“Despite the rise of the mental health profession, people are becoming increasingly vulnerable to depression.”

A thought by John Ortberg (2014-04-22) from his book, Soul Keeping: Caring For the Most Important Part of You (p. 46). Zondervan. Kindle Edition. (Click on the title to go to Amazon.com to buy the book.)

A Study in The Journal of the American Medical Association showed that in the twentieth century, people who lived in each generation were three times more likely to experience depression than folks in the generation before them. 

Now why is that?  John writes, “Martin Seligman, a brilliant psychologist with no religious ax to grind, has a theory that it’s because we have replaced church, faith, and community with a tiny little unit that cannot bear the weight of meaning. That’s the self. We’re all about the self. We revolve our lives around ourselves. Ironically, the more obsessed we are with our selves, the more we neglect our souls.”

Now there are chemical imbalances that bring about depression.  That needs to be checked but a self focus goes a long way to bring it on.  So many people live in a world that totally revolves around themselves and not their soul.

John continues, “All of our language reflects this. If you’re empty, you need to fulfill yourself. If you’re stressed, learn how to take care of yourself. If you’re on a job interview, you have to believe in yourself. If you’re at the tattoo parlor, you must learn to express yourself. If someone dares to criticize you, you have to love yourself. If you’re not getting your own way, you have to stand up for yourself. What should you do on a date? You ought to be yourself. What if your self is a train wreck? What do you do then? Self is a stand-alone, do-it-yourself unit, while the soul reminds us we were not made for ourselves.”

John quoted former opera singer Scott Flaherty where he said. “Imagine singing, ‘Then sings my self, my Savior God to thee,’ or ‘Jesus, lover of my self.’ Innately we know that the self is not the soul, even as we do everything we can to preserve it.”

We have somehow changed our focus from our soul to our self and we are suffering the emotional consequences of it.

So is it self or soul that is the focus of your life?