What Does Depression Mean for My Faith? E-Book

Kathryn Butler

• Herausgeber: Crossway
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Serie: TGC Hard Questions
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 53

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

Biblical Hope for Those Who Suffer from Clinical Depression Studies show that everyone will encounter someone who struggles with clinical depression at some point in their lifetime. Depression's debilitating, pervasive joylessness is crippling. It can affect your body and brain, numb your emotions, and put strain on your relationships. For Christians, it can even inhibit them from delighting in the greatest gift ever known—the good news of the gospel. What should Christians think about clinical depression? How can church leaders respond lovingly to those who face this dark, unsettling, and sometimes baffling dilemma? In What Does Depression Mean for My Faith? author and physician Kathryn Butler addresses common misconceptions about mental illness in the church. She offers grace, relief, and practical help to Christians who feel shame, and she equips church leaders with the tools they need to extend Christ's love to the vulnerable.   - Comforts Those Who Suffer: Offers grace, relief, and practical help to Christians who feel shame over clinical depression  - Equips Those Who Care: Provides a clinical, theological, and practical understanding of depression so church leaders can compassionately assist those who suffer  - Short, Accessible Format: Combines anecdotes, a concise overview of depression, and practical pointers - TGC Hard Questions Series: Equips readers with answers to difficult questions facing today's church

Leseprobe

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“Kathryn Butler has provided the church with a treasure in What Does Depression Mean for My Faith? Combining her clinical training and her own lived experience of depression, she offers depressed Christians, their pastors, and fellow congregants invaluable help, steering a course through depression. This resource is indispensable for anyone navigating the theological questions that surround depression.”

Karen Mason, Director of Hamilton Counseling Program, Professor of Counseling and Psychology, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary

“What Does Depression Mean for My Faith? is an incredibly helpful resource, full of clinical insight, practical wisdom, and biblical truth. Kathryn Butler writes with great tenderness and care, always with a view toward the hope we have in Christ. Her words meet us in the dark and point us to the light.”

Scott James, MD, author, The Sower; The Expected One; Where Is Wisdom?; and When Your Child Is Ill: Nurturing Faith in Hard Times

“This book is compassionately tailored to those crushed by both depression and the gnawing fear that their depression excludes them from the hopes of their faith. While Dr. Butler and I come at the issue of depression from different angles, I love her practical tools for walking faithfully as a Christian in the face of severe depression. Full of scriptural perspective on weathering the storm, this book encourages hurting strugglers toward Christ!”

J. Alasdair Groves, Executive Director, Christian Counseling & Educational Foundation; coauthor, Untangling Emotions

“What a beautifully balanced book about depression and faith. Kathryn Butler writes with a rare combination of biblical and medical wisdom, providing sufferers with a hope-filled and practical road map to healing.”

David Murray, Pastor, First Byron Christian Reformed Church, Byron Center, Michigan; author, Christians Get Depressed Too and Why Is My Teenager Feeling Like This?; coauthor, A Christian’s Guide to Mental Illness

What Does Depression Mean for My Faith?

TGC Hard Questions

Jared Kennedy, Series Editor

Does God Care about Gender Identity?, Samuel D. Ferguson

Is Christianity Good for the World?, Sharon James

What Does Depression Mean for My Faith?, Kathryn Butler, MD

Why Do We Feel Lonely at Church?, Jeremy Linneman

What Does Depression Mean for My Faith?

Kathryn Butler, MD

What Does Depression Mean for My Faith?

© 2024 by Kathryn Butler

Published by Crossway1300 Crescent StreetWheaton, Illinois 60187

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, except as provided for by USA copyright law. Crossway® is a registered trademark in the United States of America.

Published in association with the literary agency of Wolgemuth & Associates.

Cover design: Ben Stafford

Cover image: Unsplash

First printing 2024

Printed in the United States of America

Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. The ESV text may not be quoted in any publication made available to the public by a Creative Commons license. The ESV may not be translated into any other language.

Trade paperback ISBN: 978-1-4335-9345-1 ePub ISBN: 978-1-4335-9347-5 PDF ISBN: 978-1-4335-9346-8

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Butler, Kathryn, 1980– author.

Title: What does depression mean for my faith? / Kathryn Butler, MD.

Description: Wheaton, Illinois : Crossway, 2024. | Series: TGC hard questions | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2023037322 (print) | LCCN 2023037323 (ebook) | ISBN 9781433593451 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9781433593468 (pdf) | ISBN 9781433593475 (epub)

Subjects: LCSH: Depression, Mental—Religious aspects—Christianity.

Classification: LCC BV4910.34 .B88 2024 (print) | LCC BV4910.34 (ebook) | DDC 248.8/625—dc23/eng/20231211

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023037322

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023037323

Crossway is a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

2024-04-10 11:57:46 AM

Contents

What Does Depression Mean for My Faith?

Acknowledgments

Notes

Recommended Resources

Scripture Index

Sarah, a faithful Sunday school teacher who enthralls kids with stories about God’s goodness, misses several weeks of church. When friends reach out, she admits she’s tired, but she offers little other explanation and excuses herself from conversations. Loved ones observe that she seems withdrawn, as if a light within her has gone out.

Then, Sarah suddenly resigns from teaching Sunday school. Though at first she’s reticent to admit her struggles, she eventually confides that she’s overwhelmed with despair, can’t concentrate, and no longer finds joy in the things she loves. She fears that her inability to overcome her depression with prayer and Bible study disqualifies her from teaching children Scripture. “How can I teach about God’s love when I can’t feel it myself?” she says through tears. “I know the gospel, yet I can’t pull myself out of my sadness. I’m a hypocrite.” Sarah’s doctor has prescribed an antidepressant, but she feels deep-seated shame that she needs medication for a spiritual matter. The longer Sarah talks, the more her thoughts turn toward her doubts about whether God hears her prayers for relief, whether he loves her, and whether she can really be a Christian if she’s wrestling through the darkness of depression.

Studies suggest that no matter where in the world we live, we’ll at some point encounter people like Sarah who struggle with a debilitating, pervasive joylessness. While the dynamics at play are complicated, reflecting a tangled web of neurological, physical, social, and emotional factors, distinctly spiritual effects can arise for someone who experiences depression. What does depression mean for such a person’s faith, and how can church leaders respond lovingly to those among us who face such a dark, unsettling, and sometimes baffling dilemma?

The term depression can generate confusion. When used too loosely, it can be associated with feelings of grief and sadness that are appropriate responses to the brokenness in our world. The Bible is replete with scenes of the aggrieved weeping and tearing their robes, lamenting over terrible loss and hardship (Job 3; Pss. 13:1–3; 22:1–2;