You keep him in perfect peace
whose mind is stayed on you,
because he trusts in you.
Isaiah 26.3
“Studies: Belief in God relieves depression” It is nice to see God making the headlines these days, especially when the headline reveals a biblical truth, though I suspect the Washington Times reporter is not familiar with the Book of Isaiah. Yet, I wonder, is it news when researchers “discover” something that believers have known for three thousand years?
Apparently in 2009 psychologists in Toronto found that there are clinical differences between the brains of believers and non-believers. In particular, believers have brains that do a better job of blocking anxiety and minimizing stress. And now researchers at Chicago’s Rush University Medical Center have found that patients diagnosed with clinical depression who believe in a caring God show a 75 percent stronger response to treatment than patients who do not; the difference? According to Patricia Murphy, a chaplain at Rush, it is hope.
And this hope is not any kind wishing for some spiritual force to make things turn out well, but rather a trust in a personal God who actually cares about us. Imagine that! Knowing that God cares for us gives us hope, and hope, as Paul wrote in Romans 5.5, does not put us to shame. In fact, according to these studies, hope helps us resist and recover from things that tear non-believers down.
The key would seem to be peace, perfect peace with God, which is the state of all those who put their trust in him. Of course, moving from enmity to peace with God is beyond our ability, and that truth itself is just about the most depressing news anyone could ever receive. But there is a greater truth, which God himself pours into our hearts: the truth about Jesus Christ, through whom alone we have peace with God. On the Cross Jesus died to bring peace between God and humanity. It is through Christ that we access by faith/trust in him the grace of God which produces the kind of hope that puts anxiety to rout and brings us back from depression.
Try as they might, though, I fear researchers will never be able to quantify this hope of believers, because it comes from a peace that passes all understanding, a peace that guards our hearts, and our minds, in Christ Jesus. (See Philippians 4.4-7) But, though it is not quantifiable, this peace is certainly knowable and real, and if not exactly transferable, it is sharable. In fact, we can begin to help someone who is anxious or depressed with just three little words, “God loves you.” Trusting in the God who so loved us that he gave his only Son to save us is the one sure path to the peace of mind that bears all things and endures for eternity.
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