“Why am I depressed?”
The answer to your question will vary depending on who you ask. A friend may say one thing, a doctor another, and a therapist may tell you something completely different.
But have you tried asking your own soul?
In Psalms 42 and 43, the psalmist gives those struggling with depression a biblical model for finding hope. In this article, we will see how asking yourself, “Why are you cast down?” can point you to hope in the midst of depression.
The Refrain of Psalms 42 and 43
Psalms 42 and 43 are linked by a shared refrain. Three times in these two psalms, we find this cry:
Why are you cast down, O my soul,
and why are you in turmoil within me?
Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,
my salvation and my God.
(Psalm 42:5–6a, 11; 43:5)
In these verses, we find an internal struggle, an internal response, and an external response.
An Internal Struggle
The refrain takes the question to heart. “Why are you cast down, O my soul?” But this is not a bewildered, fact-seeking inquiry, for the psalmist already knows the answer—he has been singing about it from the first verse and will reiterate it again in the next sentence. No, the question is one of internal conflict: “Why are you in turmoil within me?”
The psalmist’s struggle here illuminates the struggle of depression in general: Depression is a struggle with yourself.
John Calvin understood this internal struggle. He says, “David here represents himself as if he formed two opposing parties… [he] regards himself as the enemy against whom he desires chiefly to contend.”1
One part of you knows exactly what to do. Another part of you weeps and is plagued by voices of doubt (42:3). That part is submerged under a heavy waterfall, your cries drowned out by its roar (42:7). You mourn because you feel forgotten by God and taunted by enemies (42:9–10).
Which part will win the battle?
An Internal Response
If the conflict is internal, you will need guidance on how to win that internal battle. These psalms reveal how you should respond in your heart.
What are you to do in response to this inner struggle? The psalmist models the right heart posture and internal activities:
- Pant for God (42:1)
- Thirst for God (42:2)
- Remember times of sweet corporate worship (42:4)
- Pour out your soul to God (42:4)
- Hope in God (42:5)
- Remember God (42:6)
- Take refuge in God (43:1)
You may already be doing and experiencing many of these things. After all, the psalmist pants and thirsts for God yet still describes himself as “cast down” and “in turmoil within me.”
Or maybe these things seem impossible right now. Maybe you’re so overwhelmed that the thought of putting on socks—let alone working up a holy, spiritual appetite for God—induces anxiety, guilt, or panic.
Perhaps the best advice I can give you on this point is this: Recognize that your turmoil comes from a hunger for God. You may be earnestly longing to know and love the Lord, or you may be embittered against him and running away from him. Either way, the pain you feel—or the dull ache where pain should be—comes from a soul that hungers and thirsts.
So lean into that spiritual hunger. Even if you don’t feel it now, follow the psalmist’s lead in expressing it. Turn to God internally. Meditate on the verses cited above. Identify your need as a hunger and thirst for the Lord. Turn your mind to remember him, his love for you, and his character (42:6). If that seems too abstract, remember the “glad shouts and songs of praise” you have experienced when gathering with the church to worship (42:4).
Your chief temptation will be to find an easier path. Junk food fills, but leaves you in a worse condition and destroys your appetite for wholesome fuel. Be wary—fearful, even—of starving yourself of God. The more you keep yourself from him, the more you lose your appetite for spiritual things.
Cultivating an appetite for God begins by taking charge of your inner narrative. This is one of the key insights of the psalm, and it is repeated three times by design:
- Call your soul to account: “Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me?” Let go of the excuses you make that keep you in the same place. Take an honest look at yourself, and hold yourself responsible for the state of your soul.
- Tell yourself what to do: “Hope in God.” To hope in God is not to conjure up a cheerful feeling of rosy optimism. To hope in God is to recognize that he is your only source of comfort, help, and deliverance.
- Tell yourself the truth: “I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God.” Align your thinking with what is true, which includes the reality of how you feel (see verse 5). More importantly, align your thinking with what is true about God. As you rehearse the truths of who he is and what he has promised for you, you will learn to interpret your circumstances biblically. Your conversation might look like this: “I don’t feel his presence now, but I believe that he is my only hope of salvation. I believe that he is God, and that everything the Bible says about him is true, despite whatever I feel right now. And so I will again praise him.”
- Tell yourself these truths repeatedly. Do it again, regardless of how you feel. This is the prayer’s “chorus,” and if the inspired psalmist needed to say it over and over, you do too.
An External Response
The psalmist models another type of response for us. Our internal response is important, and our internal narrative must change—that’s the point of the refrain. But our external response is equally significant if we are to find a way forward towards hope in the midst of depression.
These psalms give two examples of external responses to the internal struggle.
First, in Psalm 42:8, the psalmist speaks. “I say to God, my rock…” Three things to note about this outward activity:
- It is vocal. He actually says these words. Too often we allow inchoate thoughts to be counted as prayers. There is an advantage to articulating the problem: Instead of a messy, shapeless fog of despair, the psalmist quantifies and thus limits the problem. He says, “I feel like you have forgotten me. I’m despairing, I’m oppressed, and I feel like you are absent” (42:9–10). Whether you write or verbally speak, put your prayer into words. There is hope to be found in articulating your plea.
- It is directed to God. He speaks to God. Yes, he takes control of his inner narrative and speaks to himself, but he doesn’t stay there. He turns to God.
- It is honest. His prayer is not trite or sentimental, nor full of sanctified prattle. He is honest about the feeling of “a deadly wound in my bones,” and the question, “Where is your God?”
Second, in Psalm 43:3–4, the psalmist goes. “Bring me to your holy hill and to your dwelling! Then I will go to the altar of God, to God my exceeding joy!” Three things to note about this external response:
- Joy is found among God’s people. In 42:4, the psalmist remembers the joy of worshiping with the throng at the house of God. In 43:3–4, he anticipates the joy of returning to the place of God’s worship. Depression is the valley between the spiritual heights of gathering with God’s people. Whether depression is the cause or the effect, spiritual lethargy and sparse church attendance often go hand in hand.
- Light and truth lead to God’s house. The psalmist asks for the leading of God’s light and truth. This is a request for a revelation of God himself. He is the truth (John 14:6) and the light (1 John 1:5). Where does such revelation lead? “To your holy hill and to your dwelling.”
- Your internal narrative should lead to external worship. The trajectory of the psalm moves from sanctifying self-talk to vocal prayer and longing to worship with God’s people. Just as you must continue to call your soul to account (Psalm 43 ends with the refrain), your account leads to a robust life of worship in the church. After all, this is what the refrain points to: “I shall again praise him.” The context, as we’ve seen, indicates that the type of praise he means is congregational worship.
These psalms help us see that depression is an internal struggle that requires internal and external responses grounded in truth.
Hope is found in identifying your need as one that only God can satisfy. The way forward in the midst of inner turmoil is to call your soul to account, tell yourself truths about God, and begin practicing the external disciplines of prayer and corporate worship.
As you do so, you will move with the psalmist towards the soul-satisfying conclusion that ends both psalms: God is “my salvation and my God.”
