Q&A with Jim Hawkins

First, we tend to think of depression as a feeling. But really, most of the time depression is a lack of feeling, or a resistance to a deep experience of grief, anger, pain, disappointment or other dark emotions. It’s an absence of feeling. The problem is that positive emotions like joy, peace and the sense of connectedness we call love all come from the same part of the brain as negative emotions. When we avoid feeling the dark stuff, we cut ourselves off from emotions that bring light to our lives, including the feelings of transcendence and communion that are our inward experience of God. So, recovering from depression is not about convincing ourselves to feel better, but rather learning to “feel all the feels,” as they say on the Internet.

Second, when we’re depressed we want to be alone, which is about the worst thing we can do. We think, I’m bad company. I’m too tired. I don’t have the energy to be around people. But, as I know from personal experience, withdrawing exacerbates the loneliness, emptiness and hopelessness that are at the core of depression. If we want to heal, solitude is counterproductive. Relationships are the lifeline that keeps us from getting sucked down the drain of despair.

Third, understanding the genetic component of mental illness has been incredibly helpful. I was born predisposed to depression, thanks to my parents and their parents before them. I came by it honestly! And learning that freed me from feeling I was to blame for a character flaw called “depression,” lifting the burden of shame so the real work could begin. Freedom from shame releases us to do the hard, good work of healing.

Two things come to mind. I was born in 1953 into a pastor’s home and from early on I understood that pastors aren’t supposed to make close friends with anyone in the congregation— because pastors, like parents, can’t play favorites.

When I began my own ministry in 1976, this assumption was so ingrained that I didn’t even know it existed. But it didn’t take long before I had plenty of opportunities to reevaluate—and I concluded it’s ridiculous. God created us for relationships. Our minds and emotions are healthiest when we maintain strong attachments to people with whom we can be open, honest and vulnerable. That’s not playing favorites. That’s being fully alive.

The second thing is this longstanding, theologically distorted idea that if you just pray more, or get in the Word more, you can magically heal your emotional wounds. There is still, even to this day, spiritual stigma attached to mental illness, as though psychological pain is a symptom of spiritual failure. Yet our history is littered with saints who struggled with emotional darkness. Mother Teresa. Saint John of the Cross. The prophet Jeremiah. The writers of the Imprecatory Psalms had anger issues, yet their rage is part of our Holy Scriptures.

We can only go as deep into communion with God as we are willing to uncover, experience and surrender the darker emotions that come with being human. If ministry is standing in the way of that, it has become an obstacle between God and the person called to lead God’s people—and obviously that’s not God’s intention for the Church. We have to find a different way to do ministry.