The British preacher Charles Spurgeon lived with depression. He talked openly about it in his sermons, assuring those in his congregation who likewise suffered that their pastor could empathize with them.
He knew from personal experience the sting of well-meaning but insensitive advice about his condition offered by fellow Christians. Their counsel often boiled down to, “Stop it!”, and they were quick to blame him for his suffering.
This, Spurgeon declared from the pulpit, was “the unkindest thing that anyone can possibly say” to someone living with depression. It betrays an ignorance of the darkness to which even the strongest human minds are susceptible.
There is a kind of mental darkness, in which you are disturbed, perplexed, worried, troubled, — not, perhaps, about anything tangible; you could not write down your troubles, it may be that you really have not any, but you feel troubled and dismayed. Other people say that you are nervous, and they blame you, and say, “You ought not to give way in this manner.” That is what they think; but when a person gets into your present condition, that is the unkindest thing that anyone can possibly say, and the least likely to do any good to the poor troubled soul. I do not mind a trouble which I can see and understand. Manfully would I shoulder it in my Master’s strength; but when the spirit itself is in the dark, one imagines a thousand evil things. Even good things themselves seem to be evil, and what should be to your encouragement becomes often a source of discouragement. Have any of you ever been in that condition? If you have, and if Jesus has not come to you then, I am sure that you have felt it very hard, and you have greatly needed his presence.
Want to learn why telling a depressed person to snap out of it is terrible advice? Read my article “Bring Your Emotions Before God.”
