Is it Wrong to Hate Life? What Does the Depressed Christian Do?

Who is to blame? Your wife is asking you questions and requesting your help around the house or with running errands. Your boss gives you two projects on top of what you are already working on. You wake up one Wednesday morning, still recovering from the flu and your car breaks down, in the rain, on your way to work. Oh yeah and you have doctors appointments that day plus a schedule full of other errands and to-do’s. A favorite saying of mine is “when it rains, it pours” meaning that when something goes wrong, the world decides it will pile as much “wrongness” as it can on top of that initial annoyance. Maybe it’s always raining and it’s our attitude that decides when it pours. Maybe our hearts decide how wet our soul is going to get from the rain.

I see two options, either life isn’t really as bad as it seems or it really is and the hard part is learning to think (trick yourself into thinking) that is is not. I guess I will throw in a third option for the “well at least your glass has something in it” people who refuse to say something is half full or half empty, life could be bad and good and it involves not over exaggerating problems while learning to not overreact to negative experiences. If I am honest with myself I usually oscillate between all three view points. Really, I almost feel bi-polar over my inability to have a stable assessment of life as I experience it.

There are days where I am untouchable, nothing phases me. While other days, well let’s just say that some days I can honestly say that if I was killed on my drive to work I tell myself it would be best. That sounds awful I know, but remember that the Apostle Paul himself said that there were times where he questioned his desire to live based on what he was experiencing in life. I’m just being honest here. If Christians are ever going to help each other someone needs to come out and say look, I know I should be happy and content in all situations, but today I just want it all to end so I can finally catch a break, so I can find some rest. Still, I find myself on some days neither content or distraught, the day passes uneventfully, some good things happen and I experience some junk as well.

There is this part of me that feels like I should be this sunny person every day that praises the Lord for just being alive and able to enjoy His blessings. But the devil on my shoulder whispers “what kool-aid are you drinking, things are not o.k. in life, look around you”. Whether or not I personally am experiencing something negative, a Christian is constantly surrounded by people who hate and loathe the very things we love. While in traffic I am exposed to an uglier side of people. America is in a very delicate situation and political parties on both sides are slandering each other. The liberals are accused of being God hating, baby killing, homosexual loving destroyers of freedom and the constitution, while conservatives are hated for being Religiously blinded, poverty ignoring, health care denying, destroyers of the human spirit and progress.

Do you realize how difficult it is to wake up and feel any optimism if you truly take in all of what’s wrong with the world? Of course I want to die sometimes… that is way too much weight on anyone’s shoulders. Even Jesus himself limited the scope of his mission. Yes, I said that. The Son of God himself knew it was too much to handle for a man. He was about his Father’s business but He realized that if He allowed Himself to become distracted, He would lose heart. That is why we often see Jesus going to places by Himself. He had to recharge from everything. He was constantly surrounded by sick, bleeding, puking, crying, cursing, starving, hateful, hopeless, Godless people. That was His life all day every day, until he purposefully took himself out of it.

So I find myself lost in Los Angeles. My family is close, but I keep busy and don’t stay in touch like I should. My only friends were my Church friends, and they are in San Diego. I am becoming closer to my new Church family, but I live 30 minutes away from them but it’s almost 1 hour away in traffic, which is almost on any day except Sunday. Maybe I have ignored Jesus’ example in removing myself from it all. I don’t study or pray anywhere near as much as I should, but I can honestly say that those times when I do read God’s word and spend time talking to Him I feel better. To clarify  I don’t just mean  “praying” and saying thanks for this and please prevent this, but actually talking to God and saying “Lord, I feel messed up, I can’t handle this right now, give me strength, guide my mind to better things. Make me a more positive and useful person. I’m stuck and I don’t know what to do”. Something I have been trying to do lately is to stop asking God for an answer or specific outcome. I just tell Him that I am stuck, I don’t know what to do or how to act or what to think. Then I ask Him to be with me and guide me and do whatever is necessary.

Usually the answer comes in the form of increased guilt over sinful actions or thoughts, or the reinforcement of correct thoughts and actions. I guess at our core we are Pavlov’s dog. For those who never took a Psychology course in college, Pavlov demonstrated that you could control a dog’s reaction by associating unrelated events. If the dog was consistently fed when a bell rang, eventually just ringing the bell would illicit salivating due to the anticipation of food (even though food wasn’t visible). Maybe God has a way of teaching us how to respond by helping us associate feelings with sinful or acceptable events.

I may at times hate life more and become more depressed as a natural reaction to trusting and relying on God less.

Obviously I am still sorting everything out, but it would seem like growing weary of life and depressed is natural AND acceptable to a point. Most of the greatest men in the Bible give accounts of feeling hopeless and surrounded by evil. While those feelings are usually not condemned outright, we are usually shown the remedy lies in how we view God and the strength of our relationship to Him.

One thing I know for certain, feelings of despair and depression that are left unchecked will destroy the soul and lead to a habitually sinful outlook on life. But I don’t know how much despair and depression is too much or how long someone can be depressed before it is sinful. It’s a topic I plan on returning to with some insight from the fields of Cognitive Science and Psychology. God made our bodies work this way for a reason. Knowing how they work might help us uncover the reason.