Depression And The Brain Series

Today we finish up our series on the brain. I’d like to ask for four volunteers who are willing to read some Scripture passages. [hand out papers]

Today I want to talk to you about depression. A lot of people don't realize this, but 80% of the American population will, at one point or another, experience clinical depression in their lives. It's probably the one illness of the brain that a lot of people understand, because so many of us have experienced it.

If you’re comfortable responding, I want to ask, “Okay, let's just out ourselves today: how many people here have ever taken an antidepressant?” If you're not willing to say it, that's okay. But take a look around and

understand that most of us have.

Depression is one of those things that I think the human brain is most prone to, because so much of it is rooted in our fears, and our anxieties, and all those kinds of things. And when people have trauma or drama in their lives,

what happens is your brain chemistry has to shoot out so much serotonin and norepinephrine and all those kinds of things, but it can’t make enough. It's not like we have reservoirs of happy juice in our heads. And suddenly the

brain can't keep up. As we’ve talked about in past weeks, it's just a clinical thing that happens to our brains. As fearfully and wonderfully as we're made, the brokenness of mankind into sin has, in fact, affected our brain

chemistry.

Hope is ultimately what the church has to offer to everybody, but especially to those who are hurting and hopeless who might be depressed or have clinical issues with their mental health. But the problem in the Christian Church is twofold. First, in our culture we have an idea that we are not supposed to be unhappy. We're never supposed to suffer. We're never supposed to go through terrible times or troubles. And we’ve gotten this

idea that those times are the rare exceptions to our lives. I don't know about you, but the older I get, the more I realize that joy and happiness and things ‘being just right’ are the rare exceptions in life (especially when it comes to family gatherings, right?). But the Bible doesn't say that we are supposed to have happy lives. In fact, Jesus tells us there will be a lot of suffering and difficulties in this world. But He also promises that God will be with us. That He won't leave us. That He won't forsake us. And that in spite of whatever we're going through, we can have faith. We can have love. We can have hope. And we can know that our God is with us. Suffering is very real, and it is part of life here on this earth.

The second thing we have to understand is that when it comes to depression, a lot of people who have never had it are inclined to encourage people - wrongly. They kind of spiritualize it, and it ends up that the person who is

depressed hears that if they would ‘just read the Bible more’, ‘trust God more’, and ‘walk closer with Him, you know, just immerse yourself in Him’, and that somehow fixes it.

Granted, with every single illness you and I will ever have, all of those things are true, but not in and of themselves, because it also takes medicine. Now, it's not that God can't heal supernaturally. But if you use medicine for

other things in your life, then you’ve got to be consistent. There is no shame

in using it for your brain.

A family psychologist friend, Dr. Brian Luberstedt, said this: "Part of Christianity's problem is they think everything from the neck on up is spiritual." Now, you tell me, when is this part of you spiritual? (point to

brain) My brain doesn't think very spiritual. I have to discipline my brain to think spiritually. And I have had a lot of unpleasant things come out of this pie hole. So don't tell me from ‘here on up’ is spiritual and the rest of us is

flesh – but there are spiritual things involved. The other thing that happens many times in Christianity is that we make people feel as though if they are going through depression, it may be because of undealt-with sin. What sin have you not dealt with? Who in the Old Testament can you think of had this problem? Who really was going

through terrible times had friends constantly telling him that these bad things are happening because there must be something?

Job.

Job, Job, Job, Job, Job. There are times when the choices we make in life can lead to the consequences of having a physiological problem. Okay? There are diseases people can catch by making wrong choices. There are