Andrew Stoecklein, as many of us know by now, a thirty year old pastor in Chino, CA attempted suicide this last Friday; succumbing to his attempt the following day in the hospital. He leaves behind his wife, and three young boys. It is a tragic story, and one that is not outside the bounds of God’s gracious mercy; one that is not outside God’s eternal love and peace that he now is extending as the Comforter to Andrew’s wife, boys, family, friends, and church. Andrew and family of only the last three years lost his dad (who pastored the church that Andrew took over) at the young age of fifty-five to a four year battle with leukemia. Andrew said that this began a progression that led him into an intense breakdown resulting in severe depression and panic attacks (debilitating). He had just come back as of the last few weeks to continue in the pulpit ministry; in his first series—entitled Hot Mess—he disclosed what in fact he had been struggling with mentally and emotionally with his parishioners. Unfortunately the swarm of panic and darkness of anxiety overcame Andrew even as he was dealing with and talking about it openly among his family, friends, and church.

His story has gone far and wide online, as it should. There have been many responses to what happened, and many points of counsel in regard to what people should do in cases where they know that this is being experienced by family, friends, or even pastors; or if it is being experienced by them. The responses I have read have been from within the church by other Christians; and they have categorized what Andrew was dealing with as mental illness. I don’t want to fully discount that language, per se, but I am going to push back on that a bit in this post. I am going to speak to this from my own experience as a Christian who walked through years of literal hell dealing with exactly what Andrew was dealing with: severe anxiety, panic attacks, and depression. The way I am going to frame this though, rather than mental illness, is through the lens of spiritual battle.

My battle started most intensely in 1995, I had been out of high school since 1992; so I was only twenty-one years old. I had grown up in the church as the son of a pastor (just like Andrew), and had a sensitivity to the Spirit of Christ; but I had grown lukewarm. I knew things weren’t right, and I began praying that the LORD would do something to draw me close to him. In the midst of that I took a weeklong trip to Las Vegas with some friends. As we were getting ready to go out every night I began to have a strong oppression hit me; it was an anxiety attack (the first one I ever experienced). Each night at the same time it would hit me, as if God’s heavy hand was on me keeping me from going out; and it did. I told my parents, and they knew exactly what I was going through; my dad had experienced this in severe ways, years prior, as he as a young Christian began service in pastoral ministry. I had hoped when I came home that it would subside and I’d get on with my life; but it didn’t. Not only did it persist but it intensified and got worse. Associated with this was an intense doubting of God’s existence; even though prior to this I never even bashed an eyelash at such a thought. This began a season of probably a nine year span where I went through the deepest of darkness you might imagine (and you couldn’t unless you’ve gone through it yourself). Because I was doubting the existence of God—who was the core of my being—I also began to doubt the existence of all of reality; so of course I felt like I was going crazy. The most interesting thing about that was that the doubt didn’t seem like it was my own; as if it was from an outside source being imposed upon me. The LORD ministered to me through this in ways that have led me to where I am today, but I almost didn’t make it. During that time, mostly in the first few years, I was in such a darkness that I was on the brink of suicide multiple times (in periods, most of the time). I kept living life; going to work, hanging out with friends, and attempting to somehow survive this. I did survive it, obviously; but barely.

I don’t want this post to be fully about me; but I wanted to provide enough context in order for you to see where I am speaking from in regard to Andrew’s story. As I began this ‘walk,’ as I noted earlier, I told my parents, and I kept talking to my parents. They would talk with me for hours sometimes, and pray with me. They encouraged me to read my Bible, and so I did; constantly. I found a church (Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa) that I could attend every day of the week if I wanted to; and I did (about five days a week). My parents discerned that what I was going through was a spiritual battle, and I agree it surely was. The nature of the anxiety and panic was related to God’s existence, and then dealing with questions surrounding the veracity of Christianity versus other belief systems (even though I wasn’t really equipped to fully identify all of that at that point). Not to mention that I was also dealing with an assault of the most blasphemous and dark thoughts you could imagine (and couldn’t). My parents let me know that this wasn’t uncommon; that Charles Spurgeon himself suffered with these sorts of things throughout his pastoral ministry. So these things, I would contend, were agitated by demonic and external forces, and that God providentially allowed such assault so that I might draw close to him and he to me; and I did, and he did.

So what about Andrew? Let me quote something I tweeted earlier:

For many it is called: deep spiritual warfare wherein the demonic attempts to exploit weaknesses in the psycho-physical of our spiritual lives. The battle is real, and represents a complex that only the Gospel itself has the power of God to disentangle. Let me expand: I think the Gospel entails much. It not only entails the recreative resurrection power pro me pro nobis it entails a deep and abiding fellowship among the saints in fellowship w/ the Triune life. it places the mind and heart into a mode of deep captivation of doxology and internalizes the reality that life is given as gift from the living God. it goes beyond simply thinking of such things in terms of intellectualisms but indeed internalizes these deeper realities such that we have space to “get out of our own heads.” i would contend that being in the Christian ministry (pastoral or not) opens us up to a world of heavy spiritual battle that unless we remain vigilant we will easily be overcome. ironically what it often means to be a pastor requires attending to more superficial concerns these superficial concerns of keeping up with a certain look or sound etc actually open pastors up to more attack w/o the proper armor. as such burnout and worse can ensue and deep disaster and destruction of many sorts can take place. but i know that things are a complex. i’m just speaking from my own experience w/ anxiety, depression and spiritual warfare and being on the brink of what this pastor did many times in years past. it’s an absolute battle that the evangelical church culture doesn’t allow for so pastors and other Christians attempting to live as real life Christians bearing witness to Christ often feel isolated and feel like they have to go it alone while maintaining “appearances.” TERRIBLE. DEMONIC stuff.

And then I wrote this later on Facebook:

And I’m certainly not trying to trivialize things or complexities. I know the depths, and in the midst of it there is no easy answer or way out. Christ is present, but sometimes he lets us feel like he isn’t. We need good fellowship with sound brothers and sisters just as Titus et al comforted the Apostle Paul and brought him out of the doldrums of depression more than once. The realities of the evangelical subculture (and other church subcultures in the west) do not fit with the realities of the Kingdom; which typically and often involve being depressed having ‘the sentence of death written upon us’ much tribulation and dark nights of the soul that make us feel in the abyss. The evangelical church culture does not allow for such realities, and most people haven’t attempted to walk deep enough to even know how to comfort others with the same comfort they have been comforted with (II Cor. 1.1-6). In fact the lacuna and silence in these areas of even acknowledging what I’m noting in this comment is highly concerning for me in re to the churches. The lack of depth in regard to learning how to suffer as if it is a spiritual venture of living under ‘light affliction’ is deeply concerning. For those who desire to live holy lives there are all types of affliction just waiting to be stepped into. Often when we first experience that it feels as if we’ve entered a foreign land, and without the proper guide and perspective and understanding of what the fiery ordeal actually is we will fall into pits of despondency that others will not even be able to recognize for us.

Maybe Andrew’s sources of anxiety and panic weren’t the same as mine, but I’m guessing the darkness and abyss was very much so similar. I’m also sure that Andrew and I aren’t the only ones in the church (let alone the world ‘out there’) who have walked through this valley of the shadow of death. But what I want to press is the idea that while I can accept that there is a serious physiological component to all of this, what shouldn’t be read off of that is that this makes this issue a mental health issue alone. In fact since I believe salvation entails an embodiedness, as attested to by the bodily death, burial, resurrection, ascension, and forthcoming second advent of Jesus Christ, what should be read out of these issues is that there is a devil who is a thief and murderer who wants to destroy all of those who seek to live from the righteousness of Christ and bear witness to the name of the living God. And that because this is the reality of the Kingdom, and the in-between nature we currently inhabit, and because our LORD Jesus himself endured untold spiritual attack during his tenure on earth, we ought to read Andrew’s situation through that lens; as if what he was primarily dealing with went deeper than mental illness.

The way I see it is that “mental illness” has almost become trendy, and in our scientistic and hyper-aware times, society at large believes that we can essentially hand off these sorts of issues to the scientists and mental health experts; as if they have magic bullets that can traverse the depths of our hearts and bring us remedy and succor that “regular” non-scientific people can’t. Now, do I think that there is no place for certain medicines to maybe calm the mind down in the intensity of such seasons? No; I probably could have benefited from some of that myself, but I never did take any psycho-active drugs. But, again, these medicines don’t really or ultimately or always suppress the deeper issues; which I am going to suggest that in many cases (if not all for the Christian) are indeed a result of spiritual battle that the Christian doesn’t even know to recognize.

So what is the solution? We need fellowship, as I noted earlier, with other mature Christians. We need to experience the comfort from others that they have themselves experienced from the Comforter-God, and to fellowship in that. We need to be consistently bathing our hearts and minds in meditation upon Holy Scripture which will promote a dialogical (prayerful) interchange between the living God and the sufferer such that the sufferer (like Job) will come to the point of doxological (worshipful) awareness and come to rest in a mind and heart (God’s) that knows nothing but peace, order, and harmony as that is resident in God’s life. We also need to come to expect seasons of deep anguish, of many sorts, as Christians and not allow the surprise of the fire to over-take us to the point that we lose perspective (this is easier said than done when in the heat of the season and moment of despair). But the ultimate key is to learn to look away from ourselves, and look at the face of Christ constantly; and to learn to see him in the faces of others. As we begin the process of learning how to look out and away from our navels (which we were born to do in the ‘flesh’) it is in this that the order of God’s life comes to penetrate our psyches and we begin to experience his well-being as the basis of our being in very personal and internal ways. As these processes become patterns through the purifying fires of God’s depths for us, eventually what used to feel like utter hopelessness and abyss will be pierced through with the Light of God’s life for us.

For the Christian there is no other way of growth. Certainly there are various ways that growth occurs, and various levels of intensity that the LORD walks us through; it won’t all be the same for each of us—as the LORD has a peculiar and particular plan for each of our lives in his Kingdom. But these things need to be borne in mind as we walk this world as Christians. If we desire to live righteously we will indeed bear much tribulation; but it isn’t tribulation greater than what the LORD hasn’t already borne for us (even if it usually feels that way; especially at first).

I am not pretending to know exactly what Andrew was going through, but I am underscoring that what is called depression and anxiety is quite pervasive (as so many of us know). I am, along with you, deeply saddened at the seemingly senseless death of Andrew; but I know that he is now reveling in the presence of the living God at his right hand where there is peace and abundance forevermore. It is tragic. I am praying for his wife and three boys; and the rest of his family and church members. Rest in the Peace of Christ, Andrew. amen.

² Bear one another’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ. Galatians 6