Damaged Emotions

I started reading this book I found Monday was in my bookcase and I think I've read it before, a long time ago. I have underlined some things and marked pages. Healing for Damaged Emotions, by David A Seamands. In the preface, he says early in his ministry he began to notice there were two kinds of people he was unable to help as a minister.

"I saw one group being driven into futility and loss of confidence in God's power. While they desperately prayed, their prayers about personal problems didn't seem to be answered. They tried every Christian discipline, but with no results. As they played the same old cracked record of their defeats, the needle would get stuck in repetitive emotional patterns. While they kept up the outward observances of praying and paying and professing, they were going deeper into disillusionment and despair. 
I saw the other group moving toward phoniness. These people were repressing their inner feelings and denying to themselves that anything was seriously wrong, because "Christians can't have such problems." Instead of facing their problems, they covered them with a veneer of Scripture verses, theological terms, and unrealistic platitudes."  -- Healing for Damaged Emotions, David A. Seamands.

It was this that statement that made me decide to reread this book. He mentions in his first chapter that Christians often go to one of two extremes to address these folks. "Some Christians see anything that wiggles as the devil."  If you have a problem, you must be demon possessed. From my on experience, I've seen this over and over. If you're depressed, it is the devil. If you're overeating, it is the devil. If you're having panic attacks, it is the devil.

The other extreme was "Read your Bible. Pray. Have more faith.  If you were spiritually OK, you wouldn't have this hangup. You could never get depressed. You would never have any sexual compulsions or problems." 

In my experience as a Pentecostal, we're told we just need to shout more, sing more, speak in tongues more, and check our hems and hairlines. I believe all those things have their place in our faith, but not every problem is fixed or even addressed by any of those. Even Jesus noted that there are some problems which require more than the external actions of the believer and those ministering to them to correct.

When I suffered from clinical depression years ago, I experienced the second kind. I re-experienced it again when Jerry died. If you're one of those who deliver this kind of ministering, let me make one thing perfectly clear. You're nuts. That is not compassionate and it most certainly is not Biblical.

People suffering from damaged emotions can't be "fixed" by standard methods and they can't be fixed after one revival. They may feel better for a time, but the nature of these kinds of wounds is that they are deep and generally infected. It takes time and consistent attention to heal. I suspect that it takes a mixture of love, prayer, special encouragement, and counseling to stitch up the wounds and time to allow them to heal.

I'm going to continue reading this book. It isn't long and I'll let you know if I find it helpful.