When the Darkness Will Not Lift: Doing What We Can While We Wait for God--and Joy
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When the Darkness Will Not Lift: Doing What We Can While We Wait for God--and Joy
80Paperback
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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781581348767 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Crossway |
| Publication date: | 12/14/2006 |
| Pages: | 80 |
| Sales rank: | 684,005 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x (d) |
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CHAPTER 1
THE DARKNESS OF MELANCHOLY
How can we help Christians who seem unable to break out of darkness into the light of joy? Yes, I call them Christians, and thus assume that such things happen to genuine believers. It happens because of sin, or because of Satanic assault, or because of distressing circumstances, or because of hereditary or other physical causes. What makes the old books that I referred to in the Introduction so remarkable is the way they come to terms with all these causes and their many combinations, and how they address each condition appropriately. The old Puritan pastors never seemed to give up on anyone because of discouraging darkness.
Long before the rise of psychiatry and contemporary brain electrophysiology, Bible-saturated Puritan pastors recognized the complexity of causes behind the darkness of melancholy. In fact, the first answer Baxter mentions to the question, "What are the causes and cure of it?" is, "With very many there is a great part of the cause in distemper, weakness, and diseasedness of the body; and by it the soul is greatly disabled to any comfortable sense. But the more it ariseth from such natural necessity, it is the less sinful and less dangerous to the soul; but never the less troublesome." In his sermon on the causes and cures of melancholy, he has an entire section on "medicine and diet." He says, in his quaint but remarkably accurate language, "The disease called 'melancholy' is formally in the spirits, whose distemper unfits them for their office, in serving the imagination, understanding, memory, and affections; so by their distemper the thinking faculty is diseased, and becomes like an inflamed eye, or a foot that is sprained or out of joint, disabled for its proper work."
THE PHYSICAL SIDE OF SPIRITUAL DARKNESS
I will not go further in discussing the physical treatment of melancholy — and its severe form, depression. This is the work of a medical doctor, which I am not. What we should be clear about, though, is that the condition of our bodies makes a difference in the capacity of our minds to think clearly and of our souls to see the beauty of hope-giving truth. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, the great preacher at Westminster Chapel in London in the midtwentieth century, began his helpful book Spiritual Depression by waving the flag of warning that we not overlook the physical. It is significant that Lloyd-Jones was a medical doctor before he was called to the ministry of preaching.
Does someone hold the view that as long as you are a Christian it does not matter what the condition of your body is? Well, you will soon be disillusioned if you believe that. Physical conditions play their part in all this. ... There are certain physical ailments which tend to promote depression. ... [T]ake that great preacher who preached in London for nearly forty years in the last century — Charles Haddon Spurgeon — one of the truly great preachers of all time. That great man was subject to spiritual depression, and the main explanation in his case was undoubtedly the fact that he suffered from a gouty condition which finally killed him. He had to face this problem of spiritual depression often in a most acute form. A tendency to acute depression is an unfailing accompaniment of the gout which he inherited from his forebears. And there are many, I find, who come to talk to me about these matters, in whose case it seems quite clear to me that the cause of the trouble is mainly physical. Into this group, speaking generally, you can put tiredness, overstrain, illness, any form of illness. You cannot isolate the spiritual from the physical for we are body, mind and spirit. The greatest and the best Christians when they are physically weak are more prone to an attack of spiritual depression than at any other time and there are great illustrations of this in the scriptures.
Gaius Davies, a psychiatrist in Britain who knew LloydJones well, observed:
Before 1954, when the series of sermons on depression was completed, no effective antidepressant had been on the market, though some progress was made towards that in 1954. Later, in 1955-6 when new forms of medication were available freely, I know how concerned Dr. Lloyd-Jones was to know which kinds of antidepressants were most effective, because he asked me about them a good deal when I was beginning my medical career, and talked to other doctors in a similar way. He wanted to know enough to be able to advise those who asked his opinion.
THE PLACE OF MEDICATION IN THE FIGHT FOR JOY
I do not want to give the impression that medication should be the first or main solution to spiritual darkness. Of course, by itself medicine is never a solution to spiritual darkness. All the fundamental issues of life remain to be brought into proper relation to Christ when the medicine has done its work. Antidepressants are not the decisive savior. Christ is. In fact, the almost automatic use of pills for child misbehavior and adult sorrows is probably going to hurt us as a society.
David Powlison, who edits The Journal of Biblical Counseling, counsels at the Christian Counseling and Educational Foundation, and lectures at Westminster Seminary, wrote of a sea change in the mental sciences in the mid-1990s:
Have no doubt, the world did change in the mid-90s. The action is now in your body. It's what you got from Mom and Dad, not what they did to you. The excitement is about brain functions, not family dysfunctions. The cutting edge is in hard science medical research and psychiatry, not squishy soft, philosophy-of-life, feel your-pain psychologies. ... Biology is suddenly hot. Psychiatry has broken forth, a blitzkrieg sweeping away all opposition. ... Medicine is poised to claim the human personality. ... The biopsychologizing of human life is having a huge effect, both in culture and the church.
His conclusion is that this preoccupation with biopsychiatry will pass, and as it does,
biopsychiatry will cure a few things, for which we should praise the God of common grace. But in the long run, unwanted and unforeseen side effects will combine with vast disillusionment. The gains will never live up to the promises. And the lives of count less people, whose normal life problems are now being medicated, will not be qualitatively changed and redirected. Only intelligent repentance, living faith, and tangible obedience turn the world upside down.
Powlison refers sympathetically to Ed Welch's book Blame It on the Brain? where Welch is willing to employ medication in cases of persistent debilitating depression. Welch says:
If the person is not taking medication but is considering it, I typically suggest that he or she postpone that decision for a period of time. During that time, I consider possible causes, and together we ask God to teach us about both ourselves and him so that we can grow in faith in the midst of hardship. If the depression persists, I might let the person know that medication is an option to deal with some of the physical symptoms.
To many, this may seem excessively cautious. But widespread scientific evidence is already reining in the initial enthusiasm about the unique effectiveness of antidepressants. One summary article in The Washington Post in May 2002 put the situation starkly like this:
After thousands of studies, hundreds of millions of prescriptions and tens of billions of dollars in sales, two things are certain about pills that treat depression: Antidepressants like Prozac, Paxil and Zoloft work. And so do sugar pills. A new analysis has found that in the majority of trials conducted by drug companies in recent decades, sugar pills have done as well as — or better than — antidepressants.
The point of Welch's caution and the Post's skepticism is not that depression or spiritual darkness is disconnected with our physical condition. They are deeply connected. The point is that the relationship between the soul and the brain is beyond human comprehension and should be handled with the greatest care and with profound attention to the moral and spiritual realities of human personhood that may exert as much influence on the brain as vice versa.
In other words, if someone reading this book is on medication, or is thinking about it, I do not condemn you for that, nor does the Bible. It may or may not be the best course of action. I commend you to the wisdom of a God-centered, Bible-saturated medical doctor. If there was imperfection in the choice to use medication, the imputed righteousness of Christ will swallow it up as you rest in him.
CHAPTER 2WAITING IN DARKNESS, WE ARE NOT LOST AND NOT ALONE
With or without medication there are other things that can be done in the midst of prolonged darkness. And I would love to encourage you in some of these. It will be of great advantage to the struggling Christian to remember that seasons of darkness are normal in the Christian life. I don't mean that we should not try to live above them. I mean that if we do not succeed, we are not lost, and we are not alone, as the fragment of our faith cleaves to Christ. Consider the experience of David in Psalm 40:1-3:
I waited patiently for the LORD;
The king of Israel is in "the pit of destruction" and "the miry bog" — descriptions of his spiritual condition. The song of praise is coming, he says, but it is not now on his lips. It is as if David had fallen into a deep, dark well and plunged into life-threatening mud. There was one other time when David wrote about this kind of experience. He combined the images of mud and flood: "Save me, O God! For the waters have come up to my neck. I sink in deep mire, where there is no foothold; I have come into deep waters, and the flood sweeps over me" (Ps. 69:1-2).
In this pit of mud and destruction there is a sense of helplessness and desperation. Suddenly air, just air, is worth a million dollars. Helplessness, desperation, apparent hopelessness, the breaking point for the overworked businessman, the outer limits of exasperation for the mother of three constantly crying children, the impossible expectations of too many classes in school, the grinding stress of a lingering illness, the imminent attack of a powerful enemy. It is good that we don't know what the experience was. It makes it easier to see ourselves in the pit with the king. Anything that causes a sense of helplessness and desperation and threatens to ruin life or take it away — that is the king's pit.
HOW LONG, O LORD, HOW LONG!
Then comes the king's cry: "I waited patiently for the LORD; he inclined to me and heard my cry." One of the reasons God loved David so much was that he cried so much. "I am weary with my moaning; every night I flood my bed with tears; I drench my couch with my weeping" (Ps. 6:6). "You have kept count of my tossings; put my tears in your bottle. Are they not in your book?" (Ps. 56:8). Indeed they are! "Blessed are those who mourn" (Matt. 5:4). It is a beautiful thing when a broken man genuinely cries out to God.
Then after the cry you wait. "I waited patiently for the LORD." This is crucial to know: saints who cry to the Lord for deliverance from pits of darkness must learn to wait patiently for the Lord. There is no statement about how long David waited. I have known saints who walked through eight years of debilitating depression and came out into glorious light. Only God knows how long we must wait. The prophet Micah experienced prolonged and painful waiting. "I sit in darkness ... until [the Lord] pleads my cause and ... will bring me out to the light" (Mic. 7:8-9). We can draw no deadlines for God. He hastens or he delays as he sees fit. And his timing is all-loving toward his children. Oh, that we might learn to be patient in the hour of darkness. I don't mean that we make peace with darkness. We fight for joy. But we fight as those who are saved by grace and held by Christ. We say with Paul Gerhardt that our night will soon — in God's good timing — turn to day:
Give to the winds thy fears,
THE GROUND OF OUR ASSURANCE WHEN WE CANNOT SEE OUR FAITH
It is utterly crucial that in our darkness we affirm the wise, strong hand of God to hold us, even when we have no strength to hold him. This is the way Paul thought of his own strivings. He said, "Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own" (Phil. 3:12). The key thing to see in this verse is that all Paul's efforts to grasp the fullness of joy in Christ are secured by Christ's grasp of him. Never forget that your security rests on Christ's faithfulness first.
Our faith rises and falls. It has degrees. But our security does not rise and fall. It has no degrees. We must persevere in faith. That's true. But there are times when our faith is the size of a mustard seed and barely visible. In fact, the darkest experience for the child of God is when his faith sinks out of his own sight. Not out of God's sight, but his. Yes, it is possible to be so overwhelmed with darkness that you do not know if you are a Christian — and yet still be one.
All the great doctors of the soul have distinguished between faith and its full assurance. The reason for this is that we are saved by the work of God causing us to be born again and bringing us to faith. "The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit" (John 3:8). We are not saved by producing faith on our own and then making that the basis of our new birth. It is the other way around, which means that God is at the bottom of my faith; and when it disappears for a season from my own view, God may yet be there sustaining its root in the new birth and protecting the seed from destruction. This was crucial in Richard Baxter's soul care.
Certainty of our faith and sincerity is not necessary to salvation, but the sincerity of faith itself is necessary. He shall be saved that giveth up himself to Christ, though he know not that he is sincere in doing it. Christ knoweth his own grace, when they that have it know not that it is sound.
An abundance are cast down by ignorance of themselves, not knowing the sincerity which God hath given them. Grace is weak in the best of us here; and little and weak grace is not very easily perceived, for it acteth weakly and unconstantly, and it is known but by its acts; and weak grace is always joined with too strong corruption; and all sin in heart and life is contrary to grace, and doth obscure it. ... And how can any under all these hindrances, yet keep any full assurance of their own sincerity?
Baxter's aim here is not to destroy a Christian's comfort. On the contrary, he wants to help us in the times of our darkness to know that we can be safe in Jesus, even when we have lost sight of our own sincerity. The witness of the Holy Spirit that we are the children of God (Rom. 8:16) may be clear or faint. But the reality is unshakable. "God's firm foundation stands, bearing this seal: 'The Lord knows those who are his'" (2 Tim. 2:19). "God is faithful, by whom you were called" (1 Cor. 1:9). "He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ" (Phil. 1:6). Baxter's words are crucial counsel if we are to survive the dark night of the soul. And that night will come for almost every Christian. And when it comes, we must wait for the Lord, cry to him, and know that our own self-indictment, rendered in the darkness, is not as sure as God's Word spoken in the light.
WHEN A CHILD OF GOD IS PERSUADED THAT HE IS NOT
Christians in the darkness of depression may ask desperately, how can I know that I am truly a child of God? They are not usually asking to be reminded that we are saved by grace through faith. They know that. They are asking how they can know that their faith is real. God must guide us in how we answer, and knowing the person will help us know what to say.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "When the DARKNESS Will Not Lift"
by .
Copyright © 2006 Desiring God Foundation.
Excerpted by permission of Microcosm Publishing.
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Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION: FAITH ALONE AND THE FIGHT FOR JOY,
To Help Those for Whom Joy Stays Out of Reach,
The Foundation of Gutsy Guilt,
The Great Work of Christ Outside of Us,
Confusing Justification and Sanctification Will Kill Joy,
John Bunyan Sees His Righteousness in Heaven,
Start with Despair in Yourself,
1 THE DARKNESS OF MELANCHOLY,
The Physical Side of Spiritual Darkness,
The Place of Medication in the Fight for Joy,
2 WAITING IN DARKNESS, WE ARE NOT LOST AND NOT ALONE,
How Long, O Lord, How Long!,
The Ground of Our Assurance When We Cannot See Our Faith,
When a Child of God Is Persuaded That He Is Not,
3 FOLD NOT THE ARMS OF ACTION,
What Matters Is Your Duty, Not Your Joy?,
Duty Includes the Duty of Joy,
Will You Be a Hypocrite If You Obey without Joy?,
Thanksgiving with the Mouth Stirs Up Thankfulness in the Heart,
4 DOES UNCONFESSED SIN CLOG OUR JOY?,
Confessing to God and to Man Is Sweet Freedom,
Give the Devil His Due, but No More,
The Devil Cannot Abide with the Light of Cherished Truth,
5 THE DARKNESS THAT FEEDS ON SELF-ABSORPTION,
How Bill Leslie Became a Watered Garden and a Spring,
What My Eighty-Five-Year-Old Father Said Was Missing,
The Aim Is That Our Words Would Be the Overflow of Joy in Christ,
Is the Cause You Live for Large Enough for Your Christ-Exalting Heart?,
6 LOVING THOSE WHO CANNOT SEE THE LIGHT,
The Amazing Grace of John Newton's Care for Cowper,
There Is No Wasted Work in Loving Those without Light,
DESIRING GOD — A NOTE ON RESOURCES,