Lutheran Cemetery and Depression
Editor’s note: This blog post picks up where last week’s left off; you might find it helpful to read last week’s first.
If you remember how EKG lines look, what caused mine to fall precipitously? I can answer that in two words: Lutheran Cemetery (I mean, seminary). Even though I went to seminary with my guard up (*1) , fully aware that some of the things I would be taught weren’t Biblical and must be rejected, some garbage slipped in the back door anyway. Chief among them was an overemphasis on being Lutheran (*2). Anytime we place our identity in anything secondary, problems await. Denominations cannot bear the full weight of identity in Christ.
I’ve had fellow unity-fans tell me many times that they’ve always believed that denominations were a problem (*3). Much to their surprise, I usually share my disagreement. The Body of Christ has been incredibly diverse from the beginning of the Church; what we choose to label all those differences matters little. And these differences aren’t merely a function of sin; they’re inherent to God’s creation. God created us with various preferences and personalities, and all of us tend to hang out with people with whom we have much in common. The problem comes when we forget that our part is just one part of a bigger Body. References to Lutheran superiority made me sick every time I heard about them at the seminary, and I was often labeled a heretic by the faculty for saying so. Nevertheless, what did I do when I got out of seminary? Spend all my time with Lutherans. And sadly, even that’s an exaggeration, because there were the right Lutherans and the wrong Lutherans. I still tried to convince myself that I had the same beliefs I did prior to seminary, but my calendar would argue otherwise. And the more insular I became, the more my blind spots stayed hidden.
Image: Skitterphoto/Pixabay
My parents’ conflicted marriage had given me plenty of reason to value unity on a deeply personal level. But even when our heads and hearts are in alignment, our hands and feet might need an adjustment. I told every membership class I taught that if you were looking for a congregation that was going to emphasize Lutheran distinctives, there were plenty of those, but ours wouldn’t be one of them. Yet when pastors around town would invite me to citywide events, I was always too busy, I thought. When we’re too busy to do what Jesus instructs us to do, well, Houston, we have a problem.
The 1996 Promise Keepers International Clergy Conference in Atlanta, Georgia was the event that woke me up from my seminary-induced coma. Over 40,000 pastors filled one end of the Georgia Dome, and the event was monumental in every way. The highlight for me was when Max Lucado preached on John 17, and I was cut to the quick. Lucado said,
Of all the world problems Jesus could have chosen to address as He prayed fervently the day before he knew he would die, He thought the most important issue was whether or not Christians in future generations would get along.
I started weeping, literally (which is saying something for me), and called my wife later that night with an urgent message for my home congregation.
Tell them they need to be there this coming Sunday, because I need to repent; from here on, we’ll be doing things differently.
She did, they did, I did, and we did.
My spiritual health-meter started rising once again as we built relationships with other congregations different from our own. We formed our own CIA with two African-American Churches: Christians in Action, not spies. We exchanged pulpits and choirs, we served in the community, and we spent a lot of time growing in relationship and in prayer. Simultaneously I started hanging out with some other parts of the Body that could teach me more about the Holy Spirit. By the time I took my first planned sabbatical after nearly eight years as a pastor, I had a wealth of relationships to draw from in order to keep learning and growing. It was immediately after my sabbatical ended that I was first officially diagnosed with depression…
Depression
With all those exciting things happening, how on earth could I be struggling with depression? Tell me if you’ve heard this before, but anytime we place the weight of our identity in anything secondary, we’re knocking on the door of trouble. I had repented of my denominationalism and made the necessary changes to keep my heart better aligned with my actions. But I had another idol that went largely unrecognized: ministry. Ministry became my mistress. I loved my wife and my four children, but they got the leftovers of my energy and passion for Jesus. I found it a hundred times easier to pray with other pastors or with various groups at church than to pray at home with my wife and kids. When life at home was messy and challenging, I could retreat to church where I felt more competent. I believed that it was my job to build the Church, and I asked God to take care of my family while I was “away.” That’s exactly backwards. It’s God’s job to build His Church, and my job to make my family my first field of ministry. Workaholism is particularly seductive for those of us whose paycheck is signed by some ministry organization. It’s hard to say no when we’ve convinced ourselves that God is asking us to say yes. And there will always be people ready to stroke our egos for all the sacrifices we’re making for God. Ministry is never finished – there’s always another person to call, another book to read, another sentence to be reworked in Sunday’s sermon, another prayer to be prayed. You either learn healthy Sabbath rhythms, or you develop a Messiah complex. You either learn how to put the work down and trust God, or you work yourself (or your family) to death.
There are two different ways our Greek worldview is coming into play here. First, ministry isn’t either at church or at home, it’s both. And second, my depression wasn’t being caused by either my choices or my biochemistry, but both. Furthermore, anytime sin is involved, whether it’s my own sin or somebody sinning against me, Satan is quick to pile on. Satan never plays fair, so the more vulnerable we are, the more he pounces. Our problems can rarely be explained simply by either personal sin or spiritual warfare; both are usually in play.
Why, a reader might ask, would I invest time and money in a seminary I knew not to trust? Because I was Lutheran, that’s why, and so attending a Lutheran seminary was my only choice, or so I assumed. If I knew then what I know now, I would have done things differently.
I won’t go into all the other issues here. I’m not an anti-academic, but suffice it to say that putting faith under a microscope, in an academic environment largely removed from the Church, seems like a bad idea from the outset. Faith is meant to be practiced more than scrutinized. Ph.Ds mean little (nothing?) in the Kingdom of God. They aren’t inherently wrong, but neither are they inherently helpful.
Denominations refers to subsets of Christianity, like Lutheran, Baptist, Methodist, Assembly of God, etc. People who voice their opposition to denominations usually identify as non-denominational, which in my experience is usually just one more grouping within the Body of Christ. If it walks like a duck…