OUR DERANGED AGE

'You are depressed because you have every reason to be depressed. No member of the other two million species which inhabit the earth - and who are luckily exempt from depression - would fail to be depressed if it lived the life you lead. You live in a deranged age - more deranged than usual, because despite great scientfic and technological advances, man has not the faintest idea of who he or what he is doing.'

Walker Percy in Bobby Jamieson, Everything Is Not Enough, p.116.

DEPRESSION DEFINED

'..malfunction of the instrument we use to determine reality...'

Michael Gerson in David Brooks, How to Know People, p.128.

SERVICE LEADS TO JOY

'Have you ever noticed that people who are self-focused and narcissistic are usually really unhappy, if not depressed? Sadly, I know this from experience. But have you also noticed that people who are generally others-focused and more selfless are usually very happy? That's not a coincidence. It's the way of Jesus in action. When we're down, one of the best things we can do is serve somebody else. It's the backdoor to joy. And it's always unlocked.' 

John Mark Comer, Garden City, p.279. 

THE GENTRIFICATION OF EMOTIONS

'There is a gentrification that is happening to cities, and there is a gentrification that is happening to the emotions too, with a similarly homogenising, whitening, deadening effect. Amidst the glossiness of late capitalism, we are fed the notion that all difficult feelings - depression, anxiety, loneliness, rage - are simply a consequence of unsettled chemistry, a problem to be fixed, rather than a response to structural injustice or, on the other hand, to the native texture of embodiment, of doing time, as David Wojnarowicz memorably put it, in a rented body, with all the attendant grief and frustration that entails.

I don't believe the cure for loneliness is meeting someone, not necessarily. I think it's about two things: learning how to befriend yourself and understanding that many of the things that see to afflict us are in fact a result of larger forces of stigma and exclusion, which can and should be resisted.' 

Olivia Laing, The Lonely City, p.280. 

WEALTH & DEPRESSION

'According to a global survey by the World Health Organization, people in wealthy countries suffer depression as much as eight times the rate they do in poor countries, and people in countries with income disparities - like the United Sates - run a much higher lifelong risk of developing severe mood disorders. A 2006 study comparing depression rates in Nigeria to depression rates in North America found that across the board, women in rural areas were less likely to get depressed than their urban counterparts. And urban North American women - the most affluent demographic in the study - were the most likely to experience depression.' 

Sebastian Jurgen, Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging, p.20. 

SUFFERING & THE INCARNATION

'The afflicted do not so much look for comfort to Christ as he will come a second time...as to Christ as he came the first time, a weary man and full of woes.' 

Charles Spurgeon in Zack Eswine, Spurgeon's Sorrows, p.85. 

THE SUFFERING QUESTION

'How can we entrust our sorrows to the larger story of God?'
Zack Eswine, Spurgeon's Sorrows, p.82. 

PASTORAL CARE

'When our noses are rubbed red by tissue and our hair falls out, have you noticed that we can still sometimes muster ourselves to welcome the child's drawing or the well-wisher's handwritten note? We can't take the philosopher's treatise or the theologian's lectures. The friend who motors on with sentences, too impatient with silences, must also wait to visit us on a later day. Sick inside, we simply cannot stomach a full meal. But a bit of cracker can help. A fragment of ice, a few syllables of a word timely chosen in friendship, can go a long way, sometimes, can't they?' 

Zack Eswine, Spurgeon's Sorrows, p.23. 

HUMAN WEAKNESS

'When you see men faint, do not blame them. Perhaps, by their faintness, they have proved of what stuff they are made. They have done as much as flesh and blood can do, and therefore they are faint.' 

Charles Spurgeon in Zack Eswine, Spurgeon's Sorrows, p.48. 

DEPRESSION & THE CHRISTIAN

'We do not profess that the religion of Christ will so thoroughly change a man as to take away from him all his natural tendencies; it will give the despairing something that will alleviate that despondency, but as long as that is caused by a low state of body, or diseased mind, we do not profess that the religion of Christ will totally remove it. No, rather, we do see every day that amongst the best of God's servants, there are those who are always doubting, always looking to the dark side of every providence, who look at the threatening more than the promise, who are ready to write bitter things against themselves...' 

Charles Spurgeon in Zack Eswine, Spurgeon's Sorrows: Realistic Hope for those who Suffer from Depression, p.38. 

THE MIND

'O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall
Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed.'
Gerard Manley Hopkins. 'No worst' in The Major Works, p.167.  

AN UNDECIDED HEART

The Contrite Heart

Isaiah, lvii, 15

The Lord will happiness divine
On contrite hearts bestow:
Then tell me, gracious GOD, is mine
A contrite heart, or no?

I hear, but seem to hear in vain,
Insensible as steel;
If aught is felt, 'tis only pain,
To find I cannot feel.

I sometimes think myself inclin'd
To love thee, if I could;
But often feel another mind,
Averse to all that's good.

My best desires are faint and few,
I fain would strive for more;
But when I cry "My strength renew,"
Seem weaker than before.

They saints are comforted I know,
And love thy house of pray'r;
I therefore go where others go,
But find no comfort there.

O make this heart rejoice, or ache;
Decide this doubt for me;
And if it be not broken, break,
And heal it, if it be.

William Cowper, Verse and Letters, p.147. 

SIN

'One way to say it is that depression, rage, and other problematic emotions are always caused by sin; however, the sin is not necessarily that of the individual. Our bodies, designed by God in God's likeness, experience crippling fear, depressoion or rgae because they inhabit a sinful world. My own sin may cause me to become depressed, but so may the ways in which I am sinned against. To make it even more complicated, my depression may be caused by a combination of my own sin, the sins which have been committed against me and the general sin of a fallen world which gave me faulty genes.'

Michael Mangis, Signature Sins, p.129.

LIFE

'He sat on the edge of his bed, already exhausted before the journey had even begun. What he would have liked, what he dreamed of, was some elixir, some magical, brightly colored pill that would put the spring back into his step, the gleam in his eye, the joy of life in his heart. He took quantities of pills, but they had made no difference in the way he felt. It seemed that he had been tired for years. "Before you go, dear," his wife called from downstairs, "would you see if you can do something about the kitchen drain?" This reasonable request reminded him of the variety of his responsibilities. He had taken them all on willingly, but his willingness had not produced, as he somehow had thought it might, corresponding stores of energy. Three children in college, the interest and amortization on a twenty-five-thousand-dollar mortgage, an insecure position in business, a loving and impractical wife, a balky heating plant, a leaky roof, a car that needed repairs, a lawn choked with quack grass, a driveway with weeds, and three dying elms on the front lawn seemed, along with the stopped drain, to excite his discouragement. He had taken care of himself for most of his life. He had supported his old parents and indigent relations, raised his family, greased the sump pump, balanced the checkbook, filed the income tax, assuming that an increase in responsibility would develop an increase in confidence, but what he seemed to have developed instead was some spiritual or emotional curvature, like a hod carrier's back. Sitting on the edge of his bed, he realized that what he wanted was someone who would take care of him.'

John Cheever, Journals, p.178.

SUFFERING & MINISTRY

'The lesson of wisdom is BE NOT DISMAYED BY SOUL-TROUBLE. Count it no strange thing, but as part of ordinary ministerial experience. Should the power of depression be more than ordinary, think not that all is over with your usefulness. Cast not away your confidence, for it hath great recompense of reward. Even if the enemy's foot be on your neck, expect to rise and overthrow him. Cast the burden of the present, along with the sin of the past and the fear of the future, upon the Lord, who forsaketh not his saints. Live by the day - aye, by the hour. Put no trust in frames and feelings. Care more for a grain of faith than a ton of excitement. Trust in God alone, and lean not on the reeds of human help. Be not surprised when friends fail you; it is a failing world. Never count upon immutability in man; inconstancy you may reckon upon without fear of disapointment. The disciples of Jesus forsook him; be not amazed if your adherents wander away to other teachers: as they were not your all when with you, all is not gone from you when with their departure.

Serve God with all your might when the candle is burning, and then when it goes out for a season, you will have less to regret. Be content to be nothing, for that is what you are. When your own emptiness is painfully forced upon your consciousness, chide yourself that you ever dreamed of being full, except in the Lord. Set small store by present rewards; be grateful for earnests by the way, but look for the recompensing joy hereafter. Continue, with double earnestness to serve your Lord when no visible result is before you. Any simpleton can follow the narrow path in the light; faith's rare wisdom enables us to march on in the dark with infallible accuracy, since she places her hand in that of her Great Guide. Between this and heaven there may be rougher weather yet, but all is provided for by our covenant Head. In nothing let us be turned aside from the path which the divine call has urged us to pursue. Come fair or come foul, the pulpit is our watch-tower, and the ministry our warfare; be it ours, when we cannot see the face of God, to trust under the THE SHADOW OF HIS WINGS.'

Charles Spurgeon, 'The Minister's Fainting Fits' in Lectures to My Students, p.191.

DEPRESSION

'...depression can be seen as having a very positive potential; indeed it is part of the way God has made us. It is, in reality, a part of our body's "early warning system," alerting us to the fact that something is wrong and needs to be dealt with. We may need to slow down, seek medical treatment, turn to God in repentance or allow the grieving process to take its course. Depression may be an agent used by God for our sanity (where depression is a response to loss), or our sanctification (if there is a sinful act or attitude involved). For every loss situation there is an appropriate amount of depression.'

Peter Brain, Going the Distance: How to stay fit for a lifetime of ministry, p.70.

SUFFERING

'Strange as it may sound, it is yet true that much of the suffering we are called upon to endure on the highway of holiness is an inward suffering for which scarcely an external cause can be found. For our journey is an inward journey, and our real foes are invisible to the eyes of men. Attacks of darkness, of despondency, of acute self-depreciation, may be endured without any change in our outward circumstances. Only the enemy and God and the hard-pressed Christian know what has taken place. The inward suffering has been great and a mighty work of purification has been accomplished, but the heart knoweth its own sorrow and no-one else can share it. God has cleansed his child in the only way he can...'

AW Tozer in Nancy Guthrie (Ed.), Be Still My Soul, p.89.

DEPRESSION

'We should be ashamed of ourselves.

Not the sufferers of clinical depression, but the rest of us. Throughout the Western world we have for years just stood and watched as our best citizens keep getting this horrific illness, offering them only blame, contempt and condescension. We Brits have been the world's worst at this.

If we are to protect our best sons and daughters and through them escape our latter-day tendency to mediocrity, we must start realizing that people who develop depressive illnesses need to be respected and nurtured. They are our doers and shakers; if we fail to recognize this, we will all lose.'

Tim Cantopher, Depressive Illness: The curse of the strong, p.100.

DEPRESSION

'No sin is necessarily connected with sorrow of heart, for Jesus Christ our Lord once said, "My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even to death." There was no sin in Him, and consequently none in His deep depression.'

Charles Spurgeon in Edward T. Welch, Depression: A Stubborn Darkness, p.32.

DEPRESSION

'Depression is a form of suffering that can't be reduced to one universal cause. This means that family and friends can't rush in armed with THE answer. Instead, they must be willing to postpone swearing allegiance to a particular theory, and take time to know the depressed person and work together with him or her. What we do know is that depression is painful and, if you have never experienced it, hard to understand.'

Edward T. Welch, Depression: A Stubborn Darkness, p.14.