Leadership Journal

As a pastor and therapist, I often encounter people whose lives have been invaded by despair. Usually they approach me, not quite sure what's going on. "Maybe I'm going crazy. Or perhaps I'm just depressed. Can you help?"

It can be a scary experience, for lay people and pastors alike.

In this issue, you've read about St. John's la noche oscura, or dark night, that difficult invasion of God's astringent grace that opens us to new realms of spiritual experience. However, it's easy to miss this moment of grace, especially if we fail to ask deeper questions about what God might be up to.

Recently a 38-year-old pastor called me for advice. His church wasn't growing. His prayer lacked passion. His preaching seemed to fall on deaf ears. Previously helpful spiritual practices no longer delivered. And growing temptations to look at pornography or lose himself in Fantasy Football were worrying him and his wife. Feeling helpless and depressed, he wondered if he'd hit a ministry wall. I told him that I sensed an extraordinary moment of grace and growth. As I often do, I told him that he needed to talk to a psychologist to evaluate therapeutic issues, and possibly the need for medication.

His story, and countless others like it, raises tough questions about how we should view the dark night. What's the difference between depression and the dark night? Is there a difference? And what practical steps can we take to move through it and grow spiritually and emotionally?

St. John of the Cross and St. Teresa of Avila envisioned the dark night as a time of spiritual purging and illumination, but they weren't strict dualists. They understood that psychological dynamics are often at play in a dark night experience. Though they lacked modern categories and definitions, they were some of the most adept psychological minds of their day. St. John taught that melancholia, or depression, would often accompany the dark night. For him, it wasn't an either/or, but more often a both/and. The spiritual and psychological are interconnected.

Unfortunately we've failed to learn this valuable lesson. Often psychologists see depression merely as a neurochemical problem that needs to be fixed. And too often pastors spiritualize psychological maladies that may require further expertise. I read recently that a pastor was counseling sex addicts to avoid therapy and to choose a "Gospel Cure." According to this pastor, conquering sex addiction was simply a matter of getting honest about our spiritual condition and embracing God's love. On the other side, I find that many therapists, (Christian therapists, too), have little insight into employing spiritual disciplines, or challenging clients to avail themselves of the spiritual benefits of worship, the liturgy, and the sacraments. This divide would have been completely foreign to St. Teresa or St. John.

One lesson we learn from the ancient mystics is that dark nights are not problems, but opportunities. Grasping this reality moves us beyond the question "How do we fix this?" to the question "What might I learn in this?"

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