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Depression and Christianity

| How do u think depression and Christianity play into each other? Can one affect the other? How do they interact?

Thought?


| I don't put much value in the ideas of religion - i don't think believing in the bible, the sutras or athiest ideas will have inherently different effects since any spiritual can and probably has been interpreted to support any earthly actions. But the social content of a specific person's religious experience matters


| So it's possible for four different peoplr to be in a religious situations so that - even if they're all going to churches of the same christian sect in the same culture - one person is alienated and oppressed by a toxic environment, one person finds healing ane meaning and companionship, one person ends up the same as they would have in another religion, and one person just finds it empty because what's being done and said around them doesn't speak to them even if it's good stuff


| I would be pretty depressed if i wasn't god of my own life


| Is "christianity" even a thing? I mean there are only a few believes that all christians share, and I don't see how they affect real live. In fact the only thing that distinguishs christians from jews and muslims is the idea that jesus is gods son, who sacrificed himself for peoples sins. Everything else is very heterogenous, even more than in judaism and islam (which on their own are also quite heterogenous).


| >>695147

It's essentially an offshoot of Judaism, and Jesus himself was a Jew. The main difference is that while Jews still believe a messiah is coming, Christians believe Jesus (the) Christ was the messiah. Muslims, meanwhile, believe Muhammad was the Messiah, while Jesus was just (one of) an important prophet.

Then, you have the various denominations of all three religions who have different focuses.


| >>695093

Some people who take their religion too seriously can become depressed over dwelling on the negative aspects too much- afterlife, "sins" racked up, feeling like if you don't "save" everyone they'll all go to hell while you don't, which could be interpreted as pretty lonely tbh. Others still are pretty comfy with religion and turn to it when they're depressed if other avenues have been exhausted. Regardless of whether God actually exists or not, it can be comfortable-


| -to believe that someone's watching over you and loves you "unconditionally" while everyone else seems to hate you. Going further, many Christians I've met don't think too hard about any of this and use either the religion they've joined or been raised into to remove the existentialism connected with death while they spend most of their mental/emotional effort with just living their best life- ideally, by not being a prick to others, but unfortunately some people will use this-


| -comfortability as a kind of social status to hold over other people (I tend to find evangelicals/pentecostals to be the worst offenders in this regard). That's hardly a problem unique to the religious, however, and probably a discussion for a later time.


| Addendum: I've found that its generally Southern Baptists who get depressed over the pressure to "save" as many people as they can. I had a friend in college who was a sweetheart through and through, but she genuinely was afraid that one of her close friends, a pagan who believed in "shamanism," was going to hell if she didn't renounce her beliefs and turn to (Southern Baptist) God. Other than that, it didn't affect their friendship and they're still close today.


| You don't see this kind of depression very often in other flavors of Christianity, like the Methodists, Episcopalians (Roman Catholic-lite), Roman Catholics, etc, especially since multiple other Christianity variants place more emphasis on "not being a prick" over theological nuances. Depending on who you ask, for example, many Catholics don't care or consider premarital sex/masturbation a sin (in fact, this is no longer taught in mainstream Catholicism) and even if they did,


| -generally the only cause for depression or existential crisis is the act of a "mortal" sin, e.g. murdering someone, (which, to avoid the abortion argument which is also not universally agreed upon by any Christian, we'll refer to legally defined murder as a child or adult). Though I imagine someone committing murder will have a lot more on their mind than whether God is pissed or not.


| The most important cause for depression is social-economic pressure. It's no coincidence that crisis in capitalism is called "depression". And it's no coincidence that suicide rates grow during economical crisis. "Christianity" has not directly to do with it, but medieval catholizism had a simmiliar function like todays individualist ideologies: put the blame for political-economical failure from the leaders to the poorer common people by making them feel individually guilty.


| I think a lot of people who are insecure about life gravitate towards something solid they can hold on to, like Christianity in the past or extreme right wing politics today. As long as you feel like you're part of something larger than yourself you don't have to think too much about it.

Total number of posts: 14, last modified on: Tue Jan 1 00:00:00 1599510689

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