How to Make Someone Feel Worse
January 24th, 2011
A couple of days ago, I was listening to Premier Christian Radio, and a VERY WELL KNOWN FEMALE AMERICAN CHRISTIAN SPEAKER (not going to name names because I don't want to be sued!) was teaching on "Understanding and Beating Depression" or something like that. I was interested to hear what she had to say, seeing as this is one of the fields on my farm (?!), and I thought I could learn something that might enhance my approach.
She spoke from Kings, a passage about David's dreadful mistakes with Bathsheeba. Point one: David got into trouble because he didn't go to war with his people as kings ought to do. Application- we get depressed when we are lazy. Don't lie around on the sofa. Go out and do good works, and you'll be fine. Point two: David allowed himself to fall into self-pity. Self-pity is what depression is all about. Don't fall into self-pity! Point three: David sinned, and then had the consequences to deal with for the rest of his life. Sin leads to depression. Don't sin.
At this point there was steam coming out of my ears, and I had to turn the radio off to prevent my head exploding. I was deeply saddened and frustrated to hear such an influencial and powerful woman making things worse for depressed Christians. Maybe it improved after I turned it off- I hope so.
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Martin~ February 1st, 2011 ~ 13:02Wow...I that really is an awful programme by the sound of it! I can relate to it I think - I have had friends trying to tell me how good I have it, and to think of those worse off, and maybe even go and help them...which is all well intended I suppose, but hard to achieve if you struggle to even get yourself out of bed!
Thankfully though, there is good teaching about it, from people such as yourself. And I have found a 'healing' group here in my home town who seem to understand the complexities of depression...
Let's hope that the amount of teaching like that in this radio show continues to decrease. No teaching at all would probably be better than that!
Jo
~ February 14th, 2011 ~ 11:02Martin- meant to tell you I listened to your songs and I thought they were really great- thank you for sharing them. Can I post the link on here so other people can find them? If so, could you tell me the site address again?
Martin
~ February 17th, 2011 ~ 13:02Hi Jo - certainly! I'll send it in a separate email, then you can do what you want with it. :) Thank you!
Mbiru
~ March 10th, 2011 ~ 22:03Hey Jo
In a way I'm not surprised by the preaching but it's much in line with much of today's preaching minimises or distorts people's problems. Because the problems are minimised no real solution is offered, just platitudes. That's besides the problem of mangling the Bible in order to make untenable proclamations from the pulpit.
To top it off, the masses love it. How we love to have our ears tickled.
Sorry, I have started ranting.
