Readability: 1
Length: 112 pp
Author: David Murray
Here is a little book packed with tons of help for the depressed Christian. It is short and easily readable and thus more attractive to the depressed person who does not feel like reading a book. Murray deals with the crisis, complexity, condition, causes, cures, and caregivers in relation to the subject of depression. Christians Get Depressed Too is a helpful pastoral tool I am glad to have and recommend. There are a couple of powerful Biblically-grounded insights that really jolted my thinking on the subject. I leave you with one of them.
We would never take this view (sinful cause/spiritual solution) when counseling people with cancer, strokes, broken legs, diabetes, or Alzheimer’s. As Reformed Christians, our default position is that these physical problems are most likely the result of living as fallen creatures in a fallen world. Why should our default position with brain problems be any different? Are we saying that the brain, the most complex organ in our body is somehow exempt from the effects of the fall? My skin is broken down by psoriasis, my eyes are broken down with shortsightedness, my nose is broken down with rhinitis, my joints are sometimes broken with arthritis, my bowel has required two operations, my legs are broken down with varicose veins, my body is covered in dangerous moles (two of which have been removed), but I am actually very healthy! I do not believe any of these ailments are the result of personal sin but simply the consequences of being a fallen creature living in a fallen world or of inheriting genes from my mother and father who also had similar health issues. Why then should we always conclude that brain disorders are the result of personal sin?
