BIPOLAR CHRISTIANITY

Isaiah 12:1-14:32; 2 Corinthians 13:1-13; Psalm 57:1-11; Proverbs 23:9-11

“In that day you will sing: ‘I will praise you, O Lord! You were angry with me, but not any more. Now you comfort me. See, God has come to save me. I will trust in him and not be afraid. The Lord God is my strength and my song; he has given me victory.’ With joy you will drink deeply from the fountain of salvation!”

“…As the Scriptures say, ‘The facts of every case must be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.’ …Examine yourselves to see if your faith is genuine. Test yourselves. Surely you know that Jesus Christ is among you; if not, you have failed the test of genuine faith. … We pray that you will become mature…. Be joyful. Grow to maturity. Encourage each other. Live in harmony and peace. Then the God of love and peace will be with you. Greet each other with Christian love.”

“I will thank you, Lord, among all the people.  I will sing your praises among the nations.
 For your unfailing love is as high as the heavens. Your faithfulness reaches to the clouds.”

“Don’t waste your breath on fools, for they will despise the wisest advice.”

Bipolar disorder is a wicked disease. Those who have it routinely cycle through phases of hyperactive, manic highs to depressive lows grounding on near bedrock. Many who suffer are misdiagnosed and truly do not know what is wrong with them. There is little that is any more emotionally stressful than the irrationality of the mood swings with which these unfortunate victims must contend. I pray that God will inspire and quicken the minds of the scientists racing to help identify and treat this illness. No one should have to suffer such instability.

Unfortunately, too many Christians live like they suffer from a bipolar disease of the spirit. One moment, fresh from the mountaintop, they are awash in emotional ecstasy, and the next they are down in the dumps. They willingly substitute subjective feelings for honest assessments of their spiritual condition, and when their emotional tanks run dry, they get angry with God and/or the Church for what they see as abandonment. Unlike bipolar disorder, which has a true genetic chemical imbalance as its source, bipolar Christianity has a much simpler cause. Me. That is to say, self. I can honestly say I have never met a “bipolar Christian” whose fundamental problem was not self-centeredness. Been there, done that, myself. Inadvertently or not, at some point, all of us displace the Holy Spirit as the controlling motivator of our lives. We run on self-generated adrenalin, convincing ourselves that busyness equates to importance, until our manic lifestyle drains all emotional and physical energy. Most of us sufferers then compound the problem by trying to cover up our lack of spiritual resources. We lie and tell ourselves and others we have everything under control. Meanwhile, life presses in from all sides, threatening to collapse the tenuous hold we have on our self-confidence, ultimately causing stress and even greater depression. So, we go on more retreats, we read more spiritual books, and we throw ourselves more intensely into what we think is worship, desperate to manufacture yet another spiritual high. But with each such cycle, the highs become lower and the valleys deeper. What a yucky way to live! Christ has in mind something much better, but we have to begin by being honest with ourselves.

Paul is right: we need to honestly test ourselves to see if our faith is genuine. But we should not just take our own word, of feelings, for it. Our spiritual condition is the one thing we should NOT take on faith. It needs, demands, to be specifically examined on a periodic basis, and not just by ourselves, but by trusted, wise others. There is no such thing as spiritual inertia; we are either truly growing, or we are being drained, and we usually need friends to help us see the difference. In matters of the soul, there is just no such thing as status quo. We need to hold ourselves spiritually accountable to multiple friends who love us enough to tell us when we are substituting form for substance in our walk with Christ. All the cosmetics in the world will never cover up spiritual emptiness, and none of our good deeds or obvious Christian piety will sustain us if the Holy Spirit is not motivating us from the inside out.

Genuine, heartfelt praise is a good and wonderful thing. We are always and everywhere to give thanks to God and praise His name. But there will be times when we just don’t feel like it. In these moments, manufactured praise turns bitter and leaves us cold. We may even end up feeling worse, or wanting to punch or curse the Lord. If we are going to honestly praise Him anyway – as Scripture calls us to do – then that praise will necessarily have to come from somewhere beyond our own personal resources. Stated another way, there will be times for all of us when, if we are really going to follow Christ, the motivation will have to come from the Spirit, because we will either just flat not want to, or won’t have the personal strength to stay the course. Before the need arises, we do well to take stock of our spiritual condition in the company of friends. We need to be prepared at all times for the worst, even as we always hope for the best. As far as I know, the only real cure for bipolar Christianity is a healthy, habitual reliance on the Holy Spirit, rather than our own performance and perseverance. Ultimately, only the Spirit can make Christ real.