In the interest of bringing a degree of objectivity I will answer some basic questions as to why I am reading “Spiritual Depression” authored by D. Martin Lloyd Jones.
Why do I want to read this book?
There are a few reasons, but certainly at the outset, the very combination of the first two words in the title of D. Martin Lloyd Jones book “Spiritual Depression” reach out and grab me. The stark honesty of that combination of words placed together speaks to my human soul where two realities often meet in my innermost being, that which is “Spiritual”, and that which is, “Depression”.
The title then actually brings me a small and immediate sense of relief in the fact that it authenticates a condition that is seldom (if ever) shared in conversation between people yet is often part of a person’s experience. There is something in that alone that brings a breath of reviving.
The second reason, which quickly follows the first, is found in the last part of the title which is (Its causes and its cure) which promise insight and hope for the person who will sit down with the good Doctor Martin Lloyd Jones and undergo a thorough examination and submit to receiving prescribed medicine. (Lloyd Jones was a medical doctor before becoming a Theologian-Pastor.)
A third reason, which is surely the most objective, is that I have never read this book, though it has been in my personal library for years. I’m not completely sure how I even came to posses it.
Now I come to a few more honest questions.
Why don’t I want to read this book?
(Yes, why haven’t I read this book despite the fact that I have owned it so long?)
The first reason for not wanting to read this book, ironically, comes from the first two words of the title, Spiritual Depression. It seems much like a piercing light that threatens to exposes the rather darkened corners of the inner human experience, and not just any experience but one I know. So there is the relief of exposure on the positive side and the agony of exposure on the other.
Another reason, in the same irony and in a continuation of the same thoughts comes from the second part of the title “its causes and its cure”. There are really two promises here, one to search for the roots of the problem and the other to remedy the problem but, (and this is the hard part), these promises in order to become effective, require a commitment from the reader; (in this case myself), a commitment to submit to the tools and process of perhaps radical surgery and all without the aid of either local or general anaesthetic. In the economy of spiritual realities there can be no dulling of either pain or joy.
So I move forward hopeful, committed and with a slight perspiration on my brow as I currently sit in the waiting room of a pastor- theologian- physician, D. Martin Lloyd Jones, who had in his lifetime upon earth, served the Great Physician Jesus Christ in bringing health to people just like you and I for the purposes of God and man.
