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Virgin Monk Boy's avatar

Yes, Jim. A thousand incense sticks lit in your honor. 🙏

Trying to pray away a mental health condition is like shouting at a toothache in Aramaic and calling it “deliverance.” It may feel holy, but all you’re doing is bleeding in tongues.

The idea that faith should eliminate depression is the spiritual equivalent of prosperity gospel for the psyche: dangerous, dishonest, and designed to keep people quietly suffering while they try to outperform their humanity with devotion.

What you said about the This-Is-What-I-Have vs. This-Is-What-I-Am mindset? That’s real theology. That’s the desert wisdom the early monks were trying to channel when they stared at the walls of their cells until the walls started talking back.

We are not our pain. We are the space that holds it.

So no, you can’t pray it away—but you can bring prayer with you as you sit on the therapist’s couch, refill your meds, and walk through your grief like the mystic you forgot you were.

Thank you for naming what so many of us were taught to deny. This is gospel. Just not the kind they’ll preach from the pulpit.

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Kirsten Powers's avatar

I remember a church I went to 15 years ago where the pastor told people they shouldn’t be on antidepressants and to rely on God instead. Another church I went to convince me to do healing prayer for my anxiety and then a year later I discovered I was in perimenopause, and I started taking hormones, and the anxiety was gone within a week. The irresponsibility of this kind of behavior cannot be overstated. I’m glad I’m not part of these kinds of communities anymore but I do worry about people who are.

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