Religion and Depression - How Christian-Fatalism Leads to Despair

On the morning of November 17, 1999, I felt optimistic. I was 23 years-old and had recently buried my mother and mother-in-law. I was now facing my own poor health as I prayed for the well-being of our unborn child. Despite my many losses, I had encouraged her husband to begin his seminary training; I was excited to be a future "Pastor's Wife."

"God has a reason." That's what I told my grieving father after my mother's death.


And that pretty much sums up how I understood my world. I would not have called my thinking fatalistic during this era, and yet I was most certainly caught in a rut of thinking. In my mind, God was in control and got whatever He wanted. Therefore, if someone died, if someone was ill, if a problem threatened to devastate, I believed I could just pray and still back to see what God had planned. Fatalism? No, I wanted no part of that. But really, what is the difference between saying, "It was just fate." and declaring, "It must have been God's will"? I now see no difference.

Around 8:30 a.m. on the 17th, I received a call on my hospital room phone. It was my oldest sister. “Dad’s been killed in a car accident!” she cried in a panic stricken voice. I don’t know what I said in response because I had passed out. I was told several days later that I had “coded”: they couldn’t find a heartbeat or blood pressure on me.

Thankfully, a janitor had entered my room and found me unconscious. A team of doctors finally showed up. Our son’s heartbeat was fading as they prepared me for emergency surgery. He was dead by the time the operation was complete.

They called my survival a “miracle”, and yet, somehow, I didn’t feel fortunate. I felt like someone had tied me upside down and beaten me to within in an inch of my existence. And the fact that I remained soon became a source of great pain. Suicide was now on my mind again. I wanted out!

I did not walk out away from my faith immediately. For a few weeks, I continued to use the same old tactics, “It’s ok,” I told my nurse as she handed me our stillborn son, “It just wasn’t meant to be.”

When I was barely well enough to walk, I attended a Future Pastor’s Wives Bible Study. When the leader of the group responded to my tears by misusing the Bible to suggest that my suffering was insignificant—it was just good in disguise, a part of God’s plan, and necessary for my growth—well, I just smiled and thanked her. However, this charade could only go on for so long.

“Good in disguise? Are they crazy?” I wondered. “You expect me to believe that the deaths of my mother-in-law, mother, father, unborn son, and facing a lifetime of chronic illness—as well, as the possibility of never having another child—that all of this pain is actually good? That it is part of God’s plan? If this is the way God runs things, then I want out—out of the church, out of the faith, and out of this world. I’d rather be in hell than commune with a Heavenly Father who causes or allows me suffer in this way!” I was just a little mad! And so, within a few weeks, I ceased my daily devotions…I set my Bible on the shelf, announced my departure from faith to my husband, and merely sat in the pews to keep him looking good.

As I sat in the pews of our church, I was acutely jealous and angry. All these churchy people were happy. They clapped. They smiled. They went home renewed. They probably had children or were at least pregnant. I’d bet few of them had lost both of their parents while in their early twenties. And how many other 20 year-olds were as sick as I was? I bet their marriages were rocks of stability, but mine was on the sand and quickly sinking.

Matters went from bad to unbearable when we began “trying” for another child. “Surely,” I reasoned, “we’ll get pregnant again easily. It’s the least God can do!”


But He didn’t do it, and that’s how I saw it. Month after month, no baby. Month after month my anger was growing. And with it, my plan of suicide and escape was becoming clearer as the depression deepened. Oh, there were several options—buy a gun, lock myself in the garage with the car running, death by poison…you name it…I had considered it. In the most odd way, planning the death I felt I deserved was my part-time pleasure. When it seemed things would never improve—when the grief was inescapable—when I found out I wasn’t pregnant again—after my husband and I had had it out for the 10th time in a week— then I could fantasize about ending it all. I didn’t care who it hurt or what would happen to my soul afterwards. All I knew was that I wanted out – Out of my life, out of the way I felt the world was trapping me. I was sick of sitting around waiting to see what God would cause or allow next—if He would bless or if He would curse, if He would bring tragedy or allow some joy for once—if I’d starve to death or be consumed by His anger. If this wasn't fatalistic thinking, then I don't know what would be!

—and then there was Mike. We weren’t getting along, but I could remember when we once had. There was my best friend. My sisters, the people in my grief support group, my Christian counselor. They all insisted that although I couldn’t feel it…God loved me and there were better days ahead. I wanted to believe them, but that require something called HOPE and after having been let down by God before, I wasn’t about to go down that disappointing road again.

Then, something truly miraculous occurred: after the usual night of intense mourning, I sat on our bed—about 9 months after nearly dying—and thought something so shocking that I know my mind was being directed by God. My thought was a question: “What if I’m wrong?” What if the explanations others have offered me are incorrect? What if I’m missing something in the Scriptures? What if I’m misunderstanding God’s word?

I quickly offered the first prayer I’d made in months, “Dear Lord, I’ve heard everyone else’s thoughts on my pain; I’ve come up with several theories of my own. Please help me understand!”

It might have been that very night, I’m not sure, but it was very soon thereafter, that I began waking in the night with specific Scriptures on my mind. We had named our stillborn son Job—because we considered ourselves to be modern day Jobs. But now I questioned everything, “Are we?” I wondered. I used my husband’s seminary books, his Bible translating computer program, and the library at his school. I could not get the subject of suffering off my mind—it was my 24 hour obsession that somehow renewed my soul.

I soon concluded that much of my thinking regarding God’s relationship to suffering was off. For instance, I was shocked to find that while God called Job is ebed (Job 1:8) which is Hebrew for servant or slave, Jesus specifically told us that He no longer calls us His servants—but rather His friends (John 15:15). One does to their servant-slave as they please; however, we protect our friends from harm and defend them when accusations against their integrity are made. We had named our stillborn son Job, but we were not modern day Jobs!

My husband is in the Ministry. I am "The Pastor's Wife." I love the Lord and I adore His Church. I do believe we can be "the light of the world." But sometimes, I look back at my former way of thinking and wonder: What if all Christians understood that God's will must be ushered into our world? What if we got it that simply praying, putting forth a little effort and then calling it "God's will" is akin to fatalism? What if we never gave up trying because we refuse to call horror "good in disguise" or "God's Plan"?

Article Source: http://www.content.onlypunjab.com

Jennifer Brost is the author of "How I Suffered From My Theology" and available in stores nation-wide), President of The Job Foundation (www.thejobfoundation.org), Pastor's Wife, and mother of two. She resides in Iowa. For more information on Jennifer, visit www.deliverancepublishers.com and www.thejobfoundation.org

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