This is Part 2 of a 3 part series. You can find Part 1 here:

The Church & Victims Of Depression

Providing Training

In our last post in this series, we looked at promoting culture. This is almost like saying, “Imagine what could be,” and then making steps in the direction of what could be. However, such things will never be without those of us in church leadership providing training for the saints. This is Paul’s call to the Ephesian church, so every joint is outfitted with the training they need for redemptive up-building in love (Eph. 4:11-16). These verses teach us that ministry is a participation sport.

In my experience with Anita, I began to think that people who suffer with things like depression could only be helped by highly skilled professionals. Whilst professional involvement may be needed, this should not relegate the body of Christ to the sideline. The leadership of the church can empower the church to help and not harm people further. We harm them further when we toss out trite sayings like “Let go and let God,” or “If you were trusting Jesus, you wouldn’t be depressed.” Many of these types of responses see depression merely through the lens of sin rather than the lens of both sin and suffering.

If we as pastors are going to shepherd well, we need to think about how we can help our congregations incarnate into people’s sufferings.

We must help them to think biblically about the role of suffering in a Christian’s life. In some cases, such as my own, I had to begin studying these things at a deeper level in order to aid my congregation. Much of this training will boil down to helping the church walk in humility, preferring one another, and walking alongside one another. One way I have learned to help train my congregation is to apply the sermons with the understanding that 1 in 5 of my congregation will suffer from depression, and the other 4 in 5 will have the opportunity to walk with someone who suffers from depression.

If we bring this struggle out of darkness into light, the sufferer is better enabled to run to Christ, and the church can help point the way. This helps give the body of Christ something to grab hold of. And since we are more alike than different, the church will learn more about ourselves as well in addition to truths we already know, just applied more deeply.

Originally published on February 29, 2016

“A rash of school shootings” has people scratching their heads wondering why. Many locate the problem primarily in America’s love of guns. Each new campus tragedy becomes a rallying point in the call for gun control legislation. Gun owners and Second Amendment advocates push back. The debate degenerates into name calling and useless vitriol.

Now we hear of an emerging epidemic of suicide. While a number of experts have been calling attention to the problem for a while, the recent deaths of two celebrities, Anthony Bourdain and Kate Spade, has moved the issue to center stage.

I don’t think the increasing frequency of school shootings and suicides are disconnected.

I believe they find their origin in the same cause. Are guns the problem, as many propose? A little online sleuthing does indeed indicate the USA has the highest per capita gun ownership by a wide margin over most other countries. But that rate hasn’t increased markedly over the last 40 years. Yes, there are a lot more guns. But there are also a lot more people. So, per capita fire arm ownership hasn’t increased significantly. A remarkable statistic asserts only 3% of the entire population owns half of all fire arms! Of that 3% a statistically insignificant fraction are involved in mass shootings, such as took place in 2017 at the Route 91 Music Festival in Las Vegas. Yet school and mass shooting incidents were unheard of 40 years ago, though per capita gun ownership was virtually identical to today.

So, what changed?

Secular pundits look for causes in economics, politics and sociological trends. They ignore the spiritual dimension, because it’s regarded as a non-starter. Religion is neglected as a viable paradigm for consideration in social trends in the modern world. It’s only place of relevance for secular moderns is as a curiosity of ancient history and a handicapping hiccup to the advance of enlightened progressivism.

In order to cure a malady, the right diagnosis is required. As long as sociologists and policy makers ignore the spiritual nature of humans, they’ll miss an important ingredient that shapes society. They’ve done so in understanding the root cause of both mass shootings and the rising tide of suicide.

I propose what’s changed over the last half century is a hollowing out of the transcendent in modern society.

The State-sponsored public school system from kindergarten through university has promulgated a materialistic worldview that’s told people they are little more than grown up germs. Mistakes. Pure chance. The fortuitous combination of chemical reactions that produced self-replicating organic machines. But there is no real purpose to their existence, no significance to their 80 or so years. The best they can hope for is to feel alive. So, do whatever you want, because—well, why not? No one’s ultimately going to judge you, because molecules can’t be right or wrong; they just are.

Is it any wonder people shaped by such ideas slip a noose around their neck or swallow a bottle of pills when their pain seems inescapable?

Deep inside, something irresistibly human, something originally God-imaged, rises up against such materialistic notions. It says, “No! I reject that. I mean something.” It’s that inner voice that prompts many to live as though they are significant and that their life does matter. They strive to achieve something lasting, something worthwhile. But in some, that voice turns dark. It rages against the injustice of feeling significant when the system’s worldview tells them they aren’t. They rebel against the convenient contradiction of modern society: “You’re the product of mindless evolution. So get a degree and make something of yourself.” Their inner turmoil boils over into lashing out at the system. They are in pain and want others to feel it. Since no one seems to care about them, they’ll attack others to spread their misery.

What’s changed is the core worldview that shapes modern society.

The Judeo-Christian worldview that framed Western Civilization was replaced by a secular and materialistic worldview a century ago following the horrors of the First World War. It took several decades for the forward momentum of the Judeo-Christian worldview to slow. World War II brought it to a halt. It’s last fumes are now spent and secularism prevails.

The remedy is found in something I shared in my last article. What’s needed is a wholesale return to God and His Word. But that’s not something any church or group can engineer. It requires a mighty, soul-shaking, life-transforming move of God’s Spirit bringing revival.

When Jesus ascended into heaven after His resurrection, He told His disciples, “You shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8). The Greek word He used for witnesses is martys, from which we get our English word martyr, a person killed for their beliefs. Indeed, a martyr is a profoundly powerful example of what it means to be a witness—sealing one’s faith and devotion to Jesus by laying down one’s life.

Not all of Jesus’ disciples were called to be His witnesses through violent death, but in the Early Church Era, under severe persecution, many of His followers did indeed suffer for His name’s sake as a mighty witness to the power and truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Along with the threat of heresies such as Gnosticism, persecution was one of the greatest external threats faced by the Early Church. Although the Jews and others were in some ways hostile toward Christians, the most extensive persecutions came at the hands of the Roman Empire; in fact, in his Book of Martyrs, Foxe denotes ten distinct periods of Roman persecution of the Church that took place sporadically over the first few centuries of its existence. There were several reasons why the Empire targeted the Christian Church.

1. PRACTICES:

As we have seen previously, Christian belief and practice was very distinct from that of the Roman culture around them. Christians believed many things considered odd to the pagan mind. For one thing, they rejected the multiple deities of the Romans to serve one God alone, one not represented by any image or idol. Oddly enough, for this reason they were often labeled “atheists.” They also rejected unethical activities like gladiator battles and theater performances, and they refrained from engaging in any work associated with Roman deities.

The Christians themselves had practices that were considered strange to the Romans. As oppression increased, Christians were forced to become cautious and secretive, which gave the Roman mind freedom to speculate about their gatherings. For example, rumors abounded that the Lord’s Supper was actually a cannibalistic affair in which Christians ate the flesh and drank the blood of their master. The use of the holy kiss led the Romans to believe that the Christians were engaged in raucous orgies when they met together. And the fact that Christians referred to each other as “brother” and “sister” gave rise to rumors of incest among them. While these rumors were wildly misconstrued and false, it was because the Christians were so different from the rest of society that many people believed such absurdities.

2. POLITICS:

As the Roman Empire grew, it was more difficult to maintain control of the various people groups they conquered. It became clear that steps must to be taken toward the unification of the Empire if it was going to survive. Somehow, allegiance to Rome must be secured among such a diverse array of peoples and cultures. Because religion can exert powerful sociopolitical influence, Rome ultimately decided that worship of the Emperor as a deity would serve as the greatest unifying force.

The Romans thus took a very pragmatic, political stance toward the religions of the peoples they conquered; they were very tolerant of all belief systems as long as Emperor worship was included in them. The Jews were the only exception to this rule, as they stubbornly insisted on worshiping the one true God, Yahweh. However, because the Jews kept to themselves, Rome didn’t consider them much of a threat or concern. So as long as Christians appeared to be part of Jewish culture and religion, they were in Rome’s eyes just as harmless.

However, it soon became apparent that the Christians were very persistent in evangelizing or “proselytizing.” They weren’t just going to keep to themselves like the Jews; their hope was to bring the whole Empire to Christ! Politically speaking, the Romans viewed the Christians as a serious threat to their plan to unify the Empire through Emperor worship, because they refused to bow to Caesar when Jesus alone was Lord of their lives. Thus, the Church was seen as treacherous and disloyal to Rome. C.P.S. Clarke says that Rome viewed the Church, “…Much as a gigantic Sinn Fein or Trade Union organization might be, as an independent and possibly hostile state within the State.”¹

In fact, the Christians’ refusal to participate in Emperor worship was the greatest reason for their persecution over such a long period of time; the political unity of the Empire simply would not allow for such defiance.

3. PROBLEMS:

In light of these things, it wasn’t too much of a stretch for the Romans to find a convenient scapegoat in the Christian Church whenever there were problems of any kind in the Empire—Christians were secretive, they were strange, they made the Romans uncomfortable with their way of life, and they refused to worship the Emperor, so they must be up to no good!

The event that actually instigated extreme persecution of the Church occurred in 67 A.D. when the city of Rome experienced a devastating fire. Shockingly, Emperor Nero was apparently seen singing and playing an instrument outside the city as he calmly watched it burn, which led to rumors that perhaps he was responsible for the conflagration. What added to suspicion was the fact that the majority of the fire took place in a derelict area of the city, and that Nero constructed a huge palace on the ruins. It seemed very possible that he had started the fire himself in order to “prepare” a place for his new palace.

When Nero heard that this story was circulating, he realized he needed to blame the tragedy on another group under suspicion—the Christian Church. By blaming these upstarts for the fire, the Emperor effectively turned the anger of the people onto the Christians and instigated the first official persecution of the Church. From this time on, the precedent was set that anything bad happening in the Empire was somehow the fault of the Christians; they became the scapegoats for any problems or calamities that befell the Romans.

Over the course of the next 250 years, hundreds of thousands of Christians gave their lives for Jesus, boldly refusing to deny their faith in the face of such horrors as beheading, crucifixion, burning at the stake, slaughter by wild animals and being stretched on the rack.

And yet Jesus had declared in Matthew 16:18 that the gates of Hades would not prevail against His Church. And so John Foxe notes, “Though persecuting malice raged, yet the Gospel shone with resplendent brightness; and, firm as an impregnable rock, withstood the attacks of its boisterous enemies with success. Tertullian, who lived in this age, informs us that if the Christians had collectively withdrawn themselves from the Roman territories, the empire would have been greatly depopulated.”² It’s no wonder that the church father Tertullian stated, “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church!” As Christians laid down their lives for Jesus, countless more arose in their place, and no act of Rome could stop it!

The Christians in the Early Church Era, while facing at times horrific torture and brutality for their faith, were given by God the remarkable grace to “count it all joy” (James 1:2) in the midst of such evil, considering it a minor thing to suffer for the sake of the One who had suffered and died for them. Their gaze was fixed on eternity and the joy of their Lord that awaited them.

In response to their vibrant and victorious witness, countless onlookers gave their lives to Jesus Christ, and God’s Church prevailed. As an early Christian apologist put it, “Christians love all men, but all men persecute them. Condemned because they are not understood, they are put to death, but raised to life again. They live in poverty, but enrich many; they are totally destitute, but possess an abundance of everything. They suffer dishonor, but that is their glory. They are defamed, but vindicated. A blessing is their answer to abuse, deference their response to insult. For the good they do they receive the punishment of malefactors, but even then they, rejoice, as though receiving the gift of life.”³

Truly the witness of the martyrs not only inspires and challenges us today, but affirms to us the truth of Paul’s words in 2 Corinthians 4:8-10—“We are hard pressed on every side, yet not crushed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed—always carrying about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body.”

¹C.P.S. Clarke, Church History from Nero to Constantine
²John Foxe, Foxe’s Book of Martyrs

³Unknown, Letter to Diognetus