Song Yan
What can you do when you see people you care about struggling with depression or anxiety? The way we respond often reflects what we believe. We tend to offer others the same "fix" we rely on when facing similar struggles.
Christians often encourage one another to pray more, memorize more Bible verses, love Jesus more, trust God more, and so on. While these practices are good and important, telling someone struggling with emotional or mental pain to simply "rejoice" or "be more spiritual" rarely helps—and can even make things worse.
What is mental health, really? Mental health issues are often defined by their visible symptoms (as seen in diagnostic manuals), but the root causes remain elusive. One common thread in many mental health conditions is the obsessive drive to live up to an impossible, perfectionist self-image. For Christians, this can manifest as a spiritual ideal: “What I must be to be an acceptable Christian.” This self-imposed ideal becomes a false source of security—essentially, a god. It fuels a destructive cycle of self-doubt: “Am I good enough? I’m still not good enough.”
This is why telling someone with depression or anxiety to “be more spiritual” often backfires. It reinforces the very mindset that may have caused the problem in the first place—feeding the false belief that their worth depends on what they do and how well they do it. It intensifies the feeling of conditional self-acceptance: “I don’t have enough faith. I’m not reading the Bible enough. I don’t love Jesus enough…”
But this is the complete opposite of the Gospel message.
The Gospel says it’s not about you or how good you are. Asking “Am I good enough?” is simply the wrong question. Whether you’re the best or the worst person in the world, you are equally in need of God’s mercy. The more you focus on “Am I good enough?” the deeper your despair will grow. The right question to ask is: “Is God good enough?”
The Bible gives us a clear and resounding answer: YES. God’s goodness and love are not dependent on our performance or feelings.
So why can’t we always feel that truth? This is a tough question for many Christians. We may intellectually believe that God is good enough, yet emotionally, we struggle to experience it. There’s often a disconnect between what we think we should believe (theologically) and what we truly feel (emotionally).
Acknowledging this discrepancy, rather than denying it, is key. Honesty—with God and with ourselves—is the foundation for healing. Sometimes, accepting this reality is where true mental health begins, and where salvation takes root.
This means embracing the darkness at the bottom of the pit and admitting, “This is where I am.” Acknowledge the defeats, disappointments, and hopelessness. That’s where God meets us. Many Christians struggling with mental illness only began to heal when they stopped trying to be "better" Christians and accepted where they were.
We often resist facing this darkness because we believe "good" Christians should always be victorious and joyful. But as Jesus taught in Luke 18:9-14, those who think they are "good" are far from God’s salvation. There are no "good" Christians—only honest ones and those pretending to be.
The heart of the Gospel is that God meets us in our deepest darkness—not at the top, not halfway down. Jesus alone achieves the victory, and we share in His victory through His blood. We cannot overcome emotional brokenness through religious efforts or self-improvement. This is why many self-help messages, both secular and Christian, fail. They shift focus away from where we meet God. It’s never about what we do; it’s about what God has already done.
Tim Keller beautifully explains the “Order of Grace” in the Gospel:
- First, God loves us.
- Then, God saves us and sets us free.
- Finally, we respond by obeying Him.
This order is essential. Reversing it—thinking we must obey first to earn love or salvation—is the root of many perfectionism-driven struggles among Christians today.
Go to the bottom of your darkness and cry out to God. He will meet you there. We see this in the Bible: the woman at the well (John 4), Lazarus and his sisters (John 11), Blind Bartimaeus (Mark 10), Zacchaeus (Luke 19), the bleeding woman (Luke 8), and the father pleading with Jesus, “Help me with my unbelief!” (Mark 9).
Each of these people was completely stuck—whether emotionally, spiritually, or physically. None of them had to change or earn their healing. It wasn’t about the amount of faith they had or how hard they worked, but their raw honesty and desperation that brought healing.
This doesn’t mean spiritual disciplines like prayer and Bible reading are unimportant. They absolutely matter. But they are not tools to craft an idealized “spiritual image” to earn God’s acceptance. Stop trying to climb out of your pit to convince God—or others, or yourself—that you’re worthy of His love. God already loves you completely.
The Gospel assures us: you don’t need to climb up. God comes down to meet you exactly where you are. His love, grace, and healing are freely given, not earned.
