The opposite of depression is delight, being spontaneously surprised by the goodness and beauty of living. This is not something we can ever positively crank up and make happen in our lives. It is, as every saint and sage has told us, the by-product of something else. It is something that happens to us and which can never, on our own, make happen to us. As C. S. Lewis suggests in the title of his autobiography, Surprised by Joy, delight has to catch us unaware, at a place where we are not rationalizing that we are happy. The famous prayer of Francis of Assisi, with its insistence that it is only in giving that we receive, suggests the same thing.

This is what it would mean to not be depressed: Imagine yourself on some ordinary weekday, walking to your car, standing at a bus stop, cooking a meal, sitting at your desk, or doing anything else that is quite ordinary. Suddenly, for no tangible reason, you fill with a sense of the goodness and beauty and joy of just living. You feel your own life — your heart, your mind, your body, your sexuality, the people and things you are connected to — and you spontaneously fill with the exclamation: “God, it feels great to be alive!” That’s delight, that’s what it means not to be depressed.

– Ronald Rolheiser, The Holy Longing: The Search for a Christian Spirituality

Rolheiser suggests that the default position for many of us in contemporary culture is “depression,” which he defines as the inability to access our inner energies in order to engage life. When we are depressed (not clinically depressed — that’s something else) we feel dead inside, or at least lethargic. There is a dimness or dullness of spirit that deflates us. We are right to see this as a spiritual problem — it is traditionally recognized as the deadly sin of acedia: a state of restlessness or listlessness that keeps us from our work or prayer, or at least from finding joy in them. We can’t find the energy to care.

The American approach to overcoming such spiritual problems is typically direct and technological in nature. I identify an area of sin or weakness, a habit or fault that I imagine hinders my relationship with God or others, something that displeases God or keeps me from being effective in his service. I develop strategies for conquering this problem, and then seek and make use of proper tools to win the battle. This is the (inadequate) Christian practice of “sin management” that Dallas Willard and others write about.

Life becomes a project. A self-improvement project. Or, in more Christian terms, a “sanctification” project.

I understand the attraction of this kind of methodology. It is logical and consistent with the way people approach work and many aspects of life in modern society. It is easy to understand and communicate. It is practical and satisfies our common sense realism about dealing with life and its problems.

And in the final analysis, it is all up to you and me to accomplish — with God’s help and blessing, of course.

Continue reading “Depression and Delight”

After many years of seeking to live a spiritual life, I still ask myself, “Where am I as a Christian?” — “How far have I advanced?” — “Do I love God more now than earlier in my life?” — “Have I matured in faith since I started on the spiritual path?” Honestly I don’t know the answers to these questions. There are just as many reasons for pessimism as for optimism. Many of the real struggles of twenty or forty years ago are still very much with me. I am still searching for inner peace, for creative relationships with others, and for a deeper experience with God. And I have no way of knowing if the small psychological and spiritual changes during the past decades have made me more or less a spiritual person.

– Henri Nouwen, Spiritual Formation: Following the Movements of the Spirit

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After many years, I still have questions about how much I’ve matured.

I honestly don’t know how to evaluate myself and what “progress” I’ve made.

I still struggle with many of the same issues I had long ago.

I am searching for peace.

I am still trying to figure out how to be more loving my relationships.

I still hunger to know God more deeply.

I really don’t know how to evaluate the state of my spiritual life.

Henri Nouwen’s utter honesty is refreshing, if disturbing to our notions of “progress” in our Christian faith. Contemporary notions of “growth” and “sanctification” are more like Weight Watchers programs than traditional views of spiritual formation. We like to chart our progress, to feel like we are gaining on our goals. We like check-off lists, measurable standards, records of progress that we can capture in statistical form. An entire industry of Christian publishing is devoted to this approach, and churches and ministries everywhere promote it in their preaching and programs.

But the bottom-line, at least for me, is — I really have no idea.

I can feel ecstatic about something I learn one minute, and then the next minute I’m short-tempered toward my wife.

I patiently endure something genuinely irritating, and then the next moment I’m so discouraged over a petty matter that I want to quit.

I write something satisfying, or preach a sermon people say they appreciate, and then I curse the stupid driver in front of me on my way home (with real curse words).

I inwardly judge someone and despise them as incompetent and foolish while smiling and carrying on a friendly conversation with them.

I write a post about self-righteousness and then get upset when someone criticizes it. Don’t they recognize the insight God gave me about this subject?

A post I read yesterday alluded to remarks by a well-known preacher: “…scientists who spend their lives trying to heal and prevent cancer invest most of their time studying cancer. He says that only when you truly understand the nature and extent of the disease is it possible to find and fully appreciate its cure.”

I think that’s dangerous advice and misses an important point. The scientists who are focusing so much attention on cancer don’t know the cure and are therefore working hard to understand the disease so that they can come up with one. Christians, on the other hand, are not in this position. We may not understand the extent of our disease, but we know the cure. And it is not of our own making or doing.

I will never be able to plot my “progress” against the dread disease of sin and toward spiritual health and wholeness. I can, however, by the Spirit, in Word and Sacrament, look constantly to the cure. Jesus alone sustains me when symptoms reappear and threaten my sense of well being.