A believer sings the blues
(This was the talk called Life under pressure – depression at City Church)
Follow this link to listen to the podast
Psalm 42-43
In a society as wealthy as ours, it is surprising that there is so much unhappiness around.
“At least half of the people in my circle of friends are on Prozac, or have taken it at some time, On the surface, we all seem to be coping, doing well even, with good jobs and a great social life, but scratch the surface and you’ll discover a lot of unhappiness. I think most of us are living a lie - pretending we’re having a better time than we actually are. I know that’s the root of my depression. It started with a gnawing sense of unease about my job.”
Eileen Condon – Lifestyle magazine
But, some people are not just unhappy – they are depressed - depression and related illnesses are part of modern life. Clinical depression affects about 16% of the population on at least one occasion in their lives. It is currently the leading cause of disability in the United States as well as other countries, and is expected to become the second leading cause of disability worldwide (after heart disease) by the year 2020, according to the World Health Organization.
Christians have a unique insight into unhappiness. The Bible says that we are unhappy because we don’t know the God who made us. The real key to happiness is knowing God personally.
Yet what happens when a Christian finds that they are not that happy after all, worse, what happens if they discover they are depressed? My experience is that Christians are not all that good at dealing with depression… why?
Many Christians with a depressive illness find that other believers put this down to a spiritual failure of some kind. “You are depressed”, they say, “Because you don’t have enough faith… you have sinned in some way… or maybe you are not really a Christian after all”. The result of this is more depression and horrible guilt.
If you have ever been at the receiving end of this kind of treatment, there is a character in the Old Testament you might like to know about. His name was Job and he was one of the godliest people who ever lived. Through a series of tragedies he lost everything he owned and most of his family. He wound up sitting on a rubbish heap trying to understand what had happened. Then, three of his mates turned up and tried to cheer him up, yet all they could do was tell him that his unhappiness was his own fault. It seems that if you are a Christian facing depression you can guarantee that three others will turn up and make things worse!
There is a better way. Another Old Testament character helps us to chart a course through a crisis.
The worship leader
Read Psalm 42 and 43 (they were originally one song, not two) and it tells the story of a worship leader from Jerusalem who used to sing in the temple. For some reason we are not told he is exiled to the north where he has lost the lively fellowship and worship he once enjoyed and where the locals only make fun of his faith in God. His mood has dropped beyond sadness; he cannot break free from the dark feelings inside him. At the least, he is suffering from mild depression. And yet he is not giving in, he fights the hopelessness he feels and really believes that God will lead him out of it.
Read the psalm.
We don’t know who wrote this, but Bono (lead singer of U2) once wrote a useful comment on it:
“Forced into exile and ending up in some no-name border town facing the collapse of his ego and abandonment by God. But this is where the soap opera got interesting; this is where David was said to have composed his first psalm - a blues. That's what a lot of the psalms feel like to me, the blues. Man shouting at God, 'My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Why art thou so far from helping me?'
The fact that the scriptures are brim full of hustlers, murderers, cowards, adulterers and mercenaries used to shock me; now it's a great source of comfort.”
Introduction to the Psalms in Pocket Cannons
We have a tendency to see the people who wrote the Bible as super holy, but they weren’t; they were super-ordinary and some of them were super-sinners. They were just like us. Two things stand out about this particular poet:
First, his ego is in free fall – I bet he was quite a compassionate guy, but now all he can think about is himself - “Why have they done this to me, what are they saying about me, why does no-one care about me? When is this going to end?”
Second, he feels utterly alone, even God has abandoned him “Where is God, why has he put me out of his mind, why doesn’t he care?”
How do you conduct yourself when you feel this way? If you are a well taught evangelical Christian you will probably just hide it all away and pretend everything is fine. The other strategy is to ‘self-medicate’ the problem; drink alcohol until you feel better. Not this guy, he is howling the blues at God and anyone else that will listen! He was a worship leader, now he is a blues singer.
But, when all is said and done, he is a ‘Christian’ blues singer! He does not just moan, there is a profound purpose in his song, Derek Kidner remarks on this, “Throughout the psalm there has been a growing reliance on the things that cannot be shaken, although the storm of suffering shows no signs of abating”
A believer sings the blues
First, his song is honest with God. Psalm 43:2 is such a powerful line! “You are God… why have you tossed me aside?” (New Living Translation). We get nowhere by offering God our prissy, conformist, sanitized, sterile, bland prayers. He is the only being in the universe that can bear to see things the way they really are! Sing him an honest song; tell him the way things really are.
Having said this, he sings of his trust in the God he cannot see or feel. The chorus repeats three times “I will put my hope in God, I will praise him again, my Saviour and my God”. In case you don’t know, that is what faith looks like. Faith is a choice, it is choosing to trust the God you cannot see or feel. When a Christian sings the blues, no-one else may be listening, but he believes that God is listening and that one day God will act.
This kind of faith expects God to keep his promises. There’s a picture of this in Psalm 42:8-9; it feels OK during the day, the Lord ‘pours his unfailing love on me’, he could feel a glimmer of God’s love as warm as sunlight on a winter’s day. The feeling lasted into the night, but not for long; “I say to God my Rock, why have you forgotten me” he sings in the darkness. But here’s the principle: when you are in the darkness, hold on to the things you knew were true in the good times, when you felt the sunlight. That’s what he is doing when he says to ‘God his Rock’ – he is hanging on to the one who was his foundation in the good times.
And in the darkness he continues to do the right things believing that his feelings will change eventually.
At this point it is worth asking the question, should Christians take medication to help overcome depressive illness? I get asked this a lot, and my answer is always yes.
Imagine being at the bottom of a well, you are fifty feet down and there’s no way to climb the walls and escape. Twenty feet above your head there is a ladder, if only you could reach that ladder you would be able to climb out by yourself. Problem is you cannot reach the ladder. You need someone to raise the water level so that you can get hold of the ladder and climb out by yourself.
A doctor can help raise the water level by prescribing the right medication. Refusing to take medicine is, in my view, quite foolish. Good friends can raise the water level, too. We do this when we give our support, our prayers and when we are totally faithful and encouraging.
Meanwhile, what is our blues singer doing? Well he is praying… and he is singing (42:8)… but he is also actively waiting. That phrase he uses three times, “…put your hope in God” means literally, “I must wait for God”. That plugs us directly into one of the mightiest passages of the bible:
Do you not know?
Have you not heard?
The Lord is the everlasting God,
the Creator of the ends of the earth,
He will not grow tired or weary,
and his understanding no-one can fathom,
He gives strength to the weary,
and increases the power of the weak,
Even youths grow tired and weary,
And young men stumble and fall,
but those who wait upon the Lord
will renew their strength,
They will soar on wings like eagles,
they will run and not grow weary,
they will walk and not grow faint.
Isaiah 40:28-31
Faith waits for God, and waiting brings its reward! Waiting is doing the right things believing that God will break through eventually, that your feelings will change eventually.
Another blues singer put it like this:
Weeping may endure of a night but Joy comes with the morning.
Psalm 30:5