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Rethinking Depression and Anxiety

There are some things we get ourselves into trouble with that are the result of direct poor choices we have made.  There are other things that trouble us because they are afflictions we did not directly choose, burdens seemingly placed upon us that seek to destroy us.  Most of us would say that the first describes sin -even all sin (which often has lumped in with it things like depression and anxiety)- and the second describes something else, such as having a debilitating illness.  But in the context of what the Bible teaches, these overlap and both describe sin.  

Many sins involve deliberate, poor choices.  Take adultery, for example.  Still, we know from Scripture that even bad decisions stem from what's already in the heart.  Other sins or spiritual maladies, in particular what our spiritual forefathers would call “besetting sins," are more heavily on the spectrum of crippling afflictions than they are deliberate poor choices.  To understand this distinction is important, because I've witnessed too much bad theology promoting the idea that we just "choose" our way out of some of these things that plague us, such as depression and anxiety.  In my experience, the idea that I can fix myself by applying the right formula or choices has been part of my problem, not the solution in areas such as depression.

This is not to remove our responsibility, and it's not to say that there are not things we can or should repent of (for example, perhaps we need to repent of being preoccupied with fixing ourselves and instead trust the Lord).  It is simply to say that sin is more broadly a condition of captivity that we need a Liberator to free us from or to walk us through for His purposes to bring us to another place.  In that sense, some struggles that we would typically call “sins” are shaped more like conditions to endure - even "crosses" to endure- as we seek the Lord’s leading and wisdom and yearn for eventual deliverance from it, whether in this life or in the life that is to come, which is our ultimate hope.  Such crosses become occasions not for us to rely more upon our own resources to fix ourselves rather to empty us of leaning on our own strength so that we would rely on His as we endure.

The German Protestant Reformer, Martin Luther, had a word that included things like this in it.  "Anfechtung" is a German words that encapsulates more than one idea, making it tough to translate into a single English word, but suffice it to say that the word describes all the "stuff" we face in this broken world -temptations, trials, illnesses, difficulties- things that we did not directly choose and which we cannot readily fix by our own efforts.  There were a few conclusions that Luther came to about Anfechtung, but at risk of oversimplifying for the sake of brevity, Luther taught that such things, though they may be assaults from the devil himself, are nevertheless tools in the hands of our good Father to stifle the Old Adam in us in order that the new man, the man of faith in the Lord's promise, would emerge.  

May we learn, in our afflictions that we did not choose and which cannot seem to fix, to indeed still seek ways to find relief, yet at the same time allow them to do their work in crushing the self-reliant, victory-and-glory-obsessed flesh so that the new creation in us instead enjoys the gift of the Gospel as a forgiven yet fragile and limited creature living in a broken world until his Master returns.


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