Depression Series # 9 - Re-Entering The Faith

So this is the final article in my depression series ( got a little sidetracked this past weekend). But this article was originally published in the December issue of The Brew. This probably best describes where I'm at now.

Re-Entering The Faith (Dec. '06)

I recently began rereading a collection of Søren Kierkegaard’s spiritual writings, Provocations. To call it a breath of fresh air wouldn’t do justice to how much of a climax of sorts this has been for my faith.

I haven’t reached the top of some great mountain of affirmation in my faith or received from God an invigorating revelation that would plot out the rest of my life and service to him.

I’ve just realized that it’s probably safe to pick up my faith again after letting it go for a couple of years.

Like many others who struggle with some mental illness, I put my faith aside for a while in order to deal with the issues going on my life. I decided not to think through whether I was a pre-tribulation Calvinist or whether I was following God’s plan for my life. I was just going to exist for a while and see what happened.

After struggling with depression for years, I realized that my faith was part of the problem, and I took steps to fix the problem. Or, more accurately, I stopped taking steps forward in my faith.

There are a myriad of ways that a person’s faith plays a huge role in his or her struggles with depression, bi-polar and obsessive compulsive disorder, or any other of the hundreds of mental illness that exist. People can be imprisoned by an overactive sense of guilt or by a need to perform every task, sometimes repeatedly, perfectly. And some forms of faith only amplify these problems.

So for the last few years, I didn’t do anything to stand out or strive towards some new spiritual goal. I still attended church, but I pretty much sat in the back and didn’t attract too much attention. I didn’t talk to too many people about faith, Christ, spirituality, or, especially, theology. I avoided anything that would make me say or decide something definitive about my faith.

I’ve had many conversations with a professional counselor at a Christian college in Chicago about how he helped students, and employees of the college, to figure out how to fix their problems. In many cases, he suggested that maybe the people should leave the college. I couldn’t believe he suggested this until I realized how similar to the Church is to a Christian college, replete with all the same conflicts, sinners and issues. And then I saw the wisdom in that suggestion.

For some, letting go of their faith involves not attending church anywhere and stopping a relationship with God or even cutting all ties with Christianity. And why not? If someone’s faith is what is causing all the problems, then it would be masochistic to hold on to that which keeps hurting you.

I couldn’t do this, though. Even though my faith was a large part of my struggle with depression, I also knew that it was also, ironically, the solution to it. And the truly masochistic move would be to run away because I would always end in the same place, beaten down, broken and hurt. Nothing I would cling to could fix my depression or my disgust with American Christianity would ever really work or assuage my anger.

So years go by without any major actions or decisions in regards to my faith and things begin to get easier. Counseling helped me sort through issues and my church fed and nurtured me in spite of its apparent failures. The Bible began to make more sense to me; it guided and encouraged my faith. Prayer began to seem less like dropping a coin in a fountain.

My faith in the Church, and more importantly, in Christ’s power to heal and restore us, has grown more solid. I feel a little more comfortable talking about my faith, spirituality and even some theology because it has become more real during my time away from it.

So as I continue to read Kierkegaard, I can not only identify with the existential angst that he so eloquently put into words, but also the hope that faith can truly help fix my mental illness.

“Teach me, oh God, not to torture myself and not to make a martyr of myself in suffocating introspection, but to take a deep and wholesome breath of faith!”

- Søren Kierkegaard