Wonderful. David Powlison is a really great gift to the church in our time. I'm going through an unusually hard time in an unusually grueling life, and I really need to see this video. I'm feeling better just from the singing of the hymn. However, I'm afraid I think he underrates the biochemical element. Dr Peter Kramer and others have accumulated abundant reason to believe that the concept of clinical depression isn't reductionistic at all, but that such depression is rather a biochemical susceptibility in the brains and endocrine systems of some unfortunate people. And why should this be controversial: we are, after all, fallen creatures, and it would be almost odd if some people didn't suffer biochemical depression, just as others are genetically set up for everything from cancer to schizophrenia to lupus to early heart disease, etc. When I was seven, I was almost murdered, and have been severely disabled by a traumatic brain injury ever since. One of my most insistent symptoms is depression, and it has multiple, mutually reinforcing elements - the injury unbalances brain chemistry, which has isolated and keeps isolating me, which in turn is depression inducing, which tends to further unbalance brain chemistry, and on it goes. I've been a Christian since I was three. Yet I go on suffering in this way. Above all, I'm scared that Dr Powlison's lack of grasp of the commonness of clinical depression, his tendency to underrate it, could dissuade people who might otherwise be helped if they were to seek out medical treatment.
He was a great gift to the Church in His decades of service. Rest in Peace.
Wonderful. David Powlison is a really great gift to the church in our time. I'm going through an unusually hard time in an unusually grueling life, and I really need to see this video. I'm feeling better just from the singing of the hymn. However, I'm afraid I think he underrates the biochemical element. Dr Peter Kramer and others have accumulated abundant reason to believe that the concept of clinical depression isn't reductionistic at all, but that such depression is rather a biochemical susceptibility in the brains and endocrine systems of some unfortunate people. And why should this be controversial: we are, after all, fallen creatures, and it would be almost odd if some people didn't suffer biochemical depression, just as others are genetically set up for everything from cancer to schizophrenia to lupus to early heart disease, etc.
When I was seven, I was almost murdered, and have been severely disabled by a traumatic brain injury ever since. One of my most insistent symptoms is depression, and it has multiple, mutually reinforcing elements - the injury unbalances brain chemistry, which has isolated and keeps isolating me, which in turn is depression inducing, which tends to further unbalance brain chemistry, and on it goes.
I've been a Christian since I was three. Yet I go on suffering in this way.
Above all, I'm scared that Dr Powlison's lack of grasp of the commonness of clinical depression, his tendency to underrate it, could dissuade people who might otherwise be helped if they were to seek out medical treatment.