In her book Prayer in the Night, Tish Harrison Warren notes that since the dawn of time, humans have feared the night.

Even today (or tonight), with lights and smart devices, we still confront our darkest fears in, well, the dark.

As she writes:

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“Our very bodies confront darkness each night. So each night we practice facing our truest state: we are exposed, we cannot control our lives, we will die.

In the daylight, I’m distracted. At moments, maybe even productive.

At night I feel alone, even in a house full of sleeping bodies, I feel small and mortal.

The darkness of nighttime amplifies grief and anxiety…. we are all so very, very vulnerable.”

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Accurate, no?

Yet she makes this important point: God made the night and called it “good.”

Of course, before the fall, the night wasn’t terrifying, and yet God knew there would be a fall, and created the night anyway.

Warren notes that “In wisdom, God made things such that every day we face a time of darkness,” and yet at the same time, Revelation tells us that night will be “no more,” the day will finally overcome, much as Christ overcame death.

In other words, the fear that comes with night, the time of wrestling Jacob experienced at night, will be crushed.

As such, the night is a distinctly temporal phenomenon, and it seems true that it’s always night (it seems) when we either doubt or trust God the deepest, the truest.

When I was recently hospitalized for many nights, I came to fear the end of visiting hours, the change of shifts, the way the hospital turned quiet – not for rest, but because it was so understaffed that you’d go long periods without seeing or hearing anyone except the strange white noise of a pumping IV line.

I never knew which night I was getting — one where I’d find God, or one where I felt he’d left at 8 PM, along with the other visitors.

But whatever the case, I needed to confront my faith in God every night, and I think that as both Christians and people prone to depression, anxiety, chronic pain, or anything else troubling, the nights, oh the nights — they can be awful.

In the day, we can at least try to do something about our problems, right?

At night, our problems just sit there, and we’re too tired to work on them, and too anxious to sleep on them.

And in those moments, we look for God and hope to find him with a raw passion that’s difficult to muster in the day.

Well, just remember, that in those times, God has already found us, and many times, before dawn, by God’s grace, we will realize that he is holding us, and has been the whole time.

Find a psychiatrist here.

Find a therapist here.

In her book, Suffering Is Never for Nothing, Elisabeth Elliot writes:

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“There have been hard things in my life, of course, as there have been in yours, and I cannot say to you, I know exactly what you’re going through.

But I can say that I know the One who knows.”

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By the way, this has always seemed to me the simplest and best answer to the suffering question – “I don’t know why, but I do know that God is good.”

Some Christians try to call suffering a way for God to grow us.

Sometimes, maybe. But certainly not always.

Job’s suffering was part of a cosmic dispute. He was probably the most “grown” Christian in the world at the time.

Further, we live in a fallen world where people suffer. That’s baked into the cake and every single experience we have with that cake.

If someone says God is bringing suffering to “grow you,” that’s not only cruel or theologically dubious. It’s outright blasphemy because you are speaking for God.

Now, of course, we can grow during our suffering, but it’s blasphemous to attribute our suffering to God’s plan for our growth when we have no idea why he did it.

Job’s friends tried that route, and God rebuked them severely for trying to divine his divine message.

Other Christians will say suffering is a way for God to discipline us.

Sometimes, but it seems extremely rare.

Why?

A few reasons.

First, how often did Jesus correct his disciples through making them suffer?

He rebukes those guys left and right for their daily sins, and yet he never inflicts sudden, painful suffering on them for it.

And if anyone needed to grow spiritually, it was the ones who’d soon be carrying his message to the rest of the world.

Yet there’s not a single record of Jesus inflicting suffering on his disciples as a way of “growing them.”

Second, if God used suffering as his primary means of our growth and discipline, we’d be suffered right out of existence by the week’s end.

He’s just not that kind of Father. He’s a good one. Not an abusive one, who makes us suffer every time we sin. Again, our lives would be relentless suffering if that were the case, because we sin every day.

Of course, there are loads of other, common reasons Christians give for suffering, but none really answers the question adequately which is why there are new books written constantly on the issue.

We can appreciate reading them, but deep in our hearts, we still don’t quite understand suffering, do we?

And we have to accept that’s okay.

There are a million things we don’t understand about the universe and human life itself, that we can’t explain, that we admit are beyond our scope.

Why would the enormous complexity of suffering be any different?

That’s why I like that quote from Elliot so much.

Even though she unfortunately looks for reasons in the rest of her book, I think it’s dangerous to look for reasons in our own lives.

Why God brings suffering, in each particular case? That’s unknowable.

Jesus himself says God makes his rain to fall on the just and unjust, which speaks to the mystery of suffering and the fact the answer is reserved for God.

But note that — the answer is reserved for God.

If we believe that God is loving, our Father, then the answer is safe in his hands.

Having said all that, if you’re suffering from depression, there’s help for that suffering!

Depression and other mental health conditions are medical, and a type of suffering that is, thus, best treated medically. However that looks.

And for some good ideas…

Find a psychiatrist here.

Find a therapist here.

I sometimes run into Christians who are exhausted, intimidated, and a little scared by the “spiritual achievements” of fellow Christians who seem to be superior at this whole business of being a Christian thing.

Of course, the “superior thing” is a lie. Jesus said so himself. In many places.

We all know God has given us unique gifts, and that just because So-And-So is tremendous at hospitality doesn’t mean you can’t be just so-so at it.

And one of the most beguiling and tragic phenomenons endemic to many churches is the lionization of those with the most recognizable spiritual gifts.

It’s not those folks’ faults, of course.

They’re just really, really good at pedestal things.

And that’s great. Every single person serves their role in the body.

But it breaks my heart when Christians who haven’t been gifted that way somehow think they’re inferior, that God can’t use them, that visible good works are the only ones that matter.

And, to make matters worse, the Pedestal Christians often add to the needless shame.

“How involved are you in the body?” They ask.

And we know that’s not a question, it’s a judgment, it’s because you might sit in the back row (on the weeks you go), and maybe you’re not in a Bible study, and maybe you don’t show up for city ministry day, and so therefore, you are a wishy-washer neo-pagan who needs to — heaven help me with this phrase — “get involved.”

But for many people with depression, anxiety, or any other mood disorder, “getting involved” in things they haven’t been called to do by the Lord — well, that can kind of wreck them.

And I’ve seen it happen.

They will inevitably self-implode, or grow so discouraged and frustrated that they leave the church altogether, feeling hopeless that they’ll ever be any good. Sometimes they even leave the faith.

To Pedestal Christians and Pedestal Churches, “Good Works” are determined by the “good people,” and the good people are the people doing the most (themselves), and they speak for God, instead of letting God to speak to you.

But the greatest good you can do is literally the good that anyone can do — and that is pray.

And the way to pray, as Jesus says, is to enter your prayer closet, shut the door, be alone with God, and he can use that prayer to do mightier things than all the busy bees of church.

So I will say this — if you’re struggling to even go to church, much less do stuff there, remember that you can pray.

And since God doesn’t want us to blab about how much we pray, we will suffer from the judgment of others, but God sees, he knows, and he is greatly pleased by your prayer.

Now, I want to share this passage with you from Francis Chan’s book, Crazy Love.

Chan:

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“Oswald Chambers writes, ‘Never make a principle out of your experience; let God be as original with other people as He is with you.’

To that I would add, ‘Be careful not to turn others’ lives into the mold for your own’.

Allow God to be as creative with you as He is with each of us.

….Do you believe that you were crafted for specific good works, things that god knew before you even existed?

Or do you compare your life to others and lament what you have been given.

We have a God who is a Creator, not a duplicator.”

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So please, don’t let the religious “do good works” gadflies at church bring you down.

They were in Jesus’ face, too, and they had all kinds of ideas about how he should serve.

Jesus had a very much different idea.

And he spoke with his Father every day, and his Father told him what to do, and God will tell you, as well.

He created you. And his plan for you is best. Not theirs.

And if you listen to him, you will hear the things the deaf can’t. And if you are persecuted at church for it, well, blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake.

Lean on the Lord, not the ones who want to push you down.

Find a psychiatrist here.

Find a therapist here.

Tim Keller, in his new book, Forgive, with this wonderful insight on how bitterness can destroy us by, essentially, turning us into a ghost who can’t move from the space he’s confined to.

Keller:

“Unless you forgive deliberately, thoroughly, and with all the help Christ offers, your anger will ‘defile’ you, as Hebrews says.

Our English word wrath comes from the same Anglo-Saxon root as our word wreath.

Wrath means to be twisted out of your normal shape by your anger.

And the same Anglo-Saxon word also gives us the now somewhat archaic word wraith. We don’t use it much anymore (unless you read The Lord of the Rings), but it’s an old word for a ghost, a spirit that can’t rest.

Ghosts, according to legend, stay in the place where something was done to them, and they can’t get over it or stop reliving it.

If you don’t deal with your wrath through forgiveness, wrath can make you a wraith, turning you slowly but surely into a restless spirit, into someone who’s controlled by the past, someone who’s haunted.”

W.H. Auden in “The Age of Anxiety,” on that terrible thing:

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“We would rather die in dread/Than climb the cross of the moment/And let our illusions die.”

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There’s a lot there. But I want to focus on dread. And maybe the rest for another post.

Dread is something nearly every Christian experiences, and if one doesn’t, I applaud them because even Jesus experienced dread.

So if folks use dread as a measure of spiritual maturity, well, they’ve got one-up on Christ.

If Jesus dreaded something, it’s quite ok for us, too.

Except the church doesn’t like to admit it, because we’ve fashioned an American Christianity that looks so unlike the life of our Lord’s.

But he was God and human, and we are human.

And dread is a normal emotion – divorced from spirituality. If you want to distend dread from the Christian’s experience, you’ll have to get rid of joy, happiness, all that other stuff too.

Even if Christians don’t call it dread, listen, every single Christian experiences dread.

And dread is nearly a daily symptom of Generalized Anxiety Disorder, and I know it too well.

It’s the sense that something is wrong, even if we can’t find something immediately wrong. It’s the sense that tomorrow the sun doesn’t rise, but instead death does from a grave.

It’s impossible to explain to others, because it’s almost impossible to explain to ourselves.

I’ll end with this quote by the great 19th century Baptist preacher, C.H. Spurgeon, who even the most old-school Christian wouldn’t accuse of watering down Christianity.

““There is a kind of mental darkness, in which you are disturbed, perplexed, worried, troubled – not, perhaps, about anything tangible.”

Spurgeon, famously, suffered with overwhelming dread, as well. And he was quite open about it.

And then, as I mentioned, there’s Jesus, as well. He sweated drops of blood. That’s dread.

So if you dread, remember. You are human. That’s part of the human experience. It’s nothing to be ashamed of, even though they will make you ashamed of it at church, in Bible study group, wherever you meet.

But I promise you — every single Christian has experienced dread, and for the nearly 20% who have an anxiety disorder, it’s a part of our daily life.

Now, I know this is a dark post. But I’m not going to offer a bunch of tips on dread right now.

Instead, I’m going to point you in the direction of help.

So if you struggle with dread, as I do… (I actually dread, dread).

As always…

Find a psychiatrist here.

Find a therapist here.