Tuesday, April 30, 2013

THE DEPRESSED PROPHET: NATIONAL MENTAL HEALTH MONTH MAY 2013

"Now Ahab told Jezebel all that Elijah had done, and how he had killed all the prophets with the sword. Then Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah, saying, “So may the gods do to me and even more, if I do not make your life as the life of one of them by tomorrow about this time.” And he was afraid and arose and ran for his life and came to Beersheba, which belongs to Judah, and left his servant there. But he himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a juniper tree; and he requested for himself that he might die, and said, “It is enough; now, O Lord, take my life, for I am not better than my fathers.” (1 Kings 19:1-4)

1 Kings 18 tells of how Elijah was used by God to bring about a great victory against the prophets of the false god Baal, whom Israel was worshiping at that time, under the influence of evil King Ahab and Queen Jezebel. Elijah prayed and God sent fire from heaven to consume the offering Elijah had made, then Elijah had the prophets of Baal killed.

But when Ahab tells Jezebel what happened, the wicked queen threatens Elijah’s life. After defeating 450 prophets, Elijah is now running from one woman. He is so anxious and afraid that he prays to God to take his life. 

Why such a quick turnaround in the attitude and outlook of Elijah the prophet?

Elijah had many of the symptoms of depression, for example those found here:

Elijah’s mocking of the prophets of Baal and of the false god itself, as well as the way he confronted the people of Israel about worshiping Baal, may have expressed irritability. During his great victory, he also shows signs of restlessness

Elijah had not slept excessively, if at all. However, early-morning wakefulness may have been a factor. The day of battling with Baal’s prophets must have been exhausting. Yet the prophet made a God-powered but still long hard run to Jezreel in which he ran so fast he outran Ahab’s chariot. It is most probable that at this point he experienced fatigue and decreased energy. 

The prophet went from focused, clear and decisive to having difficulty concentrating on God instead of the enemy. He seemed to have trouble remembering the details of his very recent victory, which included God’s answer to his prayer for rain after a three and a half year drought. He had a hard time making decisions about how best to deal with Jezebel’s threats.

People suffering from depression usually have a loss of interest in activities or hobbies they once found pleasurable. The prophet of God showed no interest in doing anything but running away, fearful for his life, the past victories and blessings of God forgotten. 

It seems likely that Elijah got no sleep whatsoever before getting the message from Jezebel to look out for his life and taking right off for the wilderness. Insomnia very likely contributed to his state of depression, and he twice fell asleep after his run to the wilderness. 

Overeating was no problem for Elijah, as even food was likely not enjoyable to him at this point. The prophet apparently had such a loss of appetite that the angel of The Lord had to twice fix food for him and urge him to eat.  

Persistent aches or pains, headaches, cramps, or digestive problems that do not ease even with treatment are often among the physical symptoms of depression. Elijah had been through an exhausting battle and taken a long high speed run, then a trip into the wilderness, almost certainly without food or sleep. It seems unlikely he had no physical symptoms at all, as they are so common with depression, and he showed so many of the psychological and spiritual symptoms. 

While Elijah didn’t seem to feel guilt, he felt helpless to do anything in the face of the threat against his life, and so worthless he wanted to die. He clearly felt overwhelming pessimism and hopelessness. While Elijah made no suicide attempts that we know of, he had definite thoughts of suicide, even praying to God and asking God to kill him. 

Elijah appeared to experience persistent sad, anxious, and "empty" feelings, at least during his battle with Baal’s prophets, his run to Jezreel, his time in the wilderness, and even during part of his time on the mountain of God. 

Personal problems such as social isolation due to other mental illnesses, physical problems, or being cast out of a family or social group can lead to depression.

In a nation that had turned to worshiping a false god, Elijah as a prophet of God had been an outcast. It was as though he lost his “church”, the people he worshiped with, as well as his country. Now, the nation had declared that they worshiped God again, so to some extent he had his country and his “church” back. 

Yet Elijah now seems to feel more isolated than ever. After eating and sleeping, he goes to the mountain of God, Mount Horeb, and sets up house in a cave. He tells God he is all alone, even though the people just worshiped God with him a little over 40 days earlier. He also had forgotten about the 100 prophets Obadiah had told him he had hidden in caves to protect them from Jezebel (1 Kings 18:13). 

So God tells Elijah gently, in the sound of a soft breeze, that there are still 7,000 people in Israel who have not worshiped Baal at all. That’s a lot of people, and a long way from being alone. Most of all, God was with Elijah.  

We don’t know that depression, at least as what today would be a mental health diagnosis, was a lifelong thing for Elijah. The prophet’s depression may have started with his conflict with and triumph over the prophets of Baal and his fearful flight from Jezebel, and it may have ended soon after with the comforting voice of God and the assurance that in spite of how he felt, in how he felt, he was not alone. 

The rest of the story of Elijah in God’s word indicates that his depression either ended or was under control, no longer and never again debilitating, once God spoke to Him in that still small voice in a cave in the mountain of God. 

The story of Elijah shows us both what depression looks like and how we can cope with and overcome depression. 

But in order to live with and above depression, we must know not only the symptoms but the causes, so that we can get to the roots and pull them out. Just as Elijah suffered these symptoms of depression, his depression was caused by the same things that can cause depression for any of us.


Physical, sexual, emotional or spiritual abuses are almost certain to cause serious depression. At the least, Elijah was severely abused emotionally and spiritually. Abuse is always bad, and anyone in an abusive situation needs to get out, get away, and get help, just as Elijah did. 

Major life events may be good or bad; a new job or a lost job, divorce or marriage, the loss of a child or the birth of a child, graduation or failure to graduate, being arrested or freed from jail, promotion or downsizing, moving, changing schools. Elijah definitely went through a number of major life events in a short period of time. We all deal with different changes in different ways at different times, so any kind of major life event can bring on depression. Unlike abuse, change can be accepted or embraced.  

Depression may result from personal conflicts or disputes with family members, friends, enemies, anyone. This is true whether the conflict is constructive or destructive, and whether it is handled positively or negatively. Elijah had plenty of personal conflicts and disputes, and so will we; it is part of life. Conflict can worked out and worked through, it can be dealt with. 

Probably everyone gets depressed sometime, to some degree. Maybe not to the point of clinical depression, but in any case it disrupts life enough to make us aware of what depression can do to a person. 

Numbers vary, and but some estimates indicate that 14.8, about 7% of the U.S. adult population, suffer from a major depressive disorder in any given year. Major depressive disorders are the leading cause of disability in the U.S. for ages 18-44. Many more deal with depression that might not be medically classified as “major”, and it may not disable a person. But depression is like surgery, it’s only minor when it happens to someone else. 

Speaking from experience, it is best not to delay dealing with depression. It may be enough to talk to trusted friends or family about what is depressing you, or you may need short or long term counseling, medication or both. It depends on everything from genes, family history, living environment, what has happened, how often it happens, how long it has happened, what kind of support system you have or do not have, and a lot more. 

If you feel depressed, if people are commenting or asking about you being depressed, or if you have symptoms of depression, it is important to at least look into it further and seek out those who might be able to help. 

Avoid those giving simplistic answers of any kind, particularly “spiritual answers” like “pray more” or “get closer to God”. Of course we all need to pray and get closer to God, but there are a lot of ways to do that. 

Whether church, family, friends, groups in which you participate, professional counselors, medical professionals,  or all of the above, a strong support system is important not only to living with and above depression, but also to lowering the risks of having further major bouts of depression. 

May is National Mental Health Month in the USA. Depression is just one of many mental illnesses Elijah may have fought with and that many of us or people we know may fight with as well. Forty million Americans 18 and older, 18% of us, have various anxiety disorders such as panic, obsessive compulsive and post traumatic stress, as well as various phobias and personality disorders. 

Depression is a more common mental health issue that most people can relate to out of some experience sometime in their life. If you have never been depressed, you surely know someone who has, probably someone close to you. We can all relate to depression, we can to some degree understand it as a reality even if we have trouble grasping the degrees to which it can overwhelm someone. 

So let’s remember and reach out to those around us dealing with depression, and with other mental illnesses. Even if you don’t think you can help them at all—and don’t underestimate yourself, or especially how God can use you—then surely you can help your depressed family members and friends find others who can help more than you might be able to. 

During this National Mental Health Month, please pray for those coping with depression and other mental illnesses. Help the depressed around you, help others be aware so they can help. Any of us can face depression just as Elijah did, and any of us can overcome depression just as Elijah did, with the help and support of others and by the grace of God.   

Wednesday, April 17, 2013

THE UNFORGIVABLE SIN

"31 “Therefore I say to you, any sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven people, but blasphemy against the Spirit shall not be forgiven. 32 Whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man, it shall be forgiven him; but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit, it shall not be forgiven him, either in this age or in the age to come." (Matthew 12)

What is blasphemy against The Holy Spirit? 

Jesus had just cast out of a man a demon that had made him blind and unable to speak. Even though the man was able to see and speak again, some Pharisees declared that Jesus only casts out demons through Beelzebub the prince of demons. (12:22-24). Jesus responded that He was casting out demons through The Spirit of God (28).

So blaspheming The Holy Spirit is attributing His work to the devil. The unpardonable sin is calling The Spirit of God Who works in and through Jesus Christ evil and an evil doer. 

The Pharisees who said that Jesus cast out demons by Beelzebub committed this unforgivable sin of blaspheming The Holy Spirit. 

Christians may likewise commit this unpardonable sin. 

Hebrews 6:4-6 speaks of those who have been enlightened by and have become partakers in The Holy Spirit through faith, having tasted the good word of God and the heavenly gift of salvation and the power of God. The writer declares that such people, clearly meaning Christians, can fall away. When they do fall away, the author of Hebrews continues, it is impossible to restore them to repentance. Why? Because they have crucified again Jesus Christ Who made a once for all sacrifice to save them from their sins, and they have put Him to open shame. 

Turning and falling away from God and His salvation in willful unbelief is blaspheming The Holy Spirit by rejecting His good work through what Christ has done as being of no good and in fact evil. Such apostasy (falling away) apparently moves one beyond the point of no return, beyond the hope of being renewed in repentance. 

Jesus speaks of only one unpardonable sin. Here in Hebrews 6, I believe, is the same blasphemy and unpardonable sin of which Jesus speaks in Matthew 12. 

1 John 5:16 teaches us that all sin is unrighteousness, but there are sins not leading to death, but only one sin that leads to death. We should pray for fellow Christians who have performed sins not leading to death, that they may be given life, and be restored to life in Christ. The wages of all sin is death, but the gift of God through Jesus Christ our Lord is life, eternal life. 

But when Christians have committed the sin leading to death, their fellow Christians are not to pray that they will be given life. 

Again, there is only one unforgivable sin. So the sin leading to death must be the blasphemy of The Holy Spirit of which Jesus speaks, the total rejection of the saving work of The Holy Spirit of which the author of the Book of Hebrews speaks. Since this sin appears to be beyond forgiveness or repentance, because it is said to lead to death, it seems we are not to try to lead those committing the blasphemy of The Holy Spirit to pardon, repentance and life.

Some Christians, maybe many Christians, have at some point feared that they may have blasphemed The Holy Spirit, that they were lost and without hope of ever being saved again, that they were doomed to the eternal punishment of hell. There may be some who are reading this who have such fear for themselves or for someone else.

Christians, if we are concerned that we may have carried out the unforgivable sin, it seems certain that we have not blasphemed The Holy Spirit. Our worries could only come from one of two places. 

First, the devil and the forces of evil might be trying to frighten us into abandoning our faith in despair. If we have sinned, and especially if we are in some sort of habitual sinful practices, Satan the accuser will use guilt to grow in us a sense of hopelessness. This is one of many reasons why it is vital that we not get caught up in sinful lifestyles, and that we promptly repent of all sins and turn back to God.

However, why would the evil powers try to drive us to the belief that we were forever lost, unless we were indeed not forever lost? If the devil is trying to convince us that we are doomed, we not only are not doomed we are at least trying to live the Christian life.  

If it is not the work of Satan, then our concerns that we might have blasphemed The Holy Spirit must come from the work of The Holy Spirit in us. The Spirit of God is working to convict us of sin so that we can turn from our sins and turn to God before we can no longer repent. 

So, a Christian who is afraid they have committed the sin that leads to death has doubtless not practiced that great apostasy, that blaspheming of The Spirit. 

Thus we should always pray for one another, that we might live holy lives, repent of any sin, receive Christ’s forgiveness for that sin, and recommit ourselves to being holy as He is holy (1 Peter 1:13-16). 

But according to the Apostle John, when a Christian sees another Christian committing the sin leading to death, we are not to pray for God to give that person life in their sins. That would just be death, and that’s why it’s called a sin that leads to death. 

Yet that doesn’t mean we are not to pray for them at all. We can pray for them to repent of the sin that is leading them to death, so that, forgiven for and freed from their deadly sin, they may have life again. 

But why pray for someone to repent if they have fallen away from the faith, crucifying Christ again and putting Him to shame? Isn’t it impossible for them to repent? Aren’t they past the point of no return? 

How do we know for sure that we have seen someone commit the sin which leads to death, beyond the possibility of repentance? How do we know without a doubt that someone has blasphemed The Holy Spirit, calling the work of Christ through The Spirit evil and thus perpetrating the unpardonable sin?

It seems to be possible that we could know when someone has committed the unforgivable sin. But I’m not going to be the one to make that kind of judgment call. That’s not a stone I’m ready to throw, and I doubt I ever will be ready for that. I know I don’t want to be one who gives up on someone when maybe God is still at work in them. 

In fact, I wonder about any Christian who is ready to condemn someone as beyond hope, who refuses to pray for them and try to lead them back to Christ in repentance and faith. It might just be that such a condemning Christian is the one rejecting the work The Spirit of God may be doing in someone who seems forever lost. To do this is at least dangerously close to blaspheming The Holy Spirit, calling His work evil instead of good. 

Do I believe a Christian could commit sin leading to death, blaspheming The Holy Spirit and rejecting God beyond a chance of repentance? Yes, these verses, as well as my understanding of salvation by grace through faith, compel me to believe that one can indeed fall away from the faith for good. 

Yes, I know it is possible for someone to permanently reject their salvation. But no, I do not know when a person has reached that point. 

So I believe mutual accountability for holy living and Biblical church discipline (Matthew 18:15-18) is vital to the Christian life. It is so important that we love one another in Christ and that we help each other to worship and love Christ with our whole being and love our neighbors as ourselves. We must pray for each other that we will together stand firm in and walk steadfastly in the faith as we are led by The Holy Spirit in the grace of Jesus Christ to the glory of God The Father. 

Committing the unforgivable sin is not something to be feared when we are committed to worshiping, loving and serving God, and loving each other and all people in His Name. 

As the Apostle John says elsewhere, “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear…” (1 John 4:18).

Tuesday, April 2, 2013

UNBORN NON-PERSONS

 And they were bringing children to Him so that He might touch them; but the disciples rebuked them. But when Jesus saw this, He was indignant and said to them, “Permit the children to come to Me; do not hinder them; for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. Truly I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child will not enter it at all.” And He took them in His arms and began blessing them, laying His hands on them.” (Mark 10:13-16)

We were discussing this passage during a Lent Bible Study. The Bible study leader pointed out that, according to some commentators, children in Jesus’ time and culture were considered non-persons. Then he asked us to name some non-persons in our time and culture. 

My immediate answer was, “The unborn”. 

What people are thought of as not being people more than the unborn?
In the First Century A.D., when Jesus Christ walked the earth, the dominant culture in His part of the world and well beyond was that of the Romans, who dominated other cultures and peoples with their mighty empire. 

Apparently the Romans considered children to be the property of their fathers. The father got to decide whether or not his children could even exist as part of his family. A newborn would be laid on the ground and if the father did not pick him or her up, they were left abandoned on the ground to die or taken in by someone else. If allowed to live, children were still considered property, like servants or slaves. 

Jewish children, as a rule, seem to have received better treatment. However, the idea of children as property was not absent, and Jewish families, especially poor ones, still sometimes abandoned their children, though usually making sure there was someone nearby who might take them in.

In any case, the way Jesus treated the children even His disciples wanted to turn away as unworthy, or at least nuisances, was radical. He declared and demonstrated that children were not only worthy, but that they were people that we could learn from and whom we should be more like.

Today, in most cultures, including much of the institutional church in those cultures, unborn children are considered the property of their mothers. Unborn child are seen as non persons, body parts that have been added through conception to their mothers’ body. These spare parts may be removed from the mothers’ family at any time for any reason, destroyed and disposed of before they can even be born. 

It is not natural for mothers and family members to turn their children over to death. This is something they have been taught to do by an abortion industry fueled culture of death that is over a generation old. Our culture has taught us to be silent about this and even to shout down opposition. We have learned the lesson well, even in the institutional church. 

Now, as in the First Century AD, Jesus Christ rebukes us when we treat children as non-persons and property. Likewise He rebukes us when we treat children as less than human or even as lesser humans. Jesus rebukes us when we directly abandon unborn children to death, when we give approval to those who do so, and yes when we fail to speak out and stand up for “the least of these”.

In the United States of America and in many other countries, we think (or we try to tell ourselves) that we are a civilized society because of form of government, our “education”, our technology.

But a society in which people will in any way participate in abandoning the most helpless among us to death is not a civilized society.  The fact that those people call themselves Christians makes them not more civilized, but less civilized. 


As Christians, Christ calls us to be more than civilized, He calls us to be Christ-like, to be like Him. He welcomed children and held them up as models of faith and what it means to be a part of His Kingdom, The Kingdom of God. Jesus calls us to do the same.