Last week I shared my belief that sin isn’t a checklist, which leads to pride and judgement; it’s more a way of life, and, therefore, doesn’t have to be something we’re scared of doing because, as I taught the week before that, sin is something that should lead us to praising God – a very different concept than I heard my entire life. If you’ve ever played or seen the game Operation, sin also isn’t like trying to pull out a piece, hitting the edge, and setting off the buzzer. There isn’t a warning light or siren telling us we’ve crossed the line into sin; that’d be nice, but that’s not how it works. It’s more you get away with it until you get caught (e.g. like speeding) or something makes you aware of it (usually something not very nice). That’s why I see sin more like the guy from the game floating in a tub of water. He would be existing in sin. He can’t escape it no matter what he does. All he can do is try to keep the water as clean as possible and do what he can to clean it when it starts to get dirty. Unfortunately, many times you don’t realize how dirty the water is until someone points it out or it’s so bad it’s obvious – nasty. Ultimately, this guy can only hope he can one day be pulled out of the tub, which is a crude way of describing going to heaven where there’s no more sin (although I’m guessing heaven has hot tubs because they’re pretty sweet).
Last week I also taught that sin doesn’t have to cause division; in fact, it can create unity when we’re honest with each other about what we’re struggling with in the appropriate situations (emphasis on appropriate). I then shared how my main sin is I don’t enjoy life. Coincidentally I saw a Jerry Seinfeld interview on Jimmy Fallon from last month where he admitted a similar mindset – is this a great minds moment? Seinfeld shared that he doesn’t like doing anything, but is fine with it: “I do something I don’t like it doesn’t bother me… I’m a very happy person hating everything throughout my entire life. That’s how I would describe myself… Later, I’m going to complain about it, which is what I do enjoy doing.” Seinfeld went so far as to claim his comedy is based on complaining in a funny way. Not enjoying life helped Seinfeld be a world famous comedian and multi-millionaire. Not enjoying life helped me be a Christian… it’s strange to think that I won.
By saying I don’t enjoy life I should be clear, I don’t have depression. I have been through it, but that was when I was younger and I didn’t realize how unhealthy my thinking had become (I was floating in some pretty dirty water). I also know I can easily end up going through it again if I don’t do my regular healthy activities to keep me in as good a place as I can be, which includes exercising, trying to sleep enough, doing my daily thankful journal, connecting with good people, going to church, listening to worship music, and doing my family responsibilities. Arguably the most important thing I need to do in order to avoid depression is work. It’s amazing how important it is to have a reason to get up in the morning and to get us out of our head. For people who think too much (something that can push people into depression), work is a great way to feel accomplished, make money to pay bills, and distract us from ourselves. Too much time to think is a very dangerous thing.
All this leads to answering the question presented in the title: Is Depression a Sin? The definition of sloth includes not taking care of others or ourselves. As mentioned in my lesson on the Seven Deadly Sins four lessons ago, Gregory the Great claimed the sin of sloth is connected to malice (i.e. the desire to do evil), rancour (i.e. being stuck in the past), cowardice (i.e. not pushing ourselves past our fear), and despair. He went so far as to claim “[it] becomes a terrible source of human’s undoing.” Based on this definition, it’s hard to deny that depression is sin. But again, we’re all existing in sin, so this doesn’t mean someone with depression is worse than anyone else. It just means they have a different sin journey to face. The benefit of this sin is there are things that can help the sufferer to get out of it while there’s nothing that will ultimately help me enjoy life the way someone like my wife does – we’re very opposite. Depression is actually our body’s way of getting our attention that something needs to change. Realistically, depression is a first world problem. You can’t feel depressed when you’re in survival mode and/or there are reasons for grief. You don’t have time for it.
In my book, 52 Lessons to be a Better Person: The perfect gift for someone else, I teach that there are two kinds of depression: passive and passive aggressive. Passive depression is more a good person with bad habits. They’ve often worn themselves out people pleasing and doing whatever they can to avoid conflict while blaming themselves for everything wrong. They’ve basically bottled up their hurts and keep taking on more without finding healing and it’s reached a breaking point. A lot of these people would be described as being burnt out. Based on the people who see me, they have a 50-50 chance of finding healing because sometimes their passive nature will cause them to dig deeper into hiding (that’s not good… obviously) while they’ll be happy learning a few tools in order to grow. Passive aggressive depression has similar symptoms, but there’s no helping someone in this category because on some level they enjoy it – it’s part of their identity. It’s all about wallowing in self pity and blaming everyone else for being in this situation. It’s about gaining power through sympathy and enjoying the drama it can cause. I once talked to someone who said they’d been in therapy for over 15 years with multiple therapists. I asked what’s the most important thing they’ve learned in order to be emotionally healthy and with all the hours and money spent their answer was, “I don’t know… mindfulness?” When I asked what that meant, they responded, “I don’t know… yoga?” I then told them the most important thing for emotional health from my opinion is venting. It’s clearing the junk from our body, mind, heart, and soul through healthy processing (i.e. talking to a trusted person and journaling) and physically getting release in order to feel stronger and freer. In their 15 years with multiple therapists this was the first time they were told what I consider the foundation of being healthy proving I have a lot to offer and guess what happened… I never saw them again. If you want to grow as a person, you want guidance like I offered… but some people don’t want that. Guess what category this person was in. If you don’t want to grow, and you’re looking for someone to hold your hand and tell you how life is so much harder for you, I’m a terrible therapist. If, however, you want to grow, even if you don’t like me, I have some great tools that can change your life if you use them. Guys, in general, get a bad rap for how we listen (we generally suck at it) because we want to fix things (typically not what the sharer wants in every day conversation). Depression can be very hard for us to understand because our brain is like “Either fix it or don’t complain.” Unfortunately, that’s not how passive aggressive depression works; they’re addicted to the drama and the emotional connections they can feel through their misery while being able to point the finger at everyone else.
I should acknowledge that most people I talk to who think they have depression, don’t actually have it – they’re grieving. Grieving means we’ve had a serious loss and the symptoms can look similar to depression, but they’re different because grief will more naturally disappear as we adjust to the loss. It becomes depression, however, if we never allow ourselves to heal. Our emotions are a lot like our body. If you break your arm, it takes time to heal, but you need a little help to get on the right path for healing.
I will also point out that being burdened by stress like I’ve gone through doing this addition on my house (a four month project now a year and eight months in with little hope to be finished before the two year mark) is, again, different than depression. It’s feeling weighted down and discouraged, and it can become depression if I start to focus on all the negative things instead of balancing it with the positives and/or I tell myself I’m a victim and just want to feel sorry for myself.
Dr Lee Warren teaches that whatever you’re doing it’s what you’re going to get better at. That’s pretty powerful. That means we need to decide what we want to get good at and try to head down that path because if all we do is complain, we’re going to get really good at complaining. If we let resentment grow, we’re going to get really good at resenting. I might not enjoy life, but I can still work at being better at enjoying it (or complaining about it in a fun way like Seinfeld).
The cure to depression actually isn’t that complicated and it’s been around for 2000 years. It’s basically following this passage: “Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise.” (Phil 4:8b) The problem with depression is we get overly negative – I’ve been there. The challenge is we get really good at being negative and being negative is a hard cycle to break. The other cure option is in another verse by the same writer, the Apostle Paul: “Don’t use your freedom to satisfy your sinful nature. Instead, use your freedom to serve one another in love. For the whole law can be summed up in this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” (Gal 5:13b-14) If you serve others, you have purpose, you’re doing something, you’re connecting with them, and you feel better about yourself because we’re meant to be fruitful and in community. That being written, if your depression is the result of doing too much for others, you’re also not following this verse: “Love your neighbor as yourself,” means we need to love ourselves and that includes healthy boundaries and knowing when to say no.
People like to downplay the Bible, but it’s amazing how everything we “discover” today is something that’s already been taught in the past.
This week may you consider how you can improve from your sin (i.e. how to clean the tub of water in which you’re floating).
Rev. Chad David, ChadDavid.ca, Learning to love dumb people (like me)