In the latest episode of the CCL podcast, Peter Orr has a chat with Paul Ritchie, a pastor in Limerick in the Republic of Ireland, about his long-term struggle with different mental health challenges and how he thinks about these as a pastor.
They also discuss Paul’s book, Is it Unspiritual to be Depressed? Loved by God in the Midst of Pain, the relationship between the medical and the spiritual, intrusive thinking, the importance of receiving medical help, and the role of the church in looking after people with mental illness. We hope you find Paul’s insights—drawn from both his own experience and his understanding of God’s word—helpful.
Links referred to:
- Is it Unspiritual to be Depressed?: Loved by God in the Midst of Pain (Paul Ritchie)
- The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable? (FF Bruce)
- Jesus, Lover of My Soul: Fresh Pathways to Spiritual Passion (Julian Hardyman)
- Healing and the Scriptures (D Martyn Lloyd-Jones)
- Our August event: Affluent and Christian? Material goods, the King and the kingdom with Michael Jensen (21 August 2024)
- Support the work of the Centre
Runtime: 27:32 min.
Transcript
Please note: This transcript has been edited for readability.
Introduction
Peter Orr: In this episode, we’re going to hear from Paul Ritchie. Paul is a pastor in Limerick in the Republic of Ireland, and Paul will be speaking to us about his long-term struggle with different mental health challenges and how he thinks about these as a pastor.
Paul has written a book entitled Is it Unspiritual to be Depressed?, and I’m sure that you’ll find his insights, both from his own experience and his understanding of God’s word, to be very helpful.
I hope you enjoy the episode.
[Music]
PO: Welcome to this episode of the Centre for Christian Living podcast. I’m Peter Orr and today I’m joined by a friend: Paul Ritchie. Paul is pastor of Limerick Baptist Church. Paul, it’s great to have you on the podcast!
Paul Ritchie: Thank you, Peter! Thank you very much.
PO: Could you start by telling us a little bit about your family, but also your background, and particularly how you became a Christian?
PR: Okay. My family: I have a wife called Caroline, who is a wonderful wife. Three children: my eldest is in Dublin, training through Human Nutrition. The second is hoping to go to Dublin. They all want to go away to Dublin, which is about two hours from Limerick. They’re really enjoying life there. And then my youngest is 15—or 14 going on 15.
I grew up with parents who believed. I think one of the things that struck me early on was how different they were to other people’s parents—particularly in areas like truth, integrity, temper, and stuff like that. I could see (and I hope my friends aren’t listening) the difference between my parents and their parents in terms of just how the gospel shapes the way they viewed the world.
My dad, who’s very ill at the moment, is a very intelligent man, and I think that also gave a certain credibility to the gospel, as a child growing up and knowing this man, who was well-respected for his mind and who had engaged with the gospel. My mum is a very, very empathetic woman: she’s struggling now, because she has some sort of vascular dementia. But growing up, she was really a hero to me: she was a very, very emotionally intelligent woman, and very caring. I could see their love for the gospel.
When I was at school, I was a boarder. I put my head down. I think, like a lot of Christians going to non-Christian environments, I wasn’t much of a Christian. I wasn’t much of a study-er either; I repeated my leaving—that’s the finals in school. When I went to college, I sort of came to the stage where I thought, “I really need to take this seriously now.” I joined the Christian Union in Trinity College. I must admit that I had totally forgotten what the gospel is about, and I really struggled with the gospel. I struggled with why I couldn’t be good enough and why other people weren’t good enough. I struggled with doctrines like God’s judgement and hell. It was really difficult to take these things on board.
But I also was really helped by Christians who got me thinking: they got me looking at the evidence for the gospel. One of the books that really impacted me was FF Bruce’s The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable? The Christians I knew were intelligent people: I kind of felt in college that I was surrounded by everybody being more intelligent than me, and I realised that these people, who I really looked up to for their intelligence, were seeing the sense of the gospel, were making you think about the gospel and were making you think it through. From there, I got involved in CUY/UCCF, as it was then: the student unions did a thing called “Relay Work”, which is a voluntary year. Then I ended up working in a church, where Peter Orr used to—well, his parents were involved in it. I met my friend Peter Orr and the rest is history! [Laughter]
PO: There we go!
A childhood incident on holiday in France
PO: Now, you hinted at a few struggles at university. Take us back to when you were fourteen and you went on a camping holiday in France. I know you’ve spoken about that and written about that, and we’ll get to your book in a few moments. Take us back to that holiday and what happened on that holiday.
PR: Yeah. That was something that made a massive on my impact life—not at the time, but when I later looked back on it. I was 13, we were on holidays. I don’t know if I was a Christian then at all, but my parents used to try and encourage me by giving me good Christian biographies to read. I read a book called From Witchcraft to Christ and I was very curious about what would happen if you said some little Satanic prayers. I remember it was a really hot night and I couldn’t get to sleep. I was tempted and thought, “What would happen if I said a little Satanic prayer?” I don’t know how seriously I took it all, but I didn’t want to give in. But I couldn’t sleep, and eventually I gave in. Nothing happened and I told the Lord I was sorry for being so stupid. But that night, there was a thunderstorm. I thought, “This is God telling me I’m in big trouble!”
I went to my mother the next day and said, “Does God forgive anything that we do?”
She said, “Yes, he does—if we trust in him.”
That was probably the end of it—until when I was 19 and I began to investigate Christianity properly for the first time, and I came across this concept of an unforgivable sin. Of course, that memory came back to me.
To be honest, I was very anxious anyway: I was one of those people who was struggling with an anxiety disorder without knowing it, who latched onto the idea of an unforgivable sin before I even figured out what I had done. Then, of course, after times, thinking about it, I remembered this event from my holiday at age thirteen, and I was terrified.
That later moved into worries about the Hebrews warning passages (e.g. Heb 6:4-6, 10:26-31). No matter how much reassurance I read in commentaries that would involve an hardening of heart—that would make repentance something that you wouldn’t want to do—I was terrified.
This morning someone was talking to me in counselling and they spoke about the anxiety they experienced, I knew exactly something of what they felt. I would go to bed and just shiver with anxiety. I was sure I was doomed. In fact, the summer that I was worried about the Hebrew warnings passage, OJ Simpson was on trial for his—well, he got off [Laughter], but for his murder or whatever. I remember I used to look at him and the trial that was on Sky News all the time, and think, “But at least he’s got a chance. I’m doomed to hell. He can at least repent; I can’t.”
I obsessed over this for years and years—until I was in my 30s. Then in my 30s, the nature of my thoughts began to change and I started to have intrusive thoughts. Instead of worrying about what I had done, I was worried about thoughts that would come into my head and that “Maybe these will put me beyond God’s grace.” The truth is, anxiety disorders create terrible theology: I created a whole theology around this, even though commentary after commentary would assure me of the promises of God and the softening of the Spirit, and so on. I still struggled and struggled—eventually until I was diagnosed with OCD. That started me on the road to recovery.
The relationship between the medical and the spiritual
PO: What you’ve said is that there is the medical component—the diagnosis of OCD. But there was also a spiritual undercurrent as well. Do you just want to tease out a little bit more the relationship between those two, as you reflect back on them?
PR: Yeah. You were actually very helpful to me. For those listening, Peter has really been like a mentor to me, someone I turned on—no, not turned on [Laughter]; turned to [Laughter] at very dark times, and was very patient with me. The religious component and the medical component: it is interesting. I think I was prone to anxiety.
I think that mental health issues are multifaceted: often people I talk to might have a triggering event—an issue of bullying or abuse in their past. There might be a mental predisposition. It might even show itself in their family background.
Some of the triggering events can be—I don’t want to see “spiritual” in some ways. You might say they’re “theological”—that there’s a theological component. A bad theology. For me also, I’ve always been someone who’s struggled to trust God—struggled with my confidence in his character. That obviously will affect your mental health.
One thing I remember you said to me one time was, “Don’t forget that there is a spiritual war element to this, but not in some sort of crazy demons-whispering-in-your-ear sense, but in the sense that Satan is an accuser. Behind all this is insecurity and fear, and the devil wants to create those things within us.” But of course, there also may be a disposition—someone who is struggling with a general anxiety disorder or OCD. It’s not just accusations of the devil.
For example, often I would find that I would be anxious about something before I even knew what I was anxious about. The chemistry in your brain was creating an anxiety. I find that when I get burned out, when I’m under stress or if I’ve fallen behind on my tablets, one of the things I have to discipline myself to do is not to think—not to start thinking dark thoughts. Sometimes that can be almost impossible. But I need to realise I’m burned out, I’m stressed, I’m not well, I’m in the danger area of anxiety, and I must try not to think of old fears.
Mental illness and pastoring
PO: While you were wrestling with a lot of these issues, you were pastoring. You’ve been a pastor of a couple of churches. How did you find that particular role as a pastor while you were struggling, and sometimes struggling intensely with some of these issues?
PR: Yeah. I found a lot of times that even when I was at my worst, I wanted to work. That probably went back to my family ethic. Our family ethic was a work ethic: you could never do anything wrong if you’re working. I wasn’t much of a study-er, but once I started studying and started working, I probably found internal justification for that.
I found it hard to kick back and not work. But I did work for times as well—even through a time of deep depression. I know that the first time it happened, when I had to take a couple of months off work, I preached on a Sunday, but I didn’t stick around church. I was involved in an extremely loving and supportive church.
I don’t say this because of mental illness; I say this as a person. Because I struggle with the character of God, sometimes I do feel that sense of almost unworthiness as a pastor. I think dark thoughts, and I think dark thoughts about God, and it seems to be my disposition. It’s probably worry and proneness to worry, and so on.
Sometimes I’d think, “Really, should I be pastoring?”, because sometimes I’ve felt like the weakest Christian. I don’t say that because of mental health; I say that, really, because of something that contributed to my mental health, which was sometimes doubts about God’s character and so on. Yet God’s been so gracious: even now, with my father being very ill and probably in the last weeks of his life, my anxiety levels begin to go up. I think, “Can I cope without him? How will my depression be affected by this?” And yet I can see God’s timing. I’ve been reading a lot on the Song of Songs and reflecting on Christ’s love, and I just can see his goodness.
As I say, by nature, I’m a bit of a doubter and I’m prone to those dark thoughts. How much of that is mental health and how much of that is just who I am, I don’t know.
[Music]
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PO: The world is becoming wealthier and wealthier. Since the turn of the century, the net worth of many countries in the West and in Asia has tripled, poverty rates have fallen, and life expectancy has increased by more than six years.
At the same time, the divide between rich and poor has increased, with the richest one per cent owning almost fifty per cent of all the world’s wealth. Five to ten per cent of people still live in extreme poverty, even in the most affluent nations. Furthermore, while money can buy happiness, it can only do so up to a certain point, and wealthier people are more likely to be less generous and less kind to others.
How as Christians should we think about affluence? Is material prosperity a blessing or a curse, or both? Given the state of the world and income inequality, what are we to do with the riches God has given us? We’d love you to join us on 21 August when Michael Jensen, rector of St Mark’s Anglican Darling Point, will help us to see our earthly treasure the way our heavenly Father does.
And now let’s get back to our program.
On Paul’s book, “Is it Unspiritual to be Depressed?”
PO: Two years ago, you released a book published by Christian Focus, entitled Is it Unspiritual to be Depressed?: Loved by God in the Midst of Pain. What prompted you to write the book?
PR: What had happened was I blog a little bit—not very often—and I found that when I blogged on mental health, the reception of those blogs was good and people found them helpful. Then I ended up getting asked occasionally to speak at events about my own mental health: I’ve had a nervous breakdown. I struggle with depression. I have OCD.
One day on my day off on a Friday, I remember thinking, “I’ve got all these blogs about mental health. I think I might try to put them into a book.” I tried a couple of different publishers all around the same time, and Christian Focus picked it up. I just started working on it. In fact, I think I wrote the book before I even handed it to anyone. There was a little bit of therapy in writing it, and certainly lots of vanity. [Laughter]
Biblical resources for mental health issues
PO: It’s such a helpful book because it deals with those two issues we’ve been talking about—the medical and the psychological—but it also deals with the theological. You’ve got chapters like “Is Christianity good for our mental health?”, “Is it unspiritual to be depressed and anxious?”, “How can God help me in the midst of this pain?” and even, “How can I be sure I’m forgiven when I feel so guilty?” What resources have you found from the Bible—from the gospel—that have helped you over the years?
PR: Yeah, it’s funny: I remember reading something or listening to something by John White, the psychiatrist who wrote The Fight and other books. He had gone through a time of depression, and he said that actually what helped him was not devotional literature. He said what helped was doing an in-depth study of Hosea. He said the problem with devotional literature was that he wasn’t feeling anything: his feelings were numb, and devotional literature sort of hits in on your feelings, and so on, whereas he found a rigorous study of Hosea was something that helped him come to terms with the love of God and to see the love of God in the midst of his pain.
I have been helped by the Psalms of lament. I’m not very good at memorising Scripture, but even memorising something like Psalm 23 has been helpful to me—although, that being said, we were talking at tea time with my family, and I said, “Why don’t we pray?” and they said, “We’ll do Psalm 23”, and I said it off by heart and I got every second line wrong! [Laughter]So I hadn’t obviously learned it that well! [Laughter]
I know at the moment at this very difficult time with my dad not being well, I read a book by a guy called Julian Hardyman. He’s the pastor of Eden Baptist Church and he wrote a very good book called Jesus, Lover of My Soul: Fresh Pathways to Spiritual Passion, which is a reflection on Song of Songs. I’m finding that very helpful.
I suppose it depends where you are in your mental health struggle. When I was very, very low and right at the darkest place, I couldn’t pray at all. I remember even one time typing out prayers, because I couldn’t focus on anything other than saying, “Help me, Lord. Help me, Lord. Help me, Lord.” I took out my computer and I just had to type, because it was the only way I could finish the sentence in prayer and the only way I could move beyond, “Help me, Lord. Help me, Lord. Help me, Lord.”
In the very dark places, I think in some ways you need to trust in God’s gentleness towards you and realise that he’s not driving you to a place where you’ve got to prove yourself to him by having really significant quiet times. He is understanding and caring in that.
Medical help and intrusive thinking
PO: In terms of the medical help, some Christians might be a little bit nervous about going down that line. How did you find the medical help you received?
PR: Yeah. So I unashamedly take tablets every day. I take a serotonin reuptake inhibitor, which they have found is useful for OCD, which is really an illness based on intrusive thoughts. They seem to find some relationship to those type of tablets and the stickiness of our thinking—intrusive thoughts.
I have to say, Peter, going around and speaking at different events, the whole area of intrusive thinking is huge. I find that if I do a Christian event and I mention two things, there will always be people who want to talk: one is intrusive thoughts and one is assurance of salvation.
With intrusive thoughts, what I found very helpful was when a psychiatrist in the last church I worked in sat down and said to me, “You do realise what an intrusive thought is? When you get these thoughts that you can’t get out of your head that start piling in, they’re what’s called an ‘antithought’.” An antithought is not reflective of what you love; it really reflects what you fear. It’s the things you try not to think about—the things you’re scared to think about—and you begin to obsess over them.
I found that really helpful—this idea of an antithought. A lot of the time, I’d be thinking, “Oh my goodness! What’s wrong with my heart that these thoughts would even come into my head?” He was explaining, “But these don’t reflect what you love. They reflect the exact opposite. They’re reflective of what you hate. They’re reflective of what you fear.” I found that very helpful.
I found that when young men come to me and they might be struggling with intrusive thinking, I would sometimes say to them, “I used to worry because I’d get perverse thoughts,” and they’d go, “Oh, me too,” because that’s what they were most scared of. They were most scared that they might be perverted in some way.
I even had a man at a conference come to me and he said he had a thought of stabbing someone. He was obsessed that he might stab someone. His friend read about intrusive thinking and realised that he was actually the last person in the world who would stab someone. He was only obsessing over it because it’s what he hated and feared. This friend went to him with a knife—a bread knife—and said, “Hold that.”
He said, “I can’t hold that!”
His friend said, “Hold it.”
He said, “I can’t hold it.”
His friend said again, “Hold it.”
The guy held the knife and then realised he doesn’t want to stab anyone. It’s the last thing he wants to do. The thought was sort of disarmed of its power. So understanding things like that—understanding that there’s a medical component to this—is helpful.
I feel that people who don’t understand that mental illness can be an actual illness don’t understand the Fall. If you think of Romans 8, the whole creation groans—including our bodies (Rom 8:22-23). Or 1 Corinthians 15:50-54, which speaks of the perishable bodies we’re in. Since the Fall, our bodies ache, our bodies break, our bodies wear out, our bodies get ill, so why would we think that the brain wouldn’t suffer in some similar way? Why wouldn’t there be issues of an imbalance in the brain?
I said already that I think that mental illness tends to have more than one component to it. There can be a triggering event: for me, there was an issue of bullying at one stage in school that I think left a mental scar and fear with me. But there’s also mental health components, brain chemistry issues, and so on. If the cause of something is multifaceted, its treatment will then be multifaceted. The medical side is one way of dealing with that.
I love Martyn Lloyd-Jones. I’ve often thought Martyn Lloyd-Jones wouldn’t love me, though, because I joke all the time, as you know [Laughter], and I think Martyn Lloyd-Jones would find me a bit over-the-top. I’ve often said if Martyn Lloyd-Jones wrote a book about the Munster Rugby Team, I would be the first to buy it [Laughter], because everything he writes is interesting. Anyway, he wrote a book called Healing and the Scriptures, and in it, he said why would we think it’s any less spiritual to take a physical treatment for the brain if you’re willing to take a treatment for diabetes or anything else? I think that that’s true.
I also find that, as a pastor, when it comes to taking tablets, often the attitude of the person’s spouse, if they’re married, is really important. I’ve seen people whose spouse is a little bit unsure about whether they should take a tablet, and therefore they keep pushing away from that, whereas, I think that it’s a legitimate treatment like any other.
The role of the church in looking after those with mental illness
PO: In one of the chapters in your book, you deal with how, as a church, we can help each other—particularly those who are depressed and anxious. Can you talk a little bit about that—what you said in the chapter and how you’ve seen that play out in practice?
PR: Yeah. In the last church I was in, we seemed to have an inordinate number of people with mental health issues. But my guess is that we didn’t have any more than normal. It was just that the church had responded to the fact that their pastor struggled with depression and anxiety, and it freed them up to be able to talk about their own struggles.
One of the things I think you want to do is create an environment in church where brokenness is not uncommon. While not all people are going to struggle with mental health issues, all people are going to struggle with brokenness. You want to create a church where that is seen as something that’s normal, where that’s not shocking, and where that’s responded to with grace.
In the church I’m in now, which I absolutely adore, we’re trying to encourage more of a prayer ministry. We have a prayer room where people can go after the church service and express things they’re worried about. But it’s actually really hard to get people to go to the prayer room and ask for prayer for anything. It is that reluctance that we have to be publicly broken. We all want to look strong. But we want to create an environment—not that sort of indulgent environment where everyone wants to find their identity as a victim, but where it’s gracious and supportive.
I’ve been thinking a lot about bearing each other’s burdens. One of the girls in our church said to me recently in McDonald’s that she had really come to the conclusion of how one of the ways Christ wants to show his love to people in the church is through the people in this church—that role that we play.
PO: Yeah, wonderful.
Conclusion
PO: Paul, thank you very much for being on the podcast. Your book, Is it Unspiritual to be Depressed? is very, very helpful. I really recommend it. It’s published by Christian Focus.
Thanks again for being on the podcast with us, Paul.
PR: God bless you, Peter!
[Music]
PO: To benefit from more resources from the Centre for Christian Living, please visit ccl.moore.edu.au, where you’ll find a host of resources, including past podcast episodes, videos from our live events and articles published through the Centre. We’d love for you to subscribe to our podcast and for you to leave us a review so more people can discover our resources.
On our website, we also have an opportunity for you to make a tax deductible donation to support the ongoing work of the Centre.
We always benefit from receiving questions and feedback from our listeners, so if you’d like to get in touch, you can email us at ccl@moore.edu.au.
As always, I would like to thank Moore College for its support of the Centre for Christian Living, and to thank to my assistant, Karen Beilharz, for her work in editing and transcribing the episodes. The music for our podcast was generously provided by James West.
[Music]
