The following paper was originally presented at Evangelical Theological Society conference in November 2011.
Abstract:
In the Scriptures, there is a pattern of both a full expression of sorrow and hope in the same passage. Often, we neglect the expression of strong negative emotion, believing the spiritual thing to do is to get to ‘hope restored’ as quickly as possible. Is this in fact a useful solution? Is this the pattern we see in the Scriptures? We will explore how genuine expression of difficult emotions is together with hope and how our teaching on sorrow should reflect this fact. The implications of this for the counselor and the integration of theology and psychology will also be explored.
Introduction
The difficulties we face as evangelical Christians when facing heartache and tragedy are compounded by our coming of age in a world where reason and knowledge have been elevated at the expense of authentic emotional expression. Let me begin with three recent examples, examples I did not need to search for – things that just came naturally through my line-of-sight.
I was with a leader of an international ministry and he related to me that his mother committed suicide. As I expressed my sympathy, he told me the story. She was sexually abused as a child and became prone to depression. He had analyzed why this tragedy had happened. Her church culture had never allowed her to talk openly about her hurt and pain, she spent life stuffing her sorrow and trying to be okay. It didn’t work, and her son believed this is why she killed herself.
I had coffee with a woman who lost her son to a tragic car accident. She is one of the most vibrant, alive, committed Christians you will every meet. She has started a ministry to Africa that works in education, digging wells, and starting businesses such as poultry farming. This lady is a dynamo; without question, a woman on a mission. She told me she almost left the church after her son died. Everyone wanted to smile, quote a Scripture to her and hear her agree that she believed that “all things work together for good.” She told me that the only thing that helped her survive was when people entered into her grief and cried with her.[i]
This is not only a phenomena in the western church. I was with a man in Cape Town while attending the Lausanne conference a few weeks ago. He told me about his experience with Chinese house churches. He has been with pastors who were teaching the book of Job in China. They insisted that Job was living in sin when he declared himself righteous, and God brought on the suffering to humble him. Therefore, in suffering, they taught we must be strong, showing no fear, no tears, no worry. The righteous do not express angst in suffering, but take it from the hand of God, as it is for their purification.
My contention is that many unmet needs of those who are grieving in the church and the lack of authentic healing from tragedy are a result of theological missteps and misconceptions. Specifically, people are handicapped when the church does not allow them to fully express their pain and grief in a corporate setting and in healing relationships.
The End of Triumphalism
I was sitting at a table of Christian leaders at the Lausanne conference, listening to an exposition of Ephesians 3. Our group talked about Ephesians 3:20: “Now all glory to God, who is able, through his mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think.”
The opinion was expressed that this concept was a significant struggle. One leader in particular told of praying for God to do so much and seeing so few of the hoped for results. Where was the “more than we might ask or think?” – had God left him he wondered aloud.
In response, I wondered aloud about the context. “Paul, a prisoner of Christ Jesus for the benefit of you Gentiles” … “So please don’t lose heart because of my trials here. I am suffering for you, so you should feel honored.” … Only after these phrases do we hear the words: “you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God.” (Ephesians 3:19). Power for what? Maybe it is power to make it through suffering more than it is power to accomplish something that appeares to be great and mighty.[ii]
A few days before we heard from an 18-year-old North Korean Christian who had gone through unthinkable suffering and, for many of us, that was the emotional highlight of the conference. It was fall on the floor and weep kind of stuff, even for 4,000 mature, seasoned and guarded leaders. Maybe Ephesians 3:20 is as much or even more about getting through suffering as reaching the next 10,000 with the gospel or feeding the next 100,000. Great accomplishments might be included in the phrase “infinitely more,” I do not want to discount that. But perhaps Ephesians 3:20 is more often about a person like Denise, divorced, mother of four, abandoned by her husband, just had brain surgery, making it through another day, than it is about a great work of power.
Quoting or, dare I say, memorizing Philippians 4:13: “For I can do everything through Christ, who gives me strength.” without quoting “I know how to live on almost nothing or with everything. I have learned the secret of living in every situation, whether it is with a full stomach or empty, with plenty or little.” of verse 12, in itself can become a false teaching. What are the “all things,” Paul is talking about? Empty stomachs? Beatings? Ruined and strained friendships? What context is there in Paul’s life for any sense of a victory centered life in this phrase? A Christ centered life is what Paul has in view.[iii]
So from the viewpoint of the New Testament, our first point when dealing with sorrow and grief in the church is putting an end to the triumphalism that has grown up in our Christian culture. Romans 8:28 “life verse” quoting church culture, is to be condemned when it is done in such a way that it allows us to pass over suffering and tears with a wave of the hand and the quoting of a verse. It is not more spiritual to get over great pain quickly, without tears and full expression of grief. It is actually biblical to live in and express emotionally a tragedy that you have experienced.[iv] We must give more attention to Paul’s exhortation in Romans 12 to “weep with those who weep.” and a little less attention to being able to “do everything” – if “everything” means that we need to buck up and get through any trial with a smile and a Bible verse on our lips. Our church peer pressure needs to change from expectations of triumph over grief and adversity, to the honest comfort of family relationships in tragedy. Sorrow is to be born together in the family of God and worked through over time. It is not an enemy to be conquered.
The message of triumphalism, as I have called it, does great damage to the family of God. It destroys our witness when we do not express genuine sympathy or fail to grieve with those who hurt. It harms our relationships when we hide the depth of our sorrow and pain from those who are to love us most as this destroys authenticity. It stops the healing process, and in the worst cases it utterly destroys people. In each of these passages; Romans 8:28, Ephesians 3:20, Philippians 4:13, the context is suffering and hardship. Proof-texting the power verse, without the context of suffering and sorrow – the child of suffering, is not helpful to the family of God. The power of God in your life must be held with the struggle and pain of this life, they cannot be held separately as if our job is to get through one to permanently live in the other. In this life, final victory over sorrow and grief is not possible.
The Gap
The second issue we need to address to find a biblical grounding for a discussion of sorrow and despair is the general tendency to emphasize emotional control as a sign of spiritual maturity and the idea that emotional expression is most often a display of weakness and a lack of knowledge and rationality.
This view, I have often argued, is from Plato, not Paul. The worldview underlying the neglect of emotion in our biblical understanding finds its roots in the separation of reason from emotion and a non-cognitive understanding of emotional function that was championed by Plato, William James, Charles Darwin, Descartes, and the later Stoics among many others. In contrast, more recent studies have pointed to the interdependence of thought and emotion, each dependent on the other for proper function. Emotion is all about what we think, how we think, and what we believe. Emotions provide a unique window to understand ourselves and our world. Careful study gives strong evidence that this is the view of the New Testament as well.[v]
In this view, emotions must not be trivialized and ignored but understood and listened to. Unfortunately, a wrong view of emotions has informed the vast majority of the interpretation of the emotions in the Bible, leading to a passing over of the central importance of emotions and their expression in the Christian life. This has led to the assertion of everything from God’s impassibility implying that he has no emotions, to the definition of love being defined as action and joy being defined as theology rather than emotions God expects us to feel.[vi]
In contrast to this, I would argue that the New Testament teaches that emotional maturity is close kin to spiritual maturity. That is a far different concept from the idea of emotional control as emotional maturity.[vii]
Misguided teachings of biblical scholars and theologians on emotion, have resulted in a gap between the counselor and the pastor, between the theologian and the Christian psychologist. If those who are teaching the Bible as their life’s work insist that the great commandment of Jesus to love God and neighbor has no currency with how we feel, and that negative emotions such as anger, sorrow and jealousy are sure signs of spiritual weakness that are to be controlled and tamed, the counselor is left with a great dilemma. How is the Christian counselor to respond, when those know Greek and write 512 page commentaries on 1 Corinthians are insisting that the Bible does not hold emotions to be all that important in issues of faith?[viii]
The counselor, on the other hand, sees people all day long whose emotions are paramount. In issues of depression, marital difficulties, or almost any problem being worked through, hearing, understanding, and often redirecting the client’s emotions is central to that person becoming healed and whole. There are two opposite solutions to the gap our misunderstandings of emotion have helped to create – obviously very few of us are totally on one side or the other – and both are equally deficient. 1) We look exclusively to secular research and techniques for solving emotional issues while looking to biblical sources for spiritual issues thus dividing the emotional and spiritual.[ix] 2) We deal only with “truth” expressing to the patient that if they believe the right things from the Scripture, memorize the right verse for their problem and take the right “biblical” action, all will be well. This second approach often oversimplifies a problem, ignoring individual experience and needs, and applying a ‘one solution fits all’ solution that devalues the unique situation.[x] The first approach minimizes the Bible’s vital role as a guide for all of life, while the second tends to minimize emotions as a side issue emphasizing knowing and acting truth as the ultimate cure.[xi]
Could a theologically nuanced and informed view of emotions in Scripture help bring us all closer together? Let us, as biblical scholars, encourage an approach that allows full expression of emotion and realizes that the sometimes complex and long task of working through them is part of the biblical record – just think how manydifferent Psalms David wrote about his pain. We can take the lead for our colleagues in counseling by applying our efforts to understand how God’s Word speaks directly to emotional issues.
I believe that if we can properly understand emotion as a God-given trait, something that the Bible speaks about often and loudly, we can take steps to bridge these gaps. Can a renewed emphasis on emotion in the text help bridge the gap between those holding different views about how to use Scripture in counseling? Can this renewed emphasis lessen the gap between the psychologist and the theologian as well? A strong assertion, by theologians that the Bible has some specific and significant insights on emotions and emotional issues would be a strong first step in bringing balance to our approach to Christian counseling. Further, a strong emphasis by our pastors on emotional needs and emotional growth as central to becoming spiritually mature will go even further in bridging the gap. Can we stand with Jonathan Edwards in fighting any attempt to minimize the importance of emotion in the church and affirming the strong role emotions have in the Christian life?
So the prevailing prejudice against religious affections today has the awful effect of hardening the hearts of sinners and of dampening the grace of many saints and reducing all to a state of dullness and apathy. To despise and cry against all religious affections is a sure way of shutting all religion out of the heart and of ruining souls. . . . Those who have little religious affection have very little religion.[xii]
This is also significant in our discussion today, because one of the issues of “the gap” is the downplay or minimizing of sorrow and grief in the text of the Bible. For example, in the story of raising Lazarus, it is often asserted that Jesus did not weep for the loss of a friend but for the plight of humanity.[xiii] Or we could look to some commentators assertion that repentance with “sorrow” in 1 Corinthians 5 is not an emotional experience.[xiv]
Another example of how we promote this gap is that theologians have often defined the positive emotions of love, joy, and hope as theological constructs while leaving the negative emotions of sorrow, fear, and anger as genuine emotions that should, most often, be defeated or minimized. Logically this does not make good sense. For example, fear is the feeling that comes from believing something bad may happen in the future to something you love, and hope is the feeling that comes from believing something good may happen in the future to something you love. They are logical opposites. Theologians, on the one hand, are telling us that fear is to be conquered with the many hundreds of commands “do not fear” but hope, on the other hand, is something to believe about God, not something we should feel. This gives counselors no help in getting someone through fear to hope. The counselor must have both scientific and biblical insights on the emotion of fear and hope, and an idea of how God desires we turn fear toward actual emotional hope – a place God wants us to live.[xv]
Among the philosophical and interpretation problems with a misunderstanding of emotion in the text, there are several issues we can highlight for our discussion of sorrow.[xvi] First, making positive emotions into theological constructs and all but rejecting negative emotions leaves us no room to operate within the real world of counseling, this is not how people work in real life.
Second, it leaves the believer empty. We are left trying to rid ourselves of bad feelings without a pathway to embrace the emotional love, joy, and hope that can be found in the person of Jesus. Are we to believe that the good things we want to feel, love – joy – hope, are beliefs we are to hold or things we are to do, not things God has given us to feel? If true, we are stuck with battling those things that are hard to experience; anger/hatred – sorrow – fear; without assurance of finding the emotions God wants most for us – love, joy, and hope. The truth is we are to participate in and even celebrate the whole spectrum of human feeling as put forth in Scripture, without robbing our experience by creating false categories and special theological meanings for emotional words or a category of feelings we are supposed to repress.
Finally, the downplaying of negative emotion in the Christian life assumes a faulty view of the true nature of the fallen world. The expression of sorrow and even despair is based on real events, real disappointments, real tragedy. Our experiences in a fallen world naturally lead to sorrow and grief. To downplay the feelings that come from a tragedy is to minimize the sin and destruction that has caused the feelings. Even the Almighty grieves over the affects of sin: “My heart is torn within me, and my compassion overflows.” we read in Hosea 11:8, and we will often feel the same.[xvii]
We have briefly argued in this section, that a proper view of emotion in the Bible can be a long step in bridging the gap between theology and psychology and between secular therapy and “biblical” counseling. The affirmation that grief and sorrow is the proper result of living in a broken and hurting world should allow our evangelical culture to be more effective in its ministry to the hurting. Again, we must hold two truths together. In one hand we have a God who is there to heal, God’s word that does bring healing and, a God who will bring an ultimate end to tears and sorrow. But these truths held alone are deficient. In the other hand, we must hold that the Scriptures include a large and prominent place for struggle and pain, even long periods of inner despair. Our goal is not to encourage people to get through pain to hope as quickly as possible, but rather to grieve with the suffering while somehow in some way bringing light and healing to the person small step by small step.
Test Cases: Toward a Biblical View of the Expression of Sorrow
Thus far I have spent my time arguing on a philosophical level, but as a biblical theologian it is good to think a bit about how these principles might work out in specific passages of Scripture.
Job 19 and 23 present good test cases for our discussion. The words from Job 19 found in Handel’s Messiah pound through my head, “I know that my redeemer liveth.” This is a typical positive affirmation of God we find on Job’s lips, similar to others scattered through the narrative.
We cannot say in any sense that Job has come through the suffering and ended at this place. Listen to what precedes:
19:8 God has blocked my way so I cannot move.
He has plunged my path into darkness.
9 He has stripped me of my honor
and removed the crown from my head.
10 He has demolished me on every side, and I am finished.
He has uprooted my hope like a fallen tree.
11 His fury burns against me;
he counts me as an enemy.
And listen to what is still to come:
Job 23:8 I go east, but he is not there.
I go west, but I cannot find him.
9 I do not see him in the north, for he is hidden.
I look to the south, but he is concealed. …
6 God has made me sick at heart;
the Almighty has terrified me.[xviii]
Yet in the midst of both chapters 19 and 23, we have these wonderful affirmations of God, his authority and justice.
Job 19:25 “But as for me, I know that my Redeemer lives,
and he will stand upon the earth at last.
26 And after my body has decayed,
yet in my body I will see God!
27 I will see him for myself.
Yes, I will see him with my own eyes.
I am overwhelmed at the thought!
Job 23:10 “But he knows where I am going.
And when he tests me, I will come out as pure as gold.
My point is really very simple, the verses we quote about the victory of God and the good end result are in the midst of more questions than answers.[xix] In chapter 19, there are three verses of some kind of vindication or triumph in the midst of 26 verses of Job crying out about his suffering. We experience trouble in helping the hurting in the church when we proof-text the three verses about faith without giving one who’s grieving the time of the 26 verses of suffering and asking why. In Job, a few drops of clarity about the greatness and goodness of God’s plan are in the midst of a pool of despair. When we try to bring people to hope, too quickly, it does not work without the 80% of grief and expression of sorrow.
And in the end, as we see in Job, there are no easy answers. God never gives a clear reason for his allowing the suffering and it is God who pulls Job out of the pit – in the words of Psalm 40. God restores Job – Job is totally unable to pull himself out by his own positive thinking. The restoration is an 8-verse postscript to 40 chapters about suffering. Yes, there is restoration, but it is long and complicated in coming. The process takes center stage, not the fix.
We see a microcosm of Job in Psalm 42 (Psalm 43 is a continuation of Psalm 42). Three times there are desperate cries of discouragement and three times we see strong affirmations of faith in God. There is a repeating chorus of “Why am I discouraged? Why is my heart so sad? I will put my hope in God!” that encapsulates both.
Psa. 42:4 My heart is breaking
as I remember how it used to be:
I walked among the crowds of worshipers,
leading a great procession to the house of God,
singing for joy and giving thanks
amid the sound of a great celebration!
5 Why am I discouraged?
Why is my heart so sad?
I will put my hope in God!
I will praise him again—
my Savior and my God!
We see process and breakthrough together. I do not believe this is a repetitive process simply to emphasize a final victory to the reader, but it is a repetitive process because it is a repetitive process. This is how people get through the things that are terribly hard, we do not come to hope without dealing honestly with the pain.[xx]
Speaking this truth as Bible scholars has the power to free Christian counselors to do their work, the healing work that takes time and struggle.
Two truths are held together in these passages. Those in honest and often desperate expression of suffering and pain sometimes only have short glimpses of God’s character, his provision, and the coming restoration. This is born out in the narratives we read in Scripture as well. How many true high points do we find in Moses 40 years of wandering in the wilderness, and how much struggle with a wayward people? How many moments of great faith are in the 25 years between Abraham’s call and the birth of Isaac? Will we ever see authentic glimpses of God without allowing for authentic and sometimes overwhelming grief when life does not turn out like we thought it would? If we do not see God through the sorrow, are we seeing God as he really is?[xxi]
Healing and restoration come with both the expression of grief and the internalizing of the truths that God brings to us that give great hope.[xxii] We will never get over or through pain and suffering permanently in this world. A sinful world will always dish out more of the same. Instead we must learn how to affirm God’s goodness in the midst of it. Both are held together.
Conclusion
Sorrow and grief over loss is a natural result of sin, living in a broken world, and the human condition. Bad things happen to us and to those we love, more than that – we do bad things and are bad ourselves. This hits us in the heart. To try to get through disappointment, tragedy, and loss without feeling its force is to minimize the sin and fallen nature of our world that is its cause.
Yet, in the midst of this, we must emphasize that there is an end game. The process is going somewhere, the Psalms of lament do not leave us hanging. With the rehearsal of who God is, how God loves us, and how he provides for us, comes genuine hope and joy. Healing and restoration is the goal, and we should not loose sight of this in learning to have room for the expression of sorrow and despair. That is, after all, the pattern we see in Scripture with all of Heilsgeschichte (salvation history).
Authors note: These issues are complex, please forgive any oversimplifications and overgeneralizations as I paint with a broad brush to make my point in a limited number of words.
[i] See the similar experience of Joanna Swinney, who refers to Job and his experience with his friends in this context. Through the Dark Woods, Oxford: Monarch (2006) 50-56, 105.
[ii] We should not discount this passage referring to the final triumph of Christ, but we can see both present and future assertions of God’s power. See R C Sproul, The Purpose of God: An Exposition of Ephesians, Great Britain: Christian Focus Publications (1994) 86-87; Andrew Lincoln, Ephesians, Word Biblical Commentary, vol. 42, Dallas: Word Books (1990) 215-16.
[iii] Ralph Martin, The Epistle of Paul to the Philippians, The Tyndale New Testament Commentaries, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans (1987) 178-80 and Gerald Hawthorne, Philippians, Word Biblical Commentary, vol. 43, Dallas: Word Books (1990) 215-16, 200-01. In this assertion, lets not forget the fact that Paul also saw great works of God’s power to accomplish the will of God – and we are not amiss to pray for the same.
[iv] For example, the testimony of Frank A. James, ‘In the Shadow of Mount Hood’, Christianity Today, September, 2010.
[v] There is an extensive discussion of these issues in “What is Emotion” in Matthew Elliott, Faithful Feelings, Leiscter: Inter-Varsity Press (2006) 16-55.
[vi] A sampling of quotes following from my book Feel: The Power of Listening to Your Heart, Carol Stream: Tyndale (2008) 17. Many similar quotes can be found in Faithful Feelings. Dr. Erwin Lutzer, a well-known pastor and author writes, “Divine love is based on and dependent on the lover. It is not a feeling, for with it we can even love our enemies. Clearly, if love were a feeling, God would be putting a burden on us that we could not possibly bear.” Erwin Lutzer, Managing Your Emotions, Chappaqua, N.Y.: Christian Herald (1981) 38; Kay Arthur put the common argument like this, “Love is not merely an emotion, otherwise it could not be commanded. Love requires action. Love demands deeds.” A Marriage Without Regrets, Eugene, OR: Harvest House (2000) 64; I heard pastor Pastor James MacDonald who is now on over 600 radio stations say that the problem in the church today is that “we think love is a feeling, [but] love is a choice.” He also writes, “Faith is believing the Word of God and acting upon it no matter how I feel.” James Mcdonald, I Really Want to Change so Help Me God, Chicago: Moody Press (2000), 189; New Testament scholar D.A. Hagner says of Jesus’ command to love your enemies, “The love he describes, of course, is not an emotion . . . but volitional acts.” D. A. Hagner, Matthew 1-13, Dallas: Word (1993) 136; Dr. Markus Bockmuehl, in his commentary on Philippians writes, “Joy in the Lord is not a feeling but an attitude, and as such it can be positively commanded.” Markus N. A. Bockmuehl, The Epistle to the Philippians, Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson (1998) 59; And Joyce Meyer, in her book Managing Your Emotions: Instead of Your Emotions Managing You, writes, “That is Satan’s plan for our lives—to get us to live by our carnal feelings so we can never walk in the Spirit. . . . If we lack understanding about the fickle nature of emotions, Satan can use them—or the lack of them—to keep us out of God’s will. I firmly believe that no person will ever walk in God’s will and ultimately in victory if he takes counsel with his emotions.” Joyce Meyer, New York: FaithWords (2003) 13-14.
[vii] For a discussion of the importance of emotion in the Christian life and the New Testament see Feel and Faithful Feelings, especially pages 236-268.
[viii] See Faithful Feelings, 125-34 for a discussion of general issues and key emotional vocabulary found in the New Testament.
[ix] An example of this might be found in Herbert Wagemaker’s book The Surprising Truth about Depression, where he argues that causes of depression are strictly physiological and unrelated to the spiritual life. Grand Rapids: Zondervan (1994). This is not to deny that physical/chemical abnormalities are not often a root cause of depression or to say that the emotional states talked about in this paper are synonymous with depression. But, I think we must say that, at the very least, sorrow and despair in the Scriptures does have fellowship with depression and they are interrelated states. We also might discuss how emotional states and our way of handling these, one by one, either contributes to or mitigates a period of long-term depression. In all these instances, Scripture has something to speak to us.
[x] I commend Entwistle’s discussion of the problems with this approach. His discussion of how to integrate while maintaining the primacy of Scripture is also worthwhile. Integrative Approaches to Psychology and Christianity, Eugene: OR, Wiph and Stock Publishers (2004) 185-204; 251-75. In my view, the treatment of sorrow and depression the Bible remains relevant even when biological conditions are an underlying cause. Physical or changes are affecting the mind and thinking which is, in turn, causing the mental anguish and struggle. You can see my long discussion on the cognitive causes of emotional states in Faithful Feelings. The body and the mind are constantly interacting. This view is not without defenders in secular psychology. See Rudy Nydegger, Understanding and Treating Depression., Westport: Praeger Publishers (2008) 115-16 and Beck and Alford, Depression: Causes and Treatment, 2nd ed., Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press (2009) 231. Note also Nydegger’s discussion on the success of cognitive therapies to treat depression (125-30) and Beck and Alford’s discussions about cognitive techniques on pages 307-16. As I read the discussions, there are many similarities of cognitive therapy for depression to the response to sorrow that we see in the biblical narrative. For example, it would be a fascinating study to compare these approaches with the rehearsals of God’s goodness and character set against the writers sorrow that we find in the Psalms of lament. You could also look at group therapy in light of the idea of church as family that we find in the writings of John in the New Testament.
[xi] A good integrative approach for depression is often found in popular level handbooks. For example, Coping with Depression by Siang-Yang and Ortberg, Grand Rapids: Baker (1995) and Edward Welch’s booklet Depression: The Way Up When You Are Down, Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, (2000). The question,I think, is can we do this same integration at a higher academic level (I say this as a theologian who may not be aware of the strongest writings by Christian psychologists on the subject).
[xii] Jonathan Edwards, Religious Affections, ed. James M. Houston, Portland, Ore.: Multnomah (1984) 26.
[xiii] See D.A. Carson, The Gospel According to John, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans (1991) 416 and my discussion in Faithful Feelings, 207-08.
[xiv] Faithful Feelings, 209.
[xv] We can use many different treatments to find relief from overwhelming sorrow: therapy, Scripture memorization, drug therapy, exercise, and building relationships. The key is to be holistic instead of one dimensional, and to understand that the Bible speaks into every situation. See Joanna Swinney, Through the Dark Woods, Oxford: Monarch (2006) 76-90, 125-33. See also the discussion of the many varied causes of depression, often acting together, in Understanding and Treating Depression. Rudy Nydegger, Westport: Praeger Publishers (2008) 39-51.
[xvi] Faithful Feelings, 257-60.
[xvii] The way you feel about others tragedy is a strong indication of your moral character. J. Oakley, Morality and the Emotions, London: Routledge (1992); Faithful Feelngs, 48-53.
[xviii] It would be a fascinating study to compare Job’s state of mind with a list of characteristics of depression. For example, Beck and Alford’s list, Depression: Causes and Treatment, 2nd ed., Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press (2009) 17-43.
[xix] We see surprisingly little in commentaries on how the two differing perspectives apply to the experience of suffering today. Differing interpretations of the “conflict” in these passages include Job’s internal conflicts between alternate understandings and world views and differences between what Job knows and what he desires. There is some question as to who the “redeemer” is and how this redeemer relates to God, and some assert that the verses represent just a restatement of his case against God through the redeemer. The translation of 19: 26-28 is very difficult See Gerald Janzen, Job, Interpretation, Atlanta: John Knox (1985) 134-143; Robert Alden, Job, The New American Commentary, Nashville: B&H (1993) 199; David Clines, Job 1-20, Word Biblical Commentary, Dallas: Word Books (1989) 457-463; NIB, vol. 4, Nashville: Abingdon Press (1996) 477-479.
[xx] The message is that “we know and articulate hope and despair simultaneously.” NIB, vol. 4, Nashville: Abingdon Press (1996) 854. See also Commentary on the Whole Bible by Matthew Henry, Grand Rapids: Zondervan (1960) 621. The application of a free flow of emotion for the reader is rarely mentioned in commentaries. For a good summary see Randall Christenson, “Parallels Between Depression and Lament,” Journal of Pastoral Care and Counseling, Winter 2007, vol. 61, no 4.
[xxi] I would have enjoyed having space to dig into other passages that have relevance, especially in the New Testament. For example, what implications for depression does Acts 23:11 have? Why did Jesus see the need to pay Paul a personal visit before the coming imprisonment and trials. Was it because the great trials that were coming would have certainly overwhelmed Paul and sent him into a inevitable downward spiral toward depression without the assurance that God was in the circumstances?
[xxii] Although the emphasis of this paper is on the expression of sorrow for healing, we could just as easily emphasize the need to rehearse, memorize, and dwell on the person and promises of God that is also seen as a healing balm in these passages. See for example, James Montgomery Boice, Psalms vol. 2: 42-106, Grand Rapids: Baker (1996) 370; Faithful Feelings, 210-11.