When it comes to destigmatizing depression in the church, nothing compares to the personal revelation of a church leader.
But saying “I’m really depressed” can threaten a minister’s livelihood. Tragically, it’s happened.
Yet it can also mean saving someone’s life.
And I’m not being hyperbolic.
Growing up, I didn’t know a single church leader who fessed up to depression, and that’s probably because the church’s overwhelming attitude towards mental health was this: “If you’re depressed, it’s because you’re disobedient. If you’re anxious, it’s because you’re faithless.”
How could you be a leader and talk about depression if that depression betrayed disobedience, or that anxiety, a faithless heart?
You’d be thrown out.
So leaders didn’t talk about it. And consequently, their congregations didn’t. And then our families stopped talking about it.
Leaving only depressed children, dark in the night – worse, because now we were lonely and dark in the night.
I can’t imagine how wonderful, how life-changing it would have been to come across a church leader who talked about his depression.
Frederick Buechner writes about being “stewards of our pain,” and I think that’s a high calling for ministers, as well. To treat pain as something sacred.
To think of how we use it, and there is no greater way for a minister to use it than to spend it on helping others in pain. As Henri Nouwen writes in The Wounded Helper, “Salvation comes to us in the form of a tired traveler.”
Mark Meynell has, indeed, been a tired traveler, and he is being a steward of his pain by writing, When Darkness Seems My Closest Friend.
It’s a riveting account of his battle with depression/anxiety, and where God fits in all of it. And shame. And Guilt. And the overwhelming frustration of feeling an “almost constant sense of God’s absence” in depression. How well we know that, don’t we readers?
In an age where it’s hip for people to say “I’m messy” while looking amazing and doing social butterfly things, Meynell writes about depression that “makes one withdraw in self-defence. Its endgame is solitary confinement, deceiving us into the thought that we are better off alone… We are thus ensnared in the hell of depression’s cave.”
Meynell has done many things in life, including teaching in an East African seminary, serving on the senior ministry team of All Souls Langham Place in London, and now as the Europe and Caribbean director for Langham Preaching (founded by John Stott).
And now, writing this wonderful book.
Here’s our conversation.
WC: What made you write the book?
Meynell: It grew out of a particular process of therapy. I have discovered over the years that I tend to clarify my thoughts on things by writing.
So my psychologist encouraged me to do this more deliberately. So it was never initially designed to be read by anyone other than me and close family.
But I did share a few sections with others struggling with similar battles and they all urged me to make it more widely known.
Obviously the final version is much more considered and reworked for a wider audience, but the heart of it is substantially the same.
WC: What would you say to a Christian leader struggling with depression who might want to speak honestly about it, but fears that he might damage his credibility, and, at worst, even lose his ministry?
Meynell: Whether we have mental health challenges like this or not, we all need to have close, trusted friends with whom to share battles and challenges as well as joys and encouragements.
Ideally, these friends are not part of the churches we lead.
Apart from anything else, we all need to be accountable to others. So the most important thing, by far, if someone is battling like this is to tell somebody. If there is no one you can trust with this, then it is a matter of urgent prayer for God to raise someone up.
Depression does generate fears and paranoia in our minds, and so such fears are precisely the kinds of things that hit us. People are gradually becoming more aware of the issues these days, so often those fears are completely unfounded.
However, I have heard a few horror stories of leaders being assured that they can speak in confidence only to find that drastic action is taken once they do.
I guess the bigger issue for all of us in leadership is to grow healthy churches where honesty about our brokenness is the norm. That takes time.
WC: You talk, in the book, about the fact that genuine guilt produces depression, but also that depressed people tend to obsess over “imagined guilt.” How can we tell which is which, and what do we do about “imagined” guilt?
Meynell: I think the issue firstly is that we don’t think it is imagined but genuine! That’s the problem. So we need to discern between the two. That often takes a more objective view – so this is another reason why we need trusted friends. They can be a benchmark and help us to recalibrate our ‘guilt indicators’. And where we feel genuine guilt, we must throw ourselves on God’s mercy and acceptance in Christ – we are safe in him.
But where it is imagined, we need to make a practice of bringing those feelings to the Lord intentionally and reminding ourselves repeatedly that they’re baseless. Our acceptability to Christ is paramount. The gospel really is the foundation for our spiritual health.
WC: You talk about “depression fatigue” and the longing for a “permanent rest.” It can be exhausting to try to combat depression.
To what extent should we accept that depression/anxiety will be a part of our lives versus trying to continually combat it?
I find that fighting it almost adds to the depression because when we lose the battle, or when our hope is dashed, the depression grows even worse. Should we just stop trying to fight depression and accept it, or is that too fatalistic an attitude?
Meynell: This is a very good question and hugely complex. It seems that mental illness submerges us in a whole range of vicious circles!
There is such a variety of ways that these challenges present, as well as different time-frames. The spectrum seems to go from chronic and lifelong battles to a solitary but gruesome immersion even for just a few weeks. So we can never generalise. I can only therefore speak from my own experience.
I do think, however, that a healthier phrase is ‘manage our depression’. This may or may not result in ‘overcoming it’ – but the point is to have short-term patterns and goals. A day at a time, a week or month at a time.
We then try to find things that help with this: good habits, medication, avoiding triggers, changing work/life patterns, and so on.
WC: You talk in the book about feeling, throughout much of your life, an “almost constant sense of God’s absence.”
I have felt the same. How should depressed people even define God’s “presence?”
Can we know if we’re feeling his presence versus something else? And finally, is looking for his “presence,” in the traditional sense of the feeling, an exercise in futility for depressives that leaves us more depressed than before?
Meynell: I don’t know how to define it!
I do think that so many of our doubts about the Christian life derive from unrealistic or even plainly false expectations.
We need to search the Scriptures to see what the Lord does actually promise, especially in terms of what is to be expected of this life as opposed to the next.
The promises are what keep me going – and the clear sense I get from the scriptures that my experiences and doubts are not unique at all.
The great biblical heroes of the faith had comparable challenges to believe.
That’s why the Psalms are so helpful. There are definitely days, though, when I just wish He’d make it just a little bit easier and show himself more! I need to learn to content myself better to the blessings and supports he does offer us through his people and his creation.
WC: Within the Reformed tradition, there’s a great emphasis on the severity of sin and just how unrighteous we stand before God, pre-Christ.
In his hymn, “Alas and did my Savior bleed,” Isaac Watts famously describes himself as a “worm.” Growing up, my wife heard a pastor say, “You’re not a worm. A worm doesn’t sin. You’re worse than a worm!”
I get it, but people with depression tend to be self-loathing, and it’s very hard to go from “I was born a depraved worm” to “I’m a son or daughter of God.” We recognize how to get there, theologically, but emotionally, it’s very difficult.
As a leader, do you have any suggestions for how the church should address this?
Meynell: It’s a huge problem. I guess Biblical theology is important here.
The Bible doesn’t begin with Genesis 3, but Genesis 1-2!! We’re created in God’s image. That is NOT destroyed by sin, only severely damaged. So our starting point must be our creation.
The second step must be our redemption. Yes, we’re sinners of course – but that’s definitely not the last word, nor even the central word. We’re rescued sinners.
I think the emphasis in Reformed circles perhaps derives from a right concern for people not to be naive about the realities and battles – they’re lifelong and insidious.
But at the same time we mustn’t allow people to see their identity in their sin. Ironically, that’s precisely what the world does to those who transgress its norms. Because of Christ, we KNOW we’re made AND saved in Him. That is who we are!
Paul’s ethics, for example, are never, “you must try
harder”; they are always, “be who you are, in the security of knowing that that
is who God made us.”
WC: You give some recommendations at the end of the book for
songs, books, and poetry for depressives. Can you give a couple of your
favorites?
Meynell: All time favourite – William Styron’s Darkness Visible – A memoir of madness. Brilliant secular account by a great novelist.
Favourite Christian book is Zack Eswine’s, Spurgeon’s Sorrows. Superb account of the preacher’s own life and how he taught and spoke about his own mental illness.
WC: Finally, is there anything good that can come from depression and anxiety?
Meynell: If it means we approach the Lord with greater humility and dependence upon him, that must be good.
For me, it has made me far more accepting and open to those who have battles and brokenness of their own.
A church community where everyone is like that is surely an attractive and safe place for people to find home and peace.
ABOUT MARK: Mark Meynell has been involved in university student ministry, taught in an East African seminary, was on the senior ministry team of All Souls Langham Place for nine years, and is now director (Europe & Caribbean) for Langham Preaching. He blogs at markmeynell.net.
