LIVING WITH FAITH AND DEPRESSION
Hi friends, it’s been just over a month since I last posted, and I had no idea it would be this long.
We just finished an unexpectedly difficult move that was pretty all-consuming, and I haven’t had a spare second.
But thankfully, we’re in our new place, we’ve (I pray) gotten the things fixed that needed to be fixed, and I can start posting again.
Sorry about the unexpected break. I aim to resume posting (I pray) on Monday, July 25.
The late theologian J.I. Packer, in his book, Praying the Lord’s Prayer.
“We should certainly not content ourselves with parroting other people’s prayers, nor would God be content if we did (for what parent could be happy if his child only ever spoke to him in quotations, thus limiting his conversation to the reciting of other people’s sentiments?)”
Amen.
When our kids ask us for stuff, talk with us about things — their lives, life itself, what goes on — I’d hate for them to do so as guarded, halting, hesitant, formal.
Do I want them to come to me as someone approaches a king in what can, at best, be described as hopeful fear?
We see a lot of that in the Old Testament, but Christ changed everything.
Jesus the King chatted with kids, everyone, about everything and in their language.
And that’s how we’re to receive him, that’s how we’re to have a relationship with him. As children. Not scared or afraid of a parent’s capricious anger.
But, fully confident, that he wants to chat with us about everything and anything – just like we do our children.
There’s a brand new study of college students in Psychology Research and Behavior Management that adds to the growing body of literature, suggesting a significant relationship between anxiety disorders and self-esteem.
And that body of literature suggests the following:
Low self-esteem? You’re much more likely to suffer from anxiety.
Low self-esteem? You’re much more likely to suffer from depression.
Low self-esteem? Well, that’s associated with inflammation, with infertility, with marital conflict.
So what exactly is “self-esteem” in the academic literature?
It is, according to this particular study, “how individuals evaluate and perceive themselves.”
That can rise or fall, over time, depending on various factors. More on that later.
But I’m sharing a passage of background literature from this particular study — one that suggests just how dangerous (yes, dangerous) low self-esteem is.
The researchers:
“High self-esteem can protect individuals from harmful consequences of negative experiences such as failure.25–27
Individuals with high self-esteem strive to overcome difficulties, while those with low self-esteem tend to avoid challenging tasks.28
In particular, college students with low self-esteem were empirically evidenced to have higher stress hormone levels in response to difficult missions and were more likely to suffer from negative emotions and mental health problems.29
Low self-esteem also exerted negative effects on the academic engagement and performance as well as the happiness of students.28,30–32“
End quote.
Of course, the authors included the necessary citations for each one of those statements.
And that’s not the only literature on the subject.
You can read more here.
Now…
A lot of Christians blame “self-esteem culture” for students’ and young people’s problems, and yet the academic literature suggests exact opposite.
That a low opinion of yourself, a negative opinion of yourself is harmful, impedes success, hurts relationships, and your own body.
And that it is also associated with anxiety and depression.
Empirically, that’s been established.
Anecdotally, have you found that true in your life?
Think of the broken marriages and broken kids who suddenly view themselves as unlovable and go out desperately searching for love in the worst places.
When we’ve felt worst about ourselves, how have things gone?
Feeling poorly about yourself is a crisis of every kind, and it’s exactly what Satan wants. He is the great destroyer, and that sort of goes hand-in-hand with thinking we’re no good and worthy of destruction.
Now, to be sure, the evangelical church is changing on this. There are fewer and fewer sermons about what worms we are.
Yet there are large swaths of churches that still preach a gospel that is hardly the Good News.
And the Good News is entirely compatible with self-esteem, because self-esteem is entirely compatible with God-esteem.
In fact, you kind of have to believe you’re lovable to believe Christ can love you.
Some Christians dispute that. But it’s both theologically and practically true.
The Anglican theologian N.T. Wright recently explained on his podcast how important it is that we internalize that John 3:16 says, “For God so loved the world.”
It didn’t say he hated the world.
He loves the world, he loves people.
He loves us so much he died for us and lives in heaven, praying for us.
As Christian philosopher J.P. Moreland says, God wouldn’t send his beloved son to suffer and die for a cockroach.
Look at Jesus’ ministry.
He searched for, befriended, elevated those who undoubtedly had the lowest self-esteem.
He told a prostitute she had worth. Who else would do that?
He told the “dregs” of society that he cared so much about them he was going to be their friend, and yes, die for them because he thought they were valuable and lovely.
Read the Gospels and they’re a tale of Jesus going to those with, presumably, the lowest self-esteem and saying, “I love you so much. Can I spend time with you?”
In fact, here’s a thought experiment.
When the (presumable) prostitute famously met Jesus in Luke 7, how do you think she left that encounter?
Do you think she felt both a) better about herself as a person and b) immensely grateful for Christ’s love?
I would think so.
Christ-esteem and self-esteem co-existed and, in fact, worked in synergy.
And yet that’s not the message delivered in so many churches and in a Christian culture that bashes “self-esteem.”
But Jesus loves us. He has a place of glory reserved for us.
I don’t think he wants us to argue with that. To tell him we belong in the dirt.
Remember the verse: “We love him because he first loved us.”
He decided that you and I were intrinsically beautiful and valuable enough to die for us. Sinners, yes, but valuable and beautiful ones.
That makes me feel wonderful about both Christ and myself.
Don’t let either Satan or certain Christian groups tell you otherwise.
I heard the message of “you’re a sinning worm” my whole life, and (to this day), it’s something that’s haunted and sent me to the ground.
Because, after all, the dirt is where worms belong.
I’ve known scores of other Christians who have the same story of being told, so relentlessly, that they’re unlovable sinners that they can’t possibly believe that either Christ or anyone else can love them.
The truth is that both self-esteem and Christ-esteem are entirely compatible.
In fact, they are connected in a beautiful way.
The more we adore Christ, the more we — to paraphrase Brennan Manning — take Christ’s view of us against our own negative self-esteem, and therefore, the closer to joy in every area of our lives.
Christ loves us. And if he does, it’s quite okay for us to, as well.
[Lithograph: Self-Portrait in Spherical Mirror, M.C. Escher]
Four months ago, I posted about some of the scientifically-proven, health benefits of meditation, via Healthline.
Mindfulness meditation can reduce stress, depression, can help ward off dementia, help with insomnia, improve diabetes control. Basically, you name it.
Mayo Clinic describes it thusly: “Mindfulness is a type of meditation in which you focus on being intensely aware of what you’re sensing and feeling in the moment, without interpretation or judgment. Practicing mindfulness involves breathing methods, guided imagery, and other practices to relax the body and mind and help reduce stress. Spending too much time planning, problem-solving, daydreaming, or thinking negative or random thoughts can be draining. It can also make you more likely to experience stress, anxiety and symptoms of depression. Practicing mindfulness exercises can help you direct your attention away from this kind of thinking and engage with the world around you.”
End quote.
It is just an unbelievable source of physical and mental health, in much the same way exercise is.
Christians are often really hesitant about any kind of meditation that isn’t “Christian meditation,” but that’s odd to me.
Do Christians scold, “You have to do Christian exercise!”
No.
So it’s strange we will only tolerate “Christian meditation,” but not demand “Christian bike riding.”
Or what about diet?
A lot of the same Christians will say, “Fight depression, naturally, with a good diet.”
They don’t say, “Eat a Christian diet.”
So this resistance to breathing techniques, clearing the mind, taking a moment of silence etc is just sad.
I could go on, but put it this way — I downloaded a popular meditation app four months ago, and decided to really commit to it.
I also promised to report back on the results, in case you were curious.
Two observations.
First, there is absolutely nothing incompatible with being a Jesus-follower and mindfulness meditation.
In fact, that leads me to my second point.
It has, in many ways, improved my relationship with Christ and my love towards others by reducing stress, anxiety, and overall, making me feel much emotionally healthier. (My heart rate has dipped too).
In fact, my wife will often say, “You haven’t meditated today, have you?” And yup, she’s on the money. I’m a much more calm, kinder person when I’ve meditated.
So for me, mindfulness meditation has been the biggest game-changer for my mental health since I started taking antidepressants.
I’d say it’s a lot like physical exercise, except there’s a more useful component, because you can practice it just about anywhere.
I was at the dentist last month and a bit squeamish about some of the hygienic measures, but as I sat there, I remembered mindfulness exercises and just shut my eyes and thought about the sounds I was hearing, the sensations etc.,
It was enormously useful.
Some more personal benefits:
-my breathing has improved. That has profound effects on my entire body.
-I’m learning to stop overthinking.
And this is where Christians miss the boat on “Christian meditation.”
To them, any kind of meditation has to be on our spirituality or a verse or something, but in people with OCD or anxiety, that can promote overthinking.
One of the most blessed, deepest wonders has been learning how to just stop thinking for a bit. It’s incredibly important for our health. After all, sleep. Right?
-My “internal monologue” OCD has improved.
Primarily, through something called “noting.”
It’s a process where we simply think, “I’m getting up from the chair” when we get up or “I’m walking on this pavement” when we walk.
It’s difficult to do, but if we’re stuck in internal, distracting monologues all day, it’s a profound relief to just think “Look at that tree” and nothing more.
Now the Christian skeptic would say, “Why can’t you say, ‘Look at God’s beautiful tree’.”
Sure, you could and sometimes I do.
But people with OCD or anxiety need to think less sometimes, and just observe without thinking. At least for me.
So, to sum up, I still read my Bible, I still pray, but I also practice mindfulness meditation, and it’s been a powerfully useful thing for me.
[Painting: Philosopher in Meditation, Rembrandt]
Maybe you’re familiar with Acts 14:22, where Paul and Barnabas remind the new believers, there, then, and everywhere of a fact:
“They encouraged them to continue in the faith, reminding them that we must suffer many hardships to enter the Kingdom of God.”
That word “hardships” is often translated “tribulations,” and whenever it pops up in scripture, our minds probably go to something like persecution, or any of the woes of life that woe themselves onto us, right?
In other words, something in life happens to us, and we have to go through it, push on, and that’s the “tribulation,” right?
But here’s the fascinating thing.
If you look at the Greek for “tribulations” or “hardships,” you’ll find the transliteration, thlipsis.
And here’s how Strong’s Greek concordance explains that word:
It is “pressure….. used of a narrow place that ‘hems someone in’; tribulation, especially internal pressure that causes someone to feel confined.
Thlipsis (“compression, tribulation”) carries the challenge of coping with the internal pressure of a tribulation, especially when feeling there is ‘no way of escape’.”
[By contrast, stenoxoria focuses on the external pressure exerted by circumstances].”
Did you get that?
The hardship, the tribulation is the feeling of constriction — the feeling of no way out that we often feel during intense depression or anxiety.
It’s an internal pressure.
Now, we’d immediately assume it’s an “external pressure exerted by circumstances.”
You know, an external circumstance (losing a job, a relationship, a friend) drags us into the ground and we feel internal pressure.
But no, the Greek here indicates it’s something else.
And it suggests the early Christians were challenged by the same thing that often challenges us — hardships, tribulations of the mind that make us feel we have no good options, that squeeze the life out of us.
And they merely come from our mind!
It’s true that external hardships are undoubtedly hardships.
And we go down the rabbit hole of, “Oh, others have it so much worse. I shouldn’t feel this way.”
But no matter your external hardship, everyone is primarily dogged by internal pressures of the mind that have no bearing on external circumstances.
And, by the way, Jesus himself used the word, translated thlipsin, in John 16:33 when he told the disciples they’d have many tribulations.
We might assume he’d be talking of the upcoming beheadings, executions, stonings.
But he’d use stenoxoria for that, because that’s the word for those kinds of tribulations.
So the greatest tribulation, for anyone then and now, is what we endure in the mind, regardless of circumstance.
As Charles Spurgeon once described it: ““Quite involuntarily, unhappiness of mind, depression of spirit, and sorrow of heart will come upon you. You may be without any real reason for grief, and yet may become among the most unhappy of men.”
And that’s a powerful message that you’re not alone.
Find a psychiatrist here.
Find a therapist here.
If you’re having thoughts of harming yourself or others, please call the National Suicide Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255
[Photo: Pexels, free stock photography]
I haven’t posted much the past two weeks, because our whole family had a nasty cold, immediately followed by Covid. A real 1-2 punch, lemme tell you. Grateful for vaccines, and that we’re now through the worst of it. But when you have two little kids, family sicknesses can be pretty exhausting. You know how it goes, young parents — trying to take care of yourselves, while still helping them with everything.
Lordwilling, should be back to posting in a few days. Thanks!
Hebrews 11: 20-22: “It was by faith that Isaac promised blessings for the future to his sons, Jacob and Esau. It was by faith that Jacob, when he was old and dying, blessed each of Joseph’s sons and bowed in worship as he leaned on his staff.”
It’s much easier to believe that God exists than that he’s good.
It’s much easier to have faith that he’s here than that he’s here for us.
Yes, we know that the heavens declare the glory of God, but what do the things that happen to us declare? Do they suggest the same brilliance about God the stars do?
I have a friend who, in one year, lost her mother to a sudden aneurysm and her 36 year old sister to cancer.
It was tough to imagine God appointing both her mother and sister to die in the same year.
Why did he have to pencil both in the same calendar year?
And while we were trying to cope with that, Kate found out that she, herself, had breast cancer. At 34. She is the most wonderful mother to two young children.
So again, the heavens declare the glory of God, but as we prayed for her, for them, what was all that saying about him?
Our theology might say, “It’s this broken world,” but underneath the hood, we see God behind everything because somehow he is. He appoints man once to die, right?
That’s why we feel so stale when we hear, “the heavens declare the glory of God.”
We question God because of what life, and not heaven or theology, seems to declare about him, and all the verses about streams, rivers, and stars showing God’s brilliance mean nothing to us when a young mother is diagnosed with cancer.
That’s the trouble. We have faith in the reality of God, but not faith in the best about God.
We all struggle like this, and if you don’t, good for you, because you probably belong in Hebrews 11.
We know Hebrews 11 is the faith chapter, but if faith is the secret sauce of the Hebrews 11 saints, then it’s not something that billions of other Christians haven’t had over time. Christians all have faith in God.
So there’s something different about the faith here.
And it’s this — the saints of Hebrews 11 had an unshakable belief in the best about God. The faith that God is here, and that he has the best for us because he is the most for us.
When God told Abraham to leave his country and start a new one somewhere awful, Abraham didn’t just obey for the sake of obedience.
Instead, he “was confidently looking forward to a city with eternal foundations” because he felt certain that, however dismal the new land, it somehow offered proof of a better one ahead.
When God told Abraham to sacrifice his only son, Abraham didn’t say, “I have faith in you, God.”
He had faith in the best about God and thus, “Abraham reasoned that if Isaac died, God was able to bring him back to life again.”
Go through, verse by verse, and you’ll see that when the saints of Hebrews 11 were tempted by life (and sometimes, it appears, God himself) to believe the worst about God, they chose instead to believe the best about him.
It’s not their faith in God that set them apart. It was their faith in the best about God.
Further, they weren’t driven by some dutiful obligation to obey a command that they didn’t understand.
That’s often the way we think of faith.
Instead, they obeyed a command they didn’t understand because they understood God.
God was good, so the plan was good.
Hebrews 11, after all, is the “Faith Chapter” and not “The Dutiful Obligation to Obey Chapter.”
And so faith in God’s goodness started the dominos, and isn’t it interesting that faith is defined at the outset as the “substance of things hoped for?”
Hope is a belief in goodness. It is not a pessimistic or even neutral word. So if hope undergirds faith, then faith has to be confidence in God’s goodness.
And if you believe the best about God – if that’s your faith – then everything else falls in line and you’ll obey.
Too often, we obey God because we truly believe he’s there, and we truly believe he’s commanded us to do something.
But that’s obedience from a faith in his existence and his Lordship.
Obedience from obligation. That’s us.
And there’s nothing more painful than painful obedience, and it won’t last long because we weren’t made for it.
Now, right in the middle of the chapter, we come to the strangest set of verses, and you can see how odd they are by thinking of a cliched IQ test.
“Which one of these doesn’t belong? A car, a train, an airplane, or a refrigerator thermometer.”
Well, on the face of it, verses 20-22 are the refrigerator thermometer of Hebrews 11. They just don’t seem to belong there.
The chapter starts off with the giant dramas every writer tries to tell – they’re believable enough to think we could face them, but too unbearable to imagine facing.
You know — Noah, Abraham, Abraham, and Abraham. There’s a lot of crazy stuff there.
Building giant boats, getting pregnant at 80 years old, potentially sacrificing your son (gulp).
But suddenly, the author switches gears from floods, miraculous conceptions and potential murder to…deathbed blessings.
“It was by faith that Isaac promised blessings for the future to his sons, Jacob and Esau.”
“It was by faith that Jacob, when he was old and dying, blessed each of Joseph’s sons and bowed in worship as he leaned on his staff.”
Stop the presses.
Some elderly folks passed from natural causes and blessed their children.
Why does this belong next to Moses, the Passover, and Rahab?
These were just a couple of patriarchs, ready to die like billions of other have.
But being the faith chapter, this has something to do with faith. And with what we’ve just learned, faith in God’s goodness.
If you asked me, “At death, what is your faith in God’s goodness going to lead you to do?” I would say, “I’m going to have faith that God will take me to heaven.”
That seems the faith-at-death thing to do.
But Isaac and Jacob’s examples of unusual faith are very different – the patriarchs simply bless their children.
Why was that so unusual?
It could be that the situation was so rough and uncertain that it took extraordinary faith to believe things could turn out for their children. Or that they could become what God said they would.
Whatever the case – clearly, these deathbed blessings showed the saints’ great faith in God’s plan for their children, in his favor.
And I think any parent can learn something from this.
I’m a terrible pessimist.
I don’t worry about my kids because I don’t have faith in them, I worry because I don’t have faith in God’s goodness.
And why not?
Because under the brilliant stars at night, the police hunt for children who are never found.
On God’s sea, a tent city reflects where some child lives for drugs, and will soon die because of them.
And somewhere, every night, there’s a parent on a walk, looking up, praying to the heavens for their dying child on earth – and the heavens, those heavens that declare the glory of God – never seem to answer, they seem so lost in their own world of oblivious space and so removed from cancer and crying.
When you look at what could and does happen to children, it’s easy to see why deathbed blessings require great faith in God’s goodness.
You and I tend to beg the Lord for our children more than bless them.
But here’s what we need to do.
We need to believe the best about God.
We need to, like each of these patriarchs, bless our children, with all of our hearts, and believe that God will bless them with all of his.
I don’t know if these patriarchs indulged doubt and fear about their children at death. If they did, it certainly didn’t enter their blessing.
I think, instead, they put their hands on their children’s heads and felt the hair they’d kissed since they were so small they could sit on their lap – and remembered the innocence and love and protection and it all came back to them, and they looked up to heaven and said, “Oh God, bless these children. You know how much I love them. Bless them.”
In some way – in this life or the next — I know that God will honor our prayers for our children.
We may never see the blessing, we may never recognize the blessing, but it’s faith in God’s goodness that says, “even if I won’t see your blessing, I will believe it is there, or that it will find its way to my child, and somehow Lord, whenever it is, however it is, the morning light that broke when Jesus came will finally and fully shine on them.”
Perhaps, if not in this life, then the next.
Perhaps if not salvation now, then after death.
You don’t have to be a universalist to think that could happen. You just have to believe in God.
After all, Abraham had to know that everyone who dies…dies.
That’s how God had set things up. Hadn’t God even declared it?
But what did Abraham say when God asked him to offer up his precious son, Isaac?
“God will raise him from the dead.”
When had that ever happened?
What made Abraham believe it was possible?
Not what he knew of life or doctrine, but what he knew of God.
That God could do impossible things, and that he was impossibly good.
And that’s what Hebrews 11 is all about.
That is the thing about life that reigns supreme, that is the doctrine that reigns supreme, and that is the thing that will hopefully lead us to say, with faith, “Lord, I believe you will bless my children, either in this life or the next, because you are a good God.”
[Painting: Rest on the Flight Into Egypt, Luc Olivier Merson, 1879]
The Cleveland Clinic has a good guide on “overthinking,” which is often associated with generalized anxiety disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, and other mood disorders.
I’d recommend reading it because it has lots of good definitions, examples, and how-to’s.
As you know, one of this site’s purposes is to understand how our experience of Christianity can be influenced by our mood disorders.
And remember: the mood disorder comes before its effect on our Christianity.
Don’t let the “spiritual depression” crowd deceive you into thinking otherwise.
The scientific evidence is overwhelming that our mental health is a medical condition.
Now, going back to the Cleveland Clinic’s guide.
Let’s take some examples of “overthinking” and “destructive thought patterns” and how they might apply to our Christianity.
First, “Catastrophizing”.
Cleveland Clinic: “This is when you imagine a worst-case scenario as the inevitable outcome of the situation you’re worried about.”
We can catastrophize about anything in life. Job, health, family, relationships.
And that includes our spiritual life.
For example, we imagine the worst-case scenario anytime something spiritual comes up.
Here are some examples of spiritual catastrophizing.
“I can’t possibly be a Christian because I don’t even…”
“I can’t possibly be a Christian because I did this…”
“God can forgive others for that, but he can never forgive me.”
“I’ve exhausted God’s patience, his love. There’s no hope for me and God.”
In each of these cases, the destructive thought patterns of catastrophizing that often come with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) deeply hurts our relationship with God.
Jesus says “no way!” to every single one of those examples of spiritual catastrophizing.
“When we are faithless, he remains faithful.”
Then there’s Paul, in that wonderful Romans 5: “Just as sin ruled over all people and brought them to death, now God’s wonderful grace rules instead, giving us right standing with God and resulting in eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
There’s a new ruler on the throne, and it ain’t the law.
It’s forgiveness and love, and when you enter its court, that love will always touch you on the shoulder to bless you.
Of course, the maddening thing is that you and I know this, and we still catastrophize about it.
But my hunch is that, if you catastrophize about spirituality, you do so about a lot of things.
And that catastrophizing has no bearing in reality. It exists in a mind that lies to us about the reality of things.
Second, the Cleveland Clinic points to “All-or-Nothing Thinking.”
For example, the clinic notes the way we can all-or-nothing overthink our work.
We’re either about to be fired, or we’re top dog.
There’s no in-between.
Unfortunately, we often “all-or-nothing” think our Christianity.
For example, we have a few good months of being loving, kind, avoiding temptation, all that, and we imagine (though we’d never publicly say so ) God saying, “Now there’s a man after my own heart.”
And unfortunately, church can be a particularly toxic environment for worsening this type of thinking.
Because so many churches want to turn you into an all-or-nothing Christian.
You’re either in good standing with the church, or bad standing. And it all depends on performance.
That, perhaps, is the most tragic kind of church of all. It’s the one that trumpets the perfect church family, the perfect elders, the perfect all that.
And so, if we’re prone to the deceit of all-or-nothing thinking, these churches make it even worse by actually affirming an all-or-nothing message.
So lets say we have a few good months (or as Christians call it “seasons”), but then inevitably have a few bad months and remember, “Oh…. yeah. Maybe I’m not David. Maybe I’m Saul. Occasionally, I seem like a Christian, but in the end, I’m just a hateful, unregenerate, no-good fraud.”
This see-saw is unbelievably common among those with anxiety disorders — this “all-or-nothing” thinking pattern regarding our Christianity.
I’m sometimes so discouraged by myself I feel like giving up.
Or I’m so encouraged by myself I’m ready to write an epistle.
But here’s the clutch thing, the thing that shows it’s not a spiritual issue.
My life is sort of fueled by that all-or-nothing thinking.
Maybe yours, as well.
You either feel like you’re the best husband or worst husband, the best dad or worst dad, the best employee or about to be fired.
And that’s because “all-or-nothing thinking” is a common manifestation of “overthinking.”
It has nothing to do with your spirituality, but nevertheless, infects it.
The third destructive thinking pattern the Cleveland Clinic notes is “Overgeneralizing,” which is when we “experience a setback or failure and generalize that event across all situations…..we may wrongly assume that things have – and will always – go wrong for us.”
So let’s say you sin, which we do pretty much 24/7.
But let’s say you commit one of the “big sins.”
If you overgeneralize, you’re prone to think, “That’s it. I’m always going to be an adulterer. That’s just who I am. I will always be like this, and there’s no hope.”
Perhaps Peter thought that way.
He denied Christ, and it seemed that Jesus had to talk him out of overgeneralizing. To convince him that he wasn’t destined to a life of fear. To convince him that he’d be the pillar of the church.
So those are the three overthinking traps the Cleveland Clinic discusses: catastrophizing, all-or-nothing thinking, and overgeneralizing.
Now while the Cleveland Clinic obviously doesn’t offer ways for you to counteract overthinking your spirituality, we have to remember: the problem lies in overthinking. It doesn’t lie in our spirituality.
The root of the problem doesn’t lie in your overthinking Christianity, it lies in overthinking, everything, period.
So you address the root.
And that’s why I suggest going to psychologists of any philosophical persuasion (athiest, agnostic, Christian, Muslim, anything) because they will help address the root of the problem of overthinking.
That’s because they understand the human mind.
They’re not pastors, they’re medical practitioners, and this is a medical beast we’re dealing with.
Do we doubt a surgeon or dentist who’s not a Christian?
Why would we doubt a mental health professional who doesn’t identify as one?
I haven’t had a single, long-term therapist who identifies as Christian, and yet, they’ve each had amazing insights on what’s going on in my mind and helped me profoundly.
I’ve never returned from therapy, thinking, “Wow, they really pumped a lot of godless stuff in me.”
Please don’t believe that lie coming from the Christian traditionalists.
It’s a lie that’s kept so many from treatment — a lie that’s sent so many into the arms of practitioners of “Biblical counseling” who know very little about or disregard science, reject the notion that we have a medical condition, and anecdotally, often do more harm than good.
So if you struggle with overthinking your Christianity, talk to your doctor about medical treatment.
And so…
Find a psychiatrist here.
Find a therapist here.
Brennan Manning, writing in Abba’s Child.
“The art of gentleness toward ourselves leads to being gentle with others.”
Amen.
There are lots of Christians who would call that “snowflake” Christianity.
It’s actually Jesus Christianity.
He showed grace to you, so what’s wrong with showing yourself the same kind of grace?
Furthermore, as Manning writes, if we accept God’s gentleness as a reality, if we adopt that posture towards ourselves, then we will naturally be gentle with others.
A self-critical Christian is often enormously critical of others, as well.
Criticism becomes a part of our being.
And unfortunately, too many churches — particularly theologically conservative ones — urge Christians towards self-reflective “examination” (actually, harsh self-criticism) under the guise of “sanctification.”
God wants us to receive his gift of grace as a child — and have you ever seen how a child receive gifts?
Not with doubt, but happiness.
Not with a “do I deserve this?” but with, “Oh, thanks Dad! I can’t wait to play with that,” and then they start figuring out the remote controls.
The saddest thing is to see a child, obsessed over whether they’re good enough. God forbid!
And I suspect it breaks God’s heart, as well, when you wonder the same. When you try to please a smile out of him.
He is already and always smiling at you. You are his beloved son or daughter.
Be gentle and kind to yourself. Just as Christ was. And you will be gentle and kind to others, as well.
Remember this song from Andrew Peterson.
It’s a dishonor to Christ’s work, it’s a gateway to legalism, and a life in chains.
Michael Reeves, writing in Rejoicing in Christ, reminds us, “His death, not our sin, is our past.”