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.

I do believe that congregations are commanded in scripture to set aside their leaders and I see the wisdom in commending that ordination to other congregations as a reason to consider a man worthy of recommendation. Of course, I wish my tradition took some aspects of ordination more seriously, as we are famous for laying hands on teenagers and people who don’t understand the Gospel at all.

But there’s one aspect of ordination I really do appreciate on a very personal level. When a congregation ordains you, they are setting you aside to serve them, yes. But they are also saying, “He belongs to us. We bought him, and until he proves himself unworthy of our confidence, he’s ours. Even when he leaves, he can still come back and know we signed his papers.”

My uncle was a pastor for almost fifty years, and he built one of the largest churches in our community in his day. But I remember that he always talked about his first church- the church that ordained him- as special. He didn’t brag about the big church when he needed to remember who he was; he recalled the country people who “bought” him as a young pastor, and took on the task of being his first church.

Years later, I was speaking in the area and some of the people from that church were present at the meeting. When I mentioned my uncle- whom I look like- many of them came up to me and excitedly told me about the love for my uncle.

Because of recent events, I need to know that someone out there still believes in me and my ministry. There are people I love who’ve always supported me who have moved on to other churches and beliefs. There are people who have trusted my preaching for years who want me to sound more like an Oprah rally or more like an angry fundamentalist. There are folks who have just noted that I’m pretty old and don’t show movie clips like I’m supposed to.

Because of where I live and the kind of preaching that’s wanted in mountain churches, requests for pulpit supply are almost non-existent. The preaching that I am paid to do is preaching for young people who, for the most part, are required to be present and would be happy to be elsewhere doing anything rather than listen to me. I love them, they respect me and it’s a good ministry, but you always know they would prefer puppets.

So today, my ordination saved me from some of the rising discouragement. I’ve been going to the little Baptist church next door for the last few weeks. Going by myself and sitting alone, which is very hard. I go and pray for whatever is going on and whatever is talked about, prayed for or preached on. It’s one of those times that I’m mostly there to remember that I am part of the people of God, and we’re on pilgrimage- going forward, foibles and all- together.

I arrived today and said hello to the pastor on the way in. He stopped and called me back to where he was standing. He wanted to know if I would preach for him next week.

It’s not the biggest deal in the world, but for me, today, it works to lift me up a little higher.

Our pastor has many preachers in his congregation to ask to preach when he is gone. He knows what’s going on in my life, and he’s aware that my stock is down a bit around here. He was choosing to encourage me.

When I preach next week, most of those who will be present will be praying for me for various reasons. While I will bring the Word, I’m expecting that I will be the one who is encouraged and helped the most.

Today, my ordination reminded me that I belong to God’s particular people, and they aren’t giving up on me. They are keeping their promise when they bought me, and they are picking me up when the road has gotten almost too steep to walk with any joy.

Most of life’s discouragements are small, and some of the largest ones are disguised as the small ones. But most of God’s encouragements look very small, too. But they aren’t. Those encouragements can be as big as the love of God itself, and when they fit exactly what you are facing, they are sweet indeed.

Because I’ve been wrestling with Protestant/Catholic issues throughout this past year, I receive a lot of email from those who have moved outside of their lifelong evangelicalism and somewhere within sight of the catholic tradition, if not the Roman Catholic church.

Some of that mail takes me to blogs and the writing of people who are in a tortured state of mind and heart. Some are ministers strongly drawn to Roman Catholicism. They have read Hahn and Howard. They are listening to The Coming Home Network on EWTN. They are tired of evangelicalism’s circus atmosphere, its deficits and its many problems.

The unity, antiquity and beauty of Roman Catholicism and Orthodoxy stand in stark contrast to the divisions, innovations and shallowness of evangelicalism. I have no problem understanding this attraction. It seems that Luther made a terrible mistake, and every person who “goes home” can take satisfaction in healing that historically disastrous and unnecessary rift.

When you are reading those books and thinking about the many strong suits of Catholicism, it’s hard to feel good about being a Protestant. A recent “Coming Home to the Roman Catholic” church television ad recited so many wonderful things about Roman Catholicism- without a hint of the other side of the coin- that it was difficult to see why anyone would want to remain a Protestant.

But there is a different way to approach this situation than the back and forth of pleading apologetic arguments, collections of verses or authority claims. Without insult to any Roman Catholic or criticism of anyone who has converted or will convert in the future, I want to say some things to the rest of us.

The rest of us? Yes, those of us who are Protestant and will remain Protestant for the rest of our lives. Not because we are angry, but because we are “happy enough” to be Protestant.

We have varying feelings about Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy and the various divisions in Christianity, but we are not going to change our place as Protestants and evangelicals. We have deep respect and appreciation for the antiquity of these Christian traditions, and we have abandoned the idea that we are able to understand evangelicalism without them. But we are not changing churches because we believe we are part of the church.

We believe that the churches we have grown up in, the churches that we have served and that have served and nurtured us, are the churches God himself sovereignly brought us into. The debate about “what is the true church?” is not a compelling one for us, because we believe that all of us who belong to Christ are joined with him in his church.

Phrases about ecclesial bodies or less than fully communing churches are not heard by us in the same way they are heard by those who have a Roman Catholic view of the church. These are our churches and we love them. They have given Christ to us and many of us have given our lives in service and devotion to them. Unlike some of our brothers and sisters, we do not want to leave our Protestant churches behind, but we want to see the presence of Christ among his people in them more deeply manifested and demonstrated. We are “happy enough” to be embraced by imperfect Protestant churches and people as we make our pilgrim journey.

We love our Catholic and Orthodox brothers and sisters, and respect the godly spiritual leaders and Biblical voices within those traditions. We are embarrassed by much of the anti-Catholicism that exists in evangelicalism, though we understand it as we understand the anti-Protestantism that exists within some of the Roman Catholic community.

We are “Happy Enough” Protestants. A strange title, I know, but an important one. We are happy enough as Protestants to remain Protestants, and we are happy to be protestant. We seek to practice a kind of Protestantism that is not characterized by unrest, anxiety and anger in relations with Catholicism. Our goal, in simple terms, is to be happy to be Protestant because we are happy in Christ and the Gospel that we find in Protestantism, even with all its flaws.

We are not seeking to evangelize Roman Catholics or to sell our churches as superior. We regret the rhetoric that commodifies church and Christian experience to “mine is better than yours.” We seek, instead, to embody what Paul so often talked about in his letters: Joy in Christ in the midst of a historically imperfect church.

We regret that for many of our Protestant brothers and sisters, it has not been possible to be Protestant and be faithful to Christ or happy in the church. We may have found this difficult and discouraging at times, but we have not found it impossible. We believe our Protestant experience can be filled with Christ, the legacy of the whole church and the distinctives of both evangelicalism and catholicism.

We are “Happy Enough Protestants” because we believe that God, in his providence, called us to this part of his one, holy, catholic and apostolic body/church. We accept, even celebrate, his providence in allowing us to hear the Gospel clearly and simply in Protestantism, to be taught in its churches and schools, allowed to serve in its ministries, sit at the feel of its scholars and pastors, be inspired by its mission’s legacy, learn from its saints, be challenged by its openness to the Spirit and renewed by its ability to return, again and again, to the Bible for authority, nurture and truth.

We recognize the checkered, broken past of Protestantism, but we are happy in much of what we find in that past. We believe that though they were sinners, Luther, Calvin, Arminius, Wesley, Whitefield, Cramner, the Puritans, Spurgeon, Asbury, Ryle, The Baptists, Edwards and many other Protestant lights were called and gifted of God for the building up of his church and the equipping of his saints. We believe that within the Protestant tradition, God continues to call, equip, build, empower and demonstrate the presence of the Kingdom through his people.

We are “happy enough” to not despise ourselves or torture ourselves over what is missing in our tradition. We will, in a joyous spirit, work for restoration and the strengthening of the church. We pray that the work of the Spirit will unite all churches with the riches of Christ, but we believe those riches are accessible to us all by grace through faith and in the humble reception of the word of God.

We are “happy enough” to rejoice in the many statements of gracious inclusion and respect that have been offered in the ecumenical spirit, most particularly by the Roman Catholic church in Vatican II. But we are also “happy enough” to say we view the reformation as those who have benefited from it, and feel the responsibility to treasure and protect what was good and continually necessary in it. We believe that a tragic necessity need not remove all joy and mutual affection, nor abrogate the presence of all that is of value. We are determined in generosity and charity, to not allow all that the Reformation recovered to vanish in debates about authority and antiquity. God has sovereignly and graciously been at work in Protestantism, as well as in all Christian traditions.

In a spirit of mutual respect, we intend to be “happy enough” to tell the truth. As we repent of much in our tradition and as we see what is valuable in other traditions, we are unapologetic that much in our tradition exists more robustly and helpfully in Protestantism than elsewhere. It serves no good purpose to ignore the participation of laity, the starting of new churches, the extent of theological education, the use of congregational music, the depth of rigorous scholarship, the faithfulness in persecution, the emphasis on reform, the use of innovation in ministry or the healthy focus on personal evangelism. We will be “happy enough” to say these Protestant legacies are not to be abandoned or minimized, but should be gifts to the whole church.

At the points of our greatest disagreements, over authority, sacraments and justification, it is our prayer that we will all be “happy” in our convictions, and that should we find ourselves speaking over the greatest points of our separation, we will now have no agenda beyond living in the fruit of a joyful, “happy” experience of the truth. That someone should disagree with us should not send us into a tailspin of uncertainty or an attack-mode of anxiety. We are determined to be “happy enough” to speak of our convictions positively, winsomely and certainly without embarrassment before other Christians

I believe there are likely thousands of us who are “happy enough” Protestants and will remain so throughout our lives. We are not preparing to go to Rome, nor are we asking Rome to become Protestant. Our conversations should not be dominated by such an agenda and we repent of those occasions when such has been the case. We seek the day we can recognize Christ in one another, stand in the church of Jesus on both sides of the Tiber (and elsewhere) and be grateful to God for what he has done and what we all appreciate in our varying and various traditions. May all of us grow in the grace and goodness of Jesus and the mission of his people.