Have believers the right to be depressed? How do we, as brothers and sisters, treat such incidents?

This text is from a transcript of a talk by David Gooding, entitled ‘Conforming Our Spirits to the Spirit of God’ (2005).

My dear fellow believer, I wouldn't say that you have a right to be depressed, strictly speaking, but I think I know what you mean. Can a genuine believer suffer depression and still regard himself as a believer? And my answer is a wholehearted, 'Yes, of course.' When our brains go a bit wonky it doesn't prove we are not believers, any more than a stomach ache does.

We must be realistic. 'Our outer self is wasting away' (2 Corinthians 4:16)—it is subject to the frailty of the body. It is a sad misinterpretation of Scripture to tell people that if only they had strong enough faith they would never be ill and they oughtn't to be depressed, because that shows their faith isn't very strong and they're scarcely believers. I personally have had to deal with people like that. What a sorry thing it is. The Lord comes near to comfort and to help, and we need to support them and to confirm their faith so that the Lord may bring them through.

Have you a right to be depressed? Well, in that sense, yes. Does it mean that if you're depressed you're not a Christian? Certainly not.

I sat in a car once with a dear believer who had been diagnosed with brain cancer. His brain had been opened and they'd taken away what they could of the cancer. He had been told that if he had enough faith God would heal him. He told me this in the car as we motored back after a conference one day.

He said, 'David, what do you think of it?'

I said, 'My dear good friend, (calling him by name), I believe God heals diseases, for he has made our bodies so they can heal. If we didn't have such a system in the body, we never would heal of anything, and when we heal it is God who heals us.'

As the old Latins used to say, 'The doctor treats you; it's God who heals you.'

I said, 'I do believe that God sometimes, in answer to prayer, will intervene miraculously and heal. But I don't believe that it is in redemption, in the sense that when we get ill we can claim to be healed because Christ died for us at Calvary. If you say you're not healed because you don't have enough faith, are you telling me that, because my faith is sometimes a bit wonky, I don't have eternal life either, and if only I had a bit more faith I would get salvation? You don't tell me that, do you?' So I told him what I felt.

'David,' he said, 'you're telling me what I don't want to hear.'

We parted company at Heathrow and presently I got a letter in big handwriting: 'Miracle, the Lord has healed me and I thank God for it.'

A few more months passed and I got a letter from his widow. She said, 'David, I feel like somebody who has been led up a mountain by a guide, and after a painful ascent at last I've reached the summit only to find before me a gaping hole, and when I look round the guide has gone.'

We need to get these things right, don't we? Instead of bolstering his faith to endure what the Lord might have allowed, they nearly destroyed his wife's faith by holding out promises that were not according to Scripture.