Depression, Anxiety, and the Christian Life: Practical Wisdom from Richard Baxter by Michael S. Lundy with an introduction by J. I. Packer.

One of the strangest steps of faith I’ve ever taken as a pastor was telling a depressed Christian to stop reading the Bible. This Christian was in a terrible dark hole of depression and was tormenting herself every day by spending long periods ransacking the Scriptures for a verse that would cure her depression. She was frantic and desperate in her search and every day her “failure” only deepened her depression as she concluded that she must have been abandoned by God. It also left her mentally and even physically exhausted. Bible reading seemed to be harming rather than helping her.

I felt that her mind needed a rest and that she would never recover unless she stopped this daily self-torture. That’s when I said that she should stop reading the Bible for a short time to let her mind rest and to rebuild her emotional reserves. Then she would hopefully be able to read the Bible again with profit. I wasn’t 100% sure it was the right course of action but it seemed like the only option. I did make sure her husband read a verse or two of Scripture to her every day but insisted that she was simply to listen during these seconds and then not think about it any more. Thankfully this strange strategy seemed to work within a couple of weeks. She gained a measure of mental relief, and before long she was able to read the Bible again for herself, just a verse a day to begin with, and not suffer for it.

This was a rare situation, of course. It’s not the norm. But I was intrigued by similar advice Richard Baxter gave to depressed Christians concerning the duty of meditation:

Meditation is not a duty at all for a melancholy person, except for the few that are able to tolerate a brief, structured sort of meditation. This must be on something furthest from the matter that troubles them, except for short meditations like sudden, spontaneous prayers said out loud. A rigid and protracted meditation will only frustrate and disturb you, and render you unable to perform other duties. If a man has a broken leg, he must not walk on it until it is set, or the whole body will suffer. It is your thinking faculty or your imagination that is the broken, hurting part. Therefore, you must not use it to reflect upon the things that so trouble you.

Perhaps you will say, “That is profane, neglects God and the soul, and lets the Tempter have his will!” But I answer, “No, it is simply to refrain from what you cannot presently do, so that by doing other things that you can, you may later do what you cannot do now. It is merely to postpone attempting what (at present) will only make you less able to do all your other duties. At present, you are able to conduct the affairs of your soul by sanctified reasoning. I am not dissuading you from repenting or believing, but rather from fixed, long, and deep meditations that will only hurt you.”

Depression, Anxiety, and the Christian Life: Practical Wisdom from Richard Baxter by Michael S. Lundy with an introduction by J. I. Packer.

The Accidental President: Harry S. Truman and the Four Months That Changed the World by A. J. Baim.

This is a captivating and beautifully written book about the first four months of Harry Truman’s presidency, which the author argues were the four most world-changing months in American history.

Perhaps the most striking aspect of Truman’s early life is its sheer ordinariness, and yet God placed him in an extraordinary office during an extraordinary time. There was nothing in his education, his family background, his finances (or serious lack of them), or his working life that would have given the slightest possible hint as to his future role.

Looking back, however, his biographer highlighted one pivotal period in his life. Truman took seriously ill with diphtheria while in first grade and was packed in snow to try and reduce his dangerous fever. He ended up being paralyzed for a year, but it was during that year when he took up reading. He read the Bible, especially Matthew and Exodus, but he also read a set of books, called Heroes of History. As he read about Moses, Cyrus, Hannibal, the Duke of Wellington, Ulysses Grant, and many others, he noticed one common trait in them all. Here’s how he put it in his diary:

“In reading the lives of great men, I found that the first victory they won was over themselves . . . Self-discipline with all of them came first.”

It was a trait that he himself quietly cultivated and strengthened over many years and through many difficult providences, never realizing the greatness he was being prepared for.

Who knows what God is preparing you for. Sometimes, like Truman, all the self-sacrifice seems to lead nowhere. It’s all pain and no gain. But God may be preparing you for a great task many years down the road. In the meantime, keep building that muscle of self-discipline, which, of course is made even stronger by Spirit-discipline.

Like Truman, you may find that there’s nothing accidental in God’s plan.

The Accidental President: Harry S. Truman and the Four Months That Changed the World by A. J. Baim.

Depression, Anxiety, and the Christian Life: Practical Wisdom from Richard Baxter by Michael S. Lundy with an introduction by J. I. Packer.

As we’ve already noted, Richard Baxter understood that there was often a physical cause in depression and recommended medicine in such cases. But he also recognized that there were often spiritual causes of depression. For example, he mentions:

1. Most commonly some temporal loss, suffering, grief, or worry that has affected them too deeply.

2. An excessive fear of common if nevertheless dangerous situations.

3. Too strenuous and unremitting intellectual work or thought, which has confused and strained the imagination too intensely.

4. Fears, too deep or too constant, and serious, passionate thoughts and cares about the danger of the soul.

5. The major predispositions to it are a frailness of faculty and reason, joined with strong emotions .

6. In some cases, melancholy is ushered in by some heinous sin, the sight of which those guilty of it cannot bear, once their consciences are finally awakened.

Depression, Anxiety, and the Christian Life: Practical Wisdom from Richard Baxter by Michael S. Lundy with an introduction by J. I. Packer.

Depression, Anxiety, and the Christian Life: Practical Wisdom from Richard Baxter by Michael S. Lundy with an introduction by J. I. Packer.

After introductory essays by J. I. Packer and Michael Lundy, this book the presents modernized text of Richard Baxter’s writings on depression. The first is “Directions to the Melancholy about Their Thoughts,” the second is “The Cure of Melancholy and Overmuch Sorrow, by Faith,” and the third is on “The Duty of Physicians.”

In the first, Baxter lists no less than 35 symptoms of depression, all of which are related to the spiritual aspect of depression. It’s an astonishingly detailed and accurate insight into the spiritual dimension of depression. I’ve never come across a more insightful x-ray of the depressed mind and soul of the depressed Christian.

Some of the most striking are:

19. Their perplexed thoughts are like unraveled yarn or silk, or like a man in a maze or wilderness, or one who has lost his way in the night. He is looking and groping about, and can make little of anything. He is bewildered, confused, and entangled even more, filled with doubts and difficulties, out of which he cannot find the   way.

22. [Depressed] individuals have lost the power of controlling their thoughts by reason. If you convince them that they should reject their self-perplexing, unprofitable thoughts and turn their thoughts to other subjects or simply be at rest, they cannot obey you. They are under a compulsion or constraint. They cannot push out their troublesome thoughts; they cannot redirect their minds; they cannot think about love and mercy. They can think of nothing but that on which they do think, as a man with a toothache can think only of his pain.

34. Few of them respond positively to any reason, persuasion, or counsel. If it does seem to satisfy, quiet, and cheer them for the moment, the next day they are just as bad as before. It is the nature of their illness to think the way they do. Their thoughts are not cured, because the underlying disease itself remains uncured.

35. Yet in all this distress, few of them will believe that they are depressed, and they hate being told that they are. They insist it is merely a rational sense of unhappiness from being forsaken and under the heavy wrath of God. Therefore, they can hardly be persuaded to take any medication or use other means for the cure of their bodies. They maintain that they are well, being confident that it is only their souls that are distressed.

What’s so helpful about Baxter’s list is that depressed Christians can so readily identify with it. It rings true in their experience. They read it and say, “He gets it. He understands me,” thus making them willing to consider his prescriptions and directions. He obviously had sat with many depressed people and listened so long and so carefully that he could eventually articulate their experience even better than they could. What a door-opener to the reception of his counsel!

How should we respond to Christians with depression? Baxter urges pity and sympathy.

This is the miserable case of these unfortunate people, greatly to be pitied and not to be despised by anyone. I have spoken here only what I myself have frequently observed and known. Let no one look down on these individuals; persons of all sorts fall into this misery: educated and illiterate, high and low, good and bad, as well as some who previously lived in decadent self-seeking and sensuality until God made them aware of their foolishness.

Depression, Anxiety, and the Christian Life: Practical Wisdom from Richard Baxter by Michael S. Lundy with an introduction by J. I. Packer.

Here’s the video for Expedition 34 in Exploring the Bible. If you want to bookmark a page where all the videos are posted, you can find them on my blog, on YouTube, or the Facebook page for Exploring the Bible.

If you haven’t started your kids on the book yet, you can begin anytime and use it with any Bible version. Here are some sample pages.

You can get it at RHB, Westminster Books, Crossway, or Amazon. If you’re in Canada use Reformed Book Services. Some of these retailers have good discounts for bulk purchases by churches and schools.

Depression, Anxiety, and the Christian Life: Practical Wisdom from Richard Baxter by Michael S. Lundy with an introduction by J. I. Packer.

In his introductory essay, Michael Lundy argues that denial is a common response to mental illness and that this is often accompanied by peculiar assertions that attributed it either to sin or to the direct working of the Devil. But , he warns, “misdiagnosis leads to mistreatment, and that to a cascading set of problems.”

What happens if someone’s symptoms and behaviors and wrongly attributed to willful and sinful decisions?

1. “It absolves the observing community of the responsibility of coming alongside the individual in a supportive capacity” and it may serve to allow the community (i.e., local church), “to pressure the afflicted member until he has ‘repented’ or ‘gotten serious’ about his faith.”

2. It leads to the individual repenting of sins that can be identified but produces no relief, which then leads to the repenting of imaginary sins which is also ineffective in relieving mental and emotional distress.

While sin has a role in the general condition of mankind, there is not necessarily “a logical causality between a particular sin or patten of sinful behavior and a particular malady.” Lundy cautions:

“So this whole business of sin and sickness should make for a great deal of humility. We should be very hesitant either to blame others’ sickness on their particular sin or to hold them entirely blameless when we are short of the sort of vision allotted to Christ.”

So, in answer to the question, “Are psychiatric illnesses the result of sin or not? Are individuals to blame, or are they not responsible for their fate?” Lundy insists, “For the most part, we are left with the much more general sense that sickness and suffering in the world are distributed in ways that defy our comprehension.” Lundy points to Richard Baxter’s treatment of depression as exemplary:

Cognizant of the tension between loosely linked causes and effects, he seems to refuse to blame people for what they cannot help, while simultaneously refusing to acquit people of certain duties they can and must discharge. In the middle, he requires friends and family to do what the ailing souls cannot be expected to do themselves, yet demands of them what they alone can deliver. Baxter is at the same time gentle and difficult, generous and demanding.

Lundy encourages a similar balance in trying to repair broken humanity:

The rush for “the right medication” is just as overreaching as have been prior purely psychological formulations, or purely “spiritual” ones. A naïve optimism is unlikely to weather the difficulties of the repair work, and that can lead in turn to despair. An informed understanding of what must be attempted, and perhaps accomplished, better positions patients, physicians, pastors, family, and friends for what often proves to be “enduring to the end.”

This is what Lundy finds in Baxter. As such he paraphrases Baxter’s opening words in Advice to Depressed and Anxious Christians: “See to the condition of your own soul, and consult with your own pastor and your own physician, and apply their advice as appropriate.”

Having summarized Packer’s and Lundy’s introductory essays, we’ll look at Baxter’s own teaching over the next week or so.

Depression, Anxiety, and the Christian Life: Practical Wisdom from Richard Baxter by Michael S. Lundy with an introduction by J. I. Packer.