Dr Paul Allen

According to a major  study  by the Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute, “bisexual women die, on average, nearly 40 percent younger than heterosexual women, while lesbian women die 20 percent sooner.” These are tragic numbers that should concern all of us, regardless of our attitudes towards lesbianism and bisexuality. If you care about people, this is sad to hear. As reported in the  Daily Mail , “The researchers used data from the Nurses’ Health Study II, a cohort of over 100,000 female nurses born between 1945 and 1964 and surveyed since 1989.” So, while the study focuses on a particular segment of society, it relies on a tremendous amount of data and covers almost thirty years of death records. What was the cause of these alarmingly shortened life expectancies? According to lead author Dr. Sarah McKetta, a research fellow at the Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute, “The difference in mortality is said to be due to the ‘toxic social forces’  LGBTQ  people...

What does the author of The Gulag Archipelago have in common with the actor who played Dwight Schrute on The Office? They both recognize spiritual exhaustion in Western culture and call for spiritual renewal to shake off the materialist malaise that plagues society. In Soul Boom: Why We Need a Spiritual Revolution, Rainn Wilson lays the groundwork for a soul movement he believes is much needed. Given that Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn sounded this note in his controversial 1978 commencement address at Harvard, some might say the proposed renewal is long overdue. Wilson is an actor, the author or co-author of three books, and hosts a streaming show on Peacock exploring places that tend to make people happy: Rainn Wilson and the Geography of Bliss. Wilson also cohosts a podcast with Reza Aslan called Metaphysical Milkshake. Together with a range of public thinkers, they explore life's big questions. Soul Boom is an attempt to address the pervasive anxiety of the age. It’s easy to agree with...

For more than 10 years, I was entrenched in mysticism and self-discovery. Jordan Taylor I practised witchcraft and performed spells. I became an oracle card reader and enrolled in classes to sharpen my psychic abilities. I was a certified Reiki master and yoga teacher. I used crystals as a means of healing, protecting, and manifesting. I believed in astrology, manifesting under a new moon and cleansing and recharging my energy under the full moon. I worshipped nature and worked with goddesses. I found my spirit guides and let them lead my life. I’d talk to “Spirit/Source/Universe” and believed I was speaking to my “higher self.” I believed I created my own reality and was my own god, in control of my life. I thought I finally knew my purpose—to heal the collective, raise the planet's vibration, and help others heal and do the same. But behind it all, I grappled with darkness, deception, and a yearning for more . Still, I became trapped in a cycle of healing and “up-levelling,” cons...

What can we learn from Elijah’s struggles? 1 Kings 19:1-4 – Ahab told Jezebel all that Elijah had done and how he had killed all the prophets with the sword. Then Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah, saying, “So may the gods do to me and more also if I do not make your life as the life of one of them by this time tomorrow.” Then he was afraid, and he arose and ran for his life and came to Beersheba, which belongs to Judah, and left his servant there. But he went a day's journey into the wilderness and came and sat down under a broom tree. And he asked that he might die, saying, “It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life, for I am no better than my fathers.” Despite seeing God bring fire down from Heaven, and then rain, oppression came over the man of God, Elijah, when the demonic queen Jezebel threatened his life and put a curse on him, and he was gripped with fear and anxiety, running for his life for several miles. Laying in the woods, he told God he just wanted to die. This is...

In his magisterial history of New England, Magnalia Christi Americana, Cotton Mather notes that, after finishing his time with Mrs Drake, Thomas Hooker “in a little time . . . grew famous for his ministerial abilities, but especially for his notable faculty at the wise and fit management of wounded spirits.”1 The Puritan divine who would grow in stature both in England and America started out as a young college graduate called to a seemingly hopeless situation. As would soon become evident, his love for others and his skill in handling the Scriptures aided him in ministering to a woman teetering on the verge of heaven and hell. THE TROUBLED MRS. DRAKE About fifteen miles from London, the small parish of St. George’s in Esher, Surrey, called young Thomas Hooker (1586–1647) to serve as rector. Due to the congregation’s size, the wealthy Francis Drake, a relative of the renowned English explorer Sir Francis Drake, served as Hooker’s patron and invited him to live in his home. However, Hoo...

Not long ago, I received a moving letter from a friend who is working as a missionary in a Muslim portion of the Philippines. He wrote, We heard gunshots the other day and the sounds of running feet as people rushed by our ministry center. The coffee and rubber farms were on fire. We were in shock because we were told it was most likely intentionally done. Many tears were shed, but we prayed that what people intended for evil God would work for good. We don’t know how, but because God is good, it should work out so. So, we could sleep. The last words of his letter echo Psalm 127:2: “He gives to his beloved sleep.” If we’re awed by the fact that Almighty God loves us and that he’s working all things toward our best interests, then we really can be free from anxiety. Isaiah 26:3 tells us, “You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you because he trusts in you.” Isn’t that wonderful? If our minds are focused on the Lord Jehovah, then our hearts can be at peace. Realities of Li...

The pastor seemed uncertain. He might normally talk with the discouraged congregant about spiritual endurance or encourage him with a psalm, but today he was relatively silent. He was compassionate but offered no hopeful connections to Christ’s redeeming work or the Savior’s present help. Why? This pastor was concerned that any spiritual encouragement he gave might be misguided or unhelpful because the congregant had recently been diagnosed with depression. Most people believe depression is caused by a chemical imbalance, but this assumption has been challenged by a recent medical study titled “The Serotonin Theory of Depression.” The project, led by Dr. Joanna Moncrieff of the University College of London, was an umbrella review, a survey of the major psychiatric research on the link between depression and serotonin, the neurotransmitter psychiatrists have long cited as the most likely chemical cause of depression. After reexamining and collecting much of the relevant and reliable res...

We live in a world of pain, anguish, and torment, even though we only get glimpses of it—unless perhaps we work as a counselor or in emergency services. All around us are people in silent pain because of something in their nagging past, their anguishing present, or their dreaded future. Depression is no respecter of persons . Even one’s philosophical or religious views don’t seem to offer either immunity or susceptibility. Neither can depression be blamed on the modern technological age. Novelist William Stryon (1925–2006) called depression “a dreadful and raging disease” and likened it to “a veritable howling tempest in the brain.” He gives a conservative estimate that one in 10 Americans will suffer from it. Nobody is safe from depression—not even from “major depressive disorder,” the diagnosis I saw on my paperwork. What I Have Discovered I’m sure my feelings weren’t like those of every depressed person, but I know they weren’t unique. Fortunately, depression usually doesn’t strike ...

Myth #1: It won’t happen to me. As for me, I said in my prosperity,“I shall never be moved.” By your favour, O Lord, you made my mountain stand strong; you hid your face; I was dismayed. (Psalm 30:6–7) Overconfidence may not lead directly to a fall or to depression, but being overconfident hardly prepares one for either. David appears to have expected his spiritual “prosperity” to continue unbroken—the sort of “I’ve finally arrived” attitude that many of us may have experienced briefly before learning that, no, life usually doesn’t continue in an unbroken vista of “personal peace and affluence.”1 Even the achieving of those dubious goals does not (thankfully) fully protect us from the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.”2 It is better to expect what we are promised in Scripture in the form of unwanted and (hopefully) undeserved suffering. Otherwise, we risk being surprised by that very thing about which we have been repeatedly warned (1 Peter 4:12). Depression can be quite as fie...

People think depression is just a modern problem, but it’s not. There are even examples in the Bible of depression. You can think of David, the psalmist, in Psalm 32 and Psalm 51, or Heman in Psalm 88—the darkest psalm in the whole book of Psalms. In Job, there’s definitely evidence of depression in the chapters of his book. Jeremiah even wrote a book called Lamentations. Elijah But maybe the most obvious figure who suffered from depression is Elijah in 1 Kings. The interesting thing is his depression came after a tremendous spiritual accomplishment. He’d just been at Mount Carmel with the prophets of Baal, and he had this great triumph. He’d shown God and all his glory, then he runs and he ends up totally alone, depressed, exhausted, scared, self-critical, despairing, pessimistic about the future, and he thinks he’s the only believer left in this world, so let me die. What’s really interesting is God’s response to that. What’s the first thing God does? He gives him food, he gives him ...

Matt Tully I think it's fair to say that you have experienced a fair amount of suffering and loss in your life, along a number of different angles. A number of years ago, you witnessed a really tragic situation up close and it’s something that you’ve called a calamity. What happened? Mark Talbot The incident that started me on writing this particular book was the fact that I lost one of my students to suicide in the early 2000s. I had been talking to his parents before he died because he was depressed, and I knew that they needed to be talking to people about it.  It was the excruciating grief that they felt as Christians, especially when they knew that God was all-powerful and that he was perfectly good and that he knew everything in advance and they couldn't understand how it would be that God did not do something to keep their son from doing what he did—that was what got the book started. I was trying to address what really was a calamity—something that was rather like an ea...