Tag Archives: The Soul’s Conflict With Itself

Listening to Ourselves (a comparison of some recent psychology and a Puritan and a 20th Century Preacher)

14 Tuesday Aug 2018

Posted by in Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Psychology, Richard Sibbes, Uncategorized

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Suicide because we “listen to ourselves”:

the consistent finding of the role of the destructive inner voice in suicide. This voice drives suicidal tendencies, deceptively convincing people that it is better to end their lives than to find an alternate solution to their suffering

This author picks up on that idea and applies to other self-destructive behavior short of suicide:

For many, understanding there is an innate voice that wishes for death and destruction can help to separate, and thereby distance, one from these thoughts. Distance from the thoughts helps one disown them and take away their power. You are not your thoughts. Once these thoughts are recognized, they can be challenged, minimized, and disregarded. Healthier thoughts can be put in their place.

This observation is actually much older than these psychologists realize. First, Richard Sibbes in “The Soul’s Conflict With Itself”, writing of depression, explains:

Whence we may further observe, that we are prone to cast down ourselves, we are accessory to our own trouble, and weave the web of our own sorrow, and hamper ourselves in the cords of our own twining. God neither loves nor wills that we should be too much cast down. We see our Saviour Christ, how careful he was that his disciples should not be troubled, and therefore he labours to prevent that trouble which might arise by his suffering and departure from them, by a heavenly sermon; ‘Let not your hearts be troubled,’ &c., John 14:1. He was troubled himself that we should not be troubled. The ground, therefore, of our disquiet is chiefly from ourselves, though Satan will have a hand in it. We see many, like sullen birds in a cage, beat themselves to death. This casting down of ourselves is not from humility, but from pride; we must have our will, or God shall not have a good look from us, but as pettish and peevish children, we hang our heads in our bosom, because our wills are crossed.

And as for speaking to ourselves about such things, Martyn Lloyd-Jones, taking his cue from Sibbes, formulates the answer thus:

The main art in the manner of spiritual living is to know how to handle yourself. You have to take yourself in hand, you have to address yourself, you have to preach to yourself, question yourself. You must say to your soul, “Why art thou cast down?” — what business have you to be disquieted? You must turn on yourself, upbraid yourself, condemn yourself, exhort yourself, and say to yourself: “Hope thou in God” — instead of muttering in this depressed unhappy way. And you must go on to remind yourself of God, Who God is, and God is and what God has done, and what God has pledged Himself to do. Then having done that, end on this great note: defy yourself, and defy other people, and defy the devil and the whole world, and say with this man: “I shall yet praise Him for the help of His countenance, who is also the health of my countenance and my God.”

Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Spiritual Depression, “General Consideration”

Strangers in a Strange Country

28 Sunday Jun 2015

Posted by in affliction, Faith

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For the members, they are all predestinated to a conformity to Christ their head, as in grace and glory, so in abasement, Rom. 8:29. Neither is it a wonder for those that are born soldiers to meet with conflicts, for travellers to meet with hard usage, for seamen to meet with storms, for strangers in a strange country, especially amongst their enemies, to meet with strange entertainment.

A Christian is a man of another world, and here from home, which he would forget, if he were not exercised here, and would take his passage for his country. But though all Christians agree and meet in this, that ‘through many afflictions we must enter into heaven,’ Acts 14:22, yet according to the diversity of place, parts, and grace, there is a different cup measured to every one.

Richard Sibbes, The Soul’s Conflict With Itself

The Soul’s Conflict With Itself, 6.3

29 Saturday Nov 2014

Posted by in Biblical Counseling, Richard Sibbes

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In the midst of despair, we must realize that God has not left us without ability to respond. Sibbes next notes “that God hath made every man a governor over himself.” Observation 5.

We have a disposition to seek to rule, which is often misplaced. Say two persons are in conflict which leads them both (or one) to a troubled heart. The common move is to seek the government of the other. Yet, as Sibbes notes, that tendency must be put to its proper use:

It is the natural ambition of man’s heart to desire government, as we see in the bramble, Judges 9. Well then, let us make use of this disposition to rule ourselves.

This disposition and ability does not have its proper use, the result will be our hurt:

‘He that can govern himself,’ in the wise man’s judgment, ‘is better than he that can govern a city,’ Prov. 16:32. He that cannot, is like a city without a wall, where those that are in may go out, and the enemies without may come in at their pleasure. So where there is not a government set up, there sin breaks out, and Satan breaks in without control.

Thus, in our troubles, we must understand that much of our troubles lies in trouble we cause ourselves by (1) seeking to govern that outside of ourselves, and (2) failing to govern our own hearts.

The previous post in this series may be found here: https://memoirandremains.wordpress.com/2014/11/05/the-souls-conflict-with-itself-6-2/

The Soul’s Conflict With Itself 6.2

05 Wednesday Nov 2014

Posted by in Biblical Counseling, Richard Sibbes

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Pascal writes:

Distraction is the only thing that consoles us for our miseries. Yet it is itself the greatest of our miseries. For above all, it it that which keeps us from thinking about ourselves and so leads imperceptibly to destruction. But for that we should be bored, and boredom should drive us to seek some more reliable means of escape, but distraction passes our time and brings us imperceptibly to our death (414-171).

It is here, to the one without distraction that Sibbes draws our attention. For Sibbes, human solitude is not a matter of being withdrawn, but being alone with God. We need not be drawn away with our own distractions and confused heart — if there is a Spirit above our spirit to govern our affections and draw us toward God:

Obs. 4. We see here again, that a godly man can make a good use of privacy. When he is forced to be alone he can talk with his God and himself; one reason whereof is, that his heart is a treasury and storehouse of divine truths, whence he can speak to himself, by way of check, or encouragement of himself: he hath a Spirit over his own spirit, to teach him to make use of that store he hath laid up in his heart.

Pascal famously noted that it was our inability to be alone in a room which causes the depth of human misery.  Sibbes would agree and state that the heart which can be governed by the Spirit is one that need not be alone, at all. Rather, the one who knows and is known by God can come closest to God in such solitude.

The Spirit is never nearer him than when by way of witness to his spirit he is thus comforted;

If such solitude is such a bounty, then why do we fear it so? Our conscience. As Hamlet says to Rosencrantz:

O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.

It is precisely this trouble which makes solitude such a misery:

wherein the child of God differs from another man, who cannot endure solitariness, because his heart is empty; he was a stranger to God before, and God is a stranger to him now, so that he cannot go to God as a friend. And for his conscience, that is ready to speak to him that which he is loth to hear: and therefore he counts himself a torment to himself, especially in privacy.

Now one may dispute Sibbes (and Pascal’s) proposition. Yet experience proves the opposite. First, there is the great mountain of distraction that is our world. We make gods out of those best able to distract us. To whom do we give our money? Those who distract us and those who manage the distraction.

Now the alternative of “peace” and “meditation” is merely a variant on the theme. To empty one’s mind is merely to drive off the thoughts in a different direction. Both strategies seek to leave us anything about alone with ourselves and God.

We read of great princes, who after some bloody designs were as terrible to themselves,* as they were formerly to others, and therefore could never endure to be awaked in the night, without music or some like diversion. It may be, we may be cast into such a condition, where we have none in the world to comfort us; as in contagious sickness, when none may come near us, we may be in such an estate wherein no friend will own us.

What then is the solution? To have a heart prepared to meet God, to live in communion with God. The great weakness of the Christian church is its inability to lead Christians to be with God.  Even in the most doctrinally correct churches it seems that God is little better than an abstraction.

Sibbes directs to close with God in Word and Spirit (as Owen sought to teach in Communion With God). Christianity does most good with it is intensely spiritual and vital. When our hearts are directed and taught to be with God, even our solitude becomes a place of great joy and comfort:

And therefore let us labour now to be acquainted with God and our own hearts, and acquaint our hearts with the comforts of the Holy Ghost; then, though we have not so much as a book to look on, or a friend to talk with, yet we may look with comfort into the book of our own heart, and read what God hath written there by the finger of his Spirit. …. By this means we shall never want a divine to comfort us, a physician to cure us, a counsellor to direct us, a musician to cheer us, a controller to check us, because, by help of the word and Spirit, we can be all these to ourselves.

Consider careful those words of Sibbes: a divine (pastor), physician, counselor, musician, controller.

This comes from “observation 4” discussing remedies for a soul cast down. Here, Sibbes places the remedy in the preparatory work. We must prepare ourselves for our trouble. It will be found in:  Richard Sibbes, The Complete Works of Richard Sibbes, ed. Alexander Balloch Grosart, vol. 1 (Edinburgh; London; Dublin: James Nichol; James Nisbet and Co.; W. Robertson, 1862), 148–149.

The previous post in this series may be found here: https://memoirandremains.wordpress.com/2014/09/10/the-souls-conflict-with-itself-6-1/

The Soul’s Conflict With Itself 6.1

10 Wednesday Sep 2014

Posted by in Biblical Counseling, Richard Sibbes

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Sibbes here makes an interesting observation: without some restraint which is greater than our soul, we will fall into a drowning despair. He states this positively, as something which one who claims to knowing God must claim:

Moreover we see that a godly man can cast a restraint upon himself, as David here stays himself in falling. There is a principle of grace, that stops the heart, and pulls in the reins again when the affections are loose. A carnal man, when he begins to be cast down, sinks lower and lower, until he sinks into despair, as lead sinks into the bottom of the sea.

David Foster Wallace in his essay “Shipping Out”, makes this point in nearly the same language as Sibbes (which is all the more painful, in light of his own eventual suicide):

Some weeks before I underwent my own Luxury Cruise, A 16 – year – old mail did a half gainer off the upper deck of a Megaship. The news version of the suicide was that it had been an unhappy adolescent love thing, I shipboard romance gone bad. But I think part if it was something no new story could cover. There’s something about a mass– Market luxury cruise that’s unbearably sad. Like most unbearably sad thing is, it seems incredibly elusive and complex and its causes yet simple in its effect: onboard the Nadir (especially at night, when all the ship’s structured fun and reassurances and gaiety ceased) I felt despair. The word “despair” is overused and banalized now, but it’s a serious word, and I’m using it seriously. It’s close to what people called to read or angst, but it’s not these things, quite it’s more like wanting to die in order to escape the unbearable sadness of knowing I’m small and weak and selfish and going, without doubt, to die. It’s wanting to jump overboard (Harper’s Magazine, January 1996, p. 350)

Sibbes writes:

‘They sunk, they sunk, like lead in the mighty waters,’ Exod. 15:5. A carnal man sinks as a heavy body to the centre of the earth, and stays not if it be not stopped: there is nothing in him to stay him in falling, as we see in Ahithophel and Saul, 2 Sam. 17:23, who, wanting a support, found no other stay but the sword’s point. And the greater their parts and places are, the more they entangle themselves; and no wonder, for they are to encounter with God and his deputy, conscience, who is King of kings, and Lord of lords.

Thus, despair should not strike us as a strange thing; rather we must understand that such despair is the default setting which shows itself as soon as our stays and distractions fail. Yet such must not be the default of one who claims to know Christ, “Therefore as we would have any good evidence that we have a better spirit in us than our own, greater than the flesh or the world, let us, in all troubles we meet with, gather up ourselves, that the stream of our own affections carry us not away too far.”

The weight of this despair comes not merely from the trouble itself, but from trying to carry a weight which is beyond our ability. Wallace writes of knowing “I’m small and weak and selfish and going, without doubt, to die.” Realizing our frailty and our troubles will easily crush us. Thus, it is precisely at this point that we must turn our frailty to advantage and bring the trouble to one who can bear the weight. In Matthew 11:28, the Lord calls, “Come to me all you labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”

Sibbes explains the mechanism for how we increase our sorrow by bearing a burden which should never have been ours:

There is an art or skill of bearing troubles, if we could learn it, without overmuch troubling of ourselves, as in bearing of a burden there is a way so to poise it that it weigheth not over heavy: if it hangs all on one side, it poises the body down. The greater part of our troubles we pull upon ourselves, by not parting our care so, as to take upon us only the care of duty, and leave the rest to God; and by mingling our passions with our crosses, and like a foolish patient, chewing the pills which we should swallow down. We dwell too much upon the grief, when we should remove the soul higher. We are nearest neighbours unto ourselves. When we suffer grief, like a canker, to eat into the soul, and like a fire in the bones, to consume the marrow and drink up the spirits, we are accessory to the wrong done both to our bodies and souls: we waste our own candle, and put out our light.

 

The previous post in this series may be found 

The Benefit of a Second Self

09 Tuesday Sep 2014

Posted by in Fellowship, Richard Sibbes

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But because we are subject to favour, and flatter ourselves, it is wisdom to take the benefit of a second self, that is, a well chosen friend,
living or dead,
books I mean,
which will speak truly, without flattery, of our estates. ‘

A friend is made for the time of adversity,’ Prov. 17:17; and two are better than one, Eccl. 4:9, for, by this means, our troubles are divided, and so more easily borne. The very presence of a true-hearted friend yields often ease to our grief.

Of all friends, those that by office are to speak a word to a weary soul are most to be regarded, as speaking to us in Christ’s stead.

Oftentimes, especially in our own case, we are blinded and benighted with passion, and then the judgment of a friend is clearer. Loving friends have a threefold privilege:

1, Their advice is suitable, and fit to our present occasion, they can meet with our grievance, so cannot books so well;

2, What comes from a living friend, comes lively, as helped by his Spirit;

3, In regard of ourselves, what they say is apprehended with more ease, and less plodding and bent of mind.

There is scarce anything wherein we see God more in favour towards us, than in our friends, and their seasonable speeches, our hearts being naturally very false and willingly deceived

Richard Sibbes, The Soul’s Conflict With Itself, chapter 14

Biblical Counseling, Depression Part IV

07 Sunday Sep 2014

Posted by in Biblical Counseling, Hope, John Bunyan, Psalms

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COUNSELING PROBLEMS AND BIBLICAL CHANGE

BIBLICAL SOLUTIONS FOR DEPRESSION, PART FOUR

 

DEPRESSION AND MEMORY

Memory is a curious thing when it comes to depression: Depression has the effect of muddling up our memory. When a depressed person attempts to remember things going on in the recent past, they tend make mistakes.[1]

Yet, depression also feeds upon memory.  Emily Dickinson wrote a poem which begins, “Remorse is memory awake”. In the final stanza she writes

Remorse is cureless,—the disease

Not even God can heal;

For ’t is His institution,—

The complement of hell.

 

A 14th Century book from England is entitled Ayenbite of Inwyt – the Again-bite of In-wit [one’s inner thoughts]. One of the great pains of life is not our mere present circumstances, but our memory of how we came to this place.

For example, imagine a man in living alone in an apartment in Hollywood. If the man had recently immigrated from rural Laos, the apartment and the city might seem a wonder and joy.

Now consider another man: Six months earlier he had been married and living in Bell Aire. However, through a series of foolish and wicked choices he now finds himself divorced and living in an apartment in Hollywood.

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The Soul’s Conflict With Itself.5

28 Thursday Aug 2014

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The prior post in this series may be found here

In the fifth chapter, Sibbes begins to consider the “remedies” for a downcast soul. First, he notes that we must “reason the case” and speak to our dejected soul. “Therefore the first way to quiet the soul, is, to ask a reason of the tumult raised, and then many of our distempers for shame will not appear, because though they rage in silent darkness, yet they can say nothing for themselves, being summoned before strength of judgment and reason” (145).

Yet, there are many people who never take the time to sound their own soul. Nor knowing their own heart, “Such men are strangers at home, afraid of nothing more than themselves, and therefore in a fearful condition, because they are reserved for the judgment of the great day, if God doth not before that set upon them in this world. If men, carried away with their own lusts, would give but a little check, and stop themselves in their posting to hell, and ask, What have I done? What am I now about? Whither will this course tend? How will it end? &c., undoubtedly men would begin to be wise” (145).

The reason we shun to know ourselves is that don’t desire to see the effects of sin. Sibbes explains:

But sin is a work of darkness, and therefore shuns not only the light of grace, but even the light of reason. Yet sin seldom wants a seeming reason. Men will not go to hell without a show of reason. But such be sophistical fallacies, not reasons; and, therefore, sinners are said to play the sophisters with themselves. Satan could not deceive us, unless we deceived ourselves first, and are willingly deceived. Wilful sinners are blind, because they put out the light of reason, and so think God, like themselves, blind too, Ps. 50:21, and, therefore, they are deservedly termed madmen and fools (146).

This is certainly true. No one (perhaps there is one) thinks their action truly wrong and warranting punishment and without excuse.  We live by rationalization and could not live without it. In this appearance the wonder of true repentance. Repentance has no rationalization; rather it condemns the sin most strongly and prays with David, “Pardon my iniquity for it is great” (Psalm 25:11b).

Sibbes further details the movements of the heart which shun such work. First, we love ourselves and thus will not think ourselves wrong. “but this self-love is but self-hatred in the end” (146).

Second, it is simply hard work to examine one’s own heart truthfully.

Third, “pride also, with a desire of liberty, makes men think it to be a diminishing of greatness and freedom either to be curbed, or to curb ourselves” (146).

Sibbes next explains that when we come to examine and charge (“cite”) our soul, we must not stop there: we press the soul to “give an account” (explain itself). Since our souls will rebel more strongly the longer the sinful passion rages, it is best to press the case as soon as possible.

Now, he moves to the objection: What if my soul refuse to give an account?

Then speak to God, to Jesus Christ by prayer, that as he rebuked the winds and the waves, and went upon the sea, so he would walk upon our souls, and command a calm there. It is no less power to settle a peace in the soul, than to command the seas to be quiet. It is God’s prerogative to rule in the heart, as likewise to give it up to itself, which, next to hell is the greatest judgment; which should draw us to the greater reverence and fear of displeasing God(147-148)

Biblical Counseling for Depression, Part Three

25 Monday Aug 2014

Posted by in Biblical Counseling, Psalms

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COUNSELING PROBLEMS AND BIBLICAL CHANGE

BIBLICAL SOLUTIONS FOR DEPRESSION, PART THREE

Is there a cure for depression? Yes. But it is not in us. It is in God. The cure is to seek God’s face, so ours will not be downcast, which is what the psalmist does.

James Boice, “An Upward Look by a Downcast Soul”

 

  1. BE CAREFUL ABOUT THE WORD “DEPRESSION”

A mistake which can easily be made is that all “depression” is created equal. As we noted before, not every distress called “depression” has the same cause nor does it require the same response. Indeed, the Bible doesn’t use the word “depression” as a catch-all category for moods and behaviors which result in extreme bouts of unhappiness.

In the early 17th Century, Richard Sibbes wrote a book called, “The Soul’s Conflict With Itself” which details many different sorts of pain, sorrow, withdrawing — all of which might be loosely termed “depression.”

As we stated before, there are medical problems which can fall under the title, “depression.” Where there is a medical problem, then medicine is an appropriate treatment.  However, much of the medical treatment for “depression” has proven to be of little help:

In the January 2010 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, a large study found that in patients with mild, moderate or even severe depression, a placebo had the same therapeutic benefit as an active antidepressant medication.  Depending on the study, patients in these three categories make up 70 to 87 percent of all patients who present with depression. The study concluded that unless a person had very severe depression, a placebo pill was as effective as antidepressant medication. Even when treating very severe depression, the placebo effect could account for up to 80 percent of the effect of the antidepressant medication[1].

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The Soul’s Conflict With Itself.4

18 Monday Aug 2014

Posted by in affliction, Biblical Counseling, Richard Sibbes

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The previous post in this series may be found here

In the fourth chapter, Sibbes continues with his initial observations.

First, he notes that often our trouble stems from how we think about situation. Words like depression are used to describe many different things. Sometimes, as Sibbes here notes, depression is a matter of sullenness and anger:

Whence we may further observe, that we are prone to cast down ourselves, we are accessory to our own trouble, and weave the web of our own sorrow, and hamper ourselves in the cords of our own twining. God neither loves nor wills that we should be too much cast down. We see our Saviour Christ, how careful he was that his disciples should not be troubled, and therefore he labours to prevent that trouble which might arise by his suffering and departure from them, by a heavenly sermon; ‘Let not your hearts be troubled,’ &c., John 14:1. He was troubled himself that we should not be troubled. The ground, therefore, of our disquiet is chiefly from ourselves, though Satan will have a hand in it. We see many, like sullen birds in a cage, beat themselves to death. This casting down of ourselves is not from humility, but from pride; we must have our will, or God shall not have a good look from us, but as pettish and peevish children, we hang our heads in our bosom, because our wills are crossed.

His note at the end is of particular importance,

This casting down of ourselves is not from humility, but from pride; we must have our will, or God shall not have a good look from us, but as pettish and peevish children, we hang our heads in our bosom, because our wills are crossed.

It pretends to humility, because we see one brought down. But the discouragement is more anger. The loss is the loss of what we wanted.

How can we use this information:

Therefore, in all our troubles we should look first home to our own hearts, and stop the storm there; for we may thank our own selves, not only for our troubles, but likewise for overmuch troubling ourselves is trouble.

Trouble may thus have its root in sin. Sometimes the trouble is sin directly leading to the discouragement. At other times, the sin leads to a condition, fear, grief, condemnation, physical or relational complications, which themselves give way to discouragement.

The way out of such a hole is to begin with faith, for God remedies sin and pride. But to fall into a sullen depression makes way for more troubles: One in such a state can do no good to neighbor nor show worship to God; such a dark heart is a slander of God; it makes one forget all the good which God has previously done; it works pain on everyone in proximity:

Therefore, we should all endeavour and labour for a calmed spirit, that we may the better serve God in praying to him and praising of him; and serve one another in love, that we may be fitted to do and receive good, that we may make our passage to heaven more easy and cheerful, without drooping and hanging the wing. So much as we are quiet and cheerful upon good grounds, so much we live, and are, as it were, in heaven. So much as we yield to discouragement, we lose so much of our life and happiness cheerfulness being, as it were, that life of our lives and the spirit of our spirits by which they are more enlarged to receive happiness and to express it.