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Dealing with Depression Psalm 42 - 43.

Introduction

"Why are you downcast O my soul? Why so disturbed within me?" These words are stated three times in Psalms 42 and 43. They make a very clear statement in the beginning it is normal sometimes to be depressed. It is part of life. I think we need to realise that particularly because some Christians (and indeed not just Christians) find it hard to admit that they have problems. This is especially just so with problems of a psychological nature. If you break an arm people give you sympathy but if you are depressed people don't know what to say, they avoid you and sometimes say tactless things such as "pull yourself together".

Maybe you can relate to some of that. If so and if you read the Bible you will see that some of God's great saints and servants sometimes did have times of deep struggle, sadness and depression. Three times the refrains "Why are you downcast O my soul? Why so disturbed within me?", occur in Psalms 42 and 43. Eugene Peterson in his contemporary translation of the Bible, The Message, translates this "Why are you down in the dumps dear soul? Why are you crying the blues?". The words are a sort of chorus and suggests that the two Psalms need to be read as one. In addition Psalm 43 has no title which is unusual for this part of the Book of Psalms. It suggests it may originally have belonged to Psalm 42. We will therefore read them as one.

As we talk about depression there are two things that I would like you to bear in mind. Firstly most of you won't be feeling depressed. It maybe also that you have never had any serious depression and there is no history of it in your family. However please keep listening. We are a body and we not gather just to feed our own souls but to worship God by helping others to get fed. There may be people that need your help. And has I have already hinted this is a problem which is sometimes hidden. In addition who knows what life has in store for you and when you may be facing such a situation.

I am speaking generally. Not all that I say applies to all depressed people. There are many reasons why people get depressed and since there are many causes there are many routes out of the depression. As a result we always need to think carefully about what we say. What I say in general may not be applicable individually. When people are deeply depressed, sometimes almost to the point of not being able to say very much, there is a temptation to want to fill the silence. Sometimes we feel we must make suggestions or we want to argue people out of their problems. However we need to be careful and make sure that we think and listen before we speak.

One commentator (John Goldingay) summed up the thoughts of problems by the Psalmist in each section with these words "parched, overwhelmed and misjudged". I think these are good heading with which to look at the feelings and attitude in the Psalm.

Parched 42 :1-5.

The writer begins by comparing himself to the deer in the mountains on a hot summer's day. As the animal is thirsty so his soul is spiritually dry and parched. He writes "my soul thirsts for God" (42: 2). So distressed is he it is as if his own food as been tears (42 : 3). And to make things worse people make snide comments saying "where is this God you believe in?" he can remember wonderful times of worship in days past. He can remember when he used to be "leading the procession to the house of God with shouts of joy and thanksgiving among the festival throng". In this first stanza there is something we can learn both about the causes and possible helps when facing depression.

Sometimes depression has spiritual causes. Here the man explicitly sees the seeming absence of God from his life as the cause of his despair. Sometimes guilt, sense of worthlessness comes from un-confessed sin and pride. When these are big and serious and persistent things and when we don't deal with them they weigh heavily on our hearts. Sometimes anger and hurt that are not expressed turn in on us. Sometimes it is unbelief, that is a refusal to believe that God can forgive. Sometimes we rebel against God's particular will, ie a refusal to accept God's particular path for us in life, and it cuts us off from God's love and joy.

The Psalmist doesn't say what the explicit cause is but the man knows that coming closer to God will sort out his problems. He remembers when God was present in the past.

In one way this might be the cause of his problems. A depressed mind is sometimes one that is to much lodged in the past. I remember once talking to a number of people as a counsellor at a big Christian festival. The first two days there was a common theme when people came to talk. They were feeling down because it wasn't like it used to be. They remembered a wonderful time of fellowship, learning and worship from two to three years previously. But now things seemed to have moved on.

The root problem was they were in love with fellowship of the past and not the God of the present. This is a common problem as Christians get older. We are tempted to look back to some mythical golden age of fellowship, particularly when you first join the Church when everything seemed to be "happening". If that is the case, the focus is wrong. We are called to worship God not the Church. However the past is double edged it can also be a help. If we can remember the good things that God has done in the past then we can say to ourselves God does not change. Therefore he is still a God who loves me. It is good to develop the discipline of thanksgiving. We read in Hebrews 13: 8 "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and for ever". Similarly it describes God that way here (42; 9) - God is a rock.

Having said that sometimes the cause of depression is spiritual it is also true that some depression has physical causes. Sometimes people who have had no previous history of mental health problems and have no major live changes become inexplicitly depressed. Sometimes this can come from the side effects of medicine. Where there are physical causes then physical treatments can sometimes help.

If we step back and look at our society as a whole it is a society where God is very much absent. My hunch is that spiritual causes are at the root of a lot of depression today. We are a nation in the middle of a spiritual drought. Inside people are crying out for God. There are desperate for healing. Many people are living lives of frantic debt filled purposelessness. They are living only to die. There are people who are desperate to know they are loved just as they, are warts and all. They want to be accepted. There are people who have hurt people and are desperate for forgiveness. They want to know that they can be washed, made clean and begin their lives again.

Overwhelmed 42: 6-11

The theme of the second stanza might be described as being overwhelmed. Again the writer remembers places from his past. The heights of Hermon and Mount Mizar. As he thinks about mountains he thinks all about the waterfalls that run off them. His experience of life is such that he feels that he is being drowned in his problems, he feels overwhelmed such that he cannot cope. He cries out "deep calls to deep in the raw of your waterfalls, all your waves and breakers have swept over me." v.7

Have you ever felt like that? I feel so depressed and I am being treated unfairly at work, my car has broken down, I have bills I can't pay and the children are being awful? Or have you felt like this? - I feel depressed and my sons marriage has broken down, I scraped the car while parking it, my neighbours are gossiping about me, and there is something wrong with me but the doctors don't seem to be able to work it out. So many things have gone wrong I can't cope. I feel overwhelmed. And sometimes the causes of feeling overwhelmed are such that we can't quite put our finger on them. As we look at how this man prays I think we can learn two things that might be help. 1) Let yourself go. 2). Think yourself clear.

Let yourself go. The man feels overwhelmed yet in the middle of all this he prays "deep calls to deep in the raw of your waterfalls". Situations of desperation make us think what really matters. We pray what we really think and we pray without pretending. Desperation makes us face up to what we might have done wrong and take responsibility for our actions. Sometimes when we pray if it's only in the last five minutes the real me talks to the real God.

Not only does desperation make us real it makes us real to God. We need to let is out to him. For the first time in this Psalm the man actually directs what he says to God. Look at v 9 he says "I say to God my rock, why have you forgotten me? Why must I go about mourning oppressed by me enemy? My bones suffer mortal agony as my foes taunt me".

Think yourself clear. Wrestling and struggling in prayer helps us to see things more clearly. This is because in prayer to God we are engaging with a different point of view on our situation. God's point of view. Sometimes we need to argue with ourselves and say however bad and persistent our feelings this is the truth about my situation. These are the real facts about my life.

This is at the heart of what the man here is doing. He speaks to himself three times and says "Why are you downcast o my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God for I will yet praise him, my saviour and my God." He is analysing and thinking why am I so down.

Of course that may not be helpful. When we are down there is a temptation to interpret everything in the worst possible light. If we spend too much time thinking about ourselves we may end up feeling worse. Sometimes it is simply impossible to think.

Orde Wingate was a somewhat unconventional General in World War II. He suffered from manic depression. He describes his depressive episodes in these words "it is impossible to describe the kind of horror engulfing me at these times. It was worse because it was without form or limit and it swallowed up the whole of my existence". What do you do in such circumstances? I think all you can do is trust. That is what Orde Wingate did. He carries on "after two or three of these attacks I hit on a sort of formula which I said to myself as the waters closed over my head and went on repeating "God is good", I used to say over and over again. It had to be something simple because my anguish prevented any thought processes and it had to be something I really believed in".[in Orde Wingate - Irregular Solider, page 56, Trevor Royle, 1995].

The second part of the Psalmist's prayer is important. He says "put your hope in God for I will yet praise him my saviour and my God". In other words he decides to trust God. Sometimes in life that is a desperate screaming trust. All else seems unbelievable and all we can do is cry out "God is good".

Misjudged Ps 43.

The writer prays out "Vindicate me O God and plead my cause against an ungodly nation". Although the writer keeps repeating things we see that he has moved on a bit. He is not locked in with himself and he is praying to God. After parched and overwhelmed the particular feelings he is describing here could best be described as misjudged. He is misjudged, slandered, defeated in battle by another nation or people who don't honour God.

Some of these causes may seem very ancient but I think they reflect contemporary concerns. We have a world around us that piles lots of false expectations on us. It misjudges us. Alain de Botton is man who has recently written a book called "Status Anxiety". By status anxiety he means a pernicious worry that ruins extended structures of our lives with the fear that we are failing to conform the ideas or success laid down by society. As a result we risk being stripped of our dignity and respect. It is a worry that we are currently occupying a two modest rung society and are about to fall onto a lower one. [Status Anxiety, introduction page 3-4 (paraphrase), Alain de Botton, Penguin 2004]

Part of the cause is that we are fed high and unrealistic expectations. In the UK 10 billion pounds plus is spent every year on advertising. The writer continues "we may be happy with very little when we have come to expect little. We may by miserable with much when we have been taught to expect everything". [ibid.. page 62]. The world around us today whispers constant messages to us you are not ok, you are not ok, you are not ok.

This is untrue. We are not valuable because of where we live, or of the job we have or what we own or our success's. We are valuable because God made us. God is the supreme craftsman and he doesn't make junk. We may throw away our phones but God never makes throwaway people. It is even more so because of Jesus. Every person is precious because Jesus blood was shed for them.

Jesus

I want to end by turning to Jesus. Here are two wonderful things that Jesus says to a depressed person.

I have been where you are. I understand. Jesus was fully human and knows what human suffering is. He knew what it is to be parched, overwhelmed and misjudged. Parched, because literally on the Cross he cried out "I thirst". In addition he knows what it is to be spiritually parched because when he died he cried out again "My God my God why have you forsaken me". He knows the pain of a soul cut off from God.

Overwhelmed: in that second reading from Mark Jesus prays "my soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death" (Mark 14: 34) at that point I think Jesus for the first time felt the awfulness of the rottenness and ugliness and horror of the sin of mankind as it was placed on himself. No wonder he felt overwhelmed.

Misjudged: when Jesus died on the Cross he died as an innocent man for crimes he had not committed. He was mocked and laughed at, abandoned by his friends and executed between two criminals. He was the most perfectly innocent man in the world - no one deserved less to be on the Cross than he did.

I have come to rescue you. As Jesus has come to where we are he can take us to where he is. He was cut off because he bore our sins. He was overwhelmed by sin so that we might know forgiveness and joy. He was misjudged and condemned so that through his blood we might be declared innocent.

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