Warning: our WordPress has a feature where it scans a post to see how readable it is based on style, format, and length. This one has a big red frowny face as the score. So be warned.
Try reading through Psalm 42 and 43, then reading a couple of bold headings then taking a break. Rinse and repeat until you finish.
Soul Care from the Psalms #1— Psalm 42-43
Dementors, Depression, and Psalms, Oh My!
We’ve spent the last two months taking drastic measures to care for our physical health. Absolutely good and important to take care of our physical health (Got to start watching what I’m eating + exercise more…). A recent headline from the NYT is one of many mentioning the quarantine’s impact on our mental health: “Coronavirus Lockdown May Spur Surge in Mental Illness, U.N. Warns”. It’s essential to care for our mental health.
But have we recognized what impact shelter in place is having on our souls?
I worry that the lockdown may spur a surge in spiritual illness. This is based both on my personal experience and from talking with friends. We’re faced with great challenges. How can I stay spiritually healthy while being physically cut off from the Body of Christ? How can I cling to God when so much of the nourishment that comes from meeting together in person has been taken away? Thankfully, the author of Psalm 42-43 knows what we are going through. Like us, his ability to worship with the people of God has been disrupted, most likely because he’s living in a foreign land.[1]
The psalmist gives words to how we feel using a stirring image: It’s a scorching day in the desert and the deer is dying of thirst. The deer approaches a familiar watering hole. Pressing its way through the reeds, it finds the pond cracked and dry. Empty. And so it goes on in search of water. As a deer pants for flowing streams, so my soul pants for you, O God…
The psalmist has been cut off from communal worship, so he pants for God.
We can’t meet in person, so we pant for God. Our souls are dry and barren.
To make things worse, his sense of bereavement from God and disconnection with his community leads to and is compounded by symptoms of clinical depression.[2] He cries day and night. He can’t control his feelings. He has no appetite. Food turns to gravel in his mouth. Many of us already have experienced negative mental and emotional and physical effects as we continue to deal with coronavirus restrictions and the associated uncertainties about the future. If we haven’t, we may in the days to come.
We pant for God, but the psalmist shows us how to persevere.[3] We may be at a loss, but these psalms gives us a blueprint for responding to spiritual depression. This is a precious gift from God for times like these.
How do we care for our souls during this time? How do we hold on to faith when the normal sources of water are dry? Let’s learn from the psalmist.
Preach to Yourself
The first step in soul care is to preach to yourself.
In spiritual depression (or in depression for that matter), your feelings and moods talk to you. They’re an annoying younger sibling copying what you say. They grate on your nerves. Depression shouts in your ear. Or it can sound like the steady dripping of a leaky faucet that never goes away. It’s a dull buzz of pain in the background of everything. In 42-43 the psalmist is bombarded by the scorn and ridicule of people who don’t believe in God. The voices are loud, they are persistent, and they are persuasive. They may be internal or external.
So what does the psalmist do? He rebukes himself and he preaches: “Why are you cast down, my soul? Why are you so disturbed with me? Hope in God!” The fact that the same refrain shows up three times reveals that this is an ongoing habit. He habitually challenges his feelings and preaches the truth to himself.
It’s important to note that he doesn’t ignore his emotions. The psalmist is very much in touch with how he feels, to the point that he’s able to make poetry describing his condition. He doesn’t just suppress them, he expresses them creatively.
While he acknowledges his feelings and expresses them, he also doesn’t automatically accept what they say about God. A different way of saying this: he doesn’t let his negative feelings affect his view of God negatively.[4] His feelings and struggles are true and important so he devotes time and energy to understand and capture them artistically. But he doesn’t allow them to distort the truth about God and God’s Word.
I have a lot of personal experience dealing with negative emotions. I’ve had mild depression for a long time, sometimes more severe, sometimes less. One of the things I gradually learned was that my feelings at any given moment can totally color the way I see reality and see God. If I feel bad, everything is bad. If I feel unlovable, I believe that no one loves me.
When I went to a Christian counselor as part of my seminary education, he quickly put his finger on a major issue I had related to depression. He told me that “I irrationally select negative evidence.” Basically he meant my depression was distorting my view of reality. I select negative evidence that confirms how bad things are and ignore good things that are happening. I see everything and everyone, including God, through the lens of depression.
Let’s get to the dementors. In the Harry Potter series, Dementors are dark hooded figures that feed on happiness and thus cause depression and joylessness in their victims. But their ultimate goal is to administer the Dementor’s Kiss; they pull the very soul out of your body and leave you an empty husk, alive but without any self or personality or will. In Harry Potter the characters fight back by mustering up a happy memory (not an easy task when the dementors are sucking all your happiness away) and casting a Patronus charm. This produces a shimmering animal that chases away the soul-suckers. They have to fight depression with joy.
Spiritual depression is a real life dementor, and the psalmist shows us how to resist. Instead of listening to his feelings and accepting what they say about God, he preaches to himself. He doesn’t let his view of reality and his view of God become discolored by what is an extremely serious case of depression. If you listen to your feelings unreflectively, you’ll get sucked dry. If you stuff your feelings, you aren’t being real, and they probably will bubble up in interesting and unexpected ways.
The psalmist does neither. He does not say “Oh I’m great, I totally feel like God is there” when he doesn’t. He doesn’t say, “These bad things are happening to me, I don’t feel like God is there. So He isn’t. He doesn’t love me.” He says, “I feel forgotten and rejected…but why do I feel this way when I know God is faithful? Hasn’t he shown Himself to be trustworthy in the past? How might my feelings be distorting my view of God?” Just because you feel rejected by God doesn’t mean he has forgotten you. Just because you feel unloved by God doesn’t mean He doesn’t love you.
Don’t deny your feelings, understand and express them. But don’t stop there, don’t just listen to how you’re feeling, preach to yourself. It’s your Patronus charm.
Preach to yourself persistently and patiently
Spiritual depression is not a quick fix. The psalmist is persistent and patient in preaching to himself. In fact, he repeats the same refrain three times—“Why are you cast down my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God!” And we can learn from his example.
There are certain medicines (anti-depressants + anti-anxiety medicine for example) that slowly build in your system and must get to a certain level before they have an effect. I think many take 4-6 weeks before you experience the positive benefits. Often patients have to try many different drugs and combinations of those drugs to determine the proper cocktail and dosage.
When taking these medications, you have to be persistent. You must consistently take the proper dosage every single day so it can have an impact. Not only that, you have to take the medication for weeks before seeing any impact whatsoever.
It is the same with spiritual depression. If you’re spiritually depressed, recognize how your feelings influence your view of God and your experience with God. Your feelings are real. They are true. They are important. But they must be put into conversation with God and God’s Word, and this medication must be taken consistently in order to have an impact.
So find ways to consistently preach to yourself, and find which methods work best. It could be listening to sermons. It could be listening and playing worship music (I often sing hymns / songs to myself as a way of preaching to myself). It could be reading the Bible individually or in a group.
One method I would especially encourage: have someone else preach to you to help you preach to yourself. Share your struggles with someone and ask them to remind you about the truth of God. Great quote from Bonhoeffer: “…the Christian needs another Christian who speaks God’s Word to him. He needs him again and again when he becomes uncertain and discouraged, for by himself he cannot help himself without belying the truth…the Christ in his own heart is weaker than the Christ in the word of his brother; his own heart is uncertain, his brother’s is sure.”[5] I lean greatly on people like Ashley and Dan for this. By hearing them speak the truth to me and remind me of who I am, I can better preach to myself when I am alone.
To care for our souls, especially during dry times, we must patiently apply the truth even when we can’t see an immediate effect. We are not living in normal times, so we probably won’t feel normal. But let’s not let ourselves exacerbate our condition by giving in to our feelings of discouragement.
We also must be consistent. If you fail and days go by without thinking about God, don’t lose hope. Pick yourself back up and start trying again. If you’re overwhelmed by negative emotions and are convinced you can’t do anything, when you simply don’t have the motivation to fight back, tell someone. Lean on the Body of Christ. Let them preach to you and remind you of the truth about yourself and God. It’s not easy, but it’s worth it.
But what does the Psalmist preach to himself? What truths do we put in the arena with our feelings?
Hope in God, it won’t last forever
Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God (Psalm 43:5).
Negatively, preach to yourself that how you feel will not last forever. Emotions don’t stay the same. It’s impossible to feel something with the same intensity forever. People who have lost loved ones describe their grief coming in waves. One moment could be a tidal wave of anguish. The next wave could be a gentler hollow feeling in the gut. What’s true of grief is also true of depression, and anger, and euphoria, etc.
While people might say “I’m depressed” and think that there it’s a constant state of unending melancholy, in reality there are good days and bad days, at least for me. If your willpower was totally sapped and you couldn’t muster the energy on Monday, pay attention to how you feel on Tuesday. Has the fog lifted? Is there less inertia? If so, use the opportunity to pray and meditate on the truth!
This period of spiritual torpor may not be as short as you would like. Jesus was tempted for 40 days. Israel wandered for 40 years (though God certainly gave them plenty of chances to end the hike earlier). Your spiritual depression may last a long time, but not forever. And that can give us hope. “God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.”[6] Preach to yourself that it won’t last forever. God will provide you a way of escape to help you endure it. He doesn’t say He will take it away immediately, but He will give you the means to endure, provided you take the escape route.
Hope in God, you aren’t struggling alone
Send out your light and your truth; let them lead me; let them bring me to your holy hill and to your dwelling! Then I will go to the altar of God, to God my exceeding joy, and I will praise you with the lyre, O God, my God. Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, My Savior and My God (Psalm 43:3-5)
Second, remember that you aren’t struggling alone. The psalmist pants and thirsts for God, yet prays that God would act, that he would “send his light and truth” to lead him into God’s presence. In the New Testament, Jesus says that He leaves us His peace in the person of the Holy Spirit.[7] The Holy Spirit is our Guide and Comforter and Helper.[8] As believers we have God’s very Spirit as a guarantee of His love and our future inheritance.[9] He pours out God’s love in our hearts and makes our identity as God’s children real to us.[10]
We must preach to ourselves to persevere, but we aren’t alone—God’s Spirit bears witness with our spirit. God’s Spirit pours out love in our hearts. He is an oasis when we can’t find any other water.
We see this truth in the refrain too. A literal translation of “my Savior” is “the Savior of my face.” When you are depressed people can see it in your face and body language. You stare at the ground. You can’t make eye contact with people. You drag your feet. Your shoulders are slumped. To be “the Savior of my face” is to take a depressed person and cheer them up. Other translations say “the Help of my countenance.” It’s to encourage and give them strength to the point where they can hold their head high. The Maker of the universe, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, is also a loving Father who cares how we feel. He sees his children dejected and struggling, and puts it upon himself to make them laugh, to make them feel better.
God is the one who changes my body language. God makes me feel better. The psalmist preaches to himself to trust in God to lift his mood and bring him out of spiritual depression. But God is our Hope, and we are not alone. So we can confidently say, “Hope in God, for I shall again praise Him, my Salvation and my God.”
Hope in God, Look to Jesus
You aren’t alone in your dejection. God cares how you feel! Not only this, Jesus himself understands what you’re going through. Jesus was rejected and abandoned by his disciples. He tasted betrayal and loneliness. Like the psalmist, Jesus knew what it was like to be mocked by unbelievers. He heard the voice of scoffers and faced the temptation of the devil to renounce God. He even experienced the desolation of being forsaken by God on the Cross. And yet He was faithful and humble and obedient, even to the point of death. Because of His obedience, God raised Him from the dead and exalted Him above every name in heaven and on earth.
We can endure spiritual depression only by seeing God’s faithfulness to Jesus. God used the sufferings and agony of Christ to do the greatest good history has known, and even in the darkest moments of despair God never ultimately abandoned His Son. If that’s true, would He ever abandon us forever? Would He ever leave us alone?
As disciples of Christ we follow Jesus through temptations and trials and abandonment and suffering. We follow Him to the Cross. We live lives of self-sacrificial love. And in the midst of it all, we trust that God will exalt us.
Depression might say your feelings will never change, that you’ll always be miserable, but God is the lifter of your head. With God you can never be hopeless because He is your hope. Be patient. Preach to yourself as you wait for him to restore to you the joy of your salvation. Hope in Him to lift your head. Know that as we wait and obey, He will exalt us once again, and we will respond with praise and adoration. Our isolation from the Body of Christ will not last forever. Don’t let the dementors win.
I Have to end with a quote from D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, from whom I “borrowed” most of this post:
“You must turn to yourself, upbraid yourself, condemn yourself, exhort yourself, and say to yourself: ‘Hope thou in God’—instead of muttering in this depressed, unhappy way. And then you must go on to remind yourself of God, Who God is, and what God is and what God has done, and what God has pledged Himself to do. Then having done that, end on this great note: defy yourself, and defy other people, and defy the devil and the whole world, and say with this man: ‘I shall yet praise Him for the help of His countenance, who is also the health of my countenance and my God’.”[11]
I pray with the psalmist, Father, that You would send out Your light and truth to lead us to praise You. I pray that Your Holy Spirit would be comforting us in our suffering and struggles. I pray Jesus you would living waters, and you would refresh our souls.
P.S. Next week we’ll be looking at Psalm 1.
[1] 42:4
[2] 42:3
[3] Most commentators treat 42 and 43 as one since they share a word for word refrain in 42:5, 42:11, 43:5
[4] The same could be said for overconfidence or narcissism distorting reality—just because you feel you’re great doesn’t mean you are, just because you feel like God is affirming your decision doesn’t mean He is. We must test our feelings with Scripture and with wise mentors.
[5] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together pg. 22-23
[6] 1 Cor. 10:13
[7] John 14:27
[8] John 14:15-17
[9] Eph. 1:14
[10] Romans 5:5; 8:16
[11] D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Spiritual Depression pg. 21