Appendix (4): Good Mood: The New Psychology of Overcoming Depression

Good Mood

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Good Mood:
The New Psychology
of Overcoming Depression

Chapter 18

cont.

Values and Religion

Values Therapy frequently has connections with religion. This is sometimes problematic from the standpoint of communication, because even the word "religion" alienates many people. Religious experience has a very specific God-orientation for some people, whereas for others it is any experience of the awesome mysteries of life and the universe.

Suggesting as I will that religious values and spiritual (though not supernatural) experience may be the solution for some people may alienate those who are militantly anti-religion. On the other hand, suggesting as I will that rejecting the concept of a historical father-like God may help for others may alienate those who have a traditional Judeo-Christian belief in an active God. But if I can reach and help some sufferers, alienation or no, then I'll have done the best I can and I'll be satisfied.

(Alcoholics Anonymous seems to have little problem with this sort of problem, as mentioned earlier. Its minimum requirement - - that members have faith that there is some power greater than the individual -- seems to be widely acceptable because almost anyone can accept the idea that the "greater" power may simply be the strength and energy of "the group". So perhaps the problem is not grave.)

A religious value, or a value for being a religious person, can be the discovered value in Values Therapy. For a person who discovers the value of being a Christian, the discovery implies believing that God forgives you for all your sins, and you must hand over to God responsibility for both your decisions and your actions. If this is the case with you, as long as you live in such manner as you believe a Christian ought to live, any negative comparison between what you are and what you ought to be is inappropriate. In other words, even if you have low status in the daily world, or if you have been a sinner, you may still feel worthy if you believe as a Christian.

Christianity says that if you love Jesus, Jesus will love you in return--no matter how low you are; this is crucial for the Christian depressive. It means that if one accepts Christian values, one is bound to feel loved in return. This operates to diminish the force of negative self-comparisons, both by making one feel less bad because all are equal in Jesus, and because the feeling of love tends to diminish any sadness.

Believing that Jesus suffered for you--and hence that you should not suffer -- keeps some people out of the clutches of depression. In this way Christianity offers unusual succor to those afflicted by sadness.

For a Jew, a religious value that works against depression is the Jewish commitment to cherish life. A traditional Jew accepts as a religious duty that one must enjoy her or his life, both materially and spiritually. Of course, "cherishing" life does not mean just "fun"; rather it means being constantly aware that life is good and all-important. A Jew is not permitted by religious dictates to be inordinately sad; for example, one is not allowed to mourn more than thirty days, and to do so is to sin.

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One must be careful, of course, that the religious "requirement" of enjoying life does not turn into just another "must" that you fail to achieve and therefore leads to additional negative self-comparisons. If you tie yourself into this sort of a knot, then you obviously are better off without this religious commitment. But this is not a black mark against this religious idea; no set of guidelines for living is without its own dangers, just as the kitchen knife that is so useful for cutting food can be the instrument of a self-inflicted injury, accidental or intentional.

In the Epilogue, I describe at length how Values Therapy saved me from depression. The highlights relevant to this particular section are as follows: I first learned to keep depression at bay on the Sabbath, following the Jewish injunction that one must not be sad on the Sabbath. Then I recognized that a more general Jewish value demands that one must not throw away the largest part of one's life in sadness. Then, and perhaps most important, I faced up to the conflict between my depression and my children's future happiness. These discoveries cracked my depression and permitted me to enter into a period (lasting until now) when I am basically unrepressed and even happy (sometimes very happy), though I must continue to fight against depression on a day-to-day basis.

It is interesting that Tolstoy invented for himself (though he ostensibly took the value from Catholicism) a value which resolved his depression and which is like the Jewish value concerning life. Tolstoy concluded that life itself is its own meaning for the peasant, whom he proceeded to try to imitate:

...the life of the whole labouring people, the whole of mankind who produce life, appeared to me in its true significance. I understood that that is life itself, and that the meaning given to that life is true: and I accepted it...a bird is so made that it must fly, collect food, and build a nest, and when I see that a bird does this, I have pleasure in its joy...The meaning of human life lies in supporting it...(12)

(If one realizes that the question "What is the meaning of life?" probably is semantically meaningless, one can be free to find other values and philosophical constructions.)

Another Jewish value is that a person must respect oneself. For example, a great Talmudic sage asserted: "Be not wicked in thine own esteem".(13) And a recent scholar amplified this as follows:

Be not wicked in thine own esteem.

This saying preaches the duty of self-respect. Do not think yourself so abandoned that it is useless for you to make "an appeal for mercy and grace" before God. "Regard not thyself as wholly wicked, since by so doing thou givest up hope of repentance" (Maimonides). Communities, like individuals, are under the obligation not to be wicked in their own esteem. Achad Ha-am wrote: "Nothing is more dangerous for a nation or for an individual than to plead guilty to imaginary sins. Where the sin is real--by honest endeavor the sinner can purify himself. But when a man has been persuaded to suspect himself unjustly--what can he do? Our greatest need is emancipation from self-contempt, from this idea that we are really worse than all the world. Otherwise, we may in course of time become in reality what we now imagine ourselves to be."(14)

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