Is it a sin to be sad on this edition of Truth in Love?

I'm Heath Lambert and you're listening to Truth in Love, a podcast of the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors,

where we seek to provide biblical solutions to the

problems that people face. One of the most common biblical commands is to be joyful or to

rejoice. We understand that the scriptures teach us that as Christians, we are to be joyful people.

But this raises an issue because in the context of a fallen world, we know that many people struggle with sadness, with sorrow. That is particularly

relevant in our contemporary culture because so many people struggle with the diagnosis of

depression. One of the most common

psychiatric diagnoses is that of depression. And so we need to figure out what does this mean,

this experience of depression, when we think about the biblical commands to be joyful in Christ.

And so we've invited this week to join us on Truth and Love, Dr. Charlie Hodges. Dr. Hodges is an ACBC

certified counselor, and he is a board certified medical doctor. And this week, Amy

Evenson, the producer of Truth and Love, caught up with him to ask him some questions about

this topic. I would love if you could answer for us, is depression an evidence of sin or sickness?

Well, that's a complicated question for several reasons.

And those reasons are found in the words depression, sin, and sickness.

Because while depression is widely understood in our society today, it's not nearly as understood as well from the medical

definition of what depression is. When you say, I'm depressed today, it doesn't mean what it meant

35 years ago. Before the 1980 revision of the diagnostic statistical manual of mental disorders,

you could not be diagnosed with major

depression. If you could tell me why you were sad, if you could tell me what happened to you or what

you lost or the problem that you faced, then we would never have given you a diagnosis of major

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