| Points | 100 |
| Due | October 29, 2022 |
Prompt
What is the most important thing you learned from reading Depression, Where is Your Sting? How does this impact the way you would approach and minister to someone suffering with depression? If you have suffered with depression, how would this change your own personal approach to dealing with depression? (Saturday)
Essay
“There is no pill for salvation” (p. 79); McBain paints with one broad stroke both the futility of our attempt to deal with depression and God’s healing power through His redemption. Jesus laments our predisposition for the familiar, “You will not come to me, that you might have life” (John 5:40). The book offers a genuine detail of McBain’s journey through cycles of depression and deliverance, accentuate our perpetual and constant need of abiding in Christ.
“Our identity and vocation are rooted in the life that we have in Christ, and identity and vocation are codependent, so we do not have to establish one in order to find the other. Instead, both unfold as we live each day in the life and light of Christ” (p. 88). The linear quest for our identity, hoping it will lead to purpose, leads many to a dead end. The irreconcilable dissonance between identity and purpose accelerated McBain’s regression into depression. The simplistic solution for defining life’s purpose by recognizing one’s identity can become the catalyst for self-destruction. Derek Prince responds better, “That purpose is to know the Lord. The meaning of life is relationship. The future comes from pursuing Him, not pursuing the future” (p. 88).
McBain correctly identified that the cause of the church’s silence about depression was due to various factors, not only “the culture of stigma and silence in the church that leads to shame” (p. 90). The church’s reticence on the subject is partly due to the lack of understanding of depression, and the fear of not knowing what to do leads to hurting the person more. We turn toward the secular apparatus that is trained to help to treat people through the biomedical model, even though we know their wound is more profound than incorrect mixtures of chemicals in their brains. It is easy for the church to treat the symptoms by prescribing the biomedical model, but that will not cure the disease ravaging our souls. The church cannot remain silent on the issue of depression but must change and fulfill “its role as the Body of Christ as it operates as a redeemed community that brings wholeness to the broken” (p. 100). “Whether is it easier to say to the sick of the palsy, Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Arise, and take up thy bed, and walk” (Mark 2:9). Our medical technology cannot touch the brokenness that is at the bottom of our souls. Humanity needs to be touched by God’s love to be healed and finally free.