Over on the Mayo Clinic site I read an article about SSRI’s that ran through the positives and negatives of using these drugs. It ended on this perky note:

Talk with your doctor or mental health provider to nix your irritability, sadness or anger and boost your mood with SSRIs. Feel good again.

Nix your irritability with SSRIs!



Is this how God wants us to nix sin? Irritability is a sin. Sadness is a sin. Anger is a sin. Not always. Of course there are things that rightly make us sad and angry. But most of our sadness and anger, I am willing to bet, is sinful. We are sad because we are bored or discontent with what God has given us. We are angry because we are prideful.

And irritability? I can not think of a single time when being irritable is not sinful.

So does God want us to boost our moods with SSRIs?

God does want us to feel good again. He wants us to rejoice in the Lord always. But he does not want us to mask our emotional pain with drugs, I’m pretty sure. Emotional pain is much like physical pain. It has a purpose. When you stick your hand in the fire the nerves in your fingers scream out, “Pull back! Pull back! Alert! Pain! Danger! Pull back!” And you whip your hand back.

My husband was paralyzed from the neck down. If he stuck his hand in the fire, he felt nothing. For twenty-two years he had to do a visual check of his body every few minutes. He had to look at his body and look at the space around him and see if he was in danger from heat or cold or from sharp objects. Because if his foot fell into the campfire he’d leave it there until he smelled the burning flesh.

Why would that matter? Who cares if he burned his foot?  He couldn’t feel the pain.

It mattered because if he burned his foot he was opening himself up to infection and to possible death. It is not good for us to have big burns and wounds. That is why God gave us nerves. They are a protection. When we live without them, as my husband did, we are at a distinct disadvantage.

The same is true if you go on SSRIs to mask emotional pain. God gives us emotional pain for a reason. It is there to warn us. “Pull back! Danger! Pay attention! I’m trying to tell you something!”

On the Mayo site, in that same article, we read:

Precisely how SSRIs affect depression isn’t clear….Although antidepressants may not cure depression, they can help you achieve remission—the disappearance or nearly complete reduction of depression symptoms.

How is removing symptoms helpful? You are, in effect, paralyzing yourself. You are deadening your emotional nerves and often, I believe, your spiritual nerves. And you are then able to leave yourself, happily, in the fire.

I’ve never had depression. I’m not judging those who have. I am not anti-science or anti-medicine. It may be that a person is in such a deep depression that he can’t make any progress without the drugs to lift his fog. And psychotropic drugs for schizophrenics have saved many lives, I’d guess.

My point is not that drugs are always wrong. My point is that we, as a nation—and yes, that includes those of us in the church—have an unbiblical understanding of what God wants for us. We have bought into the idea that we have the right to not only pursue happiness, but to catch it. We believe we are entitled to feel no pain. We want our government to provide good health care and good jobs that pay well. We believe we deserve to live in ease.

God wants us to feel pain. He works through our pain. He designed us so that we would not go happily to hell without a lot of struggle. He wants us to suffer, so we will call out to him for relief.

My husband suffered through many surgeries, and through years, literally, in hospitals, fixing wounds he’d gotten because he could feel no pain. Many of us purposefully paralyze ourselves, spending years in spiritual wheelchairs, asleep…half dead, our discernment dulled by drugs or TV or porn or alcohol or exercise or food. We are opening ourselves up to big, nasty wounds that may kill us. We are not learning to obey. We are not growing in grace. We are just, pretty much, waiting to die.

I think we need to wake up. I think we need to stop wanting to feel good and start wanting to be good.

So here are some ways, off the top of my head, that the Bible gives us for responding to depression, anxiety, and worry:

1. Praying to God:

Be anxious for nothing, but in all things present your requests to God by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, and the peace of God which transcends all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. (Phil. 4:6&7)

2. Meditation Upon God:

Thou shalt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed upon Thee. (Isa. 26:3)

3. Meditation Upon What God Has Give You:

For God has not given us the spirit of fear, but of power and love and a sound mind. (2 Tim. 1:7)

4. Meditation Upon God’s Love:

Perfect love drives out fear. (1 John 4:18)

5. Meditation Upon What God Has Done in History:

The enemy pursues me…he makes me dwell in darkness like those long dead. So my spirit grows faint within me… I remember the days of long ago, I meditate on all your works. I consider what your hands have done. (Psalm 143:3-5)

6. Rebuking Your Soul:

Why so downcast within me? Put your hope in God. I will yet praise him. (Psalm 42:5, Psalm 43:5)

7. Crying Out to God:

Father take this cup….And an angel strengthened him. (Luke 22:42&43)

8. Refreshing Others:

He who refreshes others will himself be refreshed. (Prov. 11:25)

9. Waiting on the LORD:

He who waits upon the Lord will…run and not be weary. (Isa. 40:31)

10. Obedience:

I will run in the path of your commands for you have set my heart free. (Psalm 119:32)  The precepts of the Lord are right, giving joy to the heart…in keeping them there is great reward. (Psalm 19:8,11)

11. Fearing the LORD:

In the fear of the Lord is strong confidence and his children have a place of refuge. (Prov. 14:26)

12. Praising the LORD:

He has given us the oil of joy for mourning and the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness. (Isaiah 61:3)

I could go on and on. We are told to be not afraid, be not afraid, be not afraid.

One of the reasons we are to be not afraid is that God is our Father. He has not left us as orphans. He doesn’t forsake us. He won’t let us fall.

Every fear has its root in believing that God is either not good enough or not strong enough to save us. What other reason for fear can there be? We simply refuse to believe God. He tells us he’s good and he tells us he’s strong. What reason does a Christian have for fear?

Christians today look very much like nonChristians. We have the same fears, the same worries, the same depressions, the same ways of combating those bad feelings. We shop too much and eat too much and take medication to ease the pain. Is that because God has failed us? Is that because God is not able to deliver us and give us that joy that is beyond comprehension? Is that because God doesn’t really give peace when we pray?

Or is it because we don’t believe him?

I have just listened to four really wonderful sermons—well three sermons and message on the life of David Brainerd, I guess. All four messages were given at a men’s retreat. Hmmm. I’m not usually looking for men’s retreat messages. I don’t know if I’ve ever heard any before. I stumbled upon these because I was looking at books in the Westminster bookstore, and I came across a book called, Rescuing Ambition, by Dave Harvey.

Now I am about the most unambitious person around. Really. I have not a competitive bone in my body. I’m the only person I know who would rather lose a game than win. I don’t mind winning, but when I am playing with people who really want to win, I really want them to win, too. It’s important to them, after all, and I don’t care about it in the least.

So my first reaction to the title Rescuing Ambition was to run the other way. That, of course, made me stop and consider. If I don’t like a thing, it sometimes mean I need to study it.

I thought a little about ambition, then. Ambition is not really the flip side of contentment. It’s the flip side of complacency. Having ambition is not the same as having a competitive spirit. Having ambition is not the same as having selfish ambition. Ambition for furthering God’s purposes is not the same thing as ambition to get ahead in life.

I’ve been thinking about the difference between contentment and complacency for a few years. I even wrote a novel where I tried to contrast the two. Contentment comes from knowing that you are God’s own dearly loved child. Contentment in all circumstances comes from knowing that everything you walk through is God’s gift to you for your good and his glory. (Whether you want to say he allows the trials and successes or ordains them, doesn’t matter for this argument—everything he allows, he allows because he loves you. When you know this, you can be content.) Contentment is not meant to do away with ambition, though. We should plan and strive and work. We should have big plans for serving our neighbors. We serve a big God and we should have a big vision. Contentment is not grounds for complacency.

So, I, being one to lean toward complacency, thought maybe I should buy this book on ambition. I haven’t gotten it yet—it should arrive tomorrow. In the meantime, though, I discovered four messages by the author of book. He’s a very good speaker, entertaining, passionate, logical, biblical, witty, and uses himself for negative illustrations. I just loved his messages.

They were well worth the time. Check them out:

• Don’t Waste Your Ambition
• The Perfect Man
• The Quest for Contentment
• Brainerd and the Better Plan

How do we distinguish between what God is doing in our lives and what Satan is doing?

That may sound like an odd question. How can I confuse God’s work with Satan’s? But I think we do confuse the two.

I believe God is doing everything—that he’s behind everything that happens to me. I believe that God ordains every sniffle, every sneeze.

Well, where does that leave Satan? Doesn’t the Bible say that Satan is like a roaring lion seeking to destroy? Doesn’t it say I’m to be on my guard against him?

I think we need to ask how Satan destroys. Does he destroy people by making them suffer with illness and poverty? Or does he destroy them by giving them riches? Or does he destroy by using both circumstances and whispering in the ear, “God doesn’t love you, he’s letting you suffer.” Or, “You don’t need God, he’s a tyrant. You’ve worked hard for this money, you deserve to enjoy it.”

Satan does not destroy us by giving us different outward circumstances, I don’t think. Wasn’t that one of the main lessons in Job? Satan cannot steal a man’s faith by stealing a man’s wealth and health. We don’t have to fight the demon of poverty or the demon of wealth. We don’t have to give any thought to whether we are healthy or wealthy. If we are in Christ, we are healthy and wealthy beyond our wildest imaginings.

I agree with the posts I put on here by Bob Vincent (here, here, and here), but I also think that physical health and wealth is minor in light of eternity.

God does give me the health and wealth I need to do the things he asks me to do. I don’t need to chase after the things the pagans chase after. I don’t need to worry about what I’ll eat or what I’ll wear. (Matt. 6:31&32)

I think I have to beware of Satan not because of how he buffets me on the outside but because of how he buffets me on the inside. I think I have to flee from Satanic thought—from temptation to hate God because I’m poor or to forget God because I’m rich.

This is important: Temporal stuff is passing away and it can’t harm us. It’s like food that goes into the body and out. An excess of money today can’t hurt us. A lack of money can’t hurt us. Money is not the root of all evil—the love of money is. It’s not the money and the health that are so dangerous to us, it’s the way we idolize them.  And we idolize money and health whether we are rich or poor, healthy or ill.

So I don’t pray for health and wealth or for illness and poverty. I pray in health and wealth and in illness and poverty, asking God not to change my outward situation, but to make me gain from my outward situation. Give me more of Christ. Make me more like Christ. This is what I ask of God when I am sick and poor.

I do ask God to give me food daily—physical as well as spiritual. I do ask him to meet my needs. But for years and years I prayed regularly that God would give me neither poverty or riches. (Proverbs 30:7-9)

I still think that’s a good prayer. I want to lift my eyes off of the lack or excess of today and look into eternity. I want to use my wealth and my poverty, my successes and my failures, my prosperous times and my times of suffering, to praise God for his mercy to me and his willingness to mold me and make me after the image of his Son.

So who gives cancer and who gives health? God gives both and Satan gives both. Ultimately God, because he’s the big dog in charge. But I don’t think I need to look at every instance of suffering or prosperity in my life and try to discern who gave it and whether I should pray against it or be thankful for it. I think I am to give thanks in all things, for this is the will of God in Christ (1 Thess. 5:18). I think I am to rejoice always, and again, I say, rejoice (Phil. 4:4). I think Satan can’t crush me under suffering because I see all suffering as a good gift from God, and Satan can’t lure me away under riches because I see all riches as good gifts from God.

Clear vision is what we need, not health and wealth.

I’ll tell you what I don’t see: I don’t see a down side to saying, “The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, blessed be the name of the Lord.” (Job 1:21) My prayer against Satan is not that God will keep him from harassing me in the physical realm but that he’ll keep him from sending fiery darts of doubt and bitterness and worry and fear and pride and greed and self-righteousness and self-sufficiency into whatever situation I find myself in physically.

This, my friends, is the secret of being content in all things. Knowing that God gives all things—the temporal good and the temporal evil¹—for our eternal good and his eternal glory.