Depression & Anxiety in the Christian Experience
This is a topic I don’t see typically discussed amongst the Christian community, unless it’s within a hyper-charismatic realm claiming that all sadness is either demonic oppression or a result of one’s separation and/or lack of faith in God — two misconceptions that I feel to be extremely harmful, unproductive and biblically illiterate.
This theology of glory creates the idea that we as Christians, if we “really know God,” should relish in the Joy of the Lord at all times — an ideology that can easily induce shame, guilt and fear in one who is already struggling and even turn them away from God altogether because of that.
The fact is, we are born of flesh in a fallen world and although we are born again in the spirit of Christ, no longer OF this world, we are indeed still IN this world and therefore will inevitably experience negative emotion.
Being a follower of God does not excuse us of pain, nor does it indicate any disfavor of us on God’s end.
In this episode, I talk about how Christianity is not all about this pollyanna positivity mindset where we cannot know grief if we know God, as evidenced in the Bible. Despite both the secular world’s push of the “pursuit of happiness,” and the hyper-charismatic Christian’s take on basking in a constant high from God’s love, we actually see all throughout Scripture that the regular experience of a follower of God is not merely positive emotion.
In fact, perhaps not even normally so.
I use Job, Elijah, David, Jeremiah and Moses as a few examples of biblical greats that suffered from emotional bouts of sorrow, despair, anxiety, and even suicidal ideation and get into specific verses that support the fact that the joy of the Lord is not a replacement of depression, but rather an addition to it.
My prayer is that you know that you are not alone in feeling depressed and/or anxious when that does come up for you by relating to these biblical figures that had deep, personal, intimate relationships with God and yet still endured emotional strife, and to leave you with the comfort of knowing all these things are temporary in His promise of eternity.
