This topic came up rather impromptly the other day during a discussion I was having with some men regarding the indwelling of the Holy Spirit within us upon acceptance of Christ and the continued temptations of Satan and his minions afterwards and the failings of the flesh.
I was a bit astounded when one of the men, generally accepted as a mentor or leader of the group, made a comment that if you have God in your life and in your heart, you cannot have depression.
This automatically raised my internal flag as to not sounding right on various levels and I needed some further clarification. In the past, and admittedly even today I still question my own progress and growth in spiritual faith when I feel slightly down. The question creeps in "If I know God and place my trust into Him, why do I feel crappy?"
I had shared very minimally my past with one or two of the men present but never to the details of suicide or just how deeply depressed I was. To my surprise, this blanket statment seemed to have hit a chord with quite a few of the men who also seemed to question this revelation.
"Depression is the absence of 'hope', and if you know and believe and trust in your God's word, then you also have 'hope'. I submit that if you have no 'hope' then you do not know God."
Take a few minutes to let that sink in, as I have the last few days myself. Now this might not sit 100% well with you, and trust me, it didn't sit exactly hunky-dory with the rest of us either until more explanations and definitions were given.
We came to the agreement over the course of the next half hour or so that the term 'depression' is taken for granted and encompases such a variety of conditions it has been accepted by most people today to mean everything from "I had a moment" to "I had a bad day" to further degrees of "I want to kill myself and I hate everything in sight."
Perhaps those that had a "bad day", just really had a "bad day" and aren't really depressed to begin with.
It was also agreed that chemical imbalances in the head are not symptomatic of not being a believer of not having hope. Some people do indeed have a real physcial problem in which the brain is not producing the correct levels of serotonin or hormones. It's not because they haven't accepted Christ or know the word of God, but their nueral transmitters really not firing off correctly in the brain.....This is a far cry from saying "I feel depressed today because it's gloomy and cold and rainy oustide."
The mentor submitted to us, that a good portion of depression outside of 'real' chemical imbalance and sickness lies with the fact we make eveything out to be about 'us'. That is, the focus of events are no longer about God and His plan, but we selfishly shift the focus unto ourselves.
One of the best ways to break this cycle is to shift the focus off of ourselves and back to Him and in helping others. One man said the cure is a 10 step process.....Do something nice for someone else...and then do it at least 9 more times. The thought process being is that we are blessed when we help someone else out and it takes our minds off of our own problems. Continue to do this and you have no time for your mind to beat yourself down as it is occupied elsewhere. If occupied in doing things for others not only are you investing in eternal rewards in heaven, you chances for sinking into depression are reduced.
The more I think about this....the more it begins to make sense....at least it does to me. So I've been chewing on this the last few days now and am trying to make a mental note of doing things not for myself but for my wife, my neighbors, my coworkers....even when I really don't want to...because at the end of the day it's not about me...
But then again, it always nice to sit back and pontificate on 'what should be', but to put in practice is something entirely different.
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