I am a Christian who struggles with depression, anxiety, and chronic pain, and Jesus Christ has something to do with it.
To reconcile the resurrection of Jesus Christ with the persistent rebellion of my body and mind is an absurd thing. It has become abundantly clear that I cannot understand the whys and hows of my suffering. I’m thrust into a Kierkegaardian framework wherein true faith stands opposed to human rationality, and the gospel to my present experience; for now I believe “by virtue of the absurd” (Fear and Trembling, “Preliminary Expectoration”).
I’m forced to attend constantly to my suffering and not to those around me. I’m able to share in the sufferings and death of Jesus Christ as I am constantly reminded of my baptismal death and participation in the death of Jesus Christ (1 Peter 4:13).
Death
“… the one who suffered in the flesh has finished with sin in order to live the remaining time in the flesh, no longer for human desires, but for God’s will.” (1 Peter 4:1f, HCSB)
In this passage, I am reminded of the Christians around the Earth who are suffering to the highest extent for Jesus’ sake. Given that my suffering is not nearly to the extent of theirs, I can still begin to see what Peter was communicating here. My suffering in the flesh has caused me to constantly look into a mirror and see a filthy wretch in bondage to his own desires, destined for hell apart from Jesus Christ, staring back at me
Since that vision follows me around everywhere I go, my will is depleted; I have no choice but to want to do God’s will. I’m now fully convinced that God has incapacitated any will of my own by refusing to remove this thorn in my flesh. Panic attacks are felt, uncontrolled denials of the sovereignty of Jesus Christ; thoughts of suicide are altogether confronted by the wondrous Gift–Jesus Christ; suicide is the tragically nihilistic denial of the Gift in favor of no real alternative, whereas sin is a denial of the Gift in favor of a false alternative. Death offers nothing. Jesus Christ offers everything… literally.
Resurrection
Even in my constant experience of death–the death of an otherwise healthy body via progressive chronic pain, I experience an Exodus-like journey from death to life. Suffering clarifies the eyes of my soul and allows me to see the absurdity of it all (Cf. Job); in that absurdity I can feel the strangeness of the fact that God loved us while we were still sinners (Romans 5:8) and glorified us in Jesus Christ (Romans 8:30).
John reminds us that we have eternal life (1 John 5:13). Maybe the Christian experience of suffering is a side effect of the eternal confronting the temporal. Maybe suffering is blind and deaf to our experience and has no real purpose of its own, save for when its intentional and therefore evil (Cf. CS Lewis, The Problem of Pain). Maybe it’s merely a sign of the disintegrating world order post-fall.
Regardless, the resurrection is God’s eschatological denial, his definitive “No,” to death and suffering, and it is his affirmation, his “Yes,” of liberation and eternal life in Jesus Christ.
Doctrine of God
God’s providence becomes his refusal to withhold the Gift from anyone, but to rather will to allow Jesus Christ to affect his creation in wisdom by his perfect love and freedom.
God’s omnipresence means he insists on being God with Us, even when our suffering denies his existence.
God’s omniscience entails his insistence on knowing “what it is like” to be us in Jesus Christ.
God’s glory and holiness become his will to be a humble servant to humanity in the election of Jesus Christ.
God’s love becomes his free decision to give us Jesus Christ and all things in him.
In their denial of these very truths, depression, chronic pain, and anxiety show us that God is in control, always ready to listen, able to empathize, ready and able to provide for our every need, and always and forever at our service in Jesus Christ. Amen.
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