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Japanese No. Depression is not a sin, and the Bible never calls it one. Elijah asked God to take his life (1 Kings 19:4), the psalmists wrote laments such as Psalms 42 and 88, and Jesus said in Gethsemane, “My soul is very sorrowful, even to death” (Matthew 26:38). Catholic, Orthodox and major Protestant bodies treat depression as an illness.
When Elijah lay down under a broom tree and asked to die, God answered him with sleep, with bread and water, and with an angel who came back a second time. If we carry this weight, or watch someone we love carry it, Scripture puts us in that company: prophets and psalmists, and the Lord himself, who prayed “with loud cries and tears” (Hebrews 5:7).
Is depression a sin?
Scripture has no word for the medical condition, and none of the New Testament’s lists of sins includes sadness or despondency (for example Mark 7:21–22 and Galatians 5:19–21). Christian teaching ties sin to what a person knows and chooses. The Catechism of the Catholic Church says that responsibility for an act “can be diminished or even nullified by ignorance, inadvertence, duress, fear, habit, inordinate attachments, and other psychological or social factors” (paragraph 1735), and that “pathological disorders” can diminish the free character of an offense (1860).
The same Catechism does name two sins that can sound like depression. Despair, a sin against hope, is when a person “ceases to hope for his personal salvation from God, for help in attaining it or for the forgiveness of his sins” (2091). Acedia, or spiritual sloth, “goes so far as to refuse the joy that comes from God and to be repelled by divine goodness” (2094). Acedia is described as a refusal, and despair as giving up hope in God’s goodness, justice and mercy. John Paul II, speaking to a Vatican conference on depression in 2003, called depression “this disease” and “this pathology,” and said it is often accompanied by “an existential and spiritual crisis.”
Is it a sin to be sad?
No. Jesus wept at the tomb of Lazarus (John 11:35). Ecclesiastes says there is “a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance” (Ecclesiastes 3:4), and Paul told the Romans to “weep with those who weep” (Romans 12:15). Paul also distinguished two kinds of grief: “godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death” (2 Corinthians 7:10).
Depression in the Bible
The clearest case is Elijah. After the contest with the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel, Queen Jezebel threatened to kill him, and he fled into the wilderness. “He came and sat down under a broom tree. And he asked that he might die, saying, ‘It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life, for I am no better than my fathers’” (1 Kings 19:4). He slept, and an angel woke him with bread and water, then came a second time: “Arise and eat, for the journey is too great for you” (19:7). At Mount Horeb the Lord was not in the wind, the earthquake or the fire; after them came “the sound of a low whisper” (19:12). Elijah repeated his complaint, “I, even I only, am left, and they seek my life” (19:14), and God answered by sending him back to work, to anoint two kings and Elisha as the prophet who would succeed him (19:15–16).
The Psalms give such feelings words for prayer. “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” (Psalm 42:5, repeated in 42:11 and 43:5). Psalm 13 asks, “How long must I take counsel in my soul and have sorrow in my heart all the day?” Psalm 88 is darker still. It begins, “my soul is full of troubles, and my life draws near to Sheol,” and ends with no turn to praise: “You have caused my beloved and my friend to shun me; my companions have become darkness” (Psalm 88:3, 18).
Others in Scripture said they wanted to die or wished they had never been born: Moses (“kill me at once,” Numbers 11:15), Job (“Why did I not die at birth?” Job 3:11), Jeremiah (“Cursed be the day on which I was born!” Jeremiah 20:14) and Jonah (Jonah 4:3). Paul wrote that in Asia he and his companions “despaired of life itself” (2 Corinthians 1:8).
In Gethsemane Jesus “began to be sorrowful and troubled” and told Peter, James and John, “My soul is very sorrowful, even to death; remain here, and watch with me” (Matthew 26:37–38). Hebrews says he prayed “with loud cries and tears” (Hebrews 5:7), and that Christians do not have “a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses” (Hebrews 4:15).
Does suffering mean someone has sinned?
The Bible sometimes connects suffering with sin, and sometimes refuses the connection. In Psalm 38 the writer links his own distress to his own wrongdoing: “there is no health in my bones because of my sin” (Psalm 38:3). The book of Job is built around the opposite case. Job’s friends insist that his suffering must be punishment, and at the end God tells one of them, “you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has” (Job 42:7). When the disciples asked whether a man born blind or his parents had sinned, Jesus answered, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents” (John 9:3).
What do churches teach about depression?
The Catholic Church treats depression as an illness with a spiritual side. In his 2003 address John Paul II repeated the conference’s conclusion that “depression is always a spiritual trial,” and he asked those caring for depressed people who “do not have a specifically therapeutic task” to help them “rediscover their self-esteem” and to bring them into a community “in which they can feel accepted, understood, supported, respected.” He recommended the Psalms, the Rosary and the Eucharist, and asked for patience with the effort that simple tasks cost a depressed person.
The Russian Orthodox Church’s Bases of the Social Concept (2000) regards mental illness as one of the “manifestations of the general sinful distortion of the human nature,” meaning the fallen condition all people share rather than a person’s own sins. It says it is “equally unjustifiable to reduce all mental diseases to manifestations of obsession” by evil spirits “and to treat any mental disorder exclusively by medical means,” recommends combining pastoral and medical care, and states that “no mental disease diminishes the dignity of a person.”
Among Protestants, the Southern Baptist Convention resolved in 2013 to “oppose all stigmatization and prejudice against those who are suffering from mental health concerns” and to “support the wise use of medical intervention for mental health concerns when appropriate.” Some Christians, especially in the biblical counseling movement, stress the sufficiency of Scripture for mental illness; an amendment that would have added that emphasis to the 2013 resolution was voted down. A 2022 study of how evangelical Christians in the United Kingdom perceive depression began from the observation that “some Christian communities may understand mental illness as the result of spiritual causes, such as sin, demons, or a lack of faith.”
What is depression?
The World Health Organization calls depression “a common mental disorder” and estimates that 5.2% of adults worldwide have it. A depressive episode involves a depressed mood or a loss of pleasure or interest in activities, lasting most of the day, nearly every day, for at least two weeks. Depression “results from a complex interaction of social, psychological, and biological factors,” and people who have lived through abuse, severe loss or other stressful events are more likely to develop it.
Depression is treatable. The WHO says “there is effective treatment for mild, moderate and severe depression”: psychological treatments come first and can be combined with antidepressant medicines in moderate and severe cases. Depression can lead to suicide. In the United States, the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline answers calls and texts at 988.
Can Christians be depressed?
Yes, and some of the best-loved teachers in the Church have known it from the inside. The Baptist preacher Charles Spurgeon told his students in a lecture titled “The Minister’s Fainting Fits” that “fits of depression come over the most of us,” and spoke of “knowing by most painful experience what deep depression of spirit means.” The Catholic priest Henri Nouwen kept the journal later published as The Inner Voice of Love (1996) during a severe depression in 1987 and 1988. Rick and Kay Warren’s son Matthew, who had struggled with mental illness for years, died by suicide in April 2013, and in March 2014 their Saddleback Church held a gathering on mental health and the church.
The darkness came to them as it came to Elijah. God’s care for his prophet began with rest and food for the road, and the angel’s word under the broom tree is still spoken to anyone walking it: “Arise and eat, for the journey is too great for you” (1 Kings 19:7).
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