Category: Serving Mentally Ill Christians

Serving Jesus by serving you.

Should I Take Medication?

What’s Your Take on Christians Using Antidepressants?

by Pastor John Piper

I’m going to say that there are times when I think it is appropriate, but I want to go there cautiously and slowly, with warnings.

Depression is a very complex thing.

It’s got many layers. I think we all would agree that there are conditions in which nobody would deny that certain people are depressed in a pathological way because they’re immobile. They’re not even able to function.

And then there’s a continuum of discouragements and wrestlings with having an ‘Eeyore-type’ personality, which may or may not be depressed.

So that means that I want to be so careful not to have a knee-jerk reaction. When you come into my office and describe to me your discouragements, I don’t want my first response to be, “See a doctor and get a prescription.”

I fear that is way too quick today. The number of people on antidepressants as a first course rather than the last course is large.

And the assumption is that you can’t make any progress in counseling unless you get yourself stabilized or something.

So I just want to be very cautious.

As a Christian who believes that Christ is given by the Holy Spirit to deliver us from discouragements and from unbelief and sorrow and to help us live a life of usefulness, what makes me able to allow for antidepressants is the fact that medicine corresponds to physical realities.

And the physical realities are that we get headaches that make us almost unable to think. Migraine headaches can put a man out. And we are pretty much OK if the doctor can help us find some medicine that would not let us get these immobilizing headaches.

And the headaches clearly have a spiritual impact, because they’re making me unable to read my Bible and function in relation to people that I want to love and serve. And so medicine becomes spiritually effective in that way.

In the short run especially, sometimes long term—then I think, in God’s grace and mercy, we should take it as a gift from his hand.

If that physical dimension could be helped by medicine.

So we apply this principle that we all use to depression, and then the fact that the body is included in depression. Whether we should use the terms “chemical imbalances”—I’ve read both sides on that. Some people say that there is no scientific evidence for such a thing and others say that it is a given. Whatever. Everybody knows that there are physical dimensions to depression.

When God Makes Toast

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“The sinners in Zion are terrified;
    trembling grips the godless:
“Who of us can dwell with the consuming fire?
    Who of us can dwell with everlasting burning?”

Isaiah 33:14, NIV

There is a strange lack in the Church, and quite frankly, it is disturbing. Our churches have operated on nothing for so long, what we think is normal isn’t even close. We really should compare ourselves to the young Church in the early chapters of the Book of Acts. Each believer had his own personal “flame” resting and abiding on them.

“Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. 3 They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them.”

Acts 2:2-3

Our churches should be places where we directly encounter the Lord God. I would like to suggest that our elders, and our ushers, start handing out life-preservers, and flares. (Rafts, of course, should be readily available.) For who can know what will happen when we make “first contact” with the Living God. All provision for survival should be made. Ambulances should become routine when the Church meets.

Agape love can completely undo us. It seems meeting with God is a bit like dwelling in a nuclear reactor, of love and of mercy and grace.

When God’s presence rips into us full blast, we will have to decide whether to take Him in His tumultuous power, or walk away unscathed. Do we fully understand the power that we so blithely invoke? We often tolerate something less, to see that our life isn’t turned upside down. Perhaps we reason, or think, that this is the most terrible thing that could happen to us.

His special grace just can’t be filtered out without changing the gospel.

We are bread in His toaster. He sears us with divine grace. (He then slathers us with ‘butter.’) Something akin to a deep agape love singes on us, and perhaps we might easily ignite. But perhaps that is what it is all about anyway, isn’t it?

100% Pure Depression

 

depression

“Answer me quickly, O Lord!
    My spirit fails!
Hide not your face from me,
    lest I be like those who go down to the pit.
8 Let me hear in the morning of your steadfast love,
    for in you I trust.
Make me know the way I should go,
    for to you I lift up my soul.“

Psalm 143:7-8

I am not a psychiatrist nor a licensed therapist. I am just an ordinary man serving God’s flock. Yet if I were to speak I would speak on the subject of clinical depression. The stats are pretty grim. Depression affects 16.1 million people, or 6.7% of the population every year, age 18 or older. The median age is 32.5 years old. (These are just U.S. stats only.)

I’ve come to understand this much through my own struggles. It seems that there are three types of depression to consider.

These ‘big three’ seldom stand alone; they mix or overlap each other to make diagnosis difficult. Only a doctor can make that, but we can at least know that these three are most likely behind our issues. You can have these three working against you at once.

the big three:

1) Guilty depression-– when our behavior hasn’t been what it should be (sin), this is the source of condemnation. Jesus forgives us, so we should forgive ourselves. Guilty depression is very hurtful and damaging to our spirits. Often our healing will come when we draw close to the Lord Jesus.

2) Organic depression-– when it’s built into our DNA and part of our very being; it becomes fundamental to your personality. You can compare it to  someone who has diabetes or MS. We live in a fallen world and genetics affects us at this core level.

3) Reactionary depression— when we react to some bad news or injury, or working too much with no time off. We react to difficulties in this way when outside forces infringe upon our inner heart. Often God sends us an elder or a mature believer to come and help us out.  This is fortuitous indeed to have someone to speak through our confusion.

Each of these are different, but if you could identify them it may help you move through them more gracefully. These three can overlap. Perhaps it’s helpful to see reactionary depression as the most common, while guilty depression can be the most hurtful to the believer’s heart.

Satan is involved in the intensification of each.

He creeps in and slowly strangles all hope. Worship and the Word is critical and necessary weapons for us out us to walk-out clean and clear. We must defend ourselves (and others) with these weapons that the Father has given us.

Knowing the type of depression will give you understanding and perhaps this will help you defuse the situation. These things have helped me personally to work through my own issues.

“Anxiety in the heart of man causes depression, but a good word makes it glad.”

Proverbs 12:25

Statistics in opening paragraph from Anxiety and Depression Assn of America. These numbers are just for the U.S. Here is their website: https://adaa.org/about-adaa/press-room/facts-statistics

How to Die Well

“Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
   I will fear no evil,
for you are with me;
   your rod and your staff,
 they comfort me.”

Psalm 23:4, ESV

“Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints.”

Psalm 116:15, ESV

 

“Death is like my car. It takes me where I want to go.” 

Pastor John Piper

Our generation simply doesn’t know how to die well.  There are so many conflicting messages and attitudes which have steered us away from the reality of dying.  Much of it is the natural development of unbelief.  Our pop culture develops this and gives it momentum.  We are trying to convince ourselves that “death is impossible, my life will not end.’  But we’re escaping into a delusion.  We are running from what is real.

There is a Latin phrase,  Ars moriendi  (“The Art of Dying”) which the Church practiced in past generations.  In past time, Christians would be buried as close as possible to the Church building.  Many would be interred within the very walls of the Church.  The understanding was that the dead were part of the congregation.  That there was only a thin veil that stood between the living and the dead.  The dead didn’t just vanish.  They are with us.

My generation is confused.  We have forced death to wear a mask.  We insist on a significant camouflage to hide the reality of sickness and death.  No one really ever talks about it, and so no instructions are given on how to die well. So we don’t, we die poorly–in ICUs and LTCs, completely sedated, separated and unable to process it or help our families process it.  There can be no solid connection between the living and the dying. And to be very honest, this is not working.

For many, the fear of dying is intense and paralyzing.  Death brings us a terror that twists us; we don’t know how to respond to it.  Additionally there seems that there is no one available to direct us.  Death is a spooky taboo that no one really explains.  The implication is that we are simply to avoid death, ‘it may not come for you’.  But that is not what is real.

“Death avoidance” pretends to lift us above the issue, where we can imagine that we will stay separated somehow from its obscenity and ugliness.  Funerals are nothing more then an aberration.  We have become ‘teflonized’, these things just slide on and off.  We just refuse to calculate, or accept what is happening.  We have ‘molded’ our fear into a more desirable shape.  We simply cannot function in the steady gaze of what is real.  We just shut down and refuse to function. We simply pretend.

Its time for the Church to step up and guide us to our next step.  Our pastors and elders have got to prepare us to die well.  It is a part of being a disciple.  It is discipleship, and dying is inclusive.  We need somebody to prepare us for the inevitable and the certainty that is approaching us.  I need someone that will help me face my own death.

You know what?  No one escapes.  And the reality of that drives some of us mad, or addicted, or psychotic.  The idea of filling a casket up for forever is incomprehensible.  We cannot live with this sick idea of dying.  It disturbs us on the deepest level possible.  It is completely evil.

Psalm 23 has been pure comfort and healing for generations.  And it is an excellent starting point for us.  Verse 4 develops the idea of traversing death.  The writer has incredible insight of passing through death.  This verse alone is worth “billions of dollars in gold”.  Psalm 23 has made me a very wealthy man.  His Word has become my rich treasure.