use that kind of language. And if you use it enough, people get brainwashed into thinking that this is an illness because we're using the same kind of language we use for cancer, right?

I mean, one of the most offensive things I do, and it's really not very offensive, is if I'm dealing with someone who says that they're so depressed.

And I think I may ask a question like, well, why do you think you're having so much trouble rejoicing in the

Lord right now? Or something like that. What are you talking about?

I didn't say I had a problem with rejoicing in the Lord. I said I was depressed. Yeah, right. Aren't you listening? Well, why are you choosing to give in to your despair, you know, in this way?

And then you get a two -star review on Yelp or something. But I mean, if you don't speak that language, if you just change the language in a simple way to a language that's more related to moral accountability, people are just incensed and enraged at you.

But we have to speak about these things in moral categories. We can't just keep on using the victim language.

But the more we use the victim language, the more it's reinforced in people's mind that this is an illness.

And so part of it's that. I mean, part of it is also that because one in five women are on antidepressants, everyone knows women who are on antidepressants right now.

And so there's other problems in our society that you're not really allowed to confront a woman about anything.

You can't. But then we all know people who are that, and then we're trained to basically—you can't shame the victim or blame the victim.

They're put in a victim category, and so you have to cuddle the victim, essentially. And so there's a lot of things like that that are happening.

And a lot of people do know that, well, there's a lot of people who experience—I'm putting that in quotes—experience depression, who they want to get better, but they can't.

And so it must be that there's—the logical conclusion must be that there's something wrong with them. That's the way we think.

Because we view people as basically good, and if people are basically good, and they're suffering from some sort of problem that they're unable to overcome, then it must be that they have a medical disorder or something along those lines.

But then one of the things the Bible tells us is, can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard change his spots?

So also, cannot you who are accustomed to doing evil learn to do good? I mean, sin is enslaving.

And apart from God's grace, we don't have any hope or help in conquering sin.

Just look at the sins in your own life that you struggle with, and the sins you struggle with before coming to Christ.

It's not just some simple, stop doing it kind of thing. You need divine help to overcome these enslaving patterns of sin in your own heart.

There's a lot of reasons, I think, why we're looking at it that way. Yeah. Now, I know you're saying that essentially these are moral issues we're talking about.

Now, when you say that, do you mean that any time a person is experiencing,

I guess, a certain feeling or emotion that would typically be described as depression, any time they feel that, does that mean that they're in sin in some way?

Is that what you're meaning by saying that it's moral categories, or are there times where it's acceptable and times where it's not acceptable?

What are we talking here in terms of the morality of it all and how we should view it in light of the specific circumstance we might be in?

Yeah, that's a very good question. You have a clinical definition of depression, which is one thing.

From my experience, these labels are being handed out like candy. My church member just got one of these labels.

By no means was any care or caution taken to give that label, and that's by no means uncommon.

But I would say that there is the kind of person who's going to run them through the checklist and five of the eight symptoms and distinguish it from bereavement and other kinds of things.

That can happen, too. But what I'm trying to say is, by and large, what's actually happening is these labels are being thrown around like candy and these drugs are being thrown around like candy.

But this describes a wide range of phenomenon. So you have the clinical thing that you're dealing with, and then you have the pop psychology kind of – depression is just a word that's entered into common usage at this point that can mean so many different things beyond the clinical meaning.

One of the things that I assume when I hear a word like that is I just assume I have no idea what they're saying.

And that's just kind of my starting point. And an example I use in general as I'm teaching on this subject is a situation that happened with my –

I think he was maybe about 15 months old or something like that at the time – my firstborn son.

I'll try to tell you how it hangs on the moral question, but let me explain a phenomenon.

So my firstborn, he was maybe 15 months old or something like that.

And at some point, I held him up in the air, and he wanted to grab the fan strings or whatever and pull on them.

And so then I let him do that, and he would turn the light on and turn it off on the fan and off and on, and he got a kick out of that.

So he started pointing up at the fan and fussing at me, and so I was like, well,

I don't want him whining at me nonstop to turn on the fan, turn it on and off. And so one of the things

I looked at him, and I thought I was being a good parent at the time, and I said, say please. And so then he says please, and he starts pulling on the fan string, and he's all happy.

And then the next time he crawls in the room at that point or whatever, he points up at the fan string, and he says, please, please, please.

And it dawned on me what I did. It dawned on me what happened.

So what I thought I had done was taught my son to be polite, but what I had actually done was taught him to name the name of the fan string.

But one of the things I've found in conversation in general is that we're using these words, and it would be better if we just assume we're talking to a 15 -month -old.

We don't have any idea what we're saying. Does that make sense? We should assume –

I mean, there's been so many times in the course of my own marriage where my wife and I are using words, and we're just using them in very different ways.

And then there's chaos that's ensuing because we think we have a shared common vocabulary only to find out that we don't.

But as it relates to something like depression, you would be better to assume you have absolutely no idea what they're saying when they say a word like that.

And if you did, it would force you to actually make them define what they're talking about. And so because this is a word that's used in common parlance to mean so many different things – the guy who goes to Taco Bell and says, man,

I was so depressed because the nacho fries are gone. Is that a moral issue?

Probably not. I mean, it's just a way of speaking, basically.

Like a very sloppy way. Exaggerated. Exaggerated, kind of funny way of speaking that you look at that, and you just kind of laugh.

You don't think what they mean by that is they're curled up on the ball.

Right. Haven't showered in days because the fries are gone.

If they were, that would be a moral problem, right? I mean, that would be totally a moral problem.

That's all it took. It's like, man, what's going on in your life? Your dad beating you or something? Like, what is it?

My worldview is crumbled because they took the fries off the menu. Yeah. I mean, so at that point, it's like, what are we looking at?

Like, if it's straight up only related to the fries, it's like, well, my goodness, man.

Like, you got a man up, and what's wrong with you? Pour some cold water on his head and kick him a few times.

I don't know if you could do that kind of thing anymore because people were so – they may turn you in for assault or something.

But we used to be able to help people to man up when they're being a pansy. But yeah, so I mean, yeah, that situation,

I mean, that's kind of a silly usage, right? Now, if someone says, I'm so depressed, my dad just died, well,

I don't know that that's like a moral problem. But that's not a moral problem.

They're just using a loaded term in a way that isn't very precise. Does that make sense?

Yeah, they're basically meaning like, hey, I'm in mourning right now. I'm sad right now.

But then they still probably don't mean like, hey, for long periods of time,

I've shirked all my responsibilities and stopped taking care of myself and whatnot. Yeah, I mean, if your dad dies and you just lay in the bed for two weeks,

I'm not going to be the one who's throwing stones. Now, if you're laying in the bed for six months, we need to have a talk, right?

Like that's too long, you know? So now that's kind of blasphemy to say, too.

But you have to deal with these things.

And we don't grieve as those who have no hope and everything else.

So you have to deal with problems like that. And so when you use that kind of term,

I would say that I don't know what they mean when they say it. I don't know what they're talking about. And it's better to define it.

Now, you know, the kind of person who's just, you know, like let's pick on the homemaker or something.

The homemaker who's basically, you know, there's piles and piles of laundry everywhere and the dishes are piling up.

And, you know, the kids are playing with the silverware, trying to stab each other, you know, and she's laying on the floor.

She's laying on the floor, hasn't bathed in a few days and just, you know, everything else. I would say, well, yeah, that's probably a moral problem.

So I'm not going to view that as a medical problem. That's a moral problem as far as that goes. And so what's classically described in a clinical sense is depression.

Yes, that's a moral problem that we're talking about. We're not talking about a medical problem. We're talking about a moral issue, if that makes sense.

But I'm just not going to make – I think I don't want to make assumptions about what we're even saying because the word is just, you know,

Plato. It can mean anything at this point. But then part of the thing that happens is that you can just have

Christians who maybe are hearing what I'm saying and come in a thoughtless kind of way and just, you know, come up to the person who is depressed or whatever and say, you know, stop it.

And they may not know what they're dealing with. It can be kind of a sloppy thing to say and everything else.

And so you just want to know what are we talking about when we're using this kind of word in general.

And asking a few questions typically helps, if that makes sense. Yeah, yeah, to try and figure out what exactly are the specifics of this certain circumstance.

Because it might be different from maybe another circumstance where someone also seemed to be dealing with similar emotions and feelings.

But then the root causes of those two scenarios might be totally different. Is that what you mean?

Yeah, you know, I mean, you could have a person who's just saying, you know, hey, you look a little down.

What's going on? It's like, yeah, I'm depressed. I got a C on my test, and I studied for it for a long time, and I'm just a little depressed about it, you know?

It's like, I don't know that I'm going to be the person who's just saying, well, you need to go repent of that, right? I mean,

I think that there's sadness that's part of life. There's discouragement that's part of life. There's disappointment that's part of life.

But when this becomes an all -purpose excuse that an individual is going to use to forsake their responsibilities, then we're talking about something different than just general sadness, discouragement, despair that's common and normal to life.

So that homemaker who basically is using this word depression as an excuse to forsake all of her responsibilities as a homemaker or the man who basically says, like,

I refuse to go to work anymore because everyone's mean to me, and I'm so depressed, right? Well, the

Bible would say to those kind of people, you know, if a man doesn't provide for his own household, he's abandoned the faith, and he's worse than an unbeliever.

And the same thing would be said to a woman who doesn't provide for her own household, the things that she's responsible to provide for her household, that the

Bible commands her to. And both situations like that, you know, there are strong words given to that kind of person, and you can't just, you know, slough off those hard words the

Bible says by virtue of some appeal to, you know, depression or something like that.

It's like that's, like, you don't have a get -out -of -jail -free card with this psychological label just to ignore everything the

Bible says, right? Mm -hmm. It seems like thinking about this topic of, you know, depression and more specifically despair or worry or maybe anxiety in some way that's overwhelming, it seems like, you know,

I can think of a few different examples in Scripture that seem to describe similar scenarios where people are feeling those types of emotions.

So I think of, you know, Paul, when he talks several different times about his worry for different churches,

I think about, you know, Jesus right before he's, the night before he's going to be betrayed and ultimately murdered on the cross.

You know, he's so, I guess, emotionally distraught or whatever that he's actually sweating blood while he's in the garden praying.

And, you know, another example might be Elijah in 1 Kings 19 where it says that essentially

Elijah wanted to die, right? Right. And so what are we supposed to do with these types of scenarios?

I know I gave you three that might all have their own specific different explanations, but I think there is a legitimate question there that says, hey, even some of the, you know, quote -unquote big names in the

Bible, you know, the people that we look to as examples, it seems like even they dealt with this in some way.

So are we to say that, you know, they were in sin for these things or how are we supposed to view these types of things that we read in Scripture?

Yeah, well, I don't think we want to say that sadness is intrinsically morally wrong.

Mm -hmm. So Jesus is described as a man of sorrow as well, acquainted with grief. And then Paul says that there's godly sorrow and there's worldly sorrow.

And then, you know, we're taught that we don't grieve as those who have no hope. We grieve as those who have hope.

Implying that we do grieve in some way, right? Right, yeah. So when Lazarus dies, Jesus wept. So one of the things that you don't want to do is in some simplistic kind of way say that all sadness is fundamentally inappropriate.

And part of what's happening in the depression discussion is because depression can be used to describe so many different things, right?

Mm -hmm. Then if you say that depression is a moral problem, what people instantaneously hear, what they're hearing you to say is it's wrong to be sad, okay?

Mm -hmm. But then that's not what you're saying. So it just depends on what the word depression means, okay?

So because it can mean anything and everything, then you have to deal with whatever is being communicated on a case -by -case basis.

And so what are we talking about? Are we talking about sadness here? Are we talking about sorrow here? You know, there's plenty of, like,

I think one of the major failings of the church is that we're not as sorrowful as we should be.

Mm -hmm. And if we were to actually be more like Christ, we would be more sorrowful than what we otherwise are.

But it wouldn't be a self -pitying kind of sorrow that's fundamentally self -centered and, you know, no one loves me and no one treats me very well, you know, and I can't ever do anything right, you know.

Like, that isn't the kind of sorrow that we should have. But we should have a kind of sorrow that realizes that we're living in a fallen world and that's fundamentally broken and messed up by sin.

I mean, if you have loved ones who, you know, just are rejecting God and hate God, I mean, you can – a lot of people, their common response to that is just to get irritated with them and bothered by them.

But what we should be doing is be concerned for them and sad for them and sorrowful for them and praying for them.

So that would be a more godly response than just to be angry at them and frustrated with them and annoyed with them.

And so I think we have a sorrow deficiency in the church in a lot of ways. But it's not that self -pitying kind of woe -is -me kind of sorrow that becomes debilitating as far as that goes.

And so when you're dealing with this kind of subject, you always have to ask, what are we saying? What are we saying?

What kind of sorrow are we talking about? As far as that goes. And then you can have, like, good examples of sorrow and you can have bad examples of sorrow.

Now, one of the things that you don't want to do when you read through the Bible is adopt some simplistic kind of calculus where you're reading the

Bible and anything that, you know – like, divide the Bible up into good guys and the bad guys, right?

And whenever the good guy does something, then it's good. And whenever the bad guy does something, it's bad. Because the problem is that's not really the way the

Bible works. In fact, if you read through the Old Testament, one of the things that you should come away with is the knowledge that all the good guys are kind of bad.

So, I mean, Abraham, like, he's a spineless coward who basically hands his wife off to the pagans, you know, hope for the best, cross your fingers, you know, kind of thing.

As far as that goes. Like, the patriarchs were a bunch of scoundrels, man. You know, like, Dinah was raped and, you know, the brothers hatch a plan to basically enter into a covenant with Shechem and the rest of them.

And, you know, they basically say, hey, we'll intermarry with you if you all get circumcised. And so they all get circumcised and then they go and kill them all, you know.

Not only do they do that, they are so jealous of Joseph that they throw him into a pit, you know, and sell him.

They're determined in trying to kill him and then they decided on selling him into slavery, you know. What a bunch of wonderful guys there, you know.

So, I mean, you think through the narratives in that way. I mean, you get to Judges and you're at a dark point, you know.

Yes, like a free for all. Cut up the prostitute in 12 pieces and send her out through, you know, the whole land of Israel.

I mean, it's just, like, you look through the scriptures and, like, I mean, Moses doesn't even enter into the promised land.

David commits adultery and murders Uriah, a man after God's own heart, you know.

And then, like, the whole rest of the law, the whole rest of the kings say of David, like, they say of David that there's been no king like David who walked in the commandments of God.

Like, really? That's the best we've got? Yeah, I mean, he's the best we've got, you know. And so, I mean, but you think about it like that.

Like, what you can't do is read these narratives and think to yourself in any simplistic way, like, the good guys are the bad guys and the bad guys are, like, there's good guys who do everything right and bad guys who do everything wrong.

I mean, just look at the story of Jonah, for instance. My goodness, you know. Like, Jonah was the good guy who does everything wrong in the passage and the bad guys, the

Ninevites, do everything right, you know. And the Maritors, they do everything right, you know. Like, they're more concerned about Jonah than he is the

Ninevites, you know. So, I mean, it's just crazy. So, I think you have to think through those kind of things.

And so, you know, David, he was obviously depressed at different times because of his sin. You know, his body's wasting away.

You know, after the death of Absalom, he refuses to get up. You know, he's curled in a ball and grieving over his son because he understood it had something to do with his own sin.

So, you don't just look at that and say, well, that's a good depression, right?

Even godly people can suffer from depression, you know, the dark night of the soul, you know.

Like, it's just like, no, that's wrong, you know. Like, the issue of Elijah, I mean, look at – he was just at a high point, you know,

Elijah. Like, basically, the Lord vindicated him. He destroyed all the prophets of Baal with the fire coming down from heaven.

You know, and then after that, like, he hears word that Jezebel's trying to kill him.

And then he curls up in a ball, and he doesn't want to go on anymore, you know. Oh, Lord, you know, take my life. I want to die.

And so, like, he has the same response that Jonah has after the Ninevites are saved. And so, you can't look at that and say, well, he's a good guy, and so that was a good response.

That shows us that, like, hey, man, like, get up. You know, there's 10 ,000 – I reserved 10 ,000 men who haven't bowed the knee to Baal.

Time to move on, you know. Eat some food, get strengthened, and let's go. I have more work for you to do. But then, like, yes.

I mean, so, yes, that's common to life. You know, there's been plenty of pastor who's, like, just been discouraged and given into despair.

But what you don't want to do is just sanctify it and act, like, as if it's all neutral and just wonderful.

I mean, the Bible's a book that as you read, you're going to come away with thinking we're awful and God's great, right?

Yeah, yeah. I mean, you don't come away thinking, like, if you read it, you know, and you actually read it, you're not going to come away with hero worship.

You're going to realize all the heroes are villains, and then you wonder, how do they all get in the wall of faith in Hebrews, you know?

Yeah. Like, how is Lot, you know, in the wall of faith? He was going to offer his daughters up.

I mean, my goodness. So you don't read it that way. I mean, you have to read it the way it's intended, that God is gracious and merciful and abounding in steadfast love, and that his mercies are new every morning.

And if the Lord were to count iniquity, none of us would get in, you know? So that's the point.

And then with something like Jesus, I mean, Jesus obviously, like, he didn't have crippling DSM kind of depression.

And I think a lot of people misunderstand what's actually happening there at the cross. I mean, Jesus wasn't just, oh, I don't want to get beaten and whipped, and that all sounds painful.

You know, what's happening there is that he's going to become the sin bearer, as far as that goes.

And he knows that he's moving towards a moment where, you know, at that point, he had done all things according to the will of his

Father, who is in heaven. And then he was going to cry out on the cross, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

That's what he was dreading, you know, as far as that goes. But then he says, nevertheless, not my will, but thine.

And so what we don't want to conclude is that there's some sort of simplistic, you know, if you're godly, everything in life will be happy and easy and wonderful, and there will be nothing that will be sad, and there will be nothing that's discouraging.

But then when you talk about depression in the clinical sense, like in the sense of this crippling despair or hopelessness that is your excuse to not handle life, then there is no biblical example of that being a positive thing.

Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah. So whatever Jesus did, he didn't just lay there for, you know, two weeks and refuse to move, and have

Peter come along saying, Jesus, you know, you've got to go to the cross. Everyone's waiting on you, man.

You're kind of holding everything up. Yeah, and that's not what was happening, as far as that goes.

Yeah, and I guess if you have that kind of simplistic way of reading the

Bible, then when you read something like Peter denying Jesus three times, your first inclination might be to either just assume that it's morally right to somehow deny

Jesus or just be really confused by the passage. Like, why is he sad right now? You know, he did exactly what he was supposed to do.

He must just be depressed or something. Yeah, I mean, you just have to look at these narratives.

I mean, you think about the disciples. I mean, almost at every point, their instincts are all wrong.

Yeah, yeah. Who's going to be at your right hand? They're arguing over who's going to be first and who's going to be greater.

They won't even pray with Jesus during that time. Should we call down fire from heaven?

Right, right. I mean, it's just at every single point. Even when they think they have a good impulse, like Peter, like, how often should

I forgive my brother? Seven times? He was expecting, wow, that was really generous, right? Right.

That was wonderful, Peter. But I mean, that's not what came out. The Bible spares no ink trying to show us how flawed the heroes of the faith actually were, as far as that goes.

Okay, so talking about these types of emotions and feelings and temptation to despair, to be filled with anxiety and whatnot,

I think we've established that this is a moral issue that we should bear responsibility for.

So I think that begs the question, when it comes to resisting these temptations, why exactly does it glorify

God to treat depression as a moral issue that we should resist in terms of temptation, and then,

I guess, actively fight against and plead with our brothers and sisters to also repent of when they fall into it?

Yeah, so, I mean, I think that that question is fairly easy to conceptualize, if you could just imagine yourself being married to a man who is using depression as an excuse to lay around bed and miss work.

What do you mean? Well, like if you're a wife whose husband has been picked on at work, and he's laying around and refuses to go back because he's not treated the way he wants to be treated, and maybe he's going through a midlife crisis, and he just doesn't know how to get up, and he's just laying down on the floor.

And he's been doing that for two weeks, and you're going to lose your job, and you have a mortgage to pay for, you have bills to pay for, you need groceries.

I mean, what's the most loving thing to do to that person? Is it just to sanctify that despair and that hopelessness and that refusal to handle life?

Is the most loving thing to do is just to give him that label and basically give him every excuse he needs to quit providing for you and the family?

Or is it to encourage him to man up and go to work and get over himself, right?

I'm assuming it's the latter. Well, yeah. Obviously. I mean, but the thing is these labels are so hopeless.

If you view these labels as if there's some sort of medical diagnosis, then it's just hopelessness and despair all the way down.

I mean, there's nothing more hopeless than being told that you have depression. That is the most hopeless thing that you can possibly be told, because that takes away all personal responsibility from you, and basically you're stuck.

And all you can do at that point is just become a drug addict for the rest of your life, and basically be on tranquilizers that are numbing all of your emotions and numbing all of your feelings to where you can't feel anything, as far as that goes, and it doesn't fix your fundamental problem.

And so, I mean, the thing is that these labels are – there's nothing more despair -producing than these labels themselves.

I mean, that guy I was talking about that I canceled who is stuck in his house because he has all these labels.

He has ADD. He has depression. He has all this stuff. He can't live a normal functioning life in his mind.

He can't live a normal functioning life. He's 28 years old, stuck in his parents' house. He wants to get married, and his parents are telling him who he can date and who he can't date and everything else.

It's like you're stuck, man, because these labels are these things that are standing in the way of you living the kind of life that would glorify

God and actually be a good kind of life to live. And the problem is that when you give in to these labels, what happens is like this.

You say, hey, I have depression. The problem is you just sit there, and you lay around, and you don't do anything.

You're compounding your problem, okay, because God's made us to work, right? So if you reject work, now you have a new problem.

So you're discouraged. No one treats you well. You're having a midlife crisis. You don't want to go to work and all that.

You're laying on the ground. You're in despair, and you're hopeless. You don't want to go back and all that because you've never learned that sticks and stones will break your bones, but words can never hurt you and all that.

But the problem is that if you just give up, then you're going to have all the guilt and all the shame and all the condemnation that's going to come from the knowledge that God's created man for work, and you've given up.

And then you're going to get the worthlessness and shame that comes not just from the original issue, but from how you handle it.

And it's like this cycle that's just going to bring you down. But then the thing is, if we actually want to glorify

God, we don't have to accept these labels as if they're just all -purpose explanations that prevent us from handling life.

If you want to glorify God, the thing is – and it sounds so mean because we're trained you can't shame the victim or whatever.

But if that person were just to say, this is a moral problem, and I can repent of this with God's help and through His grace and by the power of His Spirit, you don't have to be chained to this for the rest of your life.

There's times in my life where I had doctors telling me that I had depression.

But I don't feel depressed anymore. That isn't me. That hasn't dominated my life. That hasn't characterized my life.

I learned at some point in my life that there are ways to handle life that glorify

God, and there are ways that don't glorify God. And so if you accept that basic premise, hey,

I'm a sinner, but God can fix my sin, that's the thing that's entirely hopeful.

Jesus died on the cross to save you and to cleanse you and to make you filled with love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, meekness, kindness, faithfulness, self -control.

And if He began a good work in you, He can complete that good work. You don't have to be mastered by these things. If you don't have to have these hopeless labels put on you and this define your life, you can be defined as having your identity in Christ and being the kind of person who

God will clean up to the uttermost as far as that goes. Yeah, you know, that kind of reminds me of a time back when my wife was pregnant with our first child.

It was a really hard pregnancy for her, and so she had to do a lot of bed rest, which meant normally if there was ever a group of friends who were going to go out or get lunch or dinner together or something,

I normally ended up just going by myself without my wife because she needed to rest.

And I remember there was one day after church where we were all getting lunch together, and this was at a time where a lot of other people in our church, they were having these different sort of life stage changes, whether that was they were getting married or they were moving into a new house together or whatever it was.

And so they were discussing all of these different plans that they were making and just how excited they were.

And I remember sitting there thinking to myself about how sad that made me because I felt in that moment,

I felt very alone. I felt a lot of sorrow for my wife and how she was feeling, and then

I looked at everyone else and how happy they were. And I think I felt a lot of like, why does everyone else get to be happy right now and I don't get to be happy like they are?

And after sitting there for a few minutes, I began to think to myself, what in the world am

I doing? I'm being so ungrateful right now and letting myself basically mope and complain because God is blessing all of our other church members.

I should actually be thankful for everything that God is doing in their lives right now.

Right now, He's putting people together, they're getting married,

He's blessing them with new homes, and I'm over here complaining that He's doing all of these things for my brothers and my sisters in Christ.

This is ridiculous. And I had a moment where maybe in years past when

I wasn't a Christian, I would have thought I was justified in my selfishness and self -centeredness.

But after thinking through all that, I realized, hey, actually what I probably need to do is

I just need to repent of my ungratefulness. And instead of moping around, maybe just thank

God for everything that He's doing. Instead, that seems like a much more honoring thing to do in this moment.

So what you're saying makes a lot of sense in terms of having that kind of mentality that this is something that is totally outside of our control and it takes away all responsibility from you.

Essentially, what that's doing is it's inhibiting you from being able to actually do the thing you were created to do, which is worship and glorify

God. Does that make sense? Yeah, and I think that's what's so frustrating about this kind of conversation, because it's so ingrained in people's minds, that depression.

It's all off -limits, and so basically anytime that word is used, it is the all -purpose excuse for everything.

Basically, you have to take a step back and just validate it, and that's what you're told to do.

You have to validate this person and basically just give this person whatever they want at that point.

And it doesn't matter how – there's no distinctions that are being made at all for the variety of situations that we could even be talking about.

So every person who describes himself as having depression, you are treating like the person who just that day got the phone call that their wife died.

And the rules across the board for every person who uses that word are the same as that kind of scenario, but then the reality is that there's a lot of different types of scenarios where that word is being used that are not at all like that.

People are so scandalized by the thought of just saying, hey, you have to turn from this. But that's the only hope they have.

If they don't turn from it, you've taken away all their hope, man. They're stuck. It was amazing.

My church member going to the doctor today and just thinking through that. If he didn't have the kind of awareness to interact with the doctor on that level, that could have fundamentally – that one doctor visit with a person who basically is just trained that whatever the doctor says is right, you have to listen to the doctor – that could have fundamentally defined the rest of his life and the rest of his marriage.

Just that one thing. Being told as far as that goes. But then we have him not being prepared to interact with the doctor in a knowledgeable way and have questions to ask.

What that does is it kept him from ruining his life as far as that goes.

By accepting some sort of hopeless label that's going to turn him into some kind of catatonic vegetable for the rest of his life.

Because this word is used so broadly, then there is no simple kind of explanation for how to deal with it.

But let me just talk about different scenarios. The person who just lost a loved one and who is describing himself in a sloppy way as having depression or whatever.

I think you give them a lot of space for the first little bit. You rejoice with those who rejoice.

You weep with those who weep. You show up. Give them a hug. Just sit with them.

That's fine. Say, I'll pray for you. Get them a meal. Just try to help them in whatever way you can.

I don't think you're expecting a lot of conversation as far as that goes. The person who has the test.

I'm a little bummed. I've got to stay on the test. I'm sorry, man.

I don't know. Every single scenario like that, you just have to go in there and say, oh, you're sad?

Well, you must not be a Christian. I don't think we want to be the despair police or something like that where we're just instantaneously in a knee -jerk way have no category for sorrow in the

Christian life as far as that goes. I think we can do that. Part of that is because we've been trained by some prosperity impulses that everything is just sunny.

I think there are difficult situations as far as that goes. There are plenty of situations that can be discouraging.

But that doesn't give an all -purpose blank check to say that any and all discouragement or sadness or sorrow is morally fine because it's not.

A lot of sadness is just purely self -centered, self -pitying kind of sadness that we need to rebuke, too.

So I want to know what we're talking about here as far as that goes. Let's distinguish grieving as a different category.

We're not talking about grieving. We're talking about solutions to depression or helping people with depression. We're not talking about trivial things like I'm bummed because the nacho fries.

We're not using trivial things like that or I'm bummed because I got a bad grade on the test. Just factor in all that.

Let's talk about the crippling, extended, two -week -long despair that has either transitioned into a total surrender of all responsibilities or a lot of the responsibilities are starting to be sloughed off.

Does that make sense? So let's talk about what you might describe as clinical depression in particular.

We're not talking about those other things. If people think we're talking about those, that's listening comprehension. We're talking about a person who for at least two weeks is experiencing crippling, hopeless despair that they're using as an excuse to not take care of life.

I think that that could happen for a variety of reasons. I don't want to present some sort of – what you need to do is if you're going to help that person, you need to ask questions and try to figure out what you're looking at.

But I think there's at least three kind of things that could be going on there.

One is just guilt. The homemaker who has finished

Netflix but doesn't know how to mail plant, that kind of thing.

Basically, the sinks are all full of dishes.

There's unfolded piles of clothing laying all over the house. The kids are basically being babysat all day long by TV.

And then the woman who's spending all day long shopping on her phone, sneaking purchases she doesn't tell her husband about or something like that.

And addicted to Facebook or something. Let's just go there. That kind of thing.

You come home and you say, honey, what's going on? It's just like, I'm just so depressed. It's just like, yeah, well, the house looks the same as it did yesterday and the day before.

So depression in that case is kind of the excuse that's being used to not handle life, right?

But then if you ask her, why are you depressed? She might not know why she's depressed.

Do you know what I mean? Yeah. Like she doesn't know the root cause of it. She doesn't know. And she might think, well, it's a medical problem.

There's something happening to me. A chemical imbalance and everything else. But then I think looking on the outside, looking at that kind of situation, looking at it objectively, thinking through it the way the

Bible would want you to think about it. What's happening there? What is it? I would say, hey, go to the doctor and have them run some medical tests and see if there's anything wrong.

Maybe you have a thyroid problem. Maybe whatever. That kind of thing. I'm going to try to rule out physical causes.

So go run some medical tests. Don't let them run any questions about your thoughts or behavior and give you any drugs.

Run some medical tests. Do I have a thyroid problem? Am I anemic? Do I have an iron deficiency?

Is there anything like that that's happening? I would say, yeah, rule out that the lack of energy is not that.

But then I would say, just run a basic inventory of their life. Are you staying up until four in the morning every night and getting up at seven with the kids?

What are you doing? Is this despair that's come from just being exhausted because you're acting like a child, staying up all night doing things?

But you rule out all that. What's left?

If I'm looking at it, I'm just saying, this is probably just the fact that you've rejected your job as a homemaker and a mother in a pretty fundamental way.

What do you think you're going to feel? Do you think that if you just take off doing your job that you should feel love, joy, peace, long -suffering and all that?

Do you think that you should just have the joy of the Lord when you basically are just taking up space and not doing anything that God's called you to do because you don't have any accountability in your life?

Imagine if a guy did that. If a guy just said, hey, I'm not going to work and not going to do anything.

What do you think he would feel? He would probably feel guilt and shame and condemnation. And we would look at that and we would say, yeah, you're not suffering from depression.

You're just worthless. You're a worthless man or you're a worthless woman and you need to repent.

That's what you need to do. And you're going to feel terrible because you're pursuing worthless things and you're not doing the things that you're called to do.

Does that make sense? So yes, in that kind of situation,

I'd say go run the medical test. Nothing comes back. Ask basic questions about their sleeping habits and their eating habits and their whatever.

And it might be that a lot of that is going to be a result of just categorical unfaithfulness across the board.

Does that make sense? So that's one scenario that I think everyone can imagine, just you're being so unfaithful to the point to where –

I mean, I don't know. There's times in my life when I was a young person where I just spent all day long on entertainment, all day long on entertainment.

And there's something that's fun about that, but then you feel worthless at the end, too. Yeah, you definitely do.

I can relate. Yeah, you do. And that's not depression.

That's like you've rejected your reason for existence. God didn't put you on the earth just to be an entertainment junkie. And so, yeah, there's some fun to that, but at the end it leaves you guilty.

And so that would be a category of depression that you would say, hey, what's causing that? Well, that's a failure to perform the responsibilities

God's called you to. Does that make sense? Mm -hmm. Yeah, but there would also be a kind of depression that would be related to just secret sin that you're holding on to, right?

Mm -hmm. So like if you're constantly feeling guilt and shame and condemnation, but you just imagine the guy who just has the porn addiction that no one knows about that's weighing on him, right?

Right. Or that porn addiction that he has that no one knows about that he's not telling anyone about. That kind of thing is going to weigh on his conscience, and he's not going to feel at ease.

He's going to be always looking over his shoulder. He's going to be destabilized in a pretty fundamental way.

And so the one before is kind of like a kind of depression that's resulted from not positively pursuing the things

God calls you to. But then this would be the kind of depression that would come from pursuing vices.

Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah. And so then there's this guilt and this shame and this condemnation that you're going to experience that is connected to things that you're actually doing in your life, right?

And so I mean that kind of person, you're going to talk to him. You're going to say, hey, do you have any unconfessed sin in your life?

And then see how they respond, right? Mm -hmm. So you're depressed all the time. Well, tell me about your routine.

What's going on in your life? What do you do? That would get to the first kind of scenario, right? Mm -hmm.

And then this one, do you have any unconfessed sin in your life? That would get to that kind of scenario. Does that make sense?

Mm -hmm. Okay. But then there's maybe a third, and there's a lot more that you could say about this, but I'm just going to give three common ones, okay?

Yeah, this isn't like an exhaustive list or anything. No, but just imagine a third scenario. A third scenario would be just the kind of person who is basically, they have unmet desires in their life.

Does that make sense? Mm -hmm. And so they have a despair or hopelessness that's come from some sort of unmet desires.

I mean, to that kind of person, I would say, what do you want that you're not getting? What are you seeking? What are you pursuing?

What do you hope for? And it might be that kind of person, they're like, I'm stuck in a hard marriage.

And I know what the Bible says, that marriage is a lifelong commitment, and my husband, he's just selfish and doesn't love me and doesn't care about me and doesn't cherish me, and he's all in it for himself.

And I'm just looking at my life, and I'm getting older, and one of the things

I realize is that this is not what I wanted for my life, right? Mm -hmm. I didn't want this for my life.

I wanted a happy marriage. I didn't want a marriage filled with conflict and filled with frustration and fights.

I wanted someone who would love me and sacrifice for me and not just be this person who's in it for themself and just doesn't care and doesn't listen to anything

I say and everything else. And so that would be the kind of depression that would come from just frustrated idols, right?

I mean, that would be kind of like the Rachel, give me children lest I die kind of depression. Does that make sense?

Yeah, yeah. So that isn't related to either a moral failing in terms of your actions or a moral sin of omission or a sin of commission.

That would be fundamentally you're unhappy with God's providence in a very fundamental way because you have certain desires that aren't being met.

Does that make sense? Mm -hmm. But you can imagine in any of those kind of scenarios, there are different answers that you would give, right?

Mm -hmm. And then you can imagine that if you give to the one who's committing the sins of omission, you give them the kind of counsel that you would give to the one with the unmet desires, how it wouldn't fit, right?

Right, yeah. That'd be pretty strange advice. Right, right, right. So we'll stop sinning and you'll be okay.

And it's like, well, I don't know that there's no unconfessed sin in my life that I know of.

But so what needs to happen there is that there are idols there that need to be dealt with, right?

So that one has idols in their heart that are being frustrated and they have to learn to live to the glory of God.

And I guess the last kind of category, and there's a lot of these that I could say would be just, I think depression is the human condition.

What do you mean? Well, I mean, it's just unbelievers are held captive by the fear of death. We have moral problems.

We all feel guilt and shame and condemnation because when you compare your own actions to those of God's standard,

God's standard is perfection, you know? And if the Lord would count iniquity, none of us could stand. And there is a kind of guilt and shame and condemnation that just is there, irrespective of the patterns of everything else.

But just by virtue of comparing yourself to a holy God who has a holy standard and just realizing that, you know what, nothing on this earth is going to satisfy and I have a problem.

I have this guilt and this shame and there's plenty of celebrities who get everything the world has to offer and it all leaves them bankrupt and empty and they don't even know what they're doing and they have all this guilt and shame from all their actions they don't know how to get rid of, you know?

I counseled a guy one time and he was thinking about going into the military, but he described himself as a dirty, like thinking about what are your thoughts about God kind of question.

It's like a dirty puppy in a white room, you know? That's how he described himself, thinking about praying to God, you know?

And that's a pretty powerful image, but there's a lot of people like that and to where, like, if you say, hey, will you have that label?

Like, well, you just took away any hope they have of repenting and turning to Jesus and getting forgiveness and fixing the guilt and the shame and the burden they have.

And so, thank you for, you know, destroying their soul. But that's what you've done.

In a certain sense, helping them along the path to hell. Right.

I mean, that's what the problem with these stupid labels are, is that these labels we're putting on people are basically removing any hope of repentance and removing any hope that people can actually be saved and have their fundamental problems fixed.

I mean, like, you're just shackling people to their sin. I mean, it's just, you know,

Paul talks about, you know, who will deliver me from this body of death and that imagery is like the imagery of, it was like, you imagine a prisoner who's, like, what they did was they, you know, chained prisoners to a dead body, essentially.

And so they're chained to this dead body, and the dead body is, like, spreading disease and infection to the live prisoner, essentially, and it's a form of execution, if that makes sense.

But that's what we're doing with these labels. We're chaining people to a body of death, essentially. And that's what's so disturbing about it.

And so this is, like, the point of, you know, the point is, like, when you say, hey, you know, do you think, you don't think depression's real, do you?

It's like, well, no, I don't. Not like you mean, right? I don't believe it. I don't believe that person who's laying there on the floor for two weeks because they don't know how to handle life.

I don't believe that that's a medical problem. I believe that that's a moral problem. But if I believe it's a moral problem, there's hope for them, right?

But you've taken away their hope, you know? And I think the church, by and large, has taken away their hope and made great allowances for that, because they're asking the wrong questions.

They're looking at – like, there's different kind of situations that you find yourself in, right?

And they're giving, like, the hope and the Lord counsel to the person who has the unconfessed sin, right?

And then they throw their hands up in the air and say, oh, well, it must be medical. It's like, no, you just didn't ask enough questions, man.

You don't even know what you're looking at, you know? So figure out what you're looking at, and you'll figure out what to say, you know?

But then, like, you're giving the wrong counsel to the wrong person and then concluding, well, it must be organic.

And it's just like, well, you're just a bad counselor. I'm sorry, you know? Yeah. Yeah, and, you know,

I think ultimately this episode is not meant to be a sort of, hey, just stop sinning, and then you'll be good, right?

It's meant to be – it's really meant to say, hey, look, here's a problem that it seems like no one is dealing with correctly.

The world has one answer to it, but then the reality is that answer is going to fail, and it's not going to work, and it will never work.

And not only will it never work, it's actually going to keep you from fixing the problem as long as you subscribe to it.

When the reality is, really what we're trying to say is there actually is hope when it comes to despair.

You actually can be delivered from these things. Even if you don't think you can be, you can through the grace of God.

But it's only through the grace of God. That's the only hope we have. And that requires acknowledging that we're in the wrong, that we've sinned in some way, and we need forgiveness.

And if we're unwilling to do that, then we won't ever be delivered. So the main message of an episode like this is to say, hey, look, you have hope if you'll just realize that this is sin that needs to be dealt with, that needs forgiveness.

And if you'll humble yourself, like the Bible says over and over and over again, if you'll humble yourself, then

God will deliver you from these things. And there's freedom in Christ, and His yoke is easy, and His burden is light, and those are true promises that you can take hold of.

And so we want to encourage those who are listening who might be dealing with a lot of these issues, we want to encourage you to really start thinking through some of the things we're saying.

And even if you think they're totally ridiculous, maybe just humor us.

And just try and think this way. Well, the thing about that too,

Harrison, is just that we have thousands of years of church history, and this is a unique problem that we're dealing with in a unique way right now.

And so this is like a recent phenomenon for the past 70 years or something, you have this pseudo -scientific mechanism that basically just allows people to curl up in a ball and never see the light of day again.

But then the problem is throughout church history, we always believed that the Bible was sufficient, we always believed the Bible has answers to these things.

Throughout the history of the world, this is a novel way of dealing with a very common problem.

Very, very common problems. We're living in a society right now where we think we're so advanced, but in some ways we're so primitive in the way that we're thinking about these problems.

And then the reality is the more that we treat these problems in a way that is totally ahistorical, no one ever dealt with it like just a blank check to give in to despair or melancholy or despondency or whatever.

We've never done that. Just some kind of absolute blank check. We had answers to these things, we chucked all the answers, but then the problem is that the more that we give people this blank check, it's just the cases of depression, quote -unquote, skyrocket.

And so the thing is that you don't have to be intimidated by the particular delusion that we're living in right now.

If you want to have some sort of historical awareness, you'll realize that the Bible's always had answers to these. We have a sufficient word.

God is not taken by surprise about depression. He has something to say about it. You just trust Him, trust His word, read what it has to say.

He's going to give us wisdom that's much better than our adversaries as far as that goes.

Right. Yeah, and so in closing, we just want to encourage everyone who's listening to this episode, if you're the person who feels like you really struggle with these things, we want to ask you, number one, if you are attending a local church, reach out to your pastor and ask them to give you counsel.

And two, if you want to reach out to us too, then that's totally fine.

You can email us at bible -podcast .gmail .com. Or if you're the person who says, hey, you know what,

I'm not dealing with this, but then there's someone close to me who I care a lot about who is dealing with this, we want to encourage you, counsel that person.

Reach out to them and confront them in whatever way is necessary, because the

Bible tells us if you love your brother, then you're going to hold them accountable, and that's something that we should be doing for one another.

So we want to encourage you in those ways, and we also want to thank everyone for listening to this episode, and we hope that it's really blessed you and that you are able to be encouraged by it and know that there is hope in Christ and that when we confront these sins in our lives, then we know that God is sanctifying us and enabling us to be able to glorify

Him more. So hopefully that's an encouragement to you guys. We want to thank you again for listening, and we'll see you guys on the next one.