03 May 2023
For my whole life, I've dealt with clinical depression. On the one hand, everything hurts. On the other hand, you don't feel anything at all. You are torn between those two sensations.
There were times when my flesh wanted to die, and it craved suicide. My heart overruled; I have always had a mission and I'm not done yet. Don't believe the lies. Medical science is deluded, chasing the wrong model. Doctors imagine that it's a malfunction of the body, that something is overabundant or in too short supply in the body chemistry. The various treatments they offer seldom actually change anything. Depression is a normal part of mortal existence; it's built in. In my case, it's hereditary.
The solution is to disassociate from your fleshly nature as much as possible. You are an eternal spirit stuck in a damned mortal existence. The only reason we live is to bless the Lord. We don't have permission to come Home until He says so, and in the manner He decides is best.
And while depressives can be morose, I've found some people are morose without it. This is also hereditary for a lot of people. Yes, the human race is awful. The vast majority of people seem stupid enough to be a fraudulent waste of oxygen. Our basic situation will never improve. But I've learned to ask: What about that person in the mirror? If we are so brilliant, why haven't we solved the worlds problems? Humility helps a lot.
It's not a question of what we deserve. Being born human is its own punishment. It marks us as having been kicked out of Paradise, and we cannot even really understand our situation. At some point we become morally accountable for all the things God revealed that we should do, but we don't measure up. We have all nailed Jesus to the Cross.
And yet, the Crucified One still holds out those nail-scarred hands to us, calling us to follow Him.
Another issue: The jail in which we all exist does not have bars and walls. Rather, it has time and space constraints. Eternal beings can be anywhen and anywhere they choose, but mortal beings have a distinct shelf-life and cannot occupy two places at once.
In the Bible, time passage is a matter of patience until something has matured. You cannot schedule anything that really matters. That we can measure time's passage down to microscopic increments doesn't mean anything except the false notion that we have some measure of control. God is the one who ripens the fruit. When time hangs heavy on your hands, it's because you are too much in your fleshly nature and not in your heart.
I've always got a million things to do and by faith I have the motivation to do them. If nothing else, I never have enough time alone with God. I'm often seeking a way to get out into a natural setting so I can shut out the world and hear from the Lord.
This week I shared a quote I stole from someone wiser than me: Jesus is always coming until He gets here. He has promised to come back for us, but only when the Father is ready. Some of the most important things God does take longer than humans live. Malachi teaches us (read between the lines) that each of us stands on the Covenant path. You can see it stretching far back into the past, though sometimes the path has suffered from really poor maintenance. Sometimes it's just a bare dirt trace in the wilderness. The future is the path not yet built. Where you stand today is the part you are laying down, the moral infrastructure on which the future depends. Will future generations find it easy to build onto what you have done, of will they feel like they are just starting something from scratch?
We are called to sacrifice, to tax ourselves hard in order to pay for what future generations will use. Give them a place to stand so they can do the work the Lord calls them to do.
A third item: I have no problem with the notion that there were very advanced civilizations before the Flood. I do not take seriously the concept that mankind has progressed in a linear fashion from primitive to modern, going back millions of years. Rather, I'm quite certain we get hammered every few thousand years and everyone forgets what came before the wrath of God was poured out. We are about to get hammered again, and the best we can hope for is that some survivors will hold onto the Covenant of God as they emerge on the other side.
It's our duty to lay a solid covenant foundation.
If you don't want to post your questions in the comments, subscribers can email me at catacombrez@protonmail.com
Comments
DarkMirror
I get what I think to be those hopeless/depressed feelings every once in a while. It doesn't do me very well, obviously, but I am not a depressed person by nature. I don't think it comes close to what a depressed person often experiences, but at times it feels like it hits me really hard. This makes me think I simply don't have the tools at my disposal that a naturally-depressed person would have for coping. Thankfully those episodes for me are rather short. I believe they may be caused somewhat with solar activity, so after the offending waves pass, my episodes do also.
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