Set Him Free: Meditations on Joy

For years I have been encouraged to smile more.

Sometimes these admonitions themselves made me smile, because they were given with love and an appreciation of what I could exude when my spirit was light and my countenance inviting. They wanted to reveal; worth and dignity and wholeness.

Other times they hurt deeply, and rather made me want to cry. When given by strangers, and even by loved ones, with condescending curtness or blithe pity, their “encouragement” hit me like an indictment. They wanted to conceal; pain and anxiety and contrast.

In the first of the two instances, though it is overly simplistic to categorize in such a way, there is a partnership. There is an investment, and a desire to see me at my best, for my own sake primarily.

In the second, there is a dismissal of my mental and spiritual constitution, and an impatience for my process of development. There is urgency to conform me to another’s concept of pleasant, antiseptic safety, born out of a favor for the status quo and an aversion to any unsightly countenance.

My lack of expression was an inconvenience to their presumption, a threat to their bliss. This is something I’ve never wished to be. I never asked for this combination of personality and experience. Yet in any case, I’ve spent much of my life flirting with melancholia, if not steeped in it. A strange admission, I know. Lest this come across as a pity-plea, I need to emphasize that this exposition is not so much about what has been done to me, but far more about what I have done to myself.

Depression. A complex phenomenon I can only address in terms of my own experience. A potent cocktail I had been sipping for years; if you drink it slowly, the poison takes it’s time debilitating you. Mixed into my depressive experience was: a disposition incongruent with the social requirements of my environment, a lasting feeling of being misunderstood, as well as sin and shame which perniciously lingered.

I lacked the inner-ballast necessary to stay steady when circumstances went awry, which my defeated spirit would perceive to be often. The past and future were equally frightening, and the present felt no better; mentally, I would retreat either into memories of the past or into hopeful fantasies of the future, because my current predicament was far from palatable. Though as my spirit continued to grow numb, even this exercise faded into a resigned, forlorn apathy.

Over a year ago I started to see a professional counselor. My time with this man was a godsend. One of the most powerful revelations during our time together was that not every thought arising, and seemingly originating, from within you, is your own thought. As in, the thoughts feeling most natural, most central to your present experience, may not in fact represent reality or your identity. This was often the case for me, and necessitated an examination of where my thoughts were emanating from.

Last summer, while visiting Harvard University, I came upon a book called Spiritual Depression by Martyn Lloyd-Jones, in the basement of the university bookstore. It has become one of my most precious sources of encouragement and guidance, and an incredible aid in transformation.

A central premise of the book is that our feelings should not be allowed to inform our reality. Instead, our reality should inform our feelings. This is not a dismissal of valid feelings leading us in proper ways, nor a reliance on circumstance to yield peace and joy, but a choice to subvert the authority of our feelings in dictating how we live. We commonly listen to our feelings, and act on what they tell us. Rather, and revolutionarily, notes Lloyd-Jones, we should speak to ourselves — preach to ourselves — the truth of the Gospel. “It is as we apprehend and submit ourselves to the truth that the feelings follow” he says. The order matters; to get it wrong is a gamble at best.

This was quite the epiphany in my life. Especially after graduating college, when I was removed from many guiding voices, space grew for me to listen to my own. This was calamitous. I had been well trained to listen, but poorly trained to speak, most particularly to myself. Thus, I had a hard time asserting the truth, and would easily be swept up in the tide of the moment.

Where the counsel of Lloyd-Jones drastically differs from some sort of self-help technique is in the substance of that inner conversation. If I only repeat to myself my own words, what I naturally possess or what has been fed to me through culture, though I may be sincere and tenacious, I am engaging in a hopeless cycle of self-soothing and self-justification. If my assessment is based within myself, the destructive forces of accusation and doubt within me will get hold of that and ensure the verdict is poor.

“Therefore to those who are particularly prone to spiritual depression through timorous fear of the future, I say in the name of God and in the words of the Apostle: ‘Stir up the gift’, talk to yourself, remind yourself of what is true of you. Instead of allowing the future and thoughts of it to grip you, talk to yourself, remind yourself of who you are and what you are, and of what Spirit is within you…”

“O let us remember that it is sin to doubt God’s word, it is sin to allow the past, which God has dealt with, to rob us of our joy and our usefulness in the present and in the future.”

When Lazarus was raised from the dead by Jesus Christ, depicted in John 11, he walked out of the tomb still wearing grave clothes. Tightly bound in linen, “Set him free” was the command.

Set him free.

I’ve come to see that I’ve spent years wearing grave clothes, long after my own resurrection, into a consciousness of God’s love and freedom. Now that I’ve shed several layers, and continue to shed further embalming linens, I’m sensing depth of feeling as never before. My spirit is beginning to breathe, and life outside of a dark enclosure, such as my “tomb” was, is becoming pleasant and refreshing, no longer menacing and cold.

I have realized that only dead things are constantly wrapped, and thus constricted, in material designed to beautify and preserve. I thought I was wearing fine clothing that would impress and sustain a fair reputation — indeed that’s a crafty deception that I believed for years, that I was truly living free and well — when in truth I was still wearing clothes from the grave. Stuff meant to cover a decaying corpse.

Just as in the case of Lazarus, these garments had to be cut off me. It was no protection to continue wearing them outside of a tomb. It has taken the help of many to complete this process.

And it must be remembered that Jesus wept over the death of Lazarus. Even so, I feel assured that He has also wept over me, when I’ve been called out of my own death yet have not lived fully alive.

“We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us in our soundest sleep.” — Thoreau

Thoreau was impeccably astute. He knows of the desperate need to awaken from our dreariness, our delusions, our depression. It is true that we can be so easily lulled to sleep, tricked by an imposing world and a cunning adversary to settle for an immobilized but ever restless life, or stupefied by our own confusion and hopelessness so that we’re scared to ever make a move.

Hope. A formidable weapon against depression, yet so elusive for those whose very reality is ruled by it. I view an individual in depression as one being deeply indebted, never having the emotional capital to emerge from it’s taxing thumb. For me, the only way to get out was to be thrust forward into solvency, on the payment of another. I could spend a lifetime making small strides — acquiring skills, collecting resources, grooming relationships, arranging circumstances — and not have earned enough to feel adequate, to escape vicious doubts, and to survive the anxious concerns of an ever growing past and an ever shrinking future. But through the generous gift of Christ, a living hope was provided.

“An infinite expectation of the dawn.” This is what can sustain you in the throes of despondency. Not a petty wish for change, nor ignoring tragedy or squelching grief, nor even an aggressive optimism. But grabbing hold of the promises of Scripture, the fulfillment of which is ensured by Jesus Christ who came to Earth to experience despair just as we do. The Bible tells us that Christ is not unsympathetic to our weaknesses, but rather “a man of sorrows, acquainted with deepest grief” (Hebrews 4:15 ; Isaiah 53:3, NLT). As Tim Keller would say, this is enough to enable you to “break through”. To see what was done for you, and remind yourself of it every day, every hour: this is enough to provide lasting joy. And I don’t mean to be overly simplistic, or ignore a myriad of concerns and contingencies in your particular situations. But, I believe this is a place to start. There is provision for you.

“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.” — excerpt from Walden

As Thoreau promotes, wisdom is in rejecting despair, refusing to succumb. Though his perspective lends itself more to self-reliance, something I have found insufficient, he understands innate human tendencies toward entropy and disillusion.

Desperation is unbecoming for Christians. How unfortunate it has been to live much of my life with at least a low-grade desperation; insecure, fearful, reactive and frail. “Faith is a refusal to panic” says Martyn Lloyd-Jones. Faith provides the calm upon which joy can be built. It blazes the trail toward security and identity. When we know what is true, irrevocably, our circumstances will not be able to persuade us of lies.

I will allow Martyn Lloyd-Jones to have the final words. Thank you for your time, patience with me and participation in my life.

“The way to get rid of the spirit of bondage and fear, is to know that if you are a child of God, you are destined for heaven and for glory, and that all the things you see inside yourself and outside yourself cannot prevent that plan from being carried out.”

“Your Father is watching over you. He is jealous concerning you because you belong to Him.”

“Do not worry about what you feel. The truth about you is glorious. If you are in Christ, rise to it ‘o’er sin and fear and care’. Take your full salvation and triumph and prevail.”