Spiritual Depression

"... hearts weighed down ..."
- Luke 21:34

There is a sort of spiritual depression that can either rise to or complicate emotional, mental, and physical depression. It is, in Greek, "barew," a verb meaning "to weigh down or depress."

Stay with me a moment.

Depression has spiritual, emotional, cognitive, physical, and biochemical dimensions. One can lead to the other. In the spiritual realm, there are spiritual remedies that can intervene.

I have met some very healthy people in mental hospitals - spiritually healthy, balanced, and centered people who are working to regain their physical, mental, and emotional health. Yes. I am changing the order of these words intentionally.

Spiritual health, in this arena, comes from watchfulness and a decision to not add weight to our already depressed thinking or to weigh ourselves down when we are not depressed.

From whence comes the weight of this particular form or complication of depression? It comes, according to Jesus, from three areas where we can make choices:

1. We respond to stress with excess and that is called "dissipation." In English, it means "to spread abroad, scatter, disperse; squander, disintegrate," It is followed by the condition where we "desire no more of something as a result of having consumed or done it to excess." Sometimes we respond to stress with excess. We do what brings us release until we pass out literally or figuratively.

Does this begin to sound like an addiction model or does it just sound like sin or are sin and addiction wearing each others' wedding rings?

Dissipation is the opposite of watching. When we watch, we are spiritually awake. When we dissipate, we are retreating from our stress into some substance, behavior, lifestyle, stinking thinking, or fantasy that gives us temporary relief. An endorphin release ensues and we experience momentary bliss followed by dissipation. Dissipation feeds deeper depression and the spiral spirals.

2. Drunkenness is next. It is "en krepalh," a word, common in the language of medical writers of Jesus' day for the nausea that follows a debauch. It is also an opposite of watchfulness, but it is a stupor, the basis of the adjective, "stupid."

Don't get stupid! The endorphin high that comes from alcohol can be produced by thought or behavior. Maybe you are addicted to wallowing in some injustice that has been inflicted on you. Maybe it is lustful thinking. Maybe it is some other habitual something that you do to find a place of release and release -- It can make you stupid!

We think "stupid" thoughts, we make "stupid" choices, and we keep doing the "stupid" things that dissipate us and make us stupid and "stupider."

We sink deeper into sin and addiction --- that is not to diminish the medical significance of addiction nor the spiritual significance of sin. They walk together and support each other.

Sin is, by definition, missing the archer's mark - that dead center where we are at home, at peace, and rightly aligned with God and our purpose. We cannot go to sleep on this -- no matter how much stress we perceive or how relentless the attacks, we must stay spiritually awake.

3. The third is what we think causes the other two - the care of this world. It is the load we either have placed upon us or place upon ourselves. It is "merimnai biwtikai," the anxieties of life. (I apologize for my clumsy transliterations of the Greek).

Can we control the anxieties of life?

Not entirely, but we can choose not to feed them, dwell on them, or add to them through dissipation and drunkenness --- or through our addictions to accumulation of wealth, power, importance, status, or control.

Jesus taught much, in his ministry, about the cares of life and how to release them. He taught trust, faith, and realignment of our sense of purpose and significance. He taught us to go up by coming down, to be first by becoming intentionally last, to win by losing, to release our anger and nagging need of revenge by forgiving, and to gain eternity by emptying ourselves before God. He taught us to come as children.

We cannot control the cares placed upon us, but we can reassign them and redefine them and refuse to allow them to become our defining factors.

These three things, dissipation, drunkenness, and cares of life become a trap that ensnares us, like addiction and like sin. As a snare. Luke translates Jesus into the Greek with the word, "pagi" from "phgnumi," meaning to "make fast a net or trap."

Robertson notes that "Paul uses it several times of the devil's snares for preachers ( 1 Timothy 3:7 ; 2 Timothy 2:26 )."

We can be watchful or we can become ensnared. Does Jesus have a word for those of us who might be trapped in spiritual depression as part of a systemic or systematic process of depression or addiction? I think so. We may need more than just spiritual therapy and prayer if we are there, but we can find spiritual health and watchfulness in the midst and we can find the way to function in this world through this admonition to wakefulness, watchfulness, and mindfulness.

"Turn your eyes upon Jesus." 

efer to Robertson's Word Pictures for deeper study of this potent verse: CLICK