And the Things of Earth Will Grow…Strangely Bright

I’m going to begin this book review of Strangely Bright, by Joe Rigney, by telling you what depression can feel like. This might be an odd way to begin a book review, but bear with me and you’ll understand by the end–I promise.

Sometimes depression feels like a veil hangs between you and the world, muting colors, sights, and sounds. Nothing appears bright; everything seems like its covered in a layer of gray and lifeless dust. Joy becomes a laughable affair when you can’t even see clearly what’s around you. How can you enjoy something that looks just as dingy as everything else?

Sometimes depression saps all of your energy and strength. You feel sleepy–even though you just woke up. You feel tired–even though you slept for nine hours. Every couch you see looks like the most comfortable and stately bed. You might even feel tempted to carry your pillow with you to catch a couple little naps during the day.

Sometimes depression makes everything seem far away, like you’re seeing a distant land you don’t recognize on an out-of-date map. The lines between the countries feel fuzzy and one place just blurs into another. Things begin to loose their rhyme and their reason, and soon life takes the place of things. Your zest and zeal just scurries away along with your clarity.

Sometimes depression makes you feel purposeless. This is the most challenging part of feeling depressed for me. I know I have a purpose here on earth: I am a wife, a mom, a sister, a daughter, a friend, a church member, a singer, a writer, an adventurer, all for God’s glory. When I feel depressed I just can’t convince my emotions or my thoughts that any of these things matter. I don’t think people will be better off without me; I wonder, “Do they even need me?” Yes, yes, resoundingly yes–of course they do.

But do they?

Strangely Bright has been an extreme help to me in my moments of feeling depressed. I don’t think Joe Rigney wrote the book specifically for that purpose, but nevertheless he brings hope to those who sit in depression’s gloomy vale. The ideas he shares combat, in so many helpful ways, the feelings of despair, joylessness, worthlessness, and hopelessness that accompany depression. Let me give you a few examples. They all come from the chapter “Enjoying the Gifts When Jesus Is Better”.

Rigney describes how he used to feel when he enjoyed some of his favorite activities, including eating pumpkin crunch cake (the recipe appears in the back of the book) and playing baseball. He says he frequently felt a “low-grade guilt and reluctant enjoyment” and goes on to explain that many Christians feel this way, too. I sympathize with him. I spent hours reading fiction books as a kid, and used to wonder if I was using my time well. Could I really be serving God while reading Redwall? “Low-grade guilt and reluctant enjoyment” also well describes how I feel when depression starts to take hold of me. Sometimes I can place where my guilt grows from, but sometimes I cannot. Depression keeps me from enjoying things I used to enjoy, like playing Go Fish with my kids or flying kites on a spring breeze.

Rigney gives us the solution to this conundrum: the integrative approach to life, in which we enjoy God’s good gifts to their full extent as they lead us to understand and know his goodness more and more. On pg. 41 he says, “Follow the rivers back to their source. Follow the sunbeams back to the sun.” Rigney gives meaning to the good things we can enjoy here on earth. They teach us more about God–namely, his goodness and love for us–as we trace their lines back to him. This means that when Go Fish and kite-flying start to lose their luster for me, I can remind myself, “God gave me these good gifts to enjoy. I can enjoy them to his glory and delight in them. I have a purpose, and they have a purpose for me: to point me back to God and his incredible love for me.” And yes, praise the Lord, I can read Redwall to his glory! I can enjoy the creative abilities God gave to Brian Jacques and search for the bigger truth’s in the story that reflect God’s character. “Every bush is a burning bush, if we only have eyes to see it” (pg. 40).

The complement of the integrative approach, “in which God and his gifts are enjoy together,” is the comparative approach (pg. 39). This is where we pit our enjoyment of God and our enjoyment of his gifts against each other for the purpose of making sure we’re not making idols out of God’s good gifts. We use the comparative approach to test the state of our hearts. So, we can summarize the integrative approach as enjoying God and enjoying his gifts, and the comparative approach as enjoying God vs. enjoying his gifts. We mostly live our lives in the vicinity of the integrative approach; we use the comparative approach as needed.

Often when I feel depressed I begin to feel worthless or purposeless, like a lonely boat set adrift on the tumultuous waves of the ocean without a rudder or guide. I am certain that I don’t speak for all Reformed churches when I say this, but I have noticed among the Reformed tradition that we like to preach how big God is and how small we are. I don’t disagree a mite with this statement; however, we have to be careful not to belittle ourselves so much that we forget we do have worth and value. In fact, we are worth so much to God that he sent his only Son to die a horrible death for us so that we could live in him. We do matter to God, and he loves us! We are small compared to him, but we are not worthless. This is especially important to hear for those who struggle with depression: you matter to God. Your life matters to God. You have a very specific and wonderful purpose on this earth. Rigney says, “You are a word from God. God means something through you” (pg. 51). Our purpose is to “be a testimony to grace and an invitation to grace…a walking, talking, living, breathing, gospel proclamation” (pg. 52). Do we do that by reading our Bibles all day, every day? Nope, even though the Bible is the best book you will ever read and essential to the Christian life. Rigney goes on to explain that we glorify God when we “enter our daily tasks alive–to God, to the wonders of his world, and to the needs of others” (pg. 58). He also explains, “I want to give my family the gift of a true and glorious picture of what God is like. I want them to experience my joy in God as I delight in them. I want to be the smile of God to my children. I want to be the smile of God to my wife [or to my husband, teachers, sisters, brothers, pastor, UPS delivery person, barista, dentist]” (pg. 68-69). He even includes a fun list of things we can do to glorify God, which happens to be one of my favorite passages in the book. (You can find it on page 53.)

In the chapter “Anchor Points,” Rigney additionally provides an antidote for the loss of rhythm in life, which sometimes happens to me when I feel depressed. He says, “Our lives ought to be structured by regular rhythms of direct and indirect godwardness, moving back and forth between direct interaction with God himself and active engagement with the world” (pg. 54). Direction interaction with God includes things like daily Bible reading and prayer, and weekly attending church. Indirect godwardness refers to what we’ve discussed so far: enjoying God’s good gifts to us. You can use this advice in a very practical way. If you’re feeling depressed or forlorn, interact with God directly. He will give you the comfort you need in Jesus. Then, go out and find something you can do that reminds you of God’s goodness and love. That will look different for all of us. For me, that means playing a game with my kids, playing the ukulele, singing as loud as I possibly can, or cooking my family a meal. God gave us each unique skills and interests–you have them, too! You may need to reconnect with them a little, or perhaps discover them for the first time, but those abilities and desires unique to you are there somewhere inside of you.

Finally, I’d like to conclude with a couple more notes about the book. Chapter 1, titled “What the Heavens Declare”, included some helpful points for someone building worlds for a story or writing creatively in general. Rigney discusses what makes the world feel real and how we perceive the world around us that God created. Again, he didn’t write the book for this purpose, but I still gleaned some useful points as a creative writer. Rigney’s writing really is poetic and beautiful at times, too.

I also found help for my struggles with overeating. On pgs. 60 and 61, Rigney shares C.S. Lewis’s idea of Encore. As humans, we tend to want to repeat enjoyable experiences over and over again, sometimes to our own detriment and folly. I do that with food. I want what I want now, even if it’s unhealthy and I just ate some of it an hour ago. Rigney talks about how part of the enjoyment of things is the anticipation and the memory of them. This helps us look forward to the future and thank God for the good things he’s given us already.

I’d like to end this review with a quote I really liked, but couldn’t find a good place for in this review: “All reality is a display of God and an invitation to know God. In showing us what God is like, the world beckons us further up and further in so that we can know him and love him and enjoy him through the things he has made” (pg. 29). So, whether you read or teach, hike or bike, write or draw, do whatever you do to the glory of God by enjoying what you do for all it’s worth! And the things of this earth will grow strangely bright, from the light of God’s glory and grace.

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Thank you to Crossway for providing me with a free copy of Strangely Bright in exchange for an honest review, as part of their Blog Review Program.