Can You Be Sad and Still Have Faith?

I want to tell you three stories.

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The First Story…

…is of a beautiful young girl living in Russia. Her heart has just been broken by a man who pretended to love her.

In vain her family tries to help her. The doctor is called for and insists this is a disease purely physical, that her depression and heartache are symptoms of some malady to be cured with medicine, rest, and a few months at the seaside. The girl wonders in shame: “Her heart was broken. Why would they try to cure her with pills and powders?”

Her father who knows and loves her best, shakes his head at the doctor’s ideas, knowing a deep, emotional root is the cause of his daughter’s unhappiness. She looks to him in tears of sorrow and hope, expecting a caress and some comfort, but he merely smiles and says, half-jokingly, half-pitying: “You must wake up one fine day and say to yourself: Why I’m quite well, and merry, and going out again with father for an early morning walk in the frost. Hey?”

At last, her sister tries to comfort her: “I know all about it. And believe me, it’s of so little consequence…We’ve all been through it…He’s not worth your grieving over him.”

_______

Last night was another sleepless night for me. About three in the morning, I gave up and went into the living room, planning to redirect my mind with music and reading, and perhaps calm it enough to fall asleep before daylight.

While the sleep never came, my mind did not stay as dark as it had previously. I followed the story I was reading and thought of ones I had read before. I thought of the story above. It is from Anna Karenina. The character named Kitty is the girl in question. I am not in the part of the novel yet where I find out how her struggle resolves (although the story is well known enough for me to guess she never gets this particular Russian prince) but this part of the story stood out to me.

Being more open this last year with my grief and depression has brought a host of remedies from well-meaning people for my darkness to find its cure. Who would have guessed that 140 years ago, Tolstoy would have addressed with his subtle irony, the issues still prevalent today?

Who has not heard that natural remedies are always the ultimate cure for emotional maladies? That a heart oppressed by depression is lacking only fresh air and plenty of exercise, healthy foods, more vitamins, a mind and body awakened by a regimen of holistic health?

Many of us have been told by other well-meaning friends, like Kitty’s father, that mind-over-body is the path to perfect wellness, and with a few days of optimistic recalibrating, mental darkness will leave.

And of course, there are always those like Kitty’s sister, who offer words of comfort behind a mask of impatient empathy: “It’s not really that bad” and “I know exactly how you feel”.

These responses are understandable. People are uncomfortable in the presence of pain they can’t fix.

And in some cases, certain suggestions are not without merit. We—being made of soul and body working as one—find often that our emotional and mental state is affected by physical conditions, and our physical condition likewise can be affected by our emotional and mental state.

Anyone who suggests Depression is always a spiritual issue fails to see us as created beings, joined in flesh to our bodies. Anyone who suggests depression only calls for mere physical remedy does not address the depth and complexity of a human soul. 

Human emotions cannot be examined in a petri dish, labeled neatly, resolved, and categorized for future reference. Human emotion demands to be experienced. There is no way to escape it. It must be felt. Feeling it may drive us to sinful responses, but the feeling itself is not a sin.

So for the Christian walking (or barely keeping afloat) in the Slough of Despond, or for the Christian attempting to comfort the one who is, here are some things to keep in mind about depression from a biblical perspective.

Faith is not a Cure for Sadness

“God,” Elijah the faith-filled prophet prayed. “God, let me die.” And God gave him bread and sustained him.

“God,” Elijah prayed, at the end of the 40 days of miraculous salvation, “God I am alone in this world. Let me die.” And God said, “You are not alone. I have preserved a remnant of the faithful, who have not bowed the knee to Baal.”

“God,” Elijah prayed, after the God of the universe finished verbally speaking to him in direct answer to his prayer. “God I still feel alone and they want to kill me anyway. Let me die.”

And God said, “Go stand in the mountain and I will pass by you.”

And he did.

First, there was a thunderstorm, then an earthquake, then a great wind that shook the bowels of the earth. But none of these were God. After all this, there was a still, small voice. A voice that made Elijah cover his head and flee back into the cave.

“God,” Elijah, the faith-filled prophet prayed, “I still feel alone and they want to kill me anyway. Please let me die.”

“You are not alone.” God said, “I have preserved a remnant. And I am sending you even now to anoint the one who will come after you, who will carry on the work I have to accomplish on this earth, a work that will be the forerunner of what my Son will accomplish, for he will kill death and the desire for death and all the evil and brokenness and darkness you feel. And Elijah, you suicidal prophet, who is pleading for death, again and again, and again and again, will never, ever taste it, but I will bear you up, alive, into my glory and presence, and a chariot of fire will bring you to the place you prayed the river would, because death has never been the answer. The answer has always been I AM.”

_______

If I was writing this story, that is what I would have wanted God to tell Elijah at the end (1 Kings 19). Just lay everything out, all the hope, all the comfort, all of what was to come so Elijah could look into his future and know what would happen, instead of looking into what he believed must happen and feel despair.

But first, I would have had this prophet’s thirst for life revived upon seeing these miracles, upon hearing God audibly answer his prayer, upon seeing God pass before him in the mountain, upon having God seek him again and again.

But none of this happened. And God did not rebuke Elijah for his sadness. He did not shake his head at his lack of insight into these glorious spiritual experiences. He simply pointed to Himself, pointed to the truth, and did not cure Elijah.

God’s plan was so much greater than Elijah’s despair. It wasn’t to cure his temporary—though significant—feelings of brokenness. It was to use Elijah’s brokenness—and all the brokenness of the world—to break the most Faith-Filled Prophet of whom Elijah was only a shadow. The Prophet who would be crushed by darkness, and thus swallow forever all the darkness of the world.

This promise is given us by faith. A faith that does not yet cure our sadness, but looks to the Cure that will one day be fulfilled.

Faith doesn’t make the blows of the world hurt less, for it doesn’t stand in between you and the world. It stands between you and Christ.

Faith Isn’t By Sight

It has become so real to me that our faith is put in something hoped for, something not yet realized. In my present, everything in me is yearning for my future, but that is what faith is—knowing such a future is coming. It is okay that nothing feels right. It’s not supposed to feel right yet. But one day it will.

If faith is not by sight, then that means that what we see does not determine ultimate reality.

The Psalmist looked to the future and saw darkness. Job saw despair. Jonah cried out injustice. Elijah saw isolation and torture. Christ saw a cup brimming over with all the agony of the world.

With our eyes, we look to the future and think we see what our life will hold for us. But God reminds us we walk by faith, not by sight. What we see is not ultimate reality.

The despair, brokenness, darkness, sleepless nights, panic, grief, torment, disease, cancer, earthquakes, abortions, adultery, assault, murder, accidents, sin, and death of this world may seem to have laid claim to our existence and rendered it unendurable.

Life feels to some like a companion worse than death. A horror to which the future is sentenced.

Life can feel like a life sentence.

But God says “What you see is not what is. The most important reality of all isn’t realized, but it’s so much more real than all this brokenness. It will swallow it whole. It will turn it on its head. Once more I will bring light forth from the darkness. So live in that promise, the promise no less certain just because you, little child, don’t have your Father’s eyes. I have laid claim on it for you. I will look for you and tell you all I see, until the day you can see it too, for in that day you will have it, and you will see with your eyes all which you held in faith.”

You Are Not the One Who Upholds Your Faith

The Third Story…

The five-year-old boy lay awake the night his father was murdered. First, it had been the messengers that had woken him, the tramping of feet, the cries of despair. His nursemaid rushed into his chamber in the darkness, frantic, her face stricken with grief and dread. Snatching him up she had rushed them both from the palace, from his home, far from his family and all he had ever known, and sleep had been stolen by uncertainty.

Soon, however, it was not the unknown, but the pain which kept him awake. She had not meant to harm him. She had meant to protect him, to shield him from the swords that had just been wet with his father’s blood, swords born by those determined to make an end to the line of the royal kingship that had just lost its king. But in her haste, his nursemaid had fallen, fallen on him, Mephibosheth, and his tender bones had broken beneath her weight. There was no time for cure, and to be crippled is better than to be dead, and so as he cried in pain she bore him onward into the night.

Mephibosheth never healed from that night. Now years later, a cripple he was still. And now, years later, he was no longer of a royal line. He was nothing. He was less than nothing. An outcast, an invalid, impoverished, disabled, in hiding, his past, present, and future destroyed. Another man was on the throne. A man who had every right to hate him. A man who could demand his life.

Mephibosheth was doomed, surely, to a painful death one day at this man’s hands, and it would be fully deserved because of who he was, because of his very identity, because of the blood that flowed in his veins, because of the fallen kingdom to which he belonged. His identity—like his crippledness—was something he could never escape on his own.

And then, one day, the summons came, dreadful. This time Mephibosheth could not run. The first flight to save his life had rendered him incapable of ever fleeing again. The handmaiden who had in panic tried to save him had, in her panic, unwittingly doomed him to death. Death by the sword. Death by the swords of those who had killed his father.

He was brought to this king—the rightful king, the king who was governing a kingdom so different from the one to which this outcast prince belonged. A kingdom ordained by God to succeed, to bring light, and righteousness, and justice upon the earth. Righteousness and justice that could demand his own blood.

So he stood before this man, David, a man acquainted with grief and suffering—a man acquainted with grief and suffering because of the fallen kingdom of the crippled prince—and Mephibosheth waited to hear the words that would pronounce his fate.

“Do not be afraid,” the king said. “For in your face, I see the man I love. I see my friend, my brother, Jonathan, who was dearer to me than life itself. And because of the love for your father, I see you as I would see him. By the rule of kings, you may deserve to die, but because of your father, I will not kill you. When I see you I see the person I most love, and because of him, in justice, you may live, and it is my joy to receive you. Come share in my inheritance. It is freely given. You are no longer an outcast, I will make you a prince again. Come enter into my joy.”

_______

These stories seem unrelated. In the first a girl receives well-meaning counsel for a broken heart. In the second, a prophet prays to perish. In the third, a fallen prince becomes part of a new kingdom.

But there is one common theme: brokenness.

Is sadness and grief contrary to a life of faith? No it is not. Those most mighty in faith are those who have drunk deepest of the dregs of brokenness. “I have forgotten what happiness feels like,” cries the lamenter (Lam. 3:17). “How long will you wait, O Lord? How long?” pleas the blood of the martyrs (Rev. 6:10).

Perhaps eyes of grief give the most clear-sighted picture of the world we live in. Perhaps some types of grief are more consistent with faith than happiness. For even our happiness, is broken. Shallow. Not as it was created to be.

In the first story, the brokenness of grief is met with shallow platitudes and corrupted compassion. There was no answer given for that pain. Platitudes and pills are not ultimate solutions to eternal problems.

In the second story, the pain was not eased in faith, or in death, nor did God choose to heal it. It was directed to the Ultimate Savior, yet God chose to let the waves wash over Elijah without immediately drawing him from the surface.

That is because every story in the world finds its redemption in what is most clearly expressed in the third story. When a King looks on a fallen cripple, belonging to a rebel kingdom, and sees the One He most loves.

But we serve a Greater King than David. King David saw the brokenness of Mephibosheth and loved him, inviting him to share in his wealth. King Jesus sees our brokenness and takes it upon himself, bearing the weight of all the brokenness in the world and letting it crush him to death, only to rise again and bid us enter the inheritance he has earned.

And that is the answer, the only true comfort for the pain too deep for platitudes, and philosophy, and flight, and pills. The answer is and always has been I AM. And we rest between the days when I AM said, It is Finished, and when he comes again to begin everything anew.

Soli Deo Gloria,