Hello everyone. Today Crisis Magazine has kindly published a reflection of mine on Martin Luther, and his role in my conversion. Here is a short snippet:
Luther was an angry man, as his polemical writings revealed. And he reveled in such anger, claiming that “anger refreshes all my blood, sharpens my mind, and drives away temptation.” The “temptation” he referred to might have been clinical depression. His biographers note periods where he was overwhelmed by a sense of despair, which he called Anfechtungen, even to the point of blacking out.
Having suffered from depression in my own life, Luther’s need for certainty was one of the things that led me to view him more charitably. His theological positions were disastrously wrong, but his anguished search for certainty of his own salvation humanized him for me, as much as his screeching diatribes against the Church repulsed me.
Please do check it out. Cheers!
