There are a lot of paths, rocks and thorns out there:
If life is so easy to find meaningful and satisfying, why do so many turn to drugs and suicide?
I don’t recall anyone saying it was easy. I only challenged your assumption that it should be any easier for a Christian.
so many???
Suicide? .013% It is less than the number of people who fail most classes in school. It is rather lower than the number of people who fail to graduate from high school which is like 30% So by that measure life is 2,500 times easier than high school.
Drugs? 8% or less using illicit drugs. Still 4 times easier than high school. Only if you include alcohol and include any who have indulged in binge drinking in the last month does it get close to the difficulty of high school. But is that really fair? Does that really equal a problem with alcohol let alone a failure at life. Sounds pretty judgmental to a self-righteous degree and I frankly have to wonder if that is such a success at life.
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If that doesn’t sound judgmental and pharisaically accusing, I don’t know what does. But it’s commendable to be frank about it.
Any suicide and drug abuse is indicative of meaninglessness.
Suicide among teens and young adults reaches highest level since 2000
Statistics on Addiction in America
Almost 21 million Americans have at least one addiction, yet only 10% of them receive treatment.
But why quibble.
Meaningfulness is built-in to a family where love is reciprocated and its members delight each other.
Hello Dale,
As I read and saw that much of the conversation was about proof of God, I hope the addition of the following lines would be helpful.
There are times when God proves us by hiding his face. 'Remember Job? Although having suddenly lost great wealth, his children, and even sickened with a skin problem, Job continued to bless and glorify God. It is written,
In all this Job sinned not, nor charged God foolishly (Job 1:22).
The book takes us through Job’s conversations with his friends and his deep search for understanding. Job passed the test and God blessed him with much more and he lived the rest of his fulfilled life.
We can never pay God back for all He did for us with His mighty power. We may only bless and thank Him even when things are taken away.I
He is God and he forever deserves our blessing and praise regardless. Our purified hearts from praise through thick and thin multiplies His kindness and mercy.
Though trials may be hard, we greatly appreciate our deepened understanding that came from them.
Earl
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A favorite CCM song is Blessings by Laura Story:
We pray for blessings
We pray for peace
Comfort for family, protection while we sleep
We pray for healing, for prosperity
We pray for Your mighty hand to ease our suffering
All the while, You hear each spoken need
Yet love is way too much to give us lesser things
'Cause what if your blessings come through raindrops
What if Your healing comes through tears
What if a thousand sleepless nights are what it takes to know You’re near
What if trials of this life are Your mercies in disguise
We pray for wisdom
Your voice to hear
We cry in anger when we cannot feel You near
We doubt your goodness, we doubt your love
As if every promise from Your Word is not enough
All the while, You hear each desperate plea
And long that we’d have faith to believe
When friends betray us
When darkness seems to win
We know that pain reminds this heart
That this is not our home
What if my greatest disappointments
Or the aching of this life
Is the revealing of a greater thirst this world can’t satisfy
What if trials of this life
The rain, the storms, the hardest nights
Are your mercies in disguise
God is the most valuable thing there is.
If you have him, as Job did, then what else really matters? All we need to want (check out that subtitle 
, an apparent oxymoron 
):
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004DEPEO6/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1
Storms Are the Triumph of His Art
Away, Despair! My gracious Lord doth hear:
Though winds and waves assault my keel,
He doth preserve it: he doth steer,
Ev’n when the boat seems most to reel:
Storms are the triumph of his art:
Well may he close his eyes, but not his heart.
– George Herbert
Human beings are subject to all manner of diseases including those of the psyche. My mother was born manic depressive but she was a Christian. I think the only thing worse than suffering deep depression is to do so while feeling that your suffering is due to some fault in your faith, especially if your faith community reinforces that erroneous belief.
Enjoy your current joy in your faith but I hope your beliefs about what real faith does for one doesn’t cause you to lose that faith when you come back down to earth.
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I’m sorry to hear that Mark. Please, accept my apology on their behalf. It pains me to say that this is not the first story I’ve heard about Christians reacting poorly to mental health issues. However, we are getting better.
My own position is that mental health issues are no more a sign of a fault in one’s faith than a fractured wrist or a chest infection. Certainly, Christians can pray that God will heal a broken wrist or a chest infection, but the vast majority of cases still require expert medical intervention. I don’t see mental health issues any differently. Practically speaking, the best thing a Christian community can do for a person with mental health issues is to encourage them to see a medical professional.
Might mental health issues impact the vibrancy of one’s faith? Sure, but so might any number of non-cognitive affecting medical conditions ranging from a broken bone that limits mobility whilst it heals to a diagnosis of cancer. I believe humans are integrated beings, what we experience in the physical impacts the emotional and spiritual, and vice versa.
Not sure anyone is saying this necessarily, but just in case, I certainly don’t think mental health issues are a sign that one’s life lacks meaning. Tough a feeling of meaninglessness can be a symptom of some conditions. Similarly, a feeling of meaningless might contribute to the onset of certain conditions - though this is far from universal. Even so, correlation does not necessarily equal causation.
Apologies, if that is somewhat off topic.
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That’s kind of funny, really. Maybe you have forgotten my kidney account already? And I am a septuagenarian with multiple health issues. (Thankfully, none of them are really debilitating, but they are certainly inconvenient and limiting.) I am in my Father’s hands and I trust him and his timing.
(And you appear to have forgotten this, too.)
It’s not our perfect love! It is our Father’s, and he only does what is good for both him and us. So whenever I catch myself being anxious about ANYTHING, I can go crawl up on Father’s lap even when court is in session in the throne room, so to speak, and his strong arms will comfort me and shield me.
If you are at all familiar with the New Testament, you should recollect Paul’s trials in the book of Acts and the Pauline epistles, and he was joyful through them all.
Get real, yourself. 
I respectfully disagree. For me, the best thing a Christian community can do is return to its roots and start praying again for all the lost souls. The majority of mental illness is spiritual in nature, not biochemical as most medical professionals would have you believe.
What is the connect with the lost souls and mental illness? Here are three exceptional medical professionals that devoted their lives to the spiritual causes of mental illness, by acknowledging the lost souls in their patient’s lives, and treating the cause of the illness, not the symptom.
- Fiore, Edith. The Unquiet Dead: A Psychologist Treats Spirit Possession . New York, NY: Ballantine, 1991. Print.
- Kübler-Ross, Elisabeth. Questions and Answers on Death and Dying: A Companion Volume to On Death and Dying . New York: Touchstone Book/Simon & Schuster, 1997. Print.
- Wickland, Carl August. 30 Years among the Dead . San Bernardino, CA: Borgo, 1980. Print.
If Christians returned to the tradition of praying for the dearly departed and the lost souls, we would have less mental illness in humanity.
I wish that were true, but it is not. The science of the mind is no where near as advanced as that of medicine and the body. So I stand somewhat between you and Shawn on this. But to counter Shawn, the only thing worse than going to a mental health professional is going to a non-professional who doesn’t have adequate training or education at all, but just a bunch of religious/spiritual dogma. I have personally had a number of bad experiences with medical doctors and family who have had even worse experiences with so called mental health professionals, so competence varies greatly in both fields but I think it is worse in the mental health profession. But… this is still a poor excuse for for going to a non-professional instead. What can I say?
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Dear Mitchell,
I was just addressing @LM77 comment regarding what Christian communities should be doing, not what a patient should. I agree with you 100% that there are very few qualified, effective mental heath professionals, mostly outside of school medicine.
Yes I think it is quite likely that there are non-professionals who have talent in this. The problem is that there are many more people outside the profession who will do you a great deal of harm – people who pretend to understanding and skills when it is little more than nonsensical opinions. At least in the profession there are some standards of education and accountability – not enough perhaps, but some.
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Dear Mitchell,
I do not want to argue who is worse, but this is my limited personal experience. It was MD’s that got my niece addicted the anti-anxiety drug Paxil and my nephew to heroin after the prescribed ADHD drug became ineffective. My brother’s long battle with depression and antidepressants came an end after his third suicide attempt and the NDE that came with it.
Like I have said… I and my family have had bad experiences also. But these are bad basis for generalizations. These are the cause of some of the worst human behaviors like prejudice.
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