Depression and the Church

I'm taking a brief moment as an aside from your regularly-scheduled programming to talk about Robin Williams' suicide and the issue of depression.  A page I follow cautioned pastors not to talk about the suicide, and I think it's for good reason...

I grew up with depression, which was caused by a myriad of issues, including being told from every angle that I was worthless on a daily basis.  By the time I was a teenager, I basically couldn't escape from the cycle of depressive thinking, and really needed psychiatric help.  I wouldn't get that help for 20 more years, and so I never understood how to escape from the thoughts that kept me locked in depression.

Now, it's important to note that I had good days and I had bad days, but I had something that I would say regularly - "nothing makes me happy."  And it was true.  I loved God, I loved spending time with friends, reading, playing video games, and many other things, but none of it made me *happy*.  Because, when you suffer from depression, it's not really a matter of "happiness"... it's more like life is just ... blah.  Sometimes, it's worse than blah. 

Happiness became this big impossible goal, which helped drive me further into depression because it was unachievable. 

One of the biggest struggles I faced was with the messages I got from Church - because I had learned from them, and truly believed it myself, that if I just loved God enough, I could be happy.  There was only one quote that ever seemed to help,

For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:38-39, NIV)

But this didn't make me happy, it just told me that even in my darkest days, God still loved me.  That's helpful, but I still struggled with why I wasn't happy. 

Yet the Church constantly taught happiness... and I am struck now how much happiness mirrors Prosperity Theology: God wants you to be happy / God wants you to be wealthy.

But here's the deal... nowhere in the Bible does it actually say that God wants you to be happy.  In fact, the New Testament talks often about suffering for Christ, and that we are supposed to somehow take joy in it.  The only thing I can find that talks about God giving us happiness is in Ecclesiastes (and, by the way, Solomon repeats this several times throughout the book):

A person can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in their own toil. This too, I see, is from the hand of God, for without him, who can eat or find enjoyment? To the person who pleases him, God gives wisdom, knowledge and happiness, but to the sinner he gives the task of gathering and storing up wealth to hand it over to the one who pleases God. (Ecclesiastes 2:24-26)

Well, isn't that special.  So, we're not suppose to take joy in other things in life (except our wives, as Solomon says in 9:9), just in work.   That's all well and good if you've somehow managed to find something you love to do, but in this day and age, that seems to be getting harder.  In my own work, I felt (and still feel) that I got stuck in a rut - that, because I had started working in computers when I was 17, I was destined to always do hardware work in computers, a field that held no interest or joy for me.  I was, in fact, miserable at work, not only because of the fact that I was doing work I didn't want and couldn't seem to get out of it, but because depression doesn't really work that way.  Simply having a better job wouldn't crack the cycle of thoughts that kept me locked in.

"What were those thoughts?" you might be asking... well, a lot of it had to do with exactly the sermons I had been hearing.  It went something like this:

1. I'm unhappy.
2. God wants me to be happy.
3. God should be all I need to be happy.
4. If God is not making me happy, I don't truly love God.
5. Ergo, I am a horrible person for wanting more than God.

And #5 would push me further toward #1.

There were other cycles as well (First, I can't be happy until I fall in love, I can't fall in love until I'm happy; Second I can't be happy until I get a better job, I can't get a better job until I make more money so I can afford to switch careers, I can't switch careers because no one is interested in someone with no experience, I can't get experience because I can't get job in that field, There's no hope for getting out of this job; etc.). 

All of it was predicated on a mistaken idea that happiness was some goal I had to achieve or some place I had to get to in my life, and, like a physical journey, I was depressed that I couldn't make that leap from where I was to the new city of happiness.  What I had to learn was that every little step I took was a tiny victory, a victory to be celebrated because it was a step away from where I had been.  Instead, I was taking a step, looking at the journey ahead and mourning, and taking two steps backward. 


So... what's the point of all this?

When you tell people who aren't happy, "Get happy," you aren't helping.  You're actually making the problem worse. 

Instead, it's important to remember that not only did God give us His Word, but He also gave us talents.  Some of the people with those talents have turned them into successful careers in the psychology and counseling industry.  Instead of encouraging people to "let go and let God," you'll be doing them a bigger favor, and showing them you love them because you understand that their problems are more difficult than your skills are capable of, if you encourage them to seek counseling. 

And before you do, go into counseling yourself.  There is no stronger message that convinced me to seek it out myself than to talk to a friend who was going through it as well, and telling me how much it helped her. 

I now consider myself a happy person.  I'm certainly miles better than I was, and even though there are moments where I get overwhelmed still, they come less often and less powerfully than they did before.  I'm not "cured" or "better," I simply have a better toolset at my disposal for dealing with depression when it comes.