Depressive Realism – Undone By Truth

Isaiah was brought into the presence of the Lord. He issued his first prophecy against himself: “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the a King, the Lord of hosts!” (Is. 6:5 ESV)

The King James translates it “Woe is me! For I am undone…”

So what kind of awful revelation is this that someone would be “lost” or “undone”? In Revelation 1:17, John describes himself as falling at his feet as though dead. God tells Moses in Exodus 33:20 that no man can see him and live.

Surely a true vision of the Almighty is a great revelation of him, an infusion of the knowledge of truth so tremendous that one is overcome with one’s own guilt, even to the point of death. There’s a reason God feeds truth to us slowly through the process of sanctification.

I recently heard of an interesting psychological proposition called Depressive Realism (DR). It’s contested, but research so far suggests that mildly depressed individuals have a higher sense of reality than optimistic people. The scope of the research is limited by equating the cynicism of depression with pessimism, or by ignoring pessimism altogether. I’m going to explain the research thus far by refining this understanding.

This fallen world is difficult. It’s dirty, hard and deadly. But we have the industrial intellect to make it more comfortable. We don’t have to dig with our hands. We don’t have to walk for miles to get where we need to. We have machines. At the end of the day, we’re not sleeping on a hard mat on the floor. We can kick back in out recliner and watch TV for a while. We don’t need to cook all day every day just to survive. We have instant food. Pop a pizza in the oven or a meal in the microwave oven. Then we can climb up on a mountain of foam and air and snuggle under thick covers to keep warm from our cold air conditioner.

But the fallen world is spiritually difficult. While we have medications to make the pain go away, we must still face reality. And the reality is that people are sinners. This means that everyone has a nature that works to keep us estranged from our Creator. Not only that but this nature works to keep us estranged from each other. We are even internally estranged from ourselves bearing psychological conflicts that we hardly understand.

But we have coping mechanisms that help us to not be completely undone. Pessimism is the act of weighing the negative heavily so that expectations are unreasonably low. This has the effect of making the world make sense and relieving internal conflicts. Expecting that other people are not to be trusted serves to justify treating them with friendly contempt. The fact that nothing anyone can do will please the pessimist allows the pessimist to blame others unreasonably. This is generally detrimental to the other person, but the pessimist doesn’t care. They happily go on their way having stirred up the trouble they figured was there to begin with.

The optimist, on the other hand, unreasonably expects great things of the world. They work hard to bring about healing and reconciliation that they would expect to see. They dive into constructive activities expecting great things and are pleased to have positive results that they can point to. They tend to ignore and avoid people and things they don’t understand because these things challenge their optimism. They like to deal with little pains that can be helped, but run from the big pains for which there appears to be no solution.

But reality is full of great pains. There is always the potential for great things to happen, but this is to be tempered with the fact that nothing in this world is perfect. No one loves perfectly. Nothing good happens without a struggle. There may be positive benefits from great difficulties, but we may not ever know what they are. In this way, the one who pursues a true understanding of the world may over time become depressed. We have a need for human contact. We have a need to feel useful. However, human contact is imperfect, and often exceptionally so. For most of us, the world wouldn’t notice if we were never here. We’re not important. We really don’t have much control over our lives.

Those who realize things like this can become mildly depressed. Unless tempered with positive experiences of quality fellowship, mild depression can yield a distortion of reality that becomes more severe over time. This distortion of reality is a falsely-weighted set of observations where the few positive experiences are all but ignored and the bulk of negative experiences are dwelt upon. Thus is the downward spiral of depressive conditioning.

So optimism, pessimism and severe depression all involve a denial of reality and true reality tends toward mild depression. Optimism and pessimism are otherwise healthy coping mechanisms while severe depression is the result of a lack of these coping mechanisms where good experiences are not normative.

We need, at the onset of any activity, some sense that the activity will likely turn out well either because we believe factors are positive or because we believe that things can turn out okay in spite of the belief that factors are negative. It doesn’t help to have the correct observation that whether factors are positive or factors are negative, we have little to no control over factors and therefore little to no control over the outcome. We are unimportant and people could care less because they are otherwise deluded.

In my previous post, I asked where the line was between initiative and presumptuousness. To some degree, initiative requires irrational presumption that is either optimistic or pessimistic. Depressive realism cannot yield initiative for there is no opportunity for which we know the outcome aside from what God has specifically revealed to us.

In this vein Isaiah, Paul, Moses, David, Mary and Joseph, Peter, John and many others took their cues from specific revelation. The problem is that we don't seem to have these revelations these days. So does that mean that we shouldn't do anything? Of course not. We have a clear command to disciple the nations. The specifics will be taken care of according to the gifts and faith that God has provided. I know plenty of people who "feel led" to do something or "step out in faith" and their works are greatly used. I also know plenty of people who"feel led" to do something or "step out in faith" and fall flat on their face in failure. However, all things work together for good, no matter what delusions God afflicts us with.

It may be that science will determine that depressive realism is a false proposition. But I doubt it.

More Random Thoughts

Here are a few more random, unconnected, unfinished thoughts…

John Piper posted a list the other day on why he doesn’t take pot shots at fundamentalists. It’s a great list and worthy of consideration because it puts into practice the I Corinthians admonishments regarding unity in the Body of Christ. I spent a few years running from God. When He brought me back, I was adopted by a family of wild fundamentalists. It was the stark contrast I needed to the life of sin I had been practicing to show me what God had put to death in my life and what real life was. Here’s the list:

1. They are humble and respectful and courteous and even funny (the ones I've met).
2. They believe in truth.
3. They believe that truth really matters.
4. They believe that the Bible is true, all of it.
5. They know that the Bible calls for some kind of separation from the world.
6. They have backbone and are not prone to compromise principle.
7. They put obedience to Jesus above the approval of man (even though they fall short, like others).
8. They believe in hell and are loving enough to warn people about it.
9. They believe in heaven and sing about how good it will be to go there.
10. Their "social action" is helping the person next door (like Jesus), which doesn't usually get written up in the newspaper.
11. They tend to raise law-abiding, chaste children, in spite of the fact that Barna says evangelical kids in general don't have any better track record than non-Christians.
12. They resist trendiness.
13. They don't think too much is gained by sounding hip.
14. They may not be hip, but they don't go so far as to drive buggies or insist on typewriters.
15. They still sing hymns.
16. They are not breathless about being accepted in the scholarly guild.
17. They give some contemporary plausibility to New Testament claim that the church is the "pillar and bulwark of the truth."
18. They are good for the rest of evangelicals because of all this.
19. My dad was one.
20. Everybody to my left thinks I am one. And there are a lot of people to my left.

What I find interesting is that for theological conservatives, we recognize those who deny the veracity of key elements of Christian orthodoxy as “liberals” while calling ourselves “conservatives”. “Fundamentalists” are those who are theologically conservative who tend toward legalistic trappings or appearances.

Most liberals don’t call themselves “liberals”. They call themselves “moderates”. They call conservatives “fundamentalists” and make no distinction between adherence to Christian theological orthodoxy and overt behavioral legalism. Use of the term “moderate” implies that there is some group much farther left that they don’t agree with. The problem is that if there are, they generally don’t acknowledge them. They certainly don’t criticize them like they criticize those they consider to be “fundamentalists”. As such, their intent seems to be to reframe the argument semantically in an attempt to move mainstream thinking ever leftward.

These same “moderates” would have been happy to leave me in my former sin. Thank God for the fundies.

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Another one from Desiring God references a Piper sermon on “Spiritual Depression in the Psalms”. I’ve talked about depression before, but this is something I’m still processing. The question I ask myself is why do we treat depression like it is a spiritual weakness?

“You have emotional issues? You must not be very spiritually mature.”
“I have emotional issues. I can’t let anyone know about it because then they’ll think I’m not a very mature Christian and ostracize me.”
or… “I have emotional issues. People will patronize me or not know how to interact with me.”

Actually, all of these are fairly accurate. However, none of them are indicative of attitudes that are becoming of a healthy Body of Christ. A good church recognizes the truth. Truth alone does not good ministry make. Sacrificial service in love does. There’s a lady who has been visiting our church. She’s been tangentially active, but has had some issues in her life. She’s open about the fact that she’s had a nervous breakdown, but most people are unwilling to sit and listen to her – so I do.

Spiritual depression, severe stress and emotional needs are characteristic of many of the first-person view in the Psalms. In this fallen world, this is normal. The church above all should be the first to recognize and offer comfort and direction for this. You can’t do this unless you are transparent enough to offer your own struggles. However, this is viewed as weak and not becoming of good leadership.

I don’t have any admonitions here; this is just where I am in considering these things.

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We (Christians) are gifts. Ok, we have received the gift of eternal life, but we are gifts to the Son by the Father. (John 17)

The question was asked, “What kind of gift am I?” I saw a commercial the other day. I think it was for an insurance company or some such. An old car, a classic that needed a lot of restoration work, was being bought and attached to the back of a truck.

The announcer came on and said something to the effect that “There’s nothing like towing a ‘new’ car home.” I imagine that’s what kind of gifts we are.

Perhaps we can imagine the Son saying to the Father, “Couldn’t you clean them up a little bit?”

The Father replies, “I have given them to you. It’s up to you to clean them up.”

I don’t mean to mischaracterize the relationship between the Father and the Son. No analogy is perfect. But I got a kick out of thinking that God saw fit to not only give me a gift that I do not deserve, but to consider me a gift fit for the Son.

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PFC Ross McGuinnis was awarded the Medal of Honor a few days ago posthumously. He gave his life for his fellow soldiers in an act that, given fuse times of grenades, took a scant second or two to perform. He didn’t have time to think about it in that moment. Rather, in order to react as he did, he would have thought about it and made that decision ahead of time.

Dealing with sin is an act of living sacrifice. We can’t wait until temptation strikes to make the decision. It’s too late by then. We make the decision what to do when tempted ahead of time. Given the insidious nature of temptation, we must realize that our lives here are to be characterized with a trust in God that desperately clings to Him moment by moment not unlike a soldier who in the heat of battle desperately clings to his weapons and armament, and looks to his fellow soldiers for support and commander for guidance.

Depression and Spiritual Growth

It's tempting when you are depressed to read something like this:

“There is more purchasing power, more music, more education, more books, worldwide instant communication, and more entertainment than ever before,” the psychologists Ed Diener and Martin Seligman wrote in 2004. “But contrary to the economic statistics,” they continue, “all the statistics on depression and demoralization are getting worse.”

...or:

As Seligman, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, has written, “We are in the midst of an epidemic of depression, one with consequences that, through suicide, takes as many lives as the AIDS epidemic and is more widespread.”

...and be comforted by the fact that you are a part of a trend that someone in an important position out there somewhere better fix.

Look at this article in Reason Magazine by Will Wilkinson reporting on a new book: The Loss of Sadness: How Psychiatry Transformed Normal Sorrow Into Depressive Disorder, by Allan V. Horwitz and Jerome C. Wakefield, New York: Oxford University Press, 287 pages, $29.95

I'm a basket case if there ever was one. I'm not manic-depressive, but I can be ecstatic and near-suicidal at the same time. I'm just as emotional as I am reasonable and logical. It makes method acting easy for me - all I have to do is chose which of any set of emotions I'm feeling at any given time and exhibit those. However it makes questions like "How are you?" difficult to answer fully. I'm writing this to indicate some of the experience with which I can comment on this matter.

There is a good use for anti-depressants. When you have an individual who is non-functional as a result of his or her depression, drugs may be used to restore a person to some semblance of functionality. My wife has taken anti-depressants in an effort to reduce her need for pain medication with regard to her fibromyalgia.

However, psychiatrists who prescribe psychotropic drugs in an effort to avoid addressing presuppositional errors or sociological conditioning resulting in depression in individuals are lazy. Drugs may treat the symptoms, but the cause must be addressed. Our emotions are a gift from God. They allow us to respond to stimuli in ways that raw reason is either not sufficient or too inefficient to address. If we had to leave it up to reason to select a mate for reproduction, then we may never find the motivation necessary. If we lacked the capacity to fear, then we would find ourselves indecisive in important situations where we would need to flee or engage danger while we paused to calculate the odds and debate the moral and ethical ramifications of any given number of actions. Without sufficient sadness, we would lack the capacity to find the companionship we need to establish beneficial community.

In other words, when we are "depressed" we understand a change needs to be made in order to assuage the depression. Such a pursuit is beneficial to us. Ultimately our relational needs must bring us to the throne of our Creator. Depression is a gift of God that brings us to Himself. Christ in Gethsemane suffered such extreme anxious depression (sounds contradictory, I know) as to cause capillaries to burst in his sweat glands. Our lot is not to die for the sins of the world for only one can and has done this, but depression can spur us on to great things.