Chapter 5: The Darkness That Feeds on Self-Absorption

Overview

Sometimes the darkness of our souls is owing, in part, to patterns of life that are not blatantly sinful but are constricted and uncaring. Our world shrinks to prudential concerns about ourselves and our families. Ethics dwindles from great concerns of justice, mercy and missions to a little list of bad things to avoid. We are energized for no great cause, always calculating how to maximize leisure and escape pressure—and, without noticing, we become self-absorbed and oblivious to suffering in the world far worse than our own.

Paradoxically, depressed people may insist that they must care for themselves and cannot take on the world’s problems, when part of the truth is that their depression is feeding on the ingrown quality of their lives. Piper is careful: this is not the diagnosis of all depression. If it were, self-giving servants would never be depressed—and they are. But one cause of some people’s darkness is a slowly creeping self-absorption and small-mindedness, and the cure may be the gradual embrace of a vision of life far greater than our present concerns.

How Bill Leslie Became a Watered Garden and a Spring

Bill Leslie pastored LaSalle Street Church in Chicago from 1961 to 1989, a ministry marked by concern for the whole person in the setting of urban life; Christianity Today later named him among the early leaders of holistic ministry. Visiting Minneapolis, he told of a near breakdown—exhaustion, burnout, a sense of dead-end ministry—and of how a spiritual mentor pointed him to Isaiah 58:10–11.

What struck him was the promise that if we pour ourselves out for the hungry and satisfy the desire of the afflicted, God will make us like “a watered garden”—we will receive the water we need for our own refreshment—and, more than that, like “a spring of water whose waters do not fail” for others. God’s way of lifting gloom and turning it into light was to pour oneself out. That pattern carried Leslie through his crisis and sustained him for the rest of his days.

God has made us to flourish by being spent for others: “It is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35). Most of us do not choose against this life of outpouring; we drift from it, confusing a pressured family life and stress at work with Christian sacrifice, when much of it has little to do with meeting the needs of the hungry, the afflicted and the perishing. Some things may need to come out of our schedule. But as health and joy return, we may prove capable of more than we ever dreamed.

What My Eighty-Five-Year-Old Father Said Was Missing

In particular, Piper points to the life-giving, joy-producing effect of sharing one’s faith with unbelievers by word and deed. While drafting the book he telephoned his eighty-five-year-old father and asked what one thing, from sixty years of ministry, Christians could do to increase their joy. Almost without hesitation the answer came: “Share their faith.” Joy in Christ thrives on being shared; that is the essence of Christian joy—it overflows or dies.

Millions of Christians live with a low-grade guilt for not openly commending Christ, and try to persuade themselves that keeping their noses morally clean is witness enough. But millions of unbelievers keep their noses clean too. Christ is the most glorious person in the world; his salvation is infinitely valuable; everyone needs it; and horrific consequences await those who do not believe. Therefore not to speak of Christ, and not to care about our city or the unreached peoples of the world, is so contradictory to Christ’s worth, people’s plight and our own joy that it sends a quiet message to our souls day after day: this Savior does not mean to you what you say he does. Great joy cannot survive that persistent message.

The Aim Is That Our Words Would Be the Overflow of Joy in Christ

Again, this will feel like added guilt to the depressed person—but it is not added; it is already there, and hiding it is like hiding part of a diagnosis. Jesus said shocking things: “Everyone who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father … but whoever denies me before men, I also will deny” (Matthew 10:32–33). Yet he did not mean this as a heavy burden or hard yoke: “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest … my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:28–30).

What makes the gospel good news is not that Christ can be buried in our entertainment-saturated lives without loss of joy. It is that God is long-suffering, willing to forgive and start over with us again and again. The depressed person cannot simply go out and proclaim the joy of the Lord. But little by little a life can be built on grace and forgiveness until being an advocate and witness for Jesus becomes like breathing—and just as life-giving. The fight is to enjoy Christ so much that speaking of him is the overflow and increase of that enjoyment.

Is the Cause You Live for Large Enough for Your Christ-Exalting Heart?

J. Campbell White of the Laymen’s Missionary Movement wrote in 1909 that most people are not satisfied with the permanent output of their lives, and that nothing can wholly satisfy the life of Christ within his followers except adopting Christ’s purpose toward the world he came to redeem. Fame, pleasure and riches are husks and ashes beside the boundless, abiding joy of working with God for the fulfilment of his eternal plans.

In the midst of darkness, saints may have no strength for such global dreams. But it may be, in God’s mercy, that as we wait for the light to rise we can do poorly what we would love to do well: read a short article about the church in China; listen to a recording about a missionary who suffered for the gospel; write a note to a missionary family with a few lines about how we are hanging onto grace, and a brief prayer for them.