Still looking to Christ: As I have heard from a few people since posting some thoughts on depression, I have wondered whether I should say something a little more personal. Not in any great detail, and certainly not because I think my experience ought to become anybody’s model. If anything, I would probably point to myself as an example of how confused a person can become while sincerely wanting to love Christ and understand what that means.
My hesitation is simply that I do not want the subject to become me. The point is larger than my experience. Still, personal experience can sometimes put flesh and blood on truths that otherwise remain safely theoretical. And regardless of whether one considers me a Christian or not, I have spent more than forty years attempting to follow Christ, or at the very least living within the parameters of the Christian religion while reading, studying, and attempting to understand the Scriptures.
This has been an interesting year, to say the least. So when I write about depression, confusion, loneliness, exhaustion, or a believer simply collapsing under the weight of life, there is something very personal behind those words. Earlier this summer, although I am sixty-two and in seemingly good health, I somehow convinced myself that I was getting ready to die. Looking back, I am sure the sudden death of my only friend had something to do with it. But whatever all the causes were, death became strangely present in my thinking.
At the same time, I was sleeping about four hours a night, sometimes less. As I look back now, there were undoubtedly a number of contributing factors. I was working long hours. My mind seemingly never stopped. Theology never stopped. Questions never stopped. Eventually I simply threw up my arms and walked away from the job I had held for most of my adult life. No, I did not retire. I was completely overwhelmed, and I did not know what to do. I could not deal with work. I could not deal with life. And for a while I could hardly deal with myself.
I frightened quite a few people, particularly my family and some friends at work. Looking back over that period, I still do not entirely know what happened. Maybe there are clinical words that could be attached to it. Maybe there are not. I only know that something in me had reached its limit. And I know something else. Not everything that was happening to me could be explained by doctrinal error or theological confusion.
After realizing what I had done, I actually went back and asked for my job back. Thankfully, it was still there waiting for me, and they welcomed me back. Looking back now, even that tells me something about just how overwhelmed and confused I really was. I had reached a point where I felt as though I could not continue, and then, not long afterward, I was trying to put everything back the way it had been.
And that is where my reaction came from. It was not from denying the importance of truth or doctrine, but from seeing depression, despair, and even suicide explained almost entirely through a spiritual lens, without leaving much room for the complexity of human weakness and suffering. Sometimes we simply become exhausted. Sometimes we become terribly confused. Loneliness is real. Grief is real. Sleeplessness is real. Fear is real. Our minds and bodies have limits, and knowing correct theology does not make us immune to any of those things.
In fact, if I am going to speak candidly, theology itself became part of my difficulty. I have spent a huge portion of my life reading, questioning, comparing Scripture with Scripture, and writing about things most normal people would never spend five minutes thinking about. Some of that has been wonderfully good for me. Some of it has not.
Somewhere along the way, theology became tangled up with my pride. Instead of making me more patient, more tender, and more useful to other people, it sometimes made me more dogmatic, more suspicious, and more consumed with being right. I questioned everything – especially if it came from a pulpit – and at times I think I nearly wrecked myself with theology. That is a difficult sentence for me to write.
I do not mean that Scripture failed me, or that there was somehow something lacking in Christ. I am talking about what I did with theology: how easily questions became obsessions, interpretations became certainties, and being right became far more important than I realized. To say that I was confused, and in some ways still am, would be a tremendous understatement. Maybe that is partly why I have been writing differently lately.
Truth be told, much of the time I am simply writing my way through questions that are still very much alive in my own mind. I will probably offend people along the way, and I will almost certainly change my mind about some things. But increasingly I find myself wanting something much simpler. I want to love Christ. I want to love the people God has placed around me. I want to receive this life with deep gratitude. We are all here trying to make our way through a world we do not completely understand, trying to find a little happiness, carrying sorrows other people often know nothing about, and receiving whatever mercies and blessings God sees fit to scatter across our path.
And sometimes those mercies are wonderfully ordinary. Waking up and discovering that God has given you another day. So I am not entirely sure why I am sharing all of this. I certainly do not have many answers. Half the time I am not even sure where I am going. But I think I know where to look. And if, somewhere along the way, I can point another confused sinner in that same direction – to Christ – then perhaps even some of my own confusion will have been put to good use. MPJ