A classic IM post by Michael Spencer (4/07), presented by Chaplain Mike.

Every time I feel like I have lost my way in the Christian life, I find myself back looking at monasticism, and the lessons I learned in two decades of reading Thomas Merton.

I’m not attracted to Catholicism, but I am very much attracted to the tradition of self-conscious, disciplined spiritual formation into a disciple of Jesus Christ. This is a great failing of our side of the church.

As much as we Protestants talk about being shaped by the Bible alone, most evangelicals are thoroughly formed and shaped by the communities where the Bible is handled, taught and practiced according to a “rule” or accepted authority, and by the media that supports and communicates the values of that community.

It is, without a doubt, one of the most appealing and positive aspects of Catholicism that it is self-conscious about its “rules” and authorities for spiritual formation. (Rule as in “way,” as in The Rule of Benedict.) It surely must be humorous to knowledgeable catholics to look at the various sects, denominations and varieties of evangelicalism and fundamentalism, all claiming to “just read the Bible.”

For a large portion of my recent evangelical journey, I have found myself wandering between three varieties of evangelicalism:

1) Southern Baptist fundamentalism
2) Evangelical Calvinism
3) Generic contemporary evangelical revivalism

All of these communities could be characterized as shaping the spiritualities of believers according to largely unwritten rules and authorities.

The closest thing you get to self-conscious spiritual formation among most evangelicals: Jabez, PDL, or an evangelism course. Or a cruise.

It’s occurred to me that at least two of these streams have done much to shape me in the belief that pursuing polemic argument is a primary expression of discipleship. I have been affected by this kind of spiritual “rule,” and when I step away from it, the effects are very obvious.

Lots of time is taken up in finding error, pointing out error, justifying the seriousness of the error (even if it is in a non-essential area), and responding to the error with the proper arrangement of Biblical material.

It’s amazing how many Christians conceive of almost the entirety of discipleship in terms of argumentation. This is seen in the pastoral models they choose, the books/blogs they write and the spiritual activities they value most (debate and classroom lecture.)

These largely unarticulated forms of spiritual formation can be seen in what is not important. I note with interest that one simply cannot say enough bad about most kinds of contemplative prayer, and any sort of silence among many of the reformed particularly. Any kind of intentional approach to spiritual formation, and any kind of intentional approach to discipleship (Dallas Willard, for example) is undertaken amidst a barrage of criticism. If the imagination is mentioned, all fire alarms are pulled and a search for Oprah Winfrey ensues.

Me thinks the lady doth protest too much.

The “fully formed” Christian in these traditions is not a person of silence, but of much talking, talking and more talking. Worship is lecture, a rally, or an emotion-centered event. The primary encounter with the Bible is exposition and lecture. Correcting theological error, moral error and ecclesiastical error is the main business of the church.

In other forms of evangelicalism spiritual formation is done under the guise of church growth and using ones “gifts” to grow the church. Or perhaps in the cause of righteous, upright living in the culture war. Again, the kinds of prayer, worship, community life and worship that are generated by these priorities are obvious to most observers, but largely invisible to the participants.

In all the years I was reading Merton’s spiritual direction writings, I can’t recall anything I would call polemic of any kind. He simply didn’t waste his life arguing with others. He read scripture constantly, but as the stuff of prayer, liturgy and meditation, not as the raw material for debate. He went through the “political years” when he was critical of his church for not living up to his standards of peacemaking and justice, but in the end it was the ancient life, the deep life of monastic rhythms that sustained Merton and made him a man and a monk. He worked on himself for a lifetime. Some will say because he didn’t believe in the reformation doctrine of justification. Perhaps. Maybe, however, the path of personal spiritual formation isn’t as instant, passive or automatic as we’ve been told.

I’m not holding Merton up as an ideal. Far from it. I’m simply saying that when one’s spirituality is formed by the pronouncements of pastors who are constantly chasing church growth, the culture war or the latest challenge to Calvinism, you are going to get one result, and when you go back to the sources, find the value of the ancient paths of formation, value silence, read, meditate, contemplate and seek to grow in love, you will get another result.

I can’t help but think there is an “internet Christian” spirituality as well. Formed by reading blogs. Expressing itself in writing. Concerned with all the perceptions of reality that run rampant on the net. I’m sure this isn’t a good thing either.

Spiritual formation happens in the real world. It’s not just reading, but it’s discussion and asking questions of those further down the road. It’s having leaders who are humble before the Word, and not leaders who take the word and become the pictures of arrogance. It’s seeing your sin in the light of holiness, not excusing your sin in the light of the latest crisis.

Much evangelical spirituality has become like fantasy baseball. We have our own league, our own team, our own statistics, our own insulated world in which all of this matters. We can give great speeches and write long posts (and I am the chief of sinners here) on what doesn’t matter much at all. These days, we don’t all get our 15 minutes of fame, but we can all worship a pastor, go to a winning church, opine on a blog, imagine our arguments are significant in the world.

Meanwhile, we start to look and act more like a fantasy league junky, and fewer and fewer people have any idea what we are talking about.

Here’s where I have come out on this:

Get the devotional books out. The old ones.

Read Peterson, and Nouwen, and Groeshel, and Bonhoeffer and Whitney. With a group of others who care about the same things.

Turn it all off for a couple of hours every day.

Find the silence.

Chew up, meditate over, digest the scriptures.

Repent of living in the community of unaware evangelicals who devalue spirituality and overvalue polemic, argument and debate.

Look for the sins that grow in this mess, and root them up.

From Chaplain Mike.

A difficult conversation today brought to mind Luther’s Small Catechism and what it has to say about the Eighth Commandment:

The Eighth Commandment.
Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.

What does this mean?

Answer.
We should fear and love God that we may not deceitfully belie, betray, slander, or defame our neighbor, but defend him, [think and] speak well of him, and put the best construction on everything.

Our Open Mic question today is a practical one:

How do you think your life and mine would be different if we lived by this standard? What would it be like in Christian congregations? How might our relationships with our neighbors and the world in general change?

I know the first thing I would do—cry out to God for mercy, using Isaiah’s prayer: “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips…” (Isa 6.5)

Your turn.

A note from Chaplain Mike:
This classic iMonk post from January 2009 brings together a few important issues that Michael has written about over the years, particularly depression, theology, and the search for a church home.

I am going to write rather directly to those of you who feel that you are experiencing some measure of mental anguish, anxiety and depression in regard to theology and, especially, the church.

I have in mind, particularly, those who are tormented about the so-called “Search for the true Church.” I’ll be relating at least some of this to the subject of depression, which has been a major part of the menu here at IM this past week.

1. Depression has a variety of causes, from strictly bio-chemical to completely event related. There is no simple, one-note description of depression. If you are confused about what is depression, find a diagnosed and successfully treated person and let them describe to you what depression was like. Read a few accounts of depression. Realize it’s not just being down or feeling bad. It is the closing in of the mind, hope, and clarity. It is a kind of abyss and it doesn’t give up easily.

2. A particular person’s depression has a trigger (or triggers), and a route and a resolution (or resolutions.) All are part of depression, but each part is different for each person. Some triggers seem non-existent. Some are unfathomable. Some are obvious. Some resolutions come from treatment. Some out of nowhere. Don’t generalize from any one situation.

3. Some depressions come and go and are never cured. Some end in tragedy. Some come once and go away. You won’t know.

4. Pastors and Bible teachers (and bloggers) are not to be trusted as expert authorities on depression. See a licensed pastoral counselor and a medical doctor. (I am neither. If you write me a long letter describing your depression, I will tell you that 1) I’ve prayed for you and 2) go see a doctor.)

5. Is depression related to theology? A better question is this: Are persons with tendencies toward depression likely to get involved in theology? Oh yeah. Oh yeah. They get involved in church looking for love, acceptance, God, truth, community, help. All the big holes we all carry around. They bring their intellect into the arena of Bible teaching or preaching. They bring their heart into the church as community and experience. They take seriously what preachers and teachers say is serious and important. When someone says “the Bible teaches this,” or “the Church has always believed that…” they take it in. When depression comes- for whatever reasons- theology is going into the experience. GOD is a big word to someone who really believes that God matters in everything and that GOD is working through the church.

6. I think it’s also something like this: Some human beings are susceptible (in varying measures) to the “unsolvable puzzle” syndrome. This can happen in any discipline: math, music, medicine or theology. There are people that have to raise a perfect kid. There are people that have to have the perfect body. I heard Ron Block, banjo player for Allison Krauss, say that his perfectionism in the studio almost cost him his job with Union Station.

So there are people who get into predestination or various Biblical issues or some aspect of the mind of God or religious truth and they don’t ever solve the puzzle. It won’t cooperate. If they begin to associate that unsolved puzzle with their life, feelings, GOD, etc., then you can have a volatile mix laying the foundation for problems.

Notice that there are some people who are able to leave the questions of theology and “unsolvable puzzles” in the book and be perfectly happy. My father-in-law is a bright theologically and Biblically astute guy, but he can shut the book, or teach the lesson, give his view, accept that we aren’t going to answer all the questions before lunch and go back to work. He’s been a happy Baptist his whole like with no axes to grind at anyone else.

7. Look at the pages of intense apologists for a particular kind of tradition or denomination. Triablogue or Bryan Cross, for example. Now realize this: there are a percentage of people that are driving themselves into depression and anxiety hell because they aren’t that certain, that confident and that knowledgeable. There is a much larger section of the population that either don’t care, say “good for them,” or just don’t see the need. If you are in the first group, if you believe you need this level of knowledge and certainty to know for sure, for certain, for real that this is THE truth, THE absolute truth, THE truth from God, THE truth that answers the questions, then you are, in my view, a fairly high target for depression, obsession, anxiety and constant doubt and insecurity. Not necessarily, but higher than average, and I think our discussion this week bears that out.

8. You need to admit something: the voices you hear on the internet, in conferences, and in the bookstore are human beings with certain characteristics. They may be compulsive workaholics. They may be holy men of prayer. They may never sleep. They may be huge liars. They may have IQs of 170. They may have such low self-esteem that they can’t stop trying to prove their worth. They may be closet homosexuals trying to fight off the urges. They may be anointed of God. I don’t know….but I do know this: THEY AREN’T LIKE ME. I’m different. I’m me. I’m the person God made this way. I have a different set of motivations, sins, flaws, gifts and quirks.

This makes it pretty likely that I am never going to be as smooth as Keller. As arrogant as Driscoll. As productive as Witherington. As gracious as Challies. As smart as White. As confident as Macarthur. And they don’t blog/podcast as much as me:-)

The point is that the people selling you certainty or their brand of Christianity aren’t you. And those human differences make a huge difference. You may not be able to be that certain, etc. It’s just not you and won’t be. You will have to find another kind of happiness. If you want what is only in someone else, you’re headed down a road that isn’t healthy.

(BTW- there is a whole industry in most religions telling you that human factors don’t matter. That it’s all just doctrine. Bullxxxx. Look at the Reformed Baptists. Look at the Catholic apologists. Look at the LCMS stalwarts. Those aren’t “clumps” of similar personalities? That’s a forest and those are trees.)

9. Now, I want to get down to this matter of the One True Church. If you judge that you are a person who believes there is only one true denomination, then I believe you should check out the candidates from the RCC to the EC to the LCMS to the local Church of Christ (if you are in west Kentucky) and reduce your choices to the actual candidates. You simply don’t need to mess around with denominations that don’t believe there’s only one true franchise or that believe we are all part of the broken, fragmented body of Christ. If you are in a typical Baptist church and you really believe that Jesus made the successor of Peter the living authority, then go to the RCC…please. Whatever the issues are that are keeping you from doing that aren’t very important.

Now, if you say “I just don’t know….” you should keep reading.

10. I am a critical and analytical person. Send me to ten churches, and I will find ten things to like and ten things not to like at each one. I do not believe that any congregation is an expression of the one true church so much that there aren’t problems. But this is my nature. It’s EASY for me to see the brokenness and hard for me to see anyone’s claim to being the one, divine “it.”

Now, if I am convinced that one Denomination is right, my problem is going to be this: I still have to belong to a congregation, and a congregation is the place where the “essentials” are worked out in real life, not just in my head. So if I believe that the RCC has it right, I won’t be hanging out with B16 or Scott Hahn. I’ll be at Our Lady of Perpetual Responsibility, a fine congregation that doesn’t have a piano, that has congregational meetings that make me want to be Shinto and a priest who thinks a homily is practice for his missed career in stand-up. Oh yes, the Catechism is in the church library, but THIS is where I am a member, out here where no one knows what I’m even talking about.

If I believe the Southern Baptist Convention is the church Jesus started, then I’m clearly insane, but for the sake of the illustration…..here’s this wonderful statement of faith, and a great missions network, and Al Mohler and those fine Calvinistic Ascol boys. But at my church….doctrine has been replaced with “How to be a great parent” sermons, the deacons have fired the last three pastors in less than 4 years, the music is a cross between an 80’s metal band made up of fat 45 year old men and the senior adult choir singing from the 1956 hymnal. We haven’t baptized a convert since 1993. Our current pastor looks like Ryan Seacrest and the youth minister looks like the Mindfreak guy.

That’s your church. Oh sure, you can drive elsewhere and you can improve. (I drive two hours each way.) You can work for improvement. You can do all that stuff. But here’s my point: You chose the one true denomination, you still have to deal with your local church. It is the place you do or don’t hear the Bible. It’s the place you do or don’t start churches and do evangelism. It’s the place you are or are not taught the faith you read about on that great web site.

The search for the one true denomination will drive some of you into depression, especially if you can’t admit that no such church exists and that you may never be happy if you find it. That every church is a compromise. That they all require you to live with some tension. You are convinced the LCMS has it right doctrinally? Great. Been to a local LCMS church lately? It’s a dice roll. That’s not an indictment. That’s the grown up world and it’s true across the board.

11. In his book Is the Reformation Over? Mark Noll makes this point very clearly. When you get Protestant converts to the RCC to answer researcher’s questions, they have a list of things they miss that’s not short or insignificant. Tears are shed. The broken body of Christ has the better sacramental thinking in one place and the better missional/evangelistic ministries in another. It’s the real thing. You want to be depressed? Go down the rabbit hole of endless despair? Just walk into ANY church saying “This is going to be great,” and forget how far short we all fall, how broken the body is, how much we all contribute to that brokenness.

There is no paradise in the SBC, the EO, the RCC, the megachurch, Redeemer Presbyterian, Mars Hill or the house church in Frank Viola’s living room. We’re all still working on this thing. We are all experiencing the brokenness and our part in it. We are all holding onto some part of the treasure, but none of us have it all. (Though as I said, if you believe someone does, then reduce your choices and go there.)

My friend Phillip Winn at the BHT is a good example. When I first met him on line, he was a member or a large Charismatic megachurch. Over time, he decided his family needed something more catholic and evangelical, so today he is a leader at a conservative ECUSA church working for renewal in that denomination. But Phillip is passionate about Jesus. He knows the flaws of his church. He knows the contributions his churches have made to the good and bad of the unity/disunity in the body of Christ. He loves his church, but his love for Jesus is what has transcended all the other aspects of his journey. If one church has nurtured that journey more than another, that doesn’t mean one is all right and the other all wrong.

Phillip is off the treadmill of looking for the perfect church. As a believer, he’s made a choice and he’s experiencing the ministry of Jesus in and through the church….imperfectly.

12. If you are depressed over this to the point of despair or atheism, I would advise you to step back; step back to the place you can see the goodness of God and the simplicity of faith. Move forward only as you are able to experience God along the way. If you believe God is playing a game with you, hiding the truth and holding out the carrot of really knowing Jesus if you choose the right door, please don’t go further down that road. God is good. Jesus love you. All that God has for you is there in Jesus, available to all who trust in Jesus alone by faith.

A note from Chaplain Mike:
We will be running some posts from the iMonk archives that deal with the subject of depression. This classic post that Michael Spencer wrote in 2004 tells the intimate story of a father’s depression and a boy who finally understands.

When I was twelve years old, my father bought a small aluminum boat, just enough for two people to use for fishing in the local lakes. He put it in our backyard. It had a tiny motor that sat in our shed. He bought the boat so we could go fishing together, father and son. It was his dream, a father’s dream that I can now relate to as I share ball games and movies with my own son.

The boat never took us fishing. In fact, it never got in the water. It remains there in the back yard, photographed by my memory, waiting for a fishing trip that would never happen. In my tendency to personify objects in my world, I picture that boat as eager and expectant, then confused, and eventually depressed. Its purpose- its joy?- was not to be fulfilled.

At age twelve, I was about as interested in my father’s dream of fishing together as the fish were in getting hooked, cleaned and fried. I resisted my father’s overtures with a quiet, but persistent force. I was always busy. There was always something else to do. I wasn’t interested in being outside. My friends wanted me to play. Mostly, I wasn’t interested because my dad was interested, and I was at war with my dad. Not a physical battle, but a back and forth emotional war that had been going on as long as I could remember, and now that my dad wanted something from me, I was in a position to frustrate him. I felt the power, and I used it to disappoint his dream.

My father had never been like other fathers I knew. By the time I was a teenager, he was unable to work, but before that he’d done all sorts of things: worked as a flunky at car lots, made tools at a tool and die company, made change at a car wash, ran errands at local automobile race tracks, worked in the oil fields, rented boats at a lake, janitored. While he was unable to work, he was able to get out and do things he liked to do: fish, hunt squirrels, pick up pecans, hunt arrowheads, go to ball games and races.

My father was a collection of contradictions and mysteries. He was deeply and genuinely religious, but the entire time I knew my dad, I can never remember him in church more than a handful of times. He was divorced (I never knew why), and his chosen church- the Southern Baptists- ranked divorce just above treason and murder on the sin scale, so it was easy to not be present. He loved the Bible, and despised most church people as hypocrites.

He was from the woods and mountains of eastern Kentucky, but all my life we lived in cities, and he hated the city. We lived in Kentucky, and he wanted to live in Wisconsin. He was sociable and funny, the life of any gathering of family or friends, but he feared and loathed almost any other kind of gathering. He loved baseball, but wouldn’t let me join Little League. He had an eighth grade education, and was determined I would graduate from college. He wanted me to be a dentist, and never once took me to one.

He was afraid of everything. The weather terrified him to the point of hysteria. Government paperwork terrorized him. Travel was so frightening to him that I never went on a school trip if he had any say in it. Fear dominated my father’s life like no one I’ve ever met, then or now. As real as it was in my childhood experiences with dad, I couldn’t help but sense it hadn’t always been this way. I knew enough about his life to know he’d once been as wild and fearless as other boys, but somewhere along the way, something else entered the picture, changing my father from a man like other men into someone assualted, subdued and captured.

I would always compare my dad to other fathers or to my uncles, and something wasn’t right. He was older than anyone else’s dad. They ran businesses, took their boys to Little League, built tree houses and worked at factories. I understood my friend’s dads. I understood the men at church. I didn’t understand my father. He was unlike them all, different, unpredictable, like he was broken far under the surface.

It made me angry that my father was like this. Sometimes I was embarrassed. Sometimes I was humiliated. Mostly, I was just ticked off, and thought about running away, or at least spending all my time hiding somewhere he couldn’t find me. Over the years, I know I was ashamed that dad was my father, and I acted it out to him and to others. Being asked about my father by anyone else was an excuse to lie or change the subject.

Dad wasn’t without good qualities. He was very funny, warm and sociable to his friends and neighbors. He loved those who were close to him. He loved his grown children, and their children. He was broken-hearted he saw them so seldom. He had a generous and encouraging side, but it seemed to never appear for long before vanishing under the other, darker side. My father knew trees like a botanist. He was sober and dependable as a friend and a helper. He was a great partner for watching classic tv shows. He could make people feel at ease, and he was very smart. I’m convinced he knew a million dirty jokes. Though he wasn’t much of a reader, he could sing, calculate and “cypher.” He could teach squirrels to climb up his pants and eat out of his pocket.

Once dad told me about all the books he read as a young man. Zane Grey. Tarzan. There wasn’t a book in the house now. He helped start a church in Wisconsin. He worked in factories and on airplane engines. At one time, he was a skilled tool maker making great money. What had happened? How did that normal man disappear, and this person take his place?

When I was thirteen, I came home from school and was sitting on the front porch, waiting for dad to return home and let me in. He drove an old, green, 1954 Chevrolet on his daily outings. Before much time had passed, I saw the old car come up the road. But then a funny thing happened. The car drove right past the house, and dad never looked at me. Not a wave, not a glance. He drove on to the end of the block, and turned right. Heading toward the hospital.

The boat in the backyard didn’t know it at the time, but its fate was sealed.

Health problems were always part of dad’s life. He complained of dizziness and chest pains to the point I wearied of what I thought, stupidly, was just whining for attention. I, of course, was never privy to just what was going on, and I wonder how much he understood his own problems. Now our family was going to become dominated by health concerns, hospitalizations, medical bills and medications. Dad was having the first of two heart attacks that would render him helpless against the onslaught of depression.

I’ve often wondered how dad’s heart problems would have been treated today. It was the late sixties, and dad stayed in the hospital for a couple of weeks. There was no surgery, as one might expect today. No miracle drugs. I would visit him in ICU, and he was glad to see me, of course. I was afraid he might die, and felt guilty that I’d wished that many, many times. He came home, and soon was sitting in a chair in the front room. He had survived a major heart attack. We were all happy. Right?

Dad grew stronger, but something bigger than the heart attack took over. Something worse than all his previous helath problems. He wouldn’t leave the house. He wouldn’t leave the chair. He sat in the chair with his hand over his face. He wept. Mom would plead with him, but to no avail. It didn’t stop. It wasn’t a bad day. It was like a living grief, a stuck record, an endless punishment. It lasted for weeks, months and then, years. Depression overwhelmed my father.

I didn’t understand. And no one could explain what was happening in a way a teenage boy could understand, though they tried, I’m sure.

Soon my dad’s oldest son, a doctor, came down to try and help. It was the first time I heard the word “depression.” I’d heard my parents always talk about “nervous breakdowns,” which I couldn’t find in any science book. But I had no idea what “depression” meant, other than the fact that dad was depressed, and it was clearly awful. I’d never seen or heard of depression. No one else had a depressed parent. Why did I?

At some point, dad went to the hospital. The psych ward in Louisville General. (He may have gone several times. I’m unsure.) Dad’s absence was always a good thing. Mom would take me out to restaurants, something dad wouldn’t ever do. We would be happy, and feel guilty about it. There was no dark, mysterious “depression” controlling our family. I didn’t have to keep my friends out of the house. Still, I didn’t understand. I did hope my dad would come back better. Doctors and hospitals made people better. I didn’t understand how elusive an opponent depression can be, resisting and defeating every effort to cure it.

I would see the boat in the backyard every day, and I began to feel badly about how I had responded to my dad’s attempts to be a regular father and son. I mowed around it, and wished it could go in the water, and that dad could teach me to use the motor. A day at the lake with my father really would be a nice way to spend some time after all.

Dad returned from the hospital, and while things may have gotten better, it wasn’t for long. Dad was still depressed. His thoughts, feelings and behaviors were the same. He talked about his stay in the hospital in hellish terms. He looked terrorized by his stay. I still remember his descriptions of the other patients. Apparently, in the days before today’s cushy psychiatric facilities, my father was part of a ward of people we would call “insane.” He received electric shock treatments. I’ve learned far too much about those. I hope they helped, because I’m afraid to think what they did if they didn’t.

Now we entered into years that were almost unbearably bad most of the time. Dad would be depressed, or he would be angry or just lost. He projected his anger out at everyone: his doctor, his children, his family, God, city people, Republicans, the neighbors. There was never any predicting what direction my father’s depression would go, only that we would certainly be the recepients of his anger.

Because I was naively analytic and stupidly verbal as a young man, I tried to convince my father everything was his fault, and could be easily fixed. It didn’t help that I became a professing Christian at age 15, and became even more aware that my father was not in church, but was sitting home cursing out the world. We argued constantly, over everything that teens and parents argue about, and then about a hundred things that were uniquely issues dad and I cooked up to fight over. Poor mom. I cannot describe the vehemence of these arguments. Surely I pushed dad to the brink of more heart problems many times, but I couldn’t see it at the time. Mom would beg us to stop. We would just get tired and quit.

I was bitterly angry that my father had ruined his part in my life and had turned our home into a horror story. First, by just being old and contrary. Then by refusing to let me be a normal kid. Then by falling apart and becoming a depressed invalid.

And then, there was one break in the darkness. I began preaching at age sixteen. Even as a young man, I remember coming home and telling dad I was “called” to be a preacher. He was moved. I couldn’t appreciate then how much he had prayed for me, and how he lived hoping my life would be useful to God in ways his had never been. All I knew was there was finally some tenderness between us. Some definable love and forgiveness.

The fighting did not stop. My understanding of depression did not increase. But Dad, slowly, began to go out again, drinking coffee with other men. On a few occasions, dad even came to hear me preach. In all my life, I believe my father heard me preach five times. Once he drove me to a small church where I was supplying, and on the way back, gently tried to tell me my sermon wasn’t very good, which I suspected, but didn’t want to acknowledge. He began to show me kindness, and by God’s grace alone, I started to receive it.

A gentleness began to enter our lives as I started to realize my father was a sick person. He’d said this many, many times, and I didn’t accept it, because it was too complicated and I was too afraid of something that couldn’t be fixed as easily as a flat tire. But as I got older, it made more and more sense. I started to notice my father in new ways, and to listen to him more closely. I could see that my father didn’t want to be this way. He was covered in a darkness that clung to him like a wet blanket. He fought against it, but couldn’t toss it away. It had, inexplicably, become part of him. He would have to live with it.

I had to live with it as well. I had to accept who my father was, and how depression had made him, and me, what we were. In my Christian journey, I was frequently confronted with my duty and need to forgive others as God had forgiven me. I never contemplated this truth without thinking of my father, and how I had denied him forgiveness for this thing that had taken so much of our family’s joy away. I needed to forgive him, because he wasn’t responsible for depression. I needed to forgive the depression more than my father. I needed to forgive myself for how I had reacted to this unwelcome visitor.

It’s funny how God works. I took a job at a local grocery store, and how I spent the money I earned became a major war zone with dad. My first paycheck turned into new clothes, and dad- who had lived through the Great Depression- was outraged that I hadn’t put all the money in the bank or paid for the family groceries. But later, I spent a good bit of my paycheck on a citizen’s band radio for my 65 Chevy. I cannot describe my father’s reaction, but it was explosive.

So it is divinely ironic that within a few weeks, my father began buying CB radios. He was fascinated by the hobby. Soon we had a base station in the house, radios in all the cars and were joining CB clubs in the area. My father loved the ability of radio users to make small talk with one another anonymously. What medications, hospitals and therapy couldn’t do, CB radio did. My father came out of his depression by talking on the CB radio. My father became “Two Bits,” and Two Bits wasn’t depressed.

Dad and I loved this hobby. I could talk to him from wherever I was, and it was actually an honor to be the son of the now famous “Two Bits.” As my interest in the hobby waned, dad’s interest increased. In the years to come, he would buy bigger and bigger radios, making friends with people all over the area, the nation and even the world. Radio brought him a magnificent amount of joy.

Dad sold the boat. We didn’t speak of the lost dreams of years ago or the bitterness that had passed. I tried to never think of those days, but I cannot help but think of them more and more as the years go on. I want my children to know about that boat. I cannot touch it, but I can feel its presence and its loss. It is real, because the love my father had for me in that boat is real.

After I married, and became a man, dad and I became friends again. We stopped fighting and enjoyed one another. He was proud of me. He helped me, and listened to me. He loved my wife and our kids. Depression never vanished, and dad’s basic personality never changed. We accepted that this was the life we had shared. Depression had taken away more than I could ever calculate, but I was determined to not spend any more time staring into the void.

Depression is now a reality I face every day in my ministry with students. I know all about it. I have my own thoughts and theories about its origins and power. I believe in the mystery of its genetic and biochemical origins. I also believe we contribute to it by our own thoughts, choices and actions. It is complex, resisting simple treatments in some cases, surrendering to the mildest of medications in others.

We were not so fortunate. Depression invaded our lives when it was a monster of unknown origin or power. I now recognize that dad was depressed before his heart attack, but succumbed to a powerful depression in its aftermath. He did not understand depression, and the chemical miracles were not available or effective.

I believe that our world is a fallen and ruined world, not so much in nature, where the glory of God shines through, but in human beings, whose brokenness takes thousands of different forms and reveals the tragedy of the wreckage that began in Eden and continues in our lives. In this ruined world, depression is a result of sin. Sin as it wrecked our minds, chemistries and emotions. Sin as our thoughts became attracted to darkness rather than light. Sin as we cower in fear rather than trust a trustworthy God who we cannot see thorugh the darkness, and from whom we run away when we do glimpse him. I am so glad that this God doesn’t count on us to find him, but has found us all along, and never lets us go. As the scripture says, “Where shall I go from your Spirit?…even the darkness is as light to you.”

Nothing I believe about depression makes depressed persons into “sinners” on some special level. Like all of us, they are broken. Like all of us, God gives grace that we can accept or reject. Like all of us, they are loved by God and have the possibility of hope, and even healing. Like all of us, they are gathered together in the wounds of Christ, and raised in his resurrection.

I have compassion for my depressed friends. In my own struggle with depression, I’ve benefited from the lessons of my father’s life. There are moments when I have found myself in the chair, hands over my face, weeping. I’ve gotten up, and decided to live. For myself, my wife, my kids, and my father. I will not go into the same night if I can help it.

I believe that fathers are put in this world to write life, goodness and wisdom into the hearts of their children. The best fathers have written boldly, deeply and legibly; they have written lessons that last a lifetime. Other fathers write painful or erring lessons, putting into their children not a path to love and joy, but a downhill slide to emptiness and desperation.

My father left many empty places in my life where he should have written his own unique imprint and example. I am acutely aware of these empty, fatherless places, and the legacy I have inherited because of them. It was my father’s depression, and his fearful, unpredictable actions and inactions, that left me with an abiding sense that I do not belong or deserve to belong in the society of normal, happy people. It was that depression that left me doubting my masculinity, and afraid to do a hundred things that boys and men ought to do to know who they really are in the world. Today, when you see me helping to coach our school baseball team, make no mistake about it: I am out there making up for those days my dad wouldn’t take me to join Little League.

It was my father’s depression that left me with vacant places where unconditional acceptance and fatherly delight ought to be. It was his fear of death that infected my mind from the time I was small, so that every suddenly ringing phone or unexpected noise can terrify me. In the place of the imprint of the father, I have written many stupid and evil legacies of my own. In my worst moments, I see my father’s depression and darkness in myself. I was so certain that I was doomed to live in illness and depression, sin’s false promises of joy looked convincingly attractive. In my own despairing, angry and confused words, I’ve heard the echo of my father’s cries.

The imprint of an earthly father is a treasure. Thankfully, the imprint of the heavenly father is a gift of grace that comes to the fatherless and the empty. Where my father did not and could not affect my heart, because depression wouldn’t allow it, God, and his manifold gifts of love have penetrated into the empty places and brought life, love and hope. In a hundred different ways, experiences and relationships, God has been a father to me in those places that my father left vacant.

I also know what my father would have done if he had not been depressed, and what I would do if I had the opportunity to do it all again. Of course, those times are past, and realities are real. Still, it comforts me greatly to know what could been and should have been. My father was not evil, but sick. Our home was not cursed, but coping with an illness that none of us really understood. The boat may have never seen the water, but the love represented in that boat is as real as ever, and more precious with time.

I know life will hold experiences where depression will inevitably return and demand its place in my life and family. I intend to resist, but I will also be realistic. There is no outrunning our fallenness, and no ultimate healing of our brokeness until heaven. There will be depressing days and seasons, but I am determined that the lessons of my father’s life will not be wasted. I believe he is waiting for me, cheering me on in the darkest of times. He made it home, and we will as well.

In fact, I am fairly certain that heaven contains a lake, where my father is waiting for me in a small boat. And I will not miss that afternoon of fishing. I promise.

Today’s post is by Chaplain Mike.

Tim Hansel was a strong, risk-taking, all-out-effort kind of guy. He climbed mountains and led wilderness expeditions. One day, on the way back to camp after climbing on the Palisade Glacier with friends, his foot slipped and he fell a long distance down into a crevasse, landing directly on his back on the ice. Amazingly, not only did he survive, but he soon arose and climbed out with his buddy, who was sure he had just witnessed his friend’s death. Together, they completed the hike back to camp.

Hansel reported that he became quite sore and that he had this funny sense of feeling shorter than before. With medication, he was able to sleep that night and, although he had a bad headache the next morning, he completed the eight-mile hike back to his car and drove home. He decided not to tell his wife about the fall. She soon found out anyway. The next night his body came out of shock and he awoke sweating profusely, delirious, in agonizing pain.

Doctors eventually told him that he would have to learn to live with that pain. The fractures and crushed discs in his back had caused traumatic, deteriorating arthritis. There was also massive soft tissue damage—the ligaments, tendons and muscles in his back were injured beyond possibility of repair.

Hansel chose to accept the pain as aggressively as possible. He kept working at his wilderness and mountaineering camp. He kept on jogging, climbing and playing tennis. But the intense pain also persisted, and he went through seasons where he became tentative, backing off from life, riding an emotional roller coaster and fighting the urge to give up.

Finally, Tim Hansel saw a doctor who put it all in perspective for him. “Son, listen to me carefully,” he said. “The damage has been done. The worst is over. You will have to live with pain, but that’s a small price to pay for life. My recommendation is that you live your life as fully and richly as possible. Bite the bullet and live to be a hundred. As far as I can tell, you can do whatever the pain will allow you to do.”

One of the greatest lessons that this courageous man learned during this process was that he had the ability to choose joy, even in the midst of his unfortunate and painful circumstances.

This, says Tim Hansel, is in contrast to “happiness,” which, you will note, comes from the same root as the word happening. Whether or not we feel happy depends on what happens to us. It is circumstantial. Of course there is nothing wrong with happiness! We all rightly enjoy when things are going well in our lives and circumstances.

But what about when they are not? People like Tim Hansel, who live in chronic pain, and others in a thousand different difficult life situations struggle with feeling happy.

Hansel encourages us, alternatively, to remember that we are privileged to be able to choose joy. We might say this about the difference between the two:

Whereas happiness may be a fleeting feeling, a mood that changes with the winds of circumstance, joy is an attitude, a posture, a position we take. Joy involves believing with a tenacious confidence that God is in control of life, though the immediate evidence might suggest otherwise.

Henri Nouwen offers this affirming, complementary opinion: a joyful heart is one in which something new is always being born, even when sadness and death are all around.

Choosing joy doesn’t mean putting on an artificial smile or acting with superficial hilarity when we don’t feel like it. Rather, we have to choose joy and keep choosing it every day. This means:

• We determine to face life with optimism, courage and perseverance because we truly believe that God is here,
  
• We are convinced that there are unseen benefits in every experience,
  
• We believe that good will ultimately triumph,
  
• And we cling tenaciously to the truth that nothing that happens, no matter how painful or mysterious, can ever separate us from God’s love.

I love the title of the book Tim Hansel wrote about his experiences and what he learned. He called it, You Gotta Keep Dancin’.

Choose joy. Life may try to drown the music, but the heart that clings to joy will always find a way to hear it and dance.

The ultimate apologetic is to a dying man.

That is what all those “Where is God?” statements in the Psalms are all about. They are, at least partially, invitations to Christians to speak up for the dying.

All the affirmations to God as creator and designer are fine, but it is as the God of the dying that the Christian has a testimony to give that absolutely no one else can give.

We need to remember that each day dying people are waiting for the word of death and RESURRECTION.

The are a lot of different kinds of Good News, but there is little good news in “My argument scored more points than you argument.” But the news that “Christ is risen!” really is Good News for one kind of person: The person who is dying.

If Christianity is not a dying word to dying men, it is not the message of the Bible that gives hope now.

What is your apologetic? Make it the full and complete announcement of the Life Giving news about Jesus.

I am weak in the faith; strengthen me.

I am cold in love; warm me and make me fervent, that my love may go out to my neighbor.

I do not have a strong and firm faith; at times I doubt and am unable to trust you altogether. O Lord, help me. Strengthen my faith and trust in you.

In you I have sealed the treasure of all I have.

I am poor; you are rich and came to be merciful to the poor.

I am a sinner; you are upright.

With me, there is an abundance of sin; in you is the fullness of righteousness.

Therefore I will will remain with you, of whom I can receive, but to whom I may not give.

Amen.

Today’s post is from IM First Officer Michael Bell.

This past year has been a difficult one for me medically. In March I was diagnosed with severe sleep apnea, which for the uninformed means that I stop breathing while sleeping, for up to 90 seconds at a time, up to 60 times an hour. So now I have to sleep with a mask, which I absolutely hate. Then just before Christmas I got a flu bug. While things are not confirmed yet, it appears as if the virus attacked my pancreas. As a result I have become diabetic, and as of this writing the medicines have not been working, I am off work, and I may have to be started on insulin injections. One of the earlier symptoms that I was experiencing was a foggy brain, and making uncharacteristic mistakes at work.

So you might be wondering how I am feeling about this. Well, to be honest, not too bad. I think that recent events in Haiti, along with Michael Spencer’s current health difficulties help me to realize that I don’t really have much to complain about. I have a lovely, loving wife, three great kids, a house, a job, and a church I love.

The diabetes will eventually get under control. I have been losing weight and that should start to help with the sleep apnea. My life continues not that much different from the way it was a year ago.

Michael Spencer faces a much more difficult future. His income has ended, his health insurance is ending, and he faces some very trying times ahead with his cancer. Michael has given so much of himself to this blog over the last number of years.

As a community of Internet Monk readers, I would urge each of us to be a blessing to Michael Spencer. Please consider using the Pay Pal button to make a gift to Michael. Let us see what we can do to meet the needs of one of our own.

Since we’re on the subject of confession, here is a look at the subject from the personal side. Today, Chaplain Mike presents this classic iMonk post that Michael wrote in October, 2008.

Some Christians love to talk about the sins of Obama or gays or the mainstream media, but get really animated when I suggest we need to talk about our own, even if they are listed in the Bible dozens of times.

If the Gospel isn’t grabbing you by the real sins in your real life, just exactly what is the Gospel doing for you? Or you with it?

I don’t like the fact that I can give a really good talk on prayer when I rarely pray.

I don’t like it that I can read Matthew 5:23-24 and, as far as I can recall, never take a single step toward obeying it.

I don’t like that I can sin and then condemn someone else’s sin in almost the same breath.

I don’t like it that I’m convinced people need to understand me, but I take so little time to understand others.

I regret that I’ve spent so much of my life seeking to make myself happy in ways that never led to real happiness at all.

I don’t like it that I’ve accumulated so much stuff I don’t need, and I’m so reluctant to give it away.

It causes me real sorrow that I’ve said “I love you” far to little in my life, especially to the people I love the most.

I don’t like the fact that some of my students think I’m a hero, when I’ve done nothing more than be an unprofitable servant.

I hate the difference between what I know and what I do.

I hate the fact that I can use words like “radical” describing what others should do in following Jesus when I’m the first one to want to play it safe.

I don’t like that part of me that thinks everyone should listen to what I say.

I wish I could see myself as God sees me, both in my sinfulness and in the Gospel of Jesus.

I regret using so little of my life’s time, energy and resources for worship and communion with God.

I despise that part of me that always finds fault, and uses that knowledge to put myself above others.

I am embarrassed by the words I use that come so easily from the tongue but have little root in the heart.

I regret taking so few risks in the cause of living a God-filled life.

I despise the shallowness of my repentance for sin that has caused hurt and pain for others.

I don’t like that part of me that can make up an excuse, even lie, almost endlessly in the cause of avoiding the truth and its consequences.

I don’t like that I can talk of heaven in a sermon or at a funeral, but very little of me wants to go there.

I regret that I have loved my arrogant self far than I’ve loved my self humbled in Christ.

I regret that so much good advice, good teaching and good example was wasted on me.

But I am glad for the endless mercies of the Lord, and the amazing fact that those mercies extend to me, today and every day.

I am glad that Christ my substitute took this sorry life, pathetic obedience and lethargic worship and exchanged it for his perfect righteousness.

I am glad that the Holy Spirit is remaking and raising dead men- even at age 52.

I am glad that one day I will look at all these failures and regrets and they will have been transformed into the very glory of Jesus Christ himself.

I am glad that God has cast the very things I most dislike about myself into the depths of the sea and has removed them as far as the east is from the west.

I am glad that when I return in shame and embarrassment, my Father meets me running, covers me with his gladness and throws me a party in the presence of the naysayers and pharisees.

I am glad that Jesus takes these things I loathe about myself and says “It is finished. Come you good and faithful servant. Enter into the joy of your Lord. Today you will be with me in paradise.”

I am glad Jesus says “Before I have called you servant, but now I will call you friend.”

I am glad Jesus says “Who condemns you? There is now no condemnation because you are in me and I am in you. If I am for you, who can be against you? Go, and sin no more.”

But I’ve also learned what it is that snags me, and it’s not always the big issues. It’s usually one word. Yes, one word can throw my switch and give me an almost irresistible yearning to argue my point.

Three examples from the last 24 hours:

1) A debate is going on several places on the blogosphere around this question: “Are the doctrinally obsessed missing the heart of Jesus?”

My answer is a simply “yes,” and the reason is one word: obsessed. You said it. Not me.

Obsessed isn’t doctrinally interested, doctrinally aware or doctrinally correct. Doctrinally obsessed isn’t someone who makes doctrine a priority or who even brings it up frequently. Obsession is….obsession. Single mindedness. Idolatry. Loss of perspective.

I’m obsessed with vanilla oreos. When we are two weeks into February, I’m obsessed with “pitchers and catchers report.” I’m close to obsessed with a new Apple laptop. I’m obsessed with my family’s safety.

If I were obsessed with doctrine, I would be perverting my experience of the heart of Jesus, because obsession with doctrine is against the teaching and example of Jesus himself. Love God with all your heart, etc. Don’t be obsessed with the outlines and definitions. Let them do their good work. See the Pharisees for more information and I Corinthians 13 for a good picture of what we’re going for.

Doctrine rightly placed and rightly valued clarifies and carries the Gospel of Jesus. It centers it and gives it language. Obsession with doctrine equates Jesus with a right view of justification. If we don’t know the difference, our Christianity will become debate points and our discipleship nothing but promoting and publishing our favorite ideas.

2) An IM commenter says about Douglas Wilson, “…My abusive marriage was, in so many ways, modeled on his book, “Reforming Marriage.” (No disrespect to this commenter, with whom I greatly sympathize, as I do with all abused persons. Her comment simply raises an ongoing issue in talking about traditionalists and complementarians.)

I’m not a complementarian, but I understand and respect complementarians. I don’t agree with all of their rhetoric and I don’t agree with all of Wilson’s dramatic metaphors and illustrations in his early work on marriage (and on several other things as well.)

Now I don’t know what behavior the commenter is calling abusive, so I’m not assuming I know everything that went on in a family. That being said, the word “modeled” implies that Wilson would endorse the behavior the commenter calls an “abusive marriage.” I take your presentation and I seek to copy it, i.e. “model” it. It implies the abuser was following the words of Wilson in being abusive, not distorting or twisting them into abusive actions Wilson would not approve of and did not suggest. (I understand that Wilson’s rhetoric of male leadership inevitably leads to excesses with some people, and I have never known a complementarian that didn’t address that. But I lament the lack of focus on abuse, and have written about that here at IM.)

I don’t think we are going to get anywhere in talking about the differences in living out gender relations as Christians if we say taking the other fellow’s book at face value will lead you to abuse. We have to take a more complex view. Wilson is a great target, but great targets aren’t necessarily right targets.)

Anyone who has ever talked with an atheist who knows the Bible is aware of how someone can take many statements in scripture- such as the endorsement of stoning rebellious children to death – and say that abusive parents are “modeling” their abuse on a passage in Leviticus.

Here’s the problem: the writer’s choice of an illustration does not determine the ethics of a person undertaking an action. That ancient Israelites could stone their children in extreme cases and be right doesn’t imply that I should abuse my child and assume I’m right. No, no. That Wilson says a woman must be led by strong male leadership may fall far short of what I understand to be the New Testament message on family life, but it doesn’t give anyone permission to abuse a spouse and I don’t think complementarian views on male leadership make that jump without the addition of the male sinful nature. (Ever hear Mark Driscoll go off on the abusive men in his church?)

Someone who “models” their abuse on someone’s endorsement of strong complementarianism- such as you might see among traditional Amish or among Orthodox Jews- is not being approved in their abusiveness. They distorting a guideline.

I’m all for telling Wilson to chill out on some of those rhetorical theatrics, but the responsibility for abuse can’t be shuttled over to complementarians like Wilson, who teach that women are to be honored and loved as Christ loved the church.

Better sentence, in my opinion: “My confused husband took ideas from men like Douglas Wilson and misused them as a justification for abuse.” On target and helpful in this discussion.

3) My friend Mel says that “Swine flu is mostly hype, stirred up by the President and the media to get the public to support health care.”

The word that gets my attention: “hype.”

Hype as in “The reported numbers aren’t accurate?” Or hype as in “The reported deaths didn’t occur?” Hype as in “They are making this stuff up?” Really?

Now, if hype means “lack of context,” count me in. There’s not enough context in this discussion to be seen under a microscope.

And the public’s lack of scientific knowledge- it’s a known virus, people- is appalling. This isn’t the plague. 90,000 people die from the flu in a typical year in the U.S. The vulnerable populations don’t vary with any of these kinds of diseases. Various protocols are acceptable, but viruses aren’t going to be daunted. They’ve managed to be quite successful on planet earth.

And swine flu as political? How far is that from Farrakhan’s line that AIDS was invented in government labs to kill blacks? Not much different, because now he’s saying swine flu is a plot to kill blacks. When you join the conspiracy club, please take note who else is at the party

The “hype” could be the swine flue, or it could be the various interpretations of why we keep hearing about it. Does someone really believe the President calls in the story? “I want H1N1 on the front page?” His own kids aren’t vaccinated!

Here’s no hype: H1N1 is getting attention because news networks are dying in a war with the internet. Disease, terrorism, crime, entertainment and financial apocalypse keep an audience on the line so advertisers will still pay for Cialis commercials. End of plot.

You can’t just make this stuff up. Mess it up? Sure, but not make it up.

So there you have it: Obsession, modeled and hype. My three words for today. Who knows what tomorrow’s words will be?