My God, My God, Why Hast Thou Forsaken Me? A Dreadful Night

By James Miller

One night, in the spring of 1998, I went to bed peacefully. Sometime during the night, I bolted from bed in a state of terror. The next hours and days were characterized by an intense and unexplainable sense of recurrent anxiety and dread. The first two weeks were the worst. I remember walking on my driveway and thinking, "I feel anxiety, but I don't even know what I am anxious about. There is no specific circumstance to which I can attach this anxiety." Later, my anxiety would find specific circumstances and attach itself to them.

I described my experience to a friend who is a social worker. He said, "It sounds like a classic panic attack." The elders of our church, along with my overseer, called a prayer meeting and anointed me with oil. My family doctor attributed the problem to a "bio-chemical imbalance" related to serotonin, a chemical produced by the brain. For six months, I was on medication. I don't think it helped me.

During the next two years, I struggled with anxiety, depression and obsessive-compulsive tendencies. It wasn't until the third year that, very slowly, I began to feel "normal". But I also began to realize that "normal" for me may not always be so "normal".

Strangely enough, as the pain decreased, the pain began to feel familiar. "This is the way I felt in the third grade" I thought, "anxious and depressed." My obsession with "doing taxes right", reminded me of my late teenage years and early twenties when I obsessed on "doing confession right." No matter how many sins I confessed, I was never satisfied that God was satisfied. No matter how many times I read the IRS publications, I couldn't satisfy my conscience-maybe I misinterpreted the tax code.

I also experienced a lot of anxiety towards God. It reminded me of my seminary days-thirteen years earlier-when I dreaded going to theology class. There, a theological system of thought, called Calvinism, was presented and defended by some of its finest proponents. The Calvinistic view of predestination created anxiety in me, though it was meant to foster security. Thirteen years later, I felt that same sense of anxiety towards God, only with unprecedented intensity precipitated by that dreadful night in May.

I could give other examples. But my point is that all of these earlier life experiences were similar-albeit less severe-to those very difficult years of 1998-2000. One day I opened a psychology text book. My eyes fell upon a section of text that grouped anxiety, depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder. I read this section and realized that I was reading about myself. There have been many wonderful seasons in my life. But there have also been times of struggle interspersed throughout these seasons.

After May of 1998, I felt so God-forsaken it seemed too painful to spend personal time with God. However, my wife Audrey would sit with me and read the Bible and pray. I cannot say enough about Audrey's profound loyalty and sustaining support during those dark days. I needed someone to have faith in God for me. She did just that.

Later, I resumed reading the Bible for myself. A whole dimension of the biblical record took on new meaning for me. I took consolation in finding passages which featured believers smitten by the "dark night of the soul". Though John the Baptist was a witness to the light, he was overcome by spiritual darkness while in prison. He questioned a basic tenet of the faith: was Jesus the Messiah, or should he look for someone else? (Matthew 11:3) David felt God-forsaken. (Psalm 22:1) The solidarity of Jesus with human suffering was so complete that he could quote David: "My God my God, why have you forsaken me?" Even Jesus asked "Why?"

I also took consolation from church history. Luther struggled with deep bouts of depression which he attributed to "loss of faith that God is good and that he is good to me." It was depression that forced Charles Spurgeon, the nineteenth century revivalist, from the pulpit for two to three months a year.

Believers are not exempt from spiritual darkness and painful emotions. Such experiences are not signs of God-forsakenness. Faith asserts itself at the deepest level when experiential evidence of God is absent. In an experiential state of God-forsakenness (Psalm 22:1-2), David confesses, "Yet you are enthroned as the Holy One." (Psalm 22:3)

After Jesus rose from the dead, he appeared to the disciples behind closed doors. The physical presence of Jesus set their faith to soaring. But there was one disciple who was given the opportunity to assert his faith without seeing the physical presence of Jesus. This is faith at the deepest level-with a special blessing. Jesus wanted doubting Thomas to be unusually strong precisely at the point that he was unusually weak. Imagine, the doubter as the believer par excellence! Thomas missed the opportunity. So Jesus did appear bodily to Thomas and said, "Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed (John 20:29).

David the King, Thomas the disciple, Martin Luther the reformer, and Charles Spurgeon the revivalist are representative of all believers who have struggled. They all have something in common. They shared their struggles. My struggles are not over. My most recent struggle feels like some of the same old struggles in a new form. I will continue to need people that I can talk with about my struggles. In openness, there is release.

James Miller is associate pastor of Lexington Mennonite Church in Lexington, Kentucky. He is married to Audrey (Showalter) and they have five children: David, Jonathan, Anthony, Micah, and Audrey.

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