My Theology of Chronic Clinical Depression

Part 1 - I've a Confession to Make
Part 2 - Not Your Everyday Depression

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How do they fit?

How can a person who claims to be a Christ-follower also claim to have chronic clinical depression?

Isn't the one supposed to cancel out the other?  Isn't faith in Christ supposed to be the all-encompassing happy stuff that cures whatever ails you?  Or, alternatively, shouldn't chronic clinical depression corrupt enough of your soul with despair to convince you that God isn't so loving after all?

Or am I simply pursuing some vain hope that a belief in Christ can be a panacea for my problems?  Is my faith merely a crutch to help me deal with chronic clinical depression?

I'll be straight-up honest with you about this, so you won't go reading any further, expecting me reach a conclusion of profound insight that nobody else in the history of humankind has ever had.  No, I don't have a lot of answers for you.  Especially if you're not already convinced that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and that He died on the cross to take away the guilt of your sins.  Neither am I at complete peace simply accepting that God allows stuff to happen to us purely for His glory and our good, which the Bible teaches are the two basic reasons why anything happens to any of us.

I'm sorry to disappoint you, but I'm not a mighty Christian.  Hey - I'm a red-blooded, self-indulgent, 21st Century American.  Which means I'm spoiled.  I'm also skeptical, iconoclastic, and cynical, which means I've looked high and low for the easy exits, and discovered there aren't any.  There are no magic beans, and there is no tantric bliss.

However, there is the Holy Spirit, and He has assured me of eternal life in Heaven with God through Christ.  I trust in God because the Holy Spirit enables me to, just as He enables me to endure, day by day - and often, hour by hour - whatever troubles, anxiety, pleasures, and accomplishments He allows.  For His glory, and my good.

If you think this makes me a dim-witted humanoid weakling who needs to hope in a Deity to make some sense out of life, then you'll probably not find anything helpful in my perspective of how my faith and my depression fit into my body and brain.  I invite you to read on, of course, perhaps only as an experiment in having an open mind.  However, if you yourself have been convinced by the Holy Spirit that God exists, and that He loves you, and you've invited Christ to be the Lord of your life, then hopefully my rough-hewn theology of clinical depression can be helpful to you.

Because I do think there is a theology of clinical depression, and I think God is teaching me about it and Himself through this experience.

Spiritual, Physical, Emotional

Admittedly, I don't know as much about the different types of serious problems other people face.

However, my theology of clinical depression probably follows along the same lines as most other perspectives of suffering, sickness, and pain that take place in the life of every born-again follower of Christ.  God never promises anybody a life of ease and carefree, pain-free idyll.  If your life seems like one big festival for you, then the cynic in me would wonder if your faith is as genuine as you think it is.  Why?  Because the Devil, our enemy, is real, and one of his vile tasks involves trying to corrupt your faith to the point where you're willing to deny your Savior because you can't make sense of what He's allowing to happen to you.

The book of Job in the Old Testament is one massive parable about how Satan went to God and proposed that he could destroy Job's faith.  God allowed Satan to try, but even after Satan caused everything that Job had to be taken from him, with the exception of an unhelpful wife and unhelpful friends, Job remained faithful to God.  Today, some Christians think that the problems they face are cataclysmic meteors direct from Satan, like Job's were.  Or they wonder if maybe God is secretly testing them, to see how genuine their faith is.

I don't necessarily hold myself in such high regard to presume that either God or Satan have chosen me to be some pawn or allegory.  Satan may have devised my chronic clinical depression to see if my faith will collapse, which is his singular modus operandi, but I'm pretty sure God is letting this happen to me to build my faith.  And part of building my faith is trusting in God's sovereignty.  My personal sin nature did not directly cause my depression, although it certainly plays a role in how I deal with it.  If medical science is correct, and my allocation of the neurotransmitter serotonin is wonky, then I was likely born with a predisposition to clinical depression, and it won't be my fault if I have it the rest of my life.  My parents and I, as we've worked backward from my diagnosis, now suspect that some of my oddities as a child and a teen stemmed from clinical depression, only back then, hardly anybody knew what clinical depression was.  The diagnosis, after all, is relatively recent.  Nevertheless, suffice it to say, whether this is a direct test, from God or Satan, it's something that God has allowed, and something that I may overcome with His help here in this life.  And if not in this life, then most assuredly in the one to come.

Maybe that sounds like fatalism to you.  To me, it's more like hope.

Two Views for Treatment

Unfortunately, for those of us in the Christian community, even everything I've just written is not enthusiastically embraced by Christ-followers who try to treat people like me.  You see, there are two general schools of thought within evangelicalism regarding treatment methods for chronic clinical depression.  The conventional method is the one in which I've been treated, and am still being treated.  It involves traditional Christian counseling that looks similar to secular psychotherapy, except it's conducted by therapists trained in Bible-based approaches to emotional disorders.  It can include a liberal reliance on psychiatric theory and medicine, as a mixture of science and spirituality.

However, a newer school of thought has developed as a reaction to the conventional Christian counseling model, and its practitioners call themselves Nouthetic, or “Biblical,” counselors.  This isn't entirely helpful for a couple of reasons, the first and most obvious one being that by calling themselves "Biblical" counselors, advocates of this school of thought are insinuating that their approach is theologically superior, and that traditional counseling methods, by contrast, are not Biblical.

This is no mistake on the part of Nouthetic practitioners, because many of them dismiss traditional counseling, no matter the clinician's evangelical devoutness, as too corrupted by worldly science and fuzzy psychiatry.  Nouthetic counselors tend to emphasize theological discipline to the exclusion of medical considerations.  They theorize that their patient's sin is the dominant problem, and believe that helping their patients confront their sin is more effective than considering biological contributing factors to clinical depression.

Understandably, conventional Christian counselors caution that Nouthetic/Biblical counseling risks being too simplistic, aggressive, and medically dangerous.  For their part, Nouthetic/Biblical advocates contend that Christian counseling flirts too much with secular theory, and it's too generous to the patient when sin issues comprise only one of several aspects to be addressed by Christian counselors - whereas Nouthetic counselors focus mostly on their patient's sin.  In other words, if I allowed myself to be treated by a Nouthetic counselor, I would likely be directed to simply confront my fears, lack of trust, selfishness, and pride - all components of my chronic clinical depression, I admit; and all sins.  And I would likely be strongly discouraged from continuing my medication regimen.

Perhaps for people who are merely wallowing in self-pity over something, such an approach is appropriate.

Meanwhile, I don't see why considering certain biological factors and medical treatments - such as prescription drugs - for clinical depression is being unBiblical.  I'm willing to explore aspects of my sin nature that likely contribute to my problems, but is science so wrong that it should be excluded from a treatment plan?  From what I've read about the Nouthetic approach, most of its advocates have never been to medical school, and seem annoyed that traditional counselors put as much faith in science as they do, as if science in general - and psychiatry in particular - is utterly unGodly.

Much of this discrepancy likely stems from continuing confusion over what "depression" really is, and the degrees of severity it can involve.  Personally, I suspect that too few Nouthetic advocates have actually ever had chronic clinical depression, and they have no idea what their patients are going through.  I had several therapists who admitted to being recovered depression patients themselves, and I could tell that they had a good handle on what I was experiencing.

Sin

Having said all of that, I am grateful to have had (with the exception of my first psychiatrist) born-again evangelical therapists to help counsel me, and they incorporated both science and scripture.  If you or somebody you know is in psychotherapy for chronic clinical depression, and your therapist is not discussing your sin patterns with you, then you need to get a new therapist.  It's possible that Nouthetic counselors have deemed some traditional Christian therapists to be inadequately incorporating difficult discussions about their patients' sin patterns in the treatment mix.  In my opinion, if you're wanting help, everything needs to be on the table.

You see, sin does not cause chronic clinical depression, but it can exacerbate it, prolong it, and even deny a patient their recovery from it.  With an illness as individualized as chronic clinical depression, even if medical science ultimately confirms that serotonin plays a causal factor in the brain, nobody can assert that sin isn't lurking somewhere deep in the soul.  No matter how physical chronic clinical depression may be proven to be, there is still an emotional component to it, and to varying degrees, I believe that our emotions can be brought under the Lordship of Christ.  Not completely, of course - even people who do not suffer from depression have imperfect emotions.  But anxiety is a form of fear, and God commands us dozens of times in His Word not to fear.  If He commands us to do something, or not to do something, shouldn't that imply that He provides us a way to do it - even if it's solely through our imperfect reliance on the Holy Spirit?

As I've struggled with my depression, I've actually been able to identify some fears that I can indeed place in His hands, and from which I can walk away.  I doubt that there's a born-again, evangelical Christian therapist out there who believes that not one fear a patient of theirs may have can be brought under the Lordship of Christ.  Any good Christian therapist's job involves helping their patients trust in God, instead of being fearful.  Even if progress in that trust is incremental.

So, why am I not cured?  I've had this diagnosis for 21 years.  Shouldn't that be long enough?

Actually, thanks to the Lord's working in my life, plus the medication I'm on, I've been able to plateau at a point that is considerably higher than where I was when my treatments began, way back in New York City.  So I count that as progress, even though it's not what anybody would call "normal."  Part of this experience is learning what I can do, what I shouldn't do, and what I can't do.  Most of all, however, the Lord has given me an all-new appreciation for the Fruit of the Spirit:  love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.  Some therapists have their patients do breathing exercises when they feel panic attacks coming on.  One of the best ways I've found to short-circuit a panic attack is to slowly recite the Fruit of the Spirit.  And speaking of panic attacks, I'm thankful to God that I can't recall the last one I had!

This is my version of the theology of chronic clinical depression.  I can't say it's cured me of my problem, but then again, no theology can, can it?  God is the sovereign Creator and Healer; not any scientific or religious theory, no matter how accurate they may be.

So, how can a Christ-follower like me also have chronic clinical depression?  Through God's sovereignty, and with the relief of His sustaining grace.

I told you it wouldn't be a fancy answer, but at least I can testify to it now, and thank Him that it's true.

Not Your Everyday Depression

Nobody wants to hear they have it.  A lot of people don't even believe it exists.

"Chronic clinical depression."

Technically, the "chronic" part means it's recurring.  "Clinical" means that it's been identified as something that exists.  And we all know what "depression" means - or, at least, we think we do.  The folks who say we're talking about simply having a bad day are the ones who think the whole idea is bogus.

But is it?  I'm one of those people who's been diagnosed with chronic clinical depression, and I've come to understand that the more we understand how these three words represent the problem they're trying to name, then the whole concept of medically treating long-term depression becomes less abstract.

Why?  Well, for starters, I don't just have the blues.  When I was diagnosed, I wasn't upset over the loss of something, like a relationship, a job, or my health.  At the time, I wasn't facing imminent financial peril, although I certainly am now.  Everybody has stressors in their life, and everybody responds to them in different ways, and in various intensities.  We grieve, we fret, we hate, we complain, we worry, we become sad, we become ambivalent.  Sometimes we panic.  Yet "normal" people rarely become crippled by these emotions for long periods of time.  "Normal" people don't dwell on the idea of killing themselves as a way out of these persistent emotions.  These are the differences between having a bad day - or a bad year - and having chronic clinical depression.

When two different evangelical psychiatrists here in the Dallas area both independently confirmed over a several-year period that I indeed have chronic clinical depression, they based their diagnoses on a broader set of quantifiable emotional disorders.  These disorders exhibit deviations from what could be expected from ordinary reactions to ordinary stressors.  For example, these doctors evaluated my history of crippling panic attacks, my pervasive fear of being physically alone, the fact that I used to be on a suicide watch, and several other personal factors which I still want to keep private.  Frankly, I've been such a reluctant patient over the years, I don't recall everything they did to render their diagnoses, but I do remember being satisfied with their explanations, even if I didn't particularly welcome the idea of having chemical problems inside my brain.

Chronic clinical depression, after all, is widely believed to be a medical problem.  Not just an emotional one.  Studies suggest that it involves levels of a chemical called serotonin, a neurotransmitter that helps send messages throughout our brain.  Unfortunately, the fact that science has yet to discover irrefutable proof of this causal factor simply lends more credence to skeptics who deny the reality of chronic clinical depression.

My fears of being physically alone, ironically, coexist with my preference for solitude, and although I've had periods in my life where I'm more socially active than at other times, I have to force myself to work harder at my people skills than is normal.

Which brings us to another problem with having this diagnosis.  What is "normal" for you might not be normal for me, and vice-versa.  To an astonishing degree, we are all unique individuals, and "normalcy" is a state of being that is shaped not only by biology and DNA, but also culture, and social expectations.  Skeptics could claim that people like me are simply being too hard on ourselves - or, not hard enough.  Conformity is one thing, but celebrating our individuality shouldn't be punitive.  Just snap out of it and get on with life!

But if that were as easy as it sounds, wouldn't most of us with this diagnosis already be doing that?  You think this is fun, or rewarding?

Believe me, this isn't a good way to get my ego stroked, or my fretful half-baked brain cosseted with attention.  I may have to work hard at interpersonal relationships, but I seriously doubt that paying a therapist or a psychiatrist to listen to your problems serves as a suitable substitute to having people befriend you without being paid to do so.  I can't remember how many years I spent in therapy, but those were not happy hours that I spent struggling to come to terms with my problems in front of somebody watching the clock.  In fact, finally, my last therapist, an earnest fellow who plied me with scripture during every session, literally threw up his hands and told me I could answer all his questions, and even come up with applicable scripture for my problems as well as he could.  Therapy wasn't helping me, he admitted, and I needed to spend my rapidly-dwindling financial resources on medications we knew worked.  And most of all - we needed to trust God for His sustaining - and hopefully, healing - grace.

I haven't been back to therapy since.

That's another problem with having this diagnosis.  It doesn't have the immediate impact like "you have cancer" can.  With a cancer diagnosis, you may want a second opinion, but not only is there usually no social stigma with it, you can ask all of your friends to pray for you.  You don't need to hide it.  And even if you get a second opinion, you need to act quickly, and decisively, to get the cancer treated.  With clinical depression, things can go on for years - and that's why they call my form of it "chronic."

Yet another problem is that a diagnosis of chronic clinical depression isn't nearly as objective as "you have a broken arm."  With a broken arm, there are x-rays and other obvious diagnostic tests to help confirm why your doctor is saying your arm is broken.  So you have an operation, or your arm gets put in a cast, and as it heals, you can watch its progress.  With clinical depression, unless you have the money to pay for expensive brain scans and high-priced specialists, very little of one's problem is ever visible.

Currently, my prescriptions are being monitored by the family practice doctor I've had since I was a teenager.  He monitors my vital signs through regular check-ups, and he's willing to give me the benefit of the doubt as I trust in my "Higher Power" for help.  So far, this arrangement has established a plateau of sorts that, while not optimal for the sort of productive "normalcy" I'd like to have, has lifted me above what I used to endure.  After all, sometimes progress has to be measured not in what you've done, but what you haven't done.  Like suicide.  Some days I struggle with it more than others, but as time has gone on, I believe God has taught me more about trusting in Him, rather than in my emotions.

Suicide is one of those elephants in the depression room that none of us likes to talk about.  And I'm not going to get too personal here, either, except to give you a little background about how it plays into my diagnosis.  Suffice it to say that I began suffering from bleak, life-ending desires after some particularly troubling emotions were triggered by an unstable domestic situation while I lived in New York City.  I'd never entertained such thoughts before, but they were pervasive, and almost tangible.  I'd stand in the street, a foot or so away from the sidewalk, and marvel at how closely - and how fast! - those lumbering city buses would shoot past the tip of my nose.  Just one more step...!

When I eventually caved, and admitted I needed some sort of help, it was my first therapist - at the time, the only born-again psychotherapist in the entire city of New York - who put me on suicide watch.  I had to call her message service and check-in every morning and every evening for about two weeks.  That was when she told me she would either contact my parents in Texas, saying she was absolving herself of my personal safety, or I would have to go on Prozac.

I'd been fighting her on the Prozac thing - until her ultimatum.  At the time, I thought taking Prozac was akin to admitting I was a heathen unbeliever, because I didn't trust God to deliver me from the sin of panicked fear.  For my prescription, my therapist sent me to a secular psychiatrist on Central Park West, who officed out of the swanky lobby of the building where Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver used to own an apartment.  Like most expensive Manhattan apartment buildings, its exterior was drab and unimpressive, while its exclusivity was best conferred to those granted access inside.  In this buildings' case, its lobby reeked of affluence, with spacious hallways lined by glossy brass paneling - I kid you not.  Walking among those panels almost made up for the doormen who looked me up and down whenever I entered and left, knowing looks plastered on their faces:  yeah, that's one of those nut jobs going to see the quack at the other end of the lobby.

I don't know, maybe that doctor was a quack.  He was Jewish, and a self-professing Freud scholar, who kept asking me if I was sexually frustrated, gay, or mourning some unrequited love.  New York City, after all, can wreak havoc on a young person's love life.  Especially if I was gay, he kept hinting?

I'd relay my conversations with this high-dollar shrink to my Christian therapist, back down in her rickety Greenwich Village walk-up, and she'd roll her eyes and apologize - he was the only doctor she could find in the city who was willing to give Bible-based psychotherapy any sort of chance.  Oh well.  I enjoyed those floor-to-ceiling walls of brass panels.  I have to say that I sure felt important entering and exiting that luxury building across from Central Park, even if it was only tourists on the sidewalks along the park who thought I might be somebody!

These days, I understand that Manhattan is oozing with Christian psychiatrists and psychotherapists, thanks in no small part to Tim Keller's Redeemer Presbyterian Church, and the emphasis they've placed on servicing the legions of Millennials and Gen-X'ers who've flocked to Gotham.  That's likely one of the reasons skeptics of clinical depression are skeptical:  it seems as though a cottage industry has sprung up over the past twenty years to treat what appears to be an offshoot of "affluenza," as more and more urban young people want to talk out their fears and frustrations, instead of grinning and bearing them like their forefathers and foremothers had to do.  After all, is clinical depression suddenly some new disease?  Why does it seem like Baby Boomers discovered it, and their kids are the ones suffering the most from it?  Maybe we're all too spoiled rotten for our own good by all of our First-World problems.  It's just the ones who need to blame something - or somebody - else for their personality issues who are trying to validate clinical depression as something genuine.

Believe me - I've had all of those doubts, and more.  Regular readers of mine know that I can be excruciatingly cynical.  How do I know for sure that the Devil isn't just trying to make me some lazy, dithering, good-for-nothing spoiled brat who'd rather worry about his problems than find a good-paying job and working so much that he doesn't have time to worry?

Because I have to admit:  chronic clinical depression is surprisingly debilitating.  And a lot of people - church-goers in particular - think I'm just being lazy.  They peg me as one of those man-boys we're hearing so much about these days, who doesn't want to leave his Mommy and Daddy's comfortable home, and have to try and make his own way in this big, bad world.  I need a swift kick in the seat of my pants so I don't end up as a drain on society.  I say I'm a man of faith?  Well, put your big-boy pants on and just trust in God.  I say I got sick when I lived in New York City?  Well, there's your problem!  You can't make it there!  No big deal; Texas should be right up your sniveling little alley! 

Right?

Since I know all the things people are likely saying about me and people like me, where's my incentive to actually prove them right?  I have my pride; otherwise, why would I be concerned about what other people think?  If I couldn't care less if other people think I'm simply lazy, would I care that something seems to be malfunctioning somewhere inside of me that makes people think I'm lazy?  Since I say I'm a born-again follower of Christ, who believes that God loves me and invites me to trust Him implicitly for everything, why don't I just do it, like the Nike commercial says?

That's probably the biggest reason why I don't like having chronic clinical depression.  Nobody can really answer all of those questions.  There is no 12-step recovery process.  There is no magic pill.  Moving away from the big, bad city doesn't cure it.  In fact, living in a place like New York, I could find plenty of compelling diversions to help dull the pain in my brain, and those diversions don't exist in suburbia.  New York City wasn't my main problem.  Something in my brain was - and is.

You can tell me I'm not sick, and I could tell a cancer patient they're not sick, but how does that change anything?

Like they say, some things you simply have to experience for yourself.  Only I hope you won't have to.
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Part 3 - My Theology of Chronic Clinical Depression

I've a Confession to Make

 
...I will not boast, except of my weaknesses.  Though if I should wish to boast, I would not be a fool, for I would be speaking the truth.  But I refrain from it, so that no one may think more of me than he sees in me or hears from me.  So to keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited.  Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me.  But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness."  Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.  For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities.  For when I am weak, then I am strong. 

- 2 Corinthians 12:5-10


Things like what I'm about to do are never easy.  Yet sometimes, we find ourselves compelled to do them anyway.  As I meditated on this scripture from 2 Corinthians this morning, I thought I heard the Lord telling me to tell you what I'm about to tell you.  But here I am, closing in on the end of this Friday afternoon, and I still haven't done it.

Because I don't want to.

But here I go anyway:  My name is Tim, and I have chronic clinical depression.

I've had it for years.  Two highly-regarded evangelical psychiatrists have separately confirmed the diagnosis, and I'm on two prescription medications for it.  I think I've had five or six other therapists over the years, but frankly, I've lost count.  It's been at least a decade since my last visit to one.

Okay, so... I'm not gay - which is what some of you were probably expecting me to admit.  And no, I've not been engaged in some adulterous affair.  I'm not a left-wing Communist, either, although some of my right-wing acquaintances will probably never be convinced of that.  I suffer from chronic clinical depression, and while by itself, that's not a crime or something I should be intrinsically ashamed of, I constantly feel like it is, and that I should be.

Particularly as a self-professing, evangelical Christ-follower.

None of our lives are perfect, although a lot of us pretend really hard that they're close to it.  But few diagnoses carry with them such punitive baggage in society - and especially in the Christian church - than having some sort of emotional or mental disorder.  For years, I've only whispered my condition to select people within the churches I've attended, exclusively on some need-to-know basis, because I'm aware of the stigma attached to it, and how most churched folk treat people like me.

A couple of close friends have asked me why I don't write more about my depression, and my answer to them has always been the same:  I have few friends as it is.  Letting this type of information circulate in the public domain isn't going to help me find more of them.  Especially not in church!  Sympathy?  Perhaps onlookers think that's what I secretly want, but they'd be completely wrong.  A flurry of self-help motivational information by people who think they're being supportive?  No thanks, because all you're doing is presuming that conditions like mine are "all in the head" - only metaphorically.  Not physically, which is what clinical depression really is.  It's a physical problem involving chemicals in my brain.

One does not simply "snap out of it."

Meanwhile, all of the other evangelicals who remain closet sufferers of depression are agreeing with me right now, knowing their own private pain, and their gnawing fear about what would happen if it were widely known.

As I read this passage this morning, which was part of the scripture from this past Sunday's sermon at church, and that subtle little thought sprung up through my brain's morning haze, I fought it.  I fought it for the same reason I always fight it, because I've been thinking of doing this for some time, but I've never had the courage to actually do it.  Part of me wonders if things really won't be so bad if I go ahead and admit it, even if it's here in an amateur blog that only a few people read regularly.  But most of me has seen and heard how my fellow church-goers treat other people who admit they're clinically depressed.  And I don't want to be their victim, too.

Yet, neither do I want to be a victim of fear.  And fear has become the all-consuming manifestation of my clinical depression.  From those excruciating days, 21 years ago, right before my parents in Texas convinced me to go see my singles pastor at my church in New York City for help... when I'd be literally curled up in that fetal position you always hear about deranged people crawling into... fear has reigned in my brain.  And probably my heart, too, if I wasn't so scared to open it up and look around inside of it.

And I'm under no delusion that this little essay will really help me feel better.  Besides, I'm not telling you my secret so I can feel better.  I'm telling you my secret because I don't think I'm honoring God with everything I've got by keeping this a secret.  I've got chronic clinical depression, and the "chronic" part means I've had it a long time, and I'll probably have it for a long time to come.  God has allowed this to be part of the life He's given me.  I didn't earn it through my personal sinfulness, having it is not a crime, and the Lord is revealing some eternal truths to me as He leads me through it.

Most of all, however, He has continued to sustain me through near-daily thoughts of suicide, and teach me why He created life in the first place:  for His glory.

Theoretically, at least, I'm learning that my life isn't about me.  And your life isn't about you.  Not ultimately, anyway.  For me, however, chronic clinical depression has been a significant part of life.  Even though some people with this condition can - and do -  earn a lot of money, I can't handle the stress required for most high-income jobs.  Chronic clinical depression has factored into why I don't have a spouse or children of my own, although lots of people with this condition do.  Yes, I've come to realize how much of my time I spend being resentful, and jealous, as well as fearful.  But then again, a lot of people who don't have chronic clinical depression are also quite resentful, jealous, and fearful.  These are things to work through, right?  Not ignore.

So, what's your problem?  'Cause we've all got 'em.

My name is Tim, and I've got chronic clinical depression.  And I've got God, Who knows what I've got, allows me to have it, and is guiding me through it.  And that's the truth.

So - help me, God!
____

Part 2 - Not Your Everyday Depression
Part 3 - My Theology of Chronic Clinical Depression

An X for Kimbell's Piano? Look Again

Can you guess what this building is? 
A military bunker?  An old K-mart?  A really low-budget municipal library?
A designer museum by a world-famous architect?

She struck a pose against the glass cabinet.

"Consider it matter of perspective," she encouraged me.

I was in the gift shop of Fort Worth's acclaimed Kimbell Art Museum, near the entrance doors of its venerable Louis Kahn building, where I had just arrived after touring a brand-new building on the museum's grounds.  Compared with what I'd just left, the original Kahn building seemed like a faithful friend.

"You have to look over at this Kahn building from inside the Renzo Piano pavilion," the curly-haired docent in the gift shop advised, using the names of each building's architect to differentiate them.  "Don't try to appreciate the Piano building from over here, in this masterpiece."

Talk about putting things into perspective. 

I had finally plucked up the courage to make my first visit to the controversial new gallery space designed by celebrated Italian architect Renzo Piano.  It had been constructed on a broad, grassy lawn that used to lie just to the west of the Kimbell's first building, designed in the 1970's by the late Louis Kahn.  And while I've grown to thoroughly enjoy Kahn's building, I'd seen enough pictures of this new structure in the local media to know it was really going to have to impress me for me to like it in person.

And sure enough, it didn't, and I don't.

I can't decide the least unflattering comparison to make with the Piano building.  A military bunker?  An old K-mart?  A really low-budget municipal library?

If you can call $135 million "low-budget," that is.  That's the amount paid by patrons of the Kimbell for what's basically expansion space.  As the Kimbell's diverse and well-regarded collection has grown over the years, the original Kahn building couldn't hold it all.  Besides, the Kimbell has won the rights to host some elite international exhibitions, which also need more room.  Initial ideas for expanding the treasured Kahn building were quickly shot down by the world's architectural community.  So an annex of sorts was commissioned, with directors of the Kimbell specifically pursuing Piano, since he's one of the most prominent architects practicing today.  Yet as Piano's proposal filtered through its design process, the customary superlatives for what was being planned became muted.  The New York Times diplomatically focused on Piano's environmental features for his project, while local critics presumed anything by Piano had to be good.

Meanwhile, regular readers of mine know that "I don't do new well," so I didn't really expect to like it.  Yet I was still surprised by how unsatisfying a design it really is.

Not that I'm an expert, of course.  But considering the bar that had been set by the precise lines of Kahn's masterpiece, his clever use of light, and the richness of his materials, I didn't think Piano, whose career has crested far higher than Kahn's ever did, would so confidently wallow in mediocrity.  The entrance hall he gave his pavilion looks like a high school gymnasium without the bleachers.  The wood floor creaks annoyingly, even though it's brand new.  The lighting - from both an overabundance of tall windows and expensive-looking spotlights - was garish on this ordinary spring day in Texas.  And Piano's gallery space?  Perfunctory and adequate, if not a bit dark in the corners, with ceilings that seem almost too low.

There's absolutely nothing in the Kimbell's new building that indicates they paid a premium for a rock star architect from Italy.  Apparently, there are some glass louvers around its roofline that Piano says will refract some sunlight, but with environmental technology being so sophisticated in far more mundane applications these days, Piano's louvers - again - seem merely adequate.

And to top it all off, there's a meager, narrow, concrete and wood sidewalk connecting the two buildings.  Two buildings that happen to each be worth tens of millions of dollars in their own right, and containing priceless art.  Talk about pedestrian!  Walking between the Kimbell and Piano buildings, I felt like a high-schooler trekking between the main schoolhouse and, well, an annex.

This is world-class design?  I didn't contribute any money to the construction of the Piano pavilion, I don't know anybody who works there, I'm not a member of the Kimbell's association of patrons, and I don't even live in Fort Worth.  But I was actually embarrassed for the folks who did, and do.

So when the docent in the gift shop quietly sighed - as though she'd heard complaints similar to mine quite often from other visitors - and leaned against her glass display case, in a gesture of "here we go again," I wasn't surprised that she had a ready answer for me.  But what she said did surprise me.

Without outright admitting that the Piano pavilion was underwhelming and, frankly, one of Piano's less stellar designs, she framed the quandary not from the perspective of the Piano pavilion's deficiencies, but from the Kahn building's strengths.

"I was at an evening function in the Piano pavilion's basement right after it opened," she recalled, "and there's a glass elevator that faces this Kahn building.  When you come up from below ground, at dusk, and you see the Kahn's facade fall in front of you through the ascending glass elevator, with the special lighting, and the setting sun from the west hitting it, it's simply beautiful."

Okay, so, are folks at the Kimbell satisfied with spending $135 million for a glorified storage annex, while their original building continues to receive the accolades?  That's not what the docent said, but perhaps even Piano himself had that perspective in mind.  "The positioning of the [Piano] pavilion on the site focuses attention on the west facade of the Kahn Building," purrs a description on the Kimbell's website of the intended interplay between the two buildings.

Which, if that's the case, makes my perspective, for what it's worth, that much more amenable.  Granted, in terms of the grand scheme of life today, it's not Russia invading Ukraine, or relatives fretting over loved ones missing on a Malaysian jetliner, or even the March Madness about to be unleashed on the basketball world.  But the Kimbell's Kahn building has been my favorite public architecture in all of North Texas for years.  And if the Kimbell's own directors, not to mention one of their gracious docents, don't mind if I completely ignore their Piano annex, then I won't either.  Since I will.

It's a matter of perspective, after all.

Controversial St. Patrick's Day Fare

Adapted from an original essay on March 17, 2010

Have you ever eaten Irish nachos?  Ohhh, they’re so good, and so drenched with fats and salt, a friend of mine was specifically ordered by his cardiologist to stop eating them.

Local dive restaurant J. Gilligan’s here in Arlington, Texas, claims to have invented Irish nachos, and has even been featured on a cable foodie show with their delicacy.  You slice up some potatoes, fry them just a bit, then smother them with cheddar cheese, jalapenos, bacon bits, and diced onions.  Then you heat it a bit more until they're all melted together.  Top it off with some chilled sour cream and chives, and dig in!

My friend’s doctor was right, wasn’t he?

I bring up the specialty of the house at J. Gilligan’s because today is St. Patrick’s Day, when this and all other Irish-themed restaurants throw green-beer-fueled bashes, and anybody can be Irish until midnight.  Here in Arlington, the city actually closes down streets around J. Gilligan’s for blocks so crowds of revelers can eat, drink, and carouse.  I'm told it's great fun - or, at least, that's what participants want to assume it was, seeing as how few of them can actually remember it the next day.

This past Saturday, Dallas threw its annual St. Patrick’s Day parade down the older, quaint part of its bar-lined Greenville Avenue.  In actuality, it’s less parade and more beerfest, and an excuse for public lewdness, although sponsors keep saying it’s a family-friendly event.

Not that drinking beer is a sin, but negligent parenting can be.

Granted, there’s more to St. Patrick’s Day than drinking beer.  Like social protests, for instance.  Today, in New York City, what's billed as the world's oldest and largest continuously-held parade will once again celebrate Ireland along Fifth Avenue, but like a lot of other traditions in America, it's being held hostage by radical gay-rights groups.  New York's newly-installed activist mayor, Bill de Blasio, is making a political statement by not marching this year, while booze purveyors Guinness and Heineken have famously dropped their sponsorships, fearing a backlash by gay customers if they didn't.  Who's not attending this year is making more news than the parade itself.

Apparently a lot of civic-minded liberals have forgotten that the city's St. Patrick's Day Parade is actually a quasi-religious event, officially sponsored by an affiliate of the Ancient Order of Hibernians (AOH), which is closely linked with the Roman Catholic Church.  The AOH is a staunchly pro-life group with programs for military veterans, and outreach to the poor, along with perpetuating nostalgia for Ireland.  But in our modern world of knee-jerk political correctness, one prevailing issue can utterly negate everything else.

St. Patrick's Day parades in other cities, like Boston and Pittsburgh, are experiencing similar snubs by politicians and sponsors this year in relation to gay marriage.  While the mainstream media has been fawning over Roman Catholicism's new Pope, and what they've been interpreting as his openness to sexual alternatives, it's become open season on Catholic organizations that appear to be out of step with the Vatican's supposed pluralism.

How ironic, then, that a fellow named Os Guinness, the great-great-great-grandson of Arthur Guinness, Ireland's legendary booze king, has become something of a progressive evangelical when it comes to the subject of religious freedom.  Os Guinness is a writer and intellectual whose latest book, The Global Public Square: Religious Freedom and the Making of a World Safe for Diversity, "calls for a bold reaffirmation of the priority of religious freedom for people of all faiths and none."

Religious freedom?  For people of all faiths, or none?  Sounds like he needs to ship some boxes of his book to the folks who now run his family's former distillery.

Adding to the irony is that up until the 1950's, Guinness' family company, which used to be nicknamed the "Protestant Porter," discriminated against Catholics in Ireland.  That makes Guinness' withdrawal from New York's celebrated Irish parade as historically incongruous as its previous sponsorship ever was.

Discrimination, of course, can be a vile thing.  Religious discrimination against Catholics sounds bizarre to many of us Americans today.  Meanwhile, gay marriage activists want sexual expression to be equivalent to religious expression, and for society to encourage both, as long as one doesn't overlap the other.  However, when there is overlap, it is sexual expression that they claim trumps religious expression.  Tit for tat, supposedly, since from time immemorial, it's been us religious zealots who've been discriminating against gays.

Times change, they say, and people want morals to change, also.

The idea is based on how whites discriminated against blacks, and Americans finally came to realize that such discrimination is wrong.  Gay marriage advocates postulate that just as whites may have prevented blacks from marching in parades back in the day, the great emancipation today is for gays who want to marry each other.  Yet the correlation some want to draw between the two struggles misses two key facts.  Denying civil rights based on race is unBiblical, since God welcomes into His family people regardless of their ethnicity.  But gay marriage is completely different than racism.  Gay marriage, not racism, is something God prohibits.  But that truth, thanks to decades of increasingly ignored sexual morality, strikes many Americans as being as bizarre as discrimination against Catholics.

Traditional racism deserved to be demonstrated against.  But untraditional marriage?  People who want it believe that retaliating against conservative Roman Catholics who hold traditional St. Patrick's Day parades has become the demonstration of conscience these days.  After all, the parades aren't about some dead religious leader anymore, but a little country with an outsized influence on American society.  Yet for devout Catholics, as well as non-papist evangelicals, it's not so much the marginalization of Ireland's patron saint that we find disturbing as much as it is the now-incessant push for the marginalization of religion in general, demonstrated by demonstrations like the ones against the AOH.

Would that putting a Tex-Mex flair on the staple of an Irish diet was as controversial as St. Patrick's Day has become!

We live in a mixed-up world these days, don't we?  We think we're making progress, but sometimes, it seems like we're spinning our cultural wheels in good old Irish mud.  We call for freedom, yet deny freedom, while trying to re-brand morality to suit our conscience. 

Meanwhile, the ancient words traditionally ascribed to Patrick himself, believed to have been written in 433, ring as relevant today as when they were penned as part of his "breastplate" prayer:

Against the demon snares of sin,The vice that gives temptation force,
The natural lusts that war within,
The hostile men that mar my course;
Or few or many, far or nigh,
In every place and in all hours,
Against their fierce hostility,
I bind to me these holy powers.

Against all Satan's spells and wiles,
Against false words of heresy,
Against the knowledge that defiles,
Against the heart's idolatry,
Against the wizard's evil craft,
Against the death wound and the burning,
The choking wave and the poisoned shaft,
Protect me, Christ, till Thy returning.

Christ be with me, Christ within me,
Christ behind me, Christ before me,
Christ beside me, Christ to win me,
Christ to comfort and restore me.
Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ in quiet, Christ in danger,
Christ in hearts of all that love me,
Christ in mouth of friend and stranger...

May thy salvation, O Lord, be ever with us.

Social Disconnect from NYC to Silicon Valley

Fifty years ago this morning, a young woman named Kitty Genovese was stabbed, robbed, raped, and murdered near her apartment in Kew Gardens, Queens.

At first, in a metropolis roiling from the rising crime and social turbulence being visited upon many cities in the 1960's, the attack on Genovese received scant attention.  It wasn't until two weeks later, when her story was casually recounted by the city's police commissioner to an editor at the New York Times, that the public learned about Genovese, and what had happened to her five decades ago this morning.

The Times ultimately figured there was a story in this brutal crime because, according to initial police accounts relayed by the commissioner, over thirty of Genovese's neighbors overheard her screaming and calling for help, yet apparently did nothing.  At the newspaper's prodding, after learning what was believed to have happened, New Yorkers quickly examined themselves in an uncharacteristic display of guilt and shame:  is this what the world's greatest city had come to?  Dozens of otherwise normal, middle-class New Yorkers had turned a deaf ear to a woman's final moments, either out of ambivalence, or an assumption that somebody else would do something about it.

Social scientists had a field day with the Genovese case, and when I was majoring in sociology in the late 1980's, we were still studying it as a prime example of the bystander effect, and "anomie," a phrase coined by Emile Durkheim to express the breakdown of social norms and morality, and the resulting disconnectedness from what society has traditionally expected from them.  In the bystander effect, people individually refuse to take a personal initiative in resolving a problem, which means that collectively, nothing positive gets done about that problem.  Between these two related social phenomena, humanity itself can devolve into a collection of autonomous actors living for their own selfish goals.

Recently, as the Times, other reporters, and social scientists have re-investigated the Genovese attack, it's been learned that over the course of its 30-minute duration, over 30 people may have heard something of it, but only one or two of the people initially interviewed by either the police or the Times ever actually said they didn't want to be bothered to help her.  Most of the residents of the mixed-use apartment and restaurant complex who heard the ruckus Genovese created assumed it was the result of inebriated patrons of an on-site bar, fighting or protesting last call; sounds to which they'd become somewhat accustomed.  Nobody actually saw the attack, or the victim, or her attacker.  One neighbor did yell out of his window for the attacker to leave her alone, but that neighbor did not have a direct line of sight to what was taking place.  And eventually, another neighbor, a female, did come outside to find Genovese dying on the sidewalk outside her door.

It's also been established that Genovese was a lesbian, and living with her lover at the time, an arrangement that some of her neighbors may not have entirely embraced, especially in the mid-1960's.  New York City has always been a socially liberal city, but in its whiter, more middle-class districts, particularly during the upheaval of white flight in the 1960's, same-sex attraction was hardly celebrated.  Nobody has been able to prove that discrimination against Genovese because she was gay played any role in her calls for help going unheeded, until it was too late.  But maybe that's because nobody wants to consider it.

With our penchant for nostalgia, we don't tend to associate the America of fifty years ago with social disconnects, or alien-sounding French terminology like anomie, or even alternative sexuality.  And to a certain extent, the Genovese case is more representative of New York City than it is of America as a whole.  Especially then, but even today.  But I found it curious that as I recalled my college studies of Genovese's death this week, I stumbled across another article that at first seemed completely unrelated, but now makes me wonder how far along we Americans have come, in terms of our jaded engagement with social constructs.

In a compelling article by technology grad student Yiren Lu for the Times, which she titled "Silicon Valley's Youth Problem," what struck me wasn't just the age polarization within America's high-tech industry, but the apparent disinterest on the part of young techies in traditional marriage.  Or even traditional dating.

Lu writes of one smartphone app that became popular only because it helped college students find somebody quickly to have sex with that night.  She almost complains that although women shouldn't have any problems scoring dates and husbands in male-saturated Silicon Valley, they're finding that all the eligible men are more interested in creating the next big app, instead of investing in romantic interpersonal relationships - let alone finding a wife, and settling down for the conventional family life.

I doubt she meant to reveal so much social dysfunction within her chosen profession, but Lu wistfully recalls the upbringing she had as a daughter of a Silicon Valley pioneer, and even selects two current entrepreneurs of a successful Silicon Valley tech family to profile in her piece, perhaps unwittingly connecting the stability from which these two children benefited with the family life they don't appear eager to have for themselves, now that they're the age at which many twentysomethings used to get married.

From reading her blog, I don't get the impression that Lu herself is interested in marriage and family as much as she is interested in simply finding a man who can look up from his computer screen for more than a minute at a time.  But the social immaturity she chronicles - even as an aside to her overall description of differences between seasoned tech workers and college grads entering the field - sounds like some sort of anomie, or disconnectedness.  Doesn't it?

Even as they're pulling down six-figure salaries - many even without a college degree - it seems as though technology may be for these guys the disconnect factor New Yorkers feared urban life was for them after the Genovese murder made headlines.

Is that too much of a stretch?  Lu's isn't the first article to remark about how technology appears to be enabling young men towards social immaturity.  But as much as they may seem to prefer women more for sexual gratification than personal enrichment - as ironically Neanderthallish as that sounds for men who make a living with computer code, they seem to be able to strike up a suitable camaraderie among their fellow male peers.  They're not completely antisocial.  And it's not like the declining marriage rate in other sectors within American society isn't making these choices by tech-centric males unique.

Meanwhile, New Yorkers may be the cold, off-putting drones they anecdotally appear to be to outsiders, but from personal experience, I know that they can make some of the deepest friends a person can have, once they get to know you, and you get to know them.

Plus, isn't it telling that there hasn't been a case along the scale of Kitty Genovese's murder since 1964, although New York has not been lacking in impersonal drama?

With the techno-wizard man-boys, however, for whom commitment means new apps for their phone, instead of developing relationships with people to actually call on that phone, anomie and disconnectedness may be the price they're willing to pay to play in Silicon Valley.

Ironic how an interpersonal communication device has become the object of such individualistic fervor.