Depression and Suicide: A case study of Saul and David

Depression and Suicide: A case study of Saul and David           Kelly Durant

Psalm 42: 3 My tears have been my meat day and night, while they continually say unto me, Where is thy God? 4 When I remember these things, I pour out my soul in me: for I had gone with the multitude, I went with them to the house of God, with the voice of joy and praise, with a multitude that kept holyday. 5 Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted in me? hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him for the help of his countenance.

6 O my God, my soul is cast down within me: therefore will I remember thee from the land of Jordan, and of the Hermonites, from the hill Mizar.

2. There is a story I read about a young man who wanted to kill himself, I believe it was by jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge. A preacher went up to try and talk to the young man before he could jump. He asked the man, “So you want to throw your life away?” “Yes”, the reply. “But do you want to throw it away in a manner that will at least help someone?”, asked the preacher. He continued, “Then throw your life away by giving it to Jesus!” “Let today be the death to yourself, and start a new life helping others!” The young man dialoged more and agreed that the loss of his previous life could be remembered as right there and then, and he accepted the challenge to lose his old life for a new purposeful life. He started over giving his life to help others, serving Jesus and saving souls! How great it would be if everyone in their most desperate hour could turn their life around catching this vision to ‘sacrifice your life for the benefit of God and others!

I can relate to this story of this young man’s conversion! Sometimes we just want to give it all up! I can tell you at age 21 I wanted to give my life up as nothing seemed worth living for. Once you have seen all the pain of others, and once you have felt hopeless to do anything to stop all the suffering, the wars, and the deaths from poverty, crime, and sickness in the world, you feel overwhelmed and you want it to stop! Stop the world, I want to get off!

I identified with the quote of Lord Byron, “I have drank from every cup of pleasure…yet I die of thirst!” And when you have failed to drown out your overwhelming feelings of sadness, depression, guilt, and frustration by sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll, and all the pleasures of life, you (as myself) will reach a cliff edge, a stopping point where you need answers or you are done. You just don’t want any more of anything! These critical times of crisis are moments when God will show up!  But you have to make the choice to turn around and take a step towards Him for Him to grab you before you make the mistake of doing a jump you would never be able to undo!

3. So what causes us as humans to get so frustrated, so low in a deep pit of sadness that we get to the point of wanting to take our own life? What are the causes of depression that can lead to suicide? Is it personal pain?  Is it frustration over unfair and oppressive conditions? Is it from being battle weary, and extremely exhausted? Is it from guilt pleasure and over doing evil deeds? Is it demon voices in the head? Is it from having a history of mental illness? Is it from vanity and the anger of not being in control and having life your way?

I think it could be from all of the above and even for as many reasons as there are people! I thought to help us understand this better, in case you or someone close to you may be afflicted with depressive thoughts and temptations of suicide (like most everyone is!), we could take a look at two depressed men, Saul and David. How did these two respond differently to their pain? Both were suicidal.  

Both of them lived with attacks of depression but in the end Saul killed himself, while David, even after growing old and blind, did not kill himself. What was the difference? What made the difference on how they each handled their low moments? How they lived from day to day influenced the final results.

4. Let’s first look at Saul. He was born handsome and when he was an adult he was a head taller than the average person. He had good looks and popularity and he was chosen to lead Israel as their king. God warned Israel to not chose a king but to be governed by judges, but they did not listen. He became wealthy, honored, and powerful. Sadly, this fed his ego and he became proud and later disobedient to God, jealous, moody, angry, vindictive, immature, irrational and the opposite of what a king should be! Never idolize any leader, only Jesus deserves worship! Human leaders will let you down, and often in a very big way!

Overtime Saul’s pride caused him to think he knew better than God. He disobeyed God in a big way on several important occasions. Because of this, because of guilt and a break in the connection with God, he got into depressive angry moods. How many people do you know who have depression because of unrepentant faults and guilt? Ones who pridefully refuse to come to Jesus and ask God forgivenessand

Saul’s mood swings  made him unbearable to be around so David was asked to play his harp to him to calm him down and the music worked! So Saul, not repenting and asking God for a pure heart, masked his pain with music! I know I use to play music all day when I was young and rebellious and it is a good way to get your mind off of things but it is just a distraction. It’s good to love music but can music heal your soul? It can sooth but only Jesus heals! However, some music today is programed with certain beats, frequencies, and sounds to provoke a desynchronization in your brain and body, so some music will cause depression!

5. So Saul lived from one distraction to another not focusing in on the root of the depression problem which was caused from his guilt of failing God. Saul had guilt he would not correct, and later he was full of hate, a hate and jealousy over how David was obviously getting God’s anointing and he wasn’t even though he was king. He became carnal, emotional, and mean leaving behind his spirituality and connection to God which would have internally guided him.

Saul represents a person who knows to do good but does not do it and the shame of being a failure can invoke depression. Shame from failure gets most exposed when there is another person nearby (in this case David) obeying God contrasting the difference between success and failure. So what happens to one’s spirt? The story of Cain and Abel all over again! The shamed and evil one gets filled with so much hate his obsession is to kill the righteous one! Saul wanted to kill David and he fled to live in the caves nearby! He went from a luxury palace to a muddy cave!

By being disconnected from God, Saul, compared to the hundreds of people around you and me daily,  become carnal, emotional, weak, obsessive, vindictive, hateful, and angry moving on to do criminal actions to harm out of spite. Over jealousy and not getting the attention they want, prideful ones hate and seek to destroy the ones doing good. They become as Satan himself calling evil good and good evil. Isaiah 5:20 Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; Who put darkness for light, and light for darkness; Who put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter! Another point, If they cannot succeed in harming others they then will turn on their selves and want to harm their own self! Image, murdering yourself?! 

6. When you are on God’s side, you win personal victories. Saul was losing the kingdom battling against the pagan nations nearby and he was mentally and physically exhausted. This is a dangerous condition because you no longer think correctly, you no longer pray and ask God to guide, you just want your never ending confusion to end! If you are ever at this point, stop immediately! Pray, fast, repent, be radical and do what it takes to get a connection with God!

Those who have done evil in their past also become paranoid. Some paranoia can be from a genetic trait passed from past generations, but most people develop it because they live in fear of being punished if others find out their sins. People like this become illogical and accusatory and destroy with unkind words their own friends, family, and supporters. They betray God and everyone! 1 Samuel 22:13

Then Saul said to him, “Why have you conspired against me, you and the son of Jesse, in that you have given him bread and a sword, and have inquired of God for him, that he should rise against me, to lie in wait, as it is this day?”

7. So prolonged disobedience to God, prolonged bitter hateful vindictive thoughts and actions, prolonged paranoia, and prolonged confusion no matter how much power and wealth one has leads up to an end with embarrassing failures and the final step is a suicide solution. How sad but this is how Satan does his destructions in people unless we turn God and Jesus to help us start all over!

1 Samuel 31:4

Then Saul said to his armorbearer, “Draw your sword, and thrust me through with it, lest these uncircumcised men come and thrust me through and abuse me.” But his armorbearer would not, for he was greatly afraid. Therefore Saul took a sword and fell on it.

Saul was disturbed by a bad spirit for many years. About half of all criminals in jail will confess that evil voices in their heads brought them to do evil. Demons and evil spirits are real and they torment millions of people and psychologists and few others take them seriously. Demons want violence done to others and to their own body, their motive is to destroy what God has made and bring pain and suffering in place of love and peace.

8. Take seriously the demons that are in children. Mark 9:22 And ofttimes it hath cast him into the fire, and into the waters, to destroy him: but if thou canst do any thing, have compassion on us, and help us. Jesus cast out a demon in a child!

Here we see a case of self-destruction and Jesus cast the demon out. Prayer, fasting, and claiming Jesus authority have proven to stop demons acting out in people. Like it or not, everyone will have to deal with this sometime in their life.

But when we see something disturbing about a person we must do as the scripture says and ‘try the spirits’ (1 John 4). Some people get down just due to overwork which is a physical exhaustion affecting a mental exhaustion and its temporary. Yet, some, due to disobeying God and doing evil by lying, stealing, slandering, or much worse, get tormented by a demon until they snap as Saul did.

Another side note, we cannot deny some people are born with a weak mind. Romans 14:1 Him that is weak in the faith receive ye, but not to doubtful disputations. We receive the weak but not for arguments. Most people today understand and respect those who need some special treatment due to a mental abnormality, but most of these types of mental problems do not lead people to commit violence against others or against their selves, and each case must be looked upon differently. Some are just born with mental issues which they must overcome with help from others.

9. Now look at the weakness of David, he had sin and was guilty but did he let that separate him from God, his comforter? No! He confessed it and repented of his sins! However, he became depressed and mourned when the consequences came, and he shed tears many times as we read in Psalms 4:25 “Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted in me? hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him for the help of his countenance.” And check out Psalm 51! But he, after a several weeks, he found his strength in the Lord by his prayers and crying to God (again, read all the Psalms).

David did not hide from God or reject God when he knew he had to pay the price of his sin. He paid a price by having his own baby die. David suffered real deep moments of depression. Connected to God, with faith, with friends who have faith, you  and I can get through dark painful time periods.

Remember David lived a few years running for his life from Saul living in ugly muddy caves in the mountains; he was shamed and rejected and his authority as king was denied for quite some time. It is a lesson that all of us should learn, some of us will have moments of glory and exhilaration, then we may experience a few years of frustration, sadness, and pain, but then happiness returns from other victories God gives us. We must never give up because the best is yet to come! David in his old age even became blind, but he always praised God!

10. What we all must remember is that almost everyone, you and me, in their lifetime will go through some very tough and hard seasons. We cannot control what happens to us, but we can control how we react! But reactions form habits. May you form the habit to praise God no matter what and you will see that it will take on a victory for good as all things work out for good for those that love God. People who curse and complain all day instead of praising God for all things end up so bitter they set their selves up to destroy their selves and others!

To avoid suicide and evil thoughts you and I must renew our minds daily with the Word of God in the Bible, especially from the Psalms that David wrote. He wrote them to comfort himself and he prayed keeping himself close to God! This was his way of praising his way out of the darkness so we must observe and learn. David gave it all to God, all his sorrowful feelings, tears, and fears and all his joys! Re read Psalm 42, that has helped me many times!

Very few Christians compared to those of other beliefs, or of no belief, kill their selves as often because they trust in God to get them through the depressions. Remember all the martyrs of old who died in the Roman coliseums praising God? The fact is they, and we also, can connect with a supernatural strength from God no matter how painful the moment. You will only get encouragement, hope, and success if you have faith and believe in the good to come that God wants to give you. It has worked for me and it will work for you as well! We all will die one day, but let it be by God’s hand in His time and not at your own!  Let’s pray that we can encourage each other with Jesus helping those  who are down, depressed, or suicidal! There is hope in Him and we must never allow the destroyer to take over our minds and actions! Praise is the victory!