Common sin grows out of human nature. It is even found in innocent infants. A recent study offered evidence that prejudice was found in the individual before any outside education gave it added impetus and negative belief and/or conduct. The preferences of the child in reaching for and receiving this or that in a human presentation created some satisfaction for the emerging infant. Denial of the preferred thing was met with negative response and some mistreatment or misrepresentation of the alternative choice offered. Neither the individual nor society appears to know how to manage the negatives drawn from the flaws of human nature, which in theology is identified as evidence of depravity. Depravity is heartily disliked as a word and concept as well as omission in regarding motivation for varieties of human experience. If it were better understood, and accepted as an important factor in lives, both social (human relationships) and individual (personal orientation) we would do much better than we do in the management of ourselves and society. Education would have an additional secret revealing factor related to its purposes. Education is willing to take on other troublesome factors, and offer directions to solutions, why not take this one on with a value structure leading to better life context? Common sin generates from our faulty human natures.
One approach to the matter, scriptural treatment, is to understand the various uses some words gain in our attention – like groan or groaning. Jesus groaned at the tomb of Lazarus, and that followed with his tears including continued groaning within self. He was brought low, in his human nature, only to escape in the miracle of his divine authority in the miracle of Lazarus emerging from the grave. Jesus actually felt depression, not for Lazarus because he knew what he would do but for the grieving people around him taken by despair – despair that here is termed grief. Death is so final that one is faced with an immediate cause to draw upon human nature to despair. One common grief we tend to call depression – the depression of human nature. Everyone faces depression to some degree, some much less than others, but the reality touches all persons in some way. We groan with it, because it seems to be prevailing, and inescapable. We are affected by it, sometimes treating it with resolve or acceptance, and on occasion it becomes so strong for some that they resort to suicide. A counselor is often told by depressed persons that they had moments, especially when they were young, when they felt suicidal. Eminent persons have admitted their serious but temporary consideration of suicide – as noted in the admissions of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King. After a few years in my marriage, with my wife taken in a serious depressive spirit at the time, she acknowledged to me that she had felt suicidal in her ‘teen years. She was in a firm Christian environment, and believed that faith was the only factor that kept her from the ultimate tragedy – as it did for her father. Suicidal persons don’t tend to blame God, but something they relate to themselves. Society presumes all this to be mental illness to be treated by counseling and medicine.
Depressives often have empathy for others, but may have antipathy for some. They yearn to have relief for themselves, and others suffering as they do. They yearn for the lifting of darkness, of a sense of pain not localized (although it may be). They would like to understand. When not taken with depression they seem like different persons – and they are. It is well for those who feel gnawing of depression in the soul to know that the Savior has felt the same orientation and prevailed. He offers life-change which may register readily or left to faith to gain, an overcoming procedure. If this delay option occurs, a means of management can emerge, so reducing what seems like a mockery of God’s interest in a victorious life. Persons can find a victorious spiritual context even in a human context of defeat. It works for other matters as well. The secret is to roll over our concerns on to Christ. The concept was common in death. Mary and Martha rolled-over some of their suffering at the loss of Lazarus to grieving friends. The burden (depression) can be turned into empathy, (identity with the spirit of others). This is not to underestimate the burden of depression, but there is relief in prayer faith. Christ offered teaching and/or miracle to show that God is in the negative courses of lives. He recommends lament, but we tend to grieve. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020