{when faith and antidepressants aren't always polar opposites}

"You just want to believe in chemical imbalance so you don't have to take responsibility for your depression...You don't need medication. It's a cop-out so you don't have to have faith."   

I sank to the edge of my bed in disbelief, feeling the breath rush from my lungs, as those words lit up the screen of my phone. 

Having been brought up in a family which had always attributed mental illness to spiritual causes, it took nothing short of my hospitalization due to a suicide attempt for my parents to reluctantly allow their 16 year old daughter to be prescribed antidepressants. 

Their resistance largely stemmed from a deeply held belief in certain Christian circles that mental illness is spiritual in nature; and therefore, all it takes is enough prayer, Bible reading, faith, and trust in God in order for you to be 'all better'.  

Unfortunately, this isn't always limited to just mental illness. I know plenty of people who don't believe in pharmaceutical medication at all, for anything, choosing rather to rely on positive affirmations, 'claiming God's promises', and homeopathic remedies.

The difference, though, is that abstaining from medication for physical ailments (such as the pain from a broken leg, etc) is looked upon skeptically. While refusal to take medicine for mental illness, on the other hand, and instead claiming that it is all spiritual and can be cured spiritually, is still very much the general Christian reaction. 

I cannot count the number of times I've been told I ought to "just have faith, claim God's promises, oh and have you tried Bible memorization?" 

"Depression is a result of unconfessed sin in your life / dabbling in the occult, and if you simply trusted God more you wouldn't have anxiety or panic attacks!" 

But there are several flaws in this thinking. First, it presupposes that God will never allow us to experience things which are not conventionally viewed as 'health'. However, Paul and his thorn in the flesh could tell you otherwise. Sometimes God doesn't 'heal' in the way we want Him to, because He wants us to grow closer to Him, or to help others through the way we handle our hardships. 

Additionally, there may very well be a spiritual component when someone struggles with depression or anxiety. Not all depression is caused by a chemical imbalance. Not all anxiety is misfiring brain chemicals. On the other hand, it's really not our place to determine whether someone's mental illness is spiritual or not.

In one of my favorite analogies ever....if someone is drowning, you don't yell at them that they need to learn how to swim. You throw them a life preserver. Might they need to learn how to swim? Possibly. Or possibly they are a world-class swimmer who has happened to get caught in the undertow. If you're standing there watching them drown, it is not your place to determine whether or not they need to learn how to swim. It's your place to throw them a life preserver. 

Additionally, even if they do need to learn how to swim eventually, when you're drowning, you can't learn how to swim. You first have to get to a place where you're no longer drowning, before you can learn how to swim. 

Go ahead and pray for someone. Go ahead and encourage them to pray. But it is counter productive to stand on the side of a boat, holding a life vest, watching someone drown not five feet away from you, and pray as they drown. Throw the life preserver as you pray. Pray as you reel them back in. Then praise God for their safety; and if they need that life preserver for the rest of their life in order to stay above water, then you thank God for providing what they need. 

And there seems to be a false dichotomy, in Christian perception of mental illness, that you either have faith or medication. You can either rely on God to heal you, or you can take medication. We have created this dichotomy where you cannot have a strong faith in God and simultaneously take medication for mental illness. 

But for me, and so many others I know, us being on medication is us having faith. 

Let me say that again: Us being on medication is us having faith. 

Because truthfully, the decision to take medication is not something we take lightly. We know medicine isn't magic, much as we sometimes wish it was. We know that there are still things that we need to work out, healthy ways to learn how to live, but sometimes we need to not be drowning and this is the provision of God. We would never dream of replacing Him with a pill.

And personally, it calls for no faith at all to take matters into my own hands, despite God's clear guidance, and take myself off of the medication. But the only place that gets me is relying on my own strength and power again to try to fight the seeming insurmountable darkness which always leaves me defeated.

What requires faith is trusting that the same God who has led me to this place can and will carry me even now. What requires faith is believing that when He said "yes" and opened these doors, He meant it. What requires faith is swallowing a small white pill and an oblong green one every day and not knowing how it will affect my brain, whether it will work or not, and praying for patience as we discover what works.

And truthfully? It takes far more faith for me to be on medication, than it would were I to take myself off of it. For some people I'm sure it's the opposite.

But to be patient, to not judge and shun those who take medication for whatever cause, and encourage them to be open to God's leading in either direction and then support them as they follow Him, is what we as Christians, and we as a church can and ought to aspire to. 

See, having faith in God and taking medication aren't always opposites. 

Sometimes they're the same thing.