Depression (Psalm 88)

I asked the patient if she was anxious about her upcoming operation.  “No”, she replied.  “I never worry.   Don’t you know that worry is a slap to the face of God.”  I agreed in small measure, but I found it odd that “patient anxiety” was the reason the nurse had requested a chaplain in the first place.   As we conversed and later held hands to pray, I realized this tough-taking lady perceived any admission of weakness, especially spiritual weakness, as a betrayal of her faith.

The woman seemed to be saying, “I am impervious to pain because I can do ALL things through Christ who strengthens me.”  I don’t doubt that faith helps her embrace life in its uncertainty.   She seemed to have a time-weathered temperament, and I know her generation is made of sterner stuff than mine, but something about this woman’s chirpy defensiveness made me question if she really believed she could entrust herself --- her real human fear --- to God.   

I don’t know.  I do know that emotional honesty makes us vulnerable in ways that can be uncomfortable --- not to mention exploited by others.  The reality of the human struggle, fear and doubt and loneliness, proves common to us all.  That’s why I love the psalms.   I appreciate the openness with which King David and others poured out their heart to God.

Buckle up and pull down that safety bar because the psalms are a roller-coaster ride through the gamut of human emotion --- joy and sorrow, spiritual desire and despair.  God’s most beautiful poetry is written upon the wounds of human flesh.

We have all been wounded, bruised by life, in one way or another.  And no doubt we’ve crushed the spirit of some fellow sojourner, with malice aforethought or not. 

 

 

 

 

Psalm 88 is a song I never wish to sing.  In fact, upon my first, second, even third reading of the thing I had to ask, “Why in the world is this poem even in the Bible?”  Does it bring me comfort?  No.  Does it make my spirit soar with intimations of God's goodness?  No.  Psalm 88 is the darkest, loneliest cry you’ll find in the Hebrew Scriptures. The words flow from a place of pain that only a few will be able to relate to.

Now I’m no stranger to worry or doubt, but when push comes to shove I’m fairly chirpy in my belief that “the sun will come out tomorrow, bet your bottom dollar that tomorrow” they’ll be a heaviness hanging over your soul that you can’t shake or bear one day more.   Take it away.  Take me away.   I can’t go on, and I don’t want to.

Psalm 88 is an unrelenting, discomfortingly honest psalm about depression and despair.  There is no happy --- praise God and pass the apple pie --- ending.  We want --- we demand --- our happy endings.  But sometimes we do not get them --- not in this life.  We pray, we plea, we cajole, we beg to hear the comforting voice of God --- and nothing echoes in the ear but silence.

All the other psalms, even psalms of lamentation and grief, end with the author’s eye firmly focused upon God, or evidence of God's faithfulness.   Not Psalm 88.  Psalm 88 pretty much concludes with the phrase, “Hello darkness my old friend, you’ve come to haunt me once again.”

Do we dare read it?   And why is Psalm 88, now officially my most disliked section of Scripture, even in the Bible?   Did some faithless, sad-sack slip it in before the censors of all things encouraging could snip it out?  I don’t know.  Sometimes in life that’s the best you get --- hard ground upon which true spirituality must blossom. Sometimes we must be brave, stand tall, and find God in the absence of God. 

PSALM 88


A song.  A psalm of the Sons of Korah. For the director of music. According to mahalath leannoth. A maskil of Heman the Ezrahite.

 1 LORD, you are the God who saves me;

   day and night I cry out to you.

2 May my prayer come before you;

   turn your ear to my cry.

 3 I am overwhelmed with troubles

   and my life draws near to death.

4 I am counted among those who go down to the pit;

   I am like one without strength.

5 I am set apart with the dead,

   like the slain who lie in the grave,

whom you remember no more,

   who are cut off from your care.

 6 You have put me in the lowest pit,

   in the darkest depths.

7 Your wrath lies heavily on me;

   you have overwhelmed me with all your waves.

8 You have taken from me my closest friends

   and have made me repulsive to them.

I am confined and cannot escape;

 9 my eyes are dim with grief.

   I call to you, LORD, every day;

   I spread out my hands to you.

10 Do you show your wonders to the dead?

   Do their spirits rise up and praise you?

11 Is your love declared in the grave,

   your faithfulness in Destruction?

12 Are your wonders known in the place of darkness,

   or your righteous deeds in the land of oblivion?

 13 But I cry to you for help, LORD;

   in the morning my prayer comes before you.

14 Why, LORD, do you reject me

   and hide your face from me?

 15 From my youth I have suffered and been close to death;

   I have borne your terrors and am in despair.

16 Your wrath has swept over me;

   your terrors have destroyed me.

17 All day long they surround me like a flood;

   they have completely engulfed me.

18 You have taken from me friend and neighbor—

   darkness is my closest friend.

It’s just like they used to sing on Hee-Haw --- “Gloom, despair and agony on me.  Deep, dark depression excessive misery.  If it weren’t for bad luck, I’d have no luck at all.  Gloom, despair and agony on me." So, why IS this psalm included in Scripture?


Why is the author of Psalm 88 so wounded?  It’s not like he’s blaming God really, he’s just stating the facts, ma’am. 

 

Some would say that Psalm 88 gives us an example not to follow.  The man’s affliction, some sort of sickness experienced since childhood, the loss of his friends, his obsession with death, especially the pit or the underworld, literally “Sheol”, a gloomy afterlife reminiscent of the New Testament’s version of hell, must have resulted from sin in Heman’s life.  There is no despair like the despair of someone out of sync with the will of God.   If Heman were a true believer then he would end his lament by acknowledging the faithfulness of God.  Bottom line:  Heman’s darkness is the consequence of rejecting the light. 

OK.  I think such a judgment is conditioned by a craven need to always assign a cause to an effect, and a dangerous desire to squeeze all the scary mystery right out of life because we want to control God and others.  I also think it’s wrong. 

Other’s would say that we really shouldn’t try to understand this psalm apart from the rest of Scripture, particularly the New Testament.  You must read the Old Testament through the lens of the New Testament.  Christians understand that the only reason the hell of that first Good Friday can be called “good” is because of the triumph of Sunday, resurrection day. 

The reality of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection give redemptive value to suffering, those light and momentary trials as well as what may seem like years of agony.  Ultimately, every happy, horrible, or heinous situation, as well as every Christian sermon comes down to whether the gospel is true --- or not.  You know, as in “we are convinced (are you?) that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

I wouldn’t disagree with Paul, but I don’t think Psalm 88 can only be understand in the light of the gospel, and I don’t think that’s why it’s in the book.  The knowledge of our future hope does not take away the reality of our present pain.  And there’s something about your present pain in and of itself that is spiritual, even redemptive, in nature. 

By way of application, we really need to be careful before we rush in to slap the happy face of God’s love on the forehead of someone in physical or mental anguish.   Chirpy platitudes --- no matter how true --- ring hollow if the bearer of that good news isn’t willing to enter the fire of the other’s suffering. Don’t tell him what his illness means, don’t presume to understand God’s will in a matter than might be perfectly clear to you but makes no sense to her at all --- until you yourself have learned what it like to crawl on your knees through the jagged shards of a shattered world.   

Thankfully, Jesus did just that.  That’s why a few scholars view this psalm as Messianic in nature.  In other words, like Psalm 22, elements of this poem capture the spiritual torment Jesus, the man from Nazareth, endured when he was crushed by the weight of human sin.  

 Psalm 88 vividly describes feelings of despair and unjust condemnation.   Psalm 88 also vividly conveys the essence of that horrible, horrible cry Jesus uttered from the cross, “My God, my God why have you forsaken me?”   Certainly we can find comfort in the fact that there is no experience common to human-kind, emotional or otherwise, to which Jesus could not relate.   But Psalm 88 is seldom, if ever, listed among the Messianic Psalms.   And I don’t think that’s why it’s in the book.

What is it?  Why can’t we stand to have our spiritual truths end on a minor chord?  We just have to interpret this bleak, little psalm in a way that makes sense to us.  We have to redeem, rewrite, re-configure the song to match our expectations.  We demand our happy ending.  But sometimes people don’t get it or can’t see through the reality of their present experience to perceive it.  So, why can’t we just let this psalm be what it is?

OK.  What is it?  Well, on one level it’s an encouragement to anyone who has ever battled depression.  You might think depression is a spiritual or emotional issue --- and it can be --- but it’s also physiologically and chemically based.  For the person going through clinical depression it can be an absolute hell on earth. In many ways, this confession reads like that of a man struggling with depression.

Obviously, the ancient Israelites didn’t have an understanding of depression as disease, like we do.  And yet the Hebrew title of this psalm, “according to mahalath leannoth” apparently means something like “concerning afflictive sickness”   Someone's fallen and can’t get up.  He’s in a hole and he doesn’t know how to crawl out.  She knows and believes enough to cry out to God, but she literally can’t discern anything but her own internal alienation.  While all the other Christians are praising God at the pep rally for Jesus down the street, all she/he can muster is a “Hello darkness my old friend, you’ve come to haunt me once again.”

I’ve never personally struggled with depression.  I’m kind of unipolar --- as in mostly manic – and I’m seldom down for too long. I also tend to be impatience with folks I might perceive as killjoys.   Wake up and smell the coffee.  God is good.  It’s a beautiful Sunday in November.  The air is brisk.  The sun will come out tomorrow – but not always and not for everyone. 

Like the television commercial says, “Where does depression hurt?  Everywhere."  "And who does depression hurt?  Everyone.”  You see, the psalms speak to every condition of the human experience, and I think that someone dealing with depression might find a lot of comfort in the fact that at least one of the biblical writers --- gets it. 

Maybe you’re old school and think depression is a spiritual problem.  Maybe you’re new school and think it can be cured with a pill.  The fact remains it is what it is.  Which brings me to the real reason I think Psalm 88 is included in the canon of Scripture --- because it is what it is --- a reminder that life doesn’t always turn out like we thought it would --- that difficult problems don’t always respond to easy answers --- that our prayers often seem to go unanswered, and that whether you’re clinically depressed or not --- whether we know better in our head or not, our practical experience of life’s pain can trump our theology so that we break under the weight of what we can no longer carry.

 

God will never give you more than you can bear.  I suppose so.  Then again, maybe you should ask the author of this psalm.

I'm actually glad that Psalm 88 has been included in the Scripture.  Please understand this is not I’m having a bad day at work kind of psalm.  This is not I’m scared to go to the doctor psalm, but I know God will watch over me.  This is I’m not sure of anything right now psalm. This is a psalm for the persecuted and alienated --- the lonely and all alone.

 In fact, some modern day Jewish commentators call it "The Psalm of the Holocaust".   Because there are some horrors in life that just really don’t make sense and to try and tidy-it-all- up theologically insults common sense as well as God. Some cuts are too deep, some wounds too infected from which to recover. 

And in our rush to make it all right, to take away the sting, we often shut the door on the work, the quiet, indiscernible, holy work God wants to do within our soul.   

There are moments in our lives when the hell of good Friday feels like the hell of an entire bad decade, because we don’t know that Sunday’s coming, we can’t see (because of our own misdeeds, or someone else’s misdeeds --- or that fact that things just are what they are) --- and we don’t know what it is we’re supposed to do --- except maybe pray.

Ultimately,  I think Psalm 88 is included in the Hebrew Scripture because Psalm 88 is included in the Hebrew Scripture.  What? What I mean is that even though by all biblical norms the psalmist's faith seems small, his perspective seems short-sighted, his confidence in God seems almost non-existent, and he ends his plea in a darker place than where he started --- he still knows and believes enough to direct his fears and worries and doubts towards God.



Someone has said I will love the light for it shows me the way, yet I will endure the darkness for it shows me the stars.  Sometimes you simply have to endure the darkness.  Look it’s a beautiful Sunday morning in November.  God is good, and I am glad to be alive.  I trust you are as well.  Besides, the sun will come out tomorrow.  Then again, maybe not. 

I’m glad Psalm 88 is in the songbook.  It’s possible during some truly dark season of life, this gloomy little ode might become your personal favorite.  I hope not.  I hope and trust that you will never experience the equivalent of a personal or corporate holocaust, the kind of horror, emotional or concrete, conveyed in Psalm 88.

But if we do, we can at the very least take that pain, that confusion, all of our wounded-ness to God, and maybe we can even resist the need to rah-rah for Jesus or to numb away the hurt with at that particular moment meaningless platitude, but instead we can embrace the pain and listen to the silence , silence that echoes loud with the absence of God, because by doing so we might discover our souls, the connection we share with our fellow man, and the preciousness of genuine faith.