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Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me?  (Ps. 42:5)

You have taken my companions and loved ones from me; the darkness is my closest friend. (Ps. 88:18 NIV)

When the sun rose, God appointed a scorching east wind, and the sun beat down on the head of Jonah so that he was faint. And he asked that he might die and said, “It is better for me to die than to live.” (Jon 4:8)

“The spirit of a man will sustain him in sickness, But who can bear a broken spirit?” (Pr 18:14) 

“O Lord, do not rebuke me in Your wrath, Nor chasten me in Your hot displeasure! For Your arrows pierce me deeply, And Your hand presses me down. There is no soundness in my flesh Because of Your anger, Nor any health in my bones Because of my sin. For my iniquities have gone over my head; Like a heavy burden they are too heavy for me. My wounds are foul and festering Because of my foolishness.” (Ps 38:1–5) 

“Nevertheless the gloom will not be upon her who is distressed, As when at first He lightly esteemed The land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, And afterward more heavily oppressed her, By the way of the sea, beyond the Jordan, In Galilee of the Gentiles.” (Is 9:1) 

“Have mercy on me, O Lord, for I am in trouble; My eye wastes away with grief, Yes, my soul and my body!” (Ps 31:9) 

“For in much wisdom is much grief, And he who increases knowledge increases sorrow.” (Eccl 1:18) 

From the days of our fathers to this day we have been in great guilt. And for our iniquities we, our kings, and our priests have been given into the hand of the kings of the lands, to the sword, to captivity, to plundering, and to utter shame, as it is today (Ez 9:7 – ESV)

Grief vs depression

Grief is the emotional response to loss and thus can and does occur when any loss is experienced. The Latin word, from which we get grief means, heavy or burdensome. The French took the word and translated it into grief and it means, to burden, afflict or oppress and that slid into injustice or misfortune.

When someone experiences loss, various emotions spring into action: sorrow, misery, sadness, anguish, despair, emotional pain, heartache, anger, denial, magical thinking, joy, peace, understanding (is that an emotion?), etc.

The greater the love, the greater the loss. In a huge way, great grief is a sign that you had a great time with the one or thing you lost. So, in that sense grief isn’t a bad thing.

Also, grief can help you realize that the person or thing you’re missing wasn’t/isn’t God. It causes us to reevaluate our lives and to reorder them to submit ourselves to God’s Lordship in our lives. “The Lord gives and the Lord takes away, blessed be the name of the Lord” (Job 1:21).

According to the dictionary, depression is, “feelings of severe despondency and dejection.”

I would say that depression is the body’s reaction to the hard things of life which results in feelings of despondency and dejection. It is deeper than simple emotions, it is emotions that have run amok and are taking over the person.

Difference

The primary difference is that grief is brought on by loss and is primarily focused on the thing lost. Depression can be caused by grief but is brought on by a switch in focus from the thing to the person. 

Grief—I   miss my wife, my job, my husband, my career, etc. 

Depression—I am such a horrible person for missing, feeling, causing, etc. or I am not being treated the way I ought to be treated by others, God, the universe, etc.

And again, grief can slide into depression as the focus switches from the object or reason for the grief to the person doing the grieving.

Mayo Clinic: “Depression is a mood disorder that causes a persistent feeling of sadness and loss of interest. Also called major depressive disorder or clinical depression, it affects how you feel, think and behave and can lead to a variety of emotional and physical problems.”

Two things to notice about this definition: (1) it is a disorder (2) it is an it.

Disorder means an abnormality or disturbance from the norm. If you take 100 people and you ask what is normal in a particular instance, whatever you come up with as normal, would be the standard and whatever wasn’t normal, would be a disorder. This is why homosexuality isn’t a disorder anymore. Things that occur often enough, become normal and thus no longer a disorder.

In the case of depression, far more people are depressed than are homosexual, and I think it is a matter of social engineering rather than definitions that have determined that homosexuality isn’t a disorder anymore. No one who is depressed thinks it’s a good idea and most people who are living as homosexuals enjoy themselves (or tell themselves they enjoy it). The genetic model is also pushing in here and saying that homosexuality is a genetic thing; though the genetic folks think depression is also a genetic thing.

Years ago, I heard a sermon about depression where the preacher began with something like, “Everyone is depressed. And those who aren’t just haven’t realized it yet.” His point was that depression is everywhere in varying degrees. People are disappointed, hurt, mistreated, misunderstood, victimized (in all the ways that that word connotates), etc. and those situations can and often do turn into depression, not necessarily or always clinical depression, but the inward and downward spiral that we call depression.

The following is from Ed Welch’s book, Depression: Looking Up From The Stubborn Darkness. As I read, notice two things: (1) how self-focused they all are and (2) how easy it would be to describe your own life experiences:

The images are dark and evocative. Desperately alone, doom, black holes, deep wells, emptiness. “I felt like I was walking through a field of dead flowers and found one beautiful rose, but when I bent down to smell it I fell into an invisible hole.” “I heard my silent scream echo through and pierce my empty soul.” “There is nothing I hate more than nothing.” “My heart is empty. All the fountains that should run with longing are in me dried up.” “It is entirely natural to think ceaselessly of oblivion.” “I feel as though I died a few weeks ago and my body hasn’t found out yet.”

Depression… involves a complete absence: absence of affect, absence of feeling, absence of response, absence of interest. The pain you feel in the course of a major clinical depression is an attempt on nature’s part, to fill up the empty space. But for all intents and purposes, the deeply depressed are just the walking, waking dead.

Abraham Lincoln suffered depression, “I am now the most miserable man living. If what I feel were equally distributed to the whole human family, there would not be one cheerful face on earth. Whether I shall ever be better, I cannot tell; I awfully forebode [sic] I shall not. To remain as I am is impossible. I must die or be better, it appears to me.”

“There was no control on my mind—thoughts ravaged me, brutally harsh ideas, thoroughly crushed ideals, incomprehensible feelings.” The mind is stuck. How can people think about anything else when it is there? “I’m in a straitjacket.” “I’m completely bound and tied up—there is a gag in my mouth.” Without one’s normal mental resources, the world is frightening. Panic. Left unchecked, hallucinations and delusions can seize the imagination with such force that they are indistinguishable from reality itself. Self-reliance seems impossible. Infantile dependence is the only way to survive. Being alone is terrifying. Abandonment is a constant fear. “I fear everyone and everything.

The only thing you know is that you are guilty, shameful, and worthless. It is not that you have made mistakes in your life or sinned or reaped futility. It is that you are a mistake; you are sin; you are futility…God has turned his back. Why bother going on in such a state? You might as well join God and turn your back on yourself too.

We’ll talk about the self-focused element as we go through, but I want us to think differently about depression from here on. Instead of thinking about it as a disorder, that which isn’t normal, I want us to think about it in Biblical terms, as a fruit of the fall. The Bible says, “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,” (Romans 3:23). People who have fallen into a state of depression are not experiencing something “not normal,” their bodies are doing what God created them to do when life gets hard. Consequently, depression isn’t a disorder it is totally in order. It is the way God has created it to be. He didn’t create us to go through the things we go through and when we do, our bodies react.

It

You’ll remember the Mayo Clinic quote above talked about depression as an it. This is very insightful and helpful for our discussion. Notice also that when I talked about depression, a moment ago, I didn’t say a person has depression or even that they are depressed, but rather depression is the body’s reaction to the hard things of life, usually sinful thoughts and actions. People say they are depressed, or that they are experiencing depression, but they are talking as if they have a disease or it has them or something like that. They are living in the popular psychological model or medical model rather than the Biblical model. But we need to think Biblically and to help them think Biblically.

Depression isn’t something someone has; it is a mood that has taken them over. They have become enslaved to it. And as with other slave owners in the Bible, they come in and take control when we begin responding in unbiblical ways to the things going on around us. With the result that depression takes control.

An illness or disease is something that comes from the outside and invades a body. Depression isn’t like that and it doesn’t come like that. Depression is the body’s reaction or response to the things going on in our lives. And how we respond to those events depends on how and what we think of those events. If we don’t think much of them, our bodies might not react at all. If we think the events are incredibly big, our bodies will react in greater ways, one of which can be depression. Sometimes, God made us such that small things bother us more than they bother other people and thus there is no sin. Other times, the way we might think about events can be sinful. And sometimes we cause our events to ramp up by our sinful or not reactions to the original events. All of these things impact whether and/or how deeply we descend into depression. 

In a counseling situation, I won’t jump right to this assessment. I want to help the counselee “discover” this for themselves. And this is how I do it:

I begin by asking them to set their depression on the table in front of us. I talk about the depression in the third person. It can be brought out and talked about. So, take it out and set it on the table and tell me about it: When did it first show up? Why did it show up? What was going on in your life? (people don’t always know what caused it, but they do know what was going on). Describe it for me. What kinds of things does it demand of you? Does it ever let up and give you any peace? What kinds of things have you tried to make it go away? Does it rule you and if so in what areas of your life? What about the other areas? Things like that. “Depression always has its reasons.”

About particular events, I’ll ask for examples and illustrations, to which I’ll use the following template to help examine those instances:

1. What was going on? 
2. What were you thinking and feeling as it was occurring? 
3. What did you do in response to the situation in which you found yourself?
4. Why did you do what you did? or What were you seeking to accomplish? 
5. What was the result? 
6. What would God have asked you to do in that same situation?
7. What can you do to prepare for the next time something similar happens?

Something else I want to do with folks in this is to start talking about what is going on in more precise and biblical terms. For example, I have heard people say that Jesus was depressed when he said, “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me.” (Mat 26:38). But like grief, sorrow isn’t depression. Depression springs up when things go past the reason for the sorrow to the inability to get anything done. Jesus was filled with deep and incredible sorrow, “unto death,” but he wasn’t in sin and his sorrow didn’t keep him from doing what God had called him to do. “He went a little farther and fell on His face, and prayed, saying, “O My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as You will” (Mt26:39). Jesus was not depressed. He was sorrowful.

You might accuse me of splitting hairs, but I believe that people need to become biblical about how they talk, think, and behave if they want to have lives that glorify God and give him pleasure. Also, thinking about their situation according to the psychological or medical model (which isn’t really medical at all) doesn’t give help or long-lasting relief. Only Jesus and the Gospel can really help and that begins by thinking about these things in Biblical terms and from a Biblical perspective.

Is Depression Sin or Sinful

If depression is the result of the way we think, it isn’t necessarily sinful itself. In other words, it may not be sinful to be depressed. If there is sin, it might be in how you became depressed, not the depression itself. So, if a person finds himself drifting or dropping, or plunging into depression, they should learn to stop and ask, “How did I get here.” One of my favorite questions is, “Where is Jesus in all this?”

Things to look for

In his book, Rethinking Depression, Daniel Berger has noticed that the DSM-5 description of Depression includes three major components of people who are suffering from Depression: (1) great sorrow (“feels sad” and “empty”), (2) guilt & shame (“feelings of worthlessness or excessive or inappropriate guilt”), and (3) hopelessness.

I suggest that as you talk with your friend, you take note of these things. Also, notice where and that they are making choices throughout their experience. They might think they can’t do anything (“the depression is so great”), but you should notice that they do make choices in their suffering. Depressed people usually eat, or get out of bed to use the restroom, or let the cat out and back in, for example.

The reason you want to notice these things is because the Gospel, which you will be pointing to in a minute or two has answers to all these situations.

Conclusion

Depression is a bodily reaction to the way we handle the stresses in our lives. People react in different ways to hard things. Depression is one of them. Depression isn’t sinful in itself but may be the bodily reaction to sin. Depression always has its reasons. We can, and should, talk about depression as a third party to the discussion. It is an it. The goal of our conversation with others is to help them understand their hearts in the situations and to see themselves and their situation through the lens of Scripture. Ultimately, the goal is to help them find joy in the life God has given them. We’ll notice things in their story that tell us that they are feeling guilty or shameful, that they are filled with sorrow, that they are hopeless, that they are making choices, and choices made prior to the depression setting in often leads to the depression setting in. And sometimes people use the depression as a way to escape from unwanted circumstances in life.

Image by Ulrike Mai from Pixabay