Depression & Joy

 Before I got saved, I had the idea that Christians didn't get depressed - I mean, not deeply, darkly depressed. I grew up as a victim of pamphlets with illustrations of only-happy Christians.  Happy, happy happy, joy, joy, joy, all the day long!  Well, I know now how false that is. At least part of it.

I am once again in the midst of one of my dark struggles with depression and I had to see my doctor. She's great and suggested the various options for getting through it this time. One of the questions a doctor always asks a depressed patient is if they feel like harming themselves. My answer: When I die, if someone says it's a suicide, call in the police! She knows that I am a Christian and that suicide is the one thing I would never do so we both did get a little smile that day.

I've struggled with what's called "mood disorder" all my life but things got worse when I was diagnosed with this autoimmune situation. But somehow my depression, no matter how bad it gets, does not cancel out my joy. It's hard to explain but there it is.

One day, chatting with a neighbor at the mailbox, I could tell she was feeling very down. A lot of people in my building are in their late 70s and 80s - a few are in their 90s - and it's tough getting older at any rate but especially when you are on a really limited income. Some of my neighbors - like the woman I mention - have outlived all their friends and some of their children. This lady is someone who had a really busy life and career as a mom and a teacher. These days, she is quite alone and, I think, bored. At the mailbox, we chatted about the up-and-down weather we've been having and I mentioned that if she was planning to go out anywhere, she should do it before the temps went back down. She said that she never goes out anywhere but to doctors' appointments because she has nowhere else to go. She seemed so lost and sad that it broke my heart.

This woman has a depression worse I think than my own. She once told me that when she lost her only child (he was fairly young at 53) just before she moved here, and she never really got over it. She was already a widow and her health is not awful but not great. She'd lost her one sibling but had hopes of spending her retirement with her spouse at least. She has no grandchildren and her one nephew (or niece?) lives overseas.

So here we are, two depressed older women - without spouses or kids. But she is depressed with no joy.

I have shared my faith with her, bringing it up during one of our casual chats about our common woes. She didn't seem interested and told me that she has never been "into church and all that". Ever since then, I have been trying to find a way to tell her that faith and hope are not about a building. Shame on me that I'm having trouble working that into one of our chats.

Thinking about people like this woman, I wonder if a doctor has ever asked her about her desire to live or die. I'd like to think that a doctor - any of her doctors - will see the signs of her despair and reach out with help.

For me, even though I am lucky to have such a doctor, my faith is my main lifeline. 

In the darkest kind of depression, I can hold onto the knowledge that my life has meaning. My existence here might not be as impactful as anyone else, but God has me here. There are times when I should have died - from doing crazy stuff in my youth to running into and with the wrong kind of people to just being a breath away from dangers I didn't even know about - but, for this moment, I am here. I matter to God if I never matter to anyone else. And that gives me joy and wonder that maybe I won't understand until my afterlife.

So today, I am thinking of all the people who struggle with their physical, mental, and emotional ailments. I am trying to remember to pray that they find Jesus and through him, peace.

I was trying to remember the verse that applies to this and just looked it up:

Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. 

And the peace of God which passes all understanding shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4:6-7 MKJV) [my bold]

This is something I never understood when my mother spoke of it until I turned to God and gave my heart to Jesus. I hope that it touches someone today.

Peace

--Free

What To Ask Skeptics?

 During my Bible study lesson the other day, a brief part of the discussion was about why some people don't believe in Divine Creation. I was thinking about how I as a believer often approach skeptics. 

Usually, if I get the chance to possibly witness to someone - or am just talking with them and the subject comes up - I will ask a variation of the question "Do you believe in God?" After that Bible study, I spent a lot of time thinking that my typical approach might be flawed.

Asking someone if they believe in God or a Divine Creation, etc., is too broad, I think. I also think it can come across as confrontational or accusatory. Maybe asking why they do or don't believe is a better way. 

Sometimes, people believe in something even if they don't believe in the God of the Bible. Over the years, I've met many people who believe in the vague "a higher power". Even before I became dedicated to my faith, I thought that was a polite copout. When I started becoming bolder about discussing my faith, I'd ask people to name that higher power. They usually gave even more vague answers by citing morals or good vs evil,  and so on. I have never been bold enough to ask if morals or good vs evil died for them.

By asking people why they do or don't believe (in whatever), I'm opening up a better route for discussion. I genuinely do want to know why. I want to know why believers believe as much as I want to know why skeptics don't believe.

Maybe asking fellow Christians the question is just as important. If someone had asked me this years ago, I would not have been able to give a plausible answer. I probably would have said it was because I was raised to believe (I was), or that I didn't know why but that I just did. That's as bad as not believing at all because it's a believe founded on nothing but nothing.

Anyway, I just wanted to bring this up in a short post. Thinking about how I personally have approached people about their faith (or lack of it), has made me think more deeply about how to have more open and honest discussions with them. I don't want to just preach at someone. First of all, I'm not qualified. All I am qualified to do at this point is share why I believe. I'm going to give others the courtesy of letting them explain their viewpoint.

Peace

--Free

If God Didn't Create Us...

 ... How did we get the names for things in creation?

... How did we get the names of our body parts? Family members? The sun and moon?

... How did we ever know to eat and drink? 

... Where does the concept of good and evil come from? The concept of truth?

... Why can't man create anything from nothing? There are no colors created without using the existing colors. Create a new color. Create anything while not using what already exists.

I have always pondered things like this when I hear intelligent people question the existence of a Creator God.

If you can go as far as to believe in evolution - that the first humans and animals came into existence without God. That we came out of nothingness without a Creator God - if you can get that far, then how do you explain the beginnings of the very complexity of our being?

Did love and empathy come into being from evolution? Did yearning and hope and laughter and motivation? 

If Adam and Eve were not created and taught life by God, where did human communion come from? The need for communion and community? 

How did the first un-created (but somehow existing) human - mysteriously evolved out of whatever - know to use their mouths and vocal cords for speech? 

If Adam was not created in the image of God - how did we come to want to know about or question the existence of God. Why do we want and need love? Why do we feel guilt? Why do we feel joy? What - without the existence of a Creator God is joy?

I have had conversations with thoughtful and intelligent people of all sorts of worldviews - evolutionism, I-don't-care-ism, and I-don't-know-ism - who don't believe in a Creator God, and not one of them has been able to answer these questions. They usually have responded to the questions but all their answers fall back on things they can't prove to me any more than I can prove to them that there is a God.

Ask me why I believe in a Creator God and my brief response is to tell you to answer my questions. Look at the complexity and design in nature and answer my questions. My longer answer is to address the complexity and design in nature.

There is a computer program called ChatGPT that I find very interesting. Since I don't know how to explain what to you what it is, I asked it to explain that to me like I'm five years old. Here is the answer"

GPT stands for "Generative Pre-training Transformer." (I added the link) It's a type of computer program that can generate text that sounds like it was written by a human. It does this by using a large amount of information from the internet to "learn" about how words and sentences are put together in different languages.

When you use GPT to make a chat program, you can ask it questions and it will try to answer them using the information it has learned. It might not always get the answers right, but it can be a fun and interesting way to learn more about different things.

On days when I am stuck in bed, I spend time asking the program random questions. Whenever I ask about anything to do with evolution, science, etc, I usually get answers that sound very sure. When I ask about anything to do with God or biblical creation, I get respectful but biased answers. I have jokingly decided that the program thinks of my Christian beliefs as "kinda cute". I guess it is being "taught" that Christians are not logical but that we are nice.

At any rate, I just wanted to share some of the things I think about when I ponder Atheism or Nihilism.  In this time of social media, when we get to peek at the daily lives of random people - people who seem good, happy, prosperous, and flourishing in this life - I often wonder what they believe. And when I see an obituary or just hear about someone stranger's death, my first thought is "Did they cry out to God for salvation?"

As a former spiritual wallflower (being agnostic out of laziness and ignorance) as soon as I gave serious thought and study into evolution and creationism, I chose the latter. And I am glad that I took the time to carefully consider the different worldviews before my time on this earth had run out.

I still read and study my Bible almost daily. I have told people that the closer I get to Death the more I want to be ready for it. I hope that everyone is ready when it's time for their last breath.

I am not the kind of Christian who is a bold "witness" but I do encourage people to give their beliefs deep and serious thought.

Peace

-- Free