A Biblical-Theological Examination of Melancholy
“Melancholia—on a spectrum from simple sadness to profound discouragement, then crossing a moral line into despair—marks nearly every life at some point.” - Challies
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This will be an interesting Conference of which I am planning to attend. The church is unbelievably weak in this space, so I am encouraged that this is being tackled. Despair can be a very fine line. I have found the churches response in "just trust God", to be flimsy at best. All of us have suffered. What I have found interesting over the last year or so is that suffering is unique to all of us. If the worse suffering you have had is a struggle in marriage, that will seem overwhelming to you, because it is the worse that you have experienced. Depending on the level of suffering and/or your proclivity to weaknesses that are impacted by suffering, it can get very, very dark. The ability of our faith and our trust can be wholly insufficient to deal with the situation. Simple anecdotes will not do.
If the worse suffering you have had is a struggle in marriage, that will seem overwhelming to you, because it is the worse that you have experienced. Depending on the level of suffering and/or your proclivity to weaknesses that are impacted by suffering, it can get very, very dark.
In a conversation recently, some things I went through as a child came up. They were very small, ordinary experiences, but at the time, they were huge for me. So it’s all “common to man,” as a category, but the way it hits you is unique to your journey.
Those not going through it should “be patient with them all” (1 Thess 5:14)
Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.
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