Skip to footer

Overcoming depression with God’s love

We can rise into a more permanent joy through learning of our unity with divine Love. 

  • By Diahana Barnes

Christian Science Perspective audio edition
Loading the player...

There was a time in my life when I experienced a deep depression. There were days when I didn’t want to get out of bed and completely lacked motivation. It was a dark sadness that seemed to be sucking me under. I was not my usual self.

Desperate to feel happy again, I decided to turn to God for help through prayer. Using a foundational truth of Christian Science – that all is created and governed by the divine source, God, Love – I began to pray deeply. With support from teachings in the Bible and its companion textbook called “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures” by Mary Baker Eddy, I started to deepen my spiritual understanding of God and my unique relationship to our source.

What I was learning included the fact that God is all good and only good. And we, as God’s likeness, are entirely spiritual and also only good. The book of Genesis states, “God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good” (1:31). And Science and Health says, “God is Love” (p. 2), echoing the first Epistle of John.

Thinking about all these ideas, I replaced any depressed thoughts with “God is Love.” I thought about what that meant for me, reasoning that since God is Love and created all things, then that creation is good and includes me. If I am one with my spiritual source, how would it be even slightly possible to experience anything unlike Love? Could the source of all goodness also create a feeling of sadness?

I knew the answer was no. Divine Love couldn’t create sadness or depression. And that meant it wasn’t possible for me to be bogged down with depressed thoughts. So I could find the freedom that was always truly mine by focusing on spiritual thoughts and qualities – those that come from God and are harmonious, loving, kind, gentle, and caring.

Depressed feelings are like sludge or mud that tries to pull us down, preventing us from seeing and experiencing the love of God. But the love of God is amazing, all-powerful. We can wash away the mud of depression and negative self-talk, which are false in the light of divine Love, by prayerfully deepening our understanding of the love of God. “Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time. Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you” (I Peter 5:6, 7, New International Version).

As I continued to pray with these ideas, my thinking became more spiritualized. Thoughts of depression and sadness were increasingly replaced by spiritual thoughts of love, goodness, and joy, and I felt more and more like myself until the sadness was completely gone. The depression has never returned.

We are created, expressed, and composed solely from Love, which means we are now and forever living in harmony. By understanding God’s love for us, we can find peace and joy, even in the midst of our struggles. And, if we’re feeling depressed, we can overcome this and experience more fully our inherent happiness.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Enjoying this content?
Explore the power of gratitude with the Thanksgiving Bible Lesson – free online through December 31, 2024. Available in English, French, German, Spanish, and (new this year) Portuguese.
Read the Thanksgiving Lesson
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Overcoming depression with God’s love
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/A-Christian-Science-Perspective/2023/0711/Overcoming-depression-with-God-s-love
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe