Do you have a minute? I am not trying to sell you on religious faith, but I always appreciate a new idea. 

What does a preacher talking about love and God have to do with a therapist treating someone with depression?

This post is about a man of faith whose approach to the world can be used in therapy. I know this because I used it.

You might remember Reverend William Sloan Coffin Jr. (June 1, 1924 – April 12, 2006) if you read my posts regularly. His name is quite a name, one suggesting death, but he was a person more alive than most of us. He had a beautiful voice and used it to preach and take action for justice.

Wikipedia tells us this:

In his younger days, he was an athlete, a talented pianist, a CIA officer, and later chaplain of Yale University, where the influence of H. Richard Niebuhr‘s social philosophy led him to become a leader in the civil rights movement and peace movements of the 1960s and 1970s. He also was a member of the secret society Skull and Bones. He went on to serve as senior minister at Riverside Church in New York City and President of SANE/Freeze, the nation’s largest peace and justice group, and prominently opposed United States military interventions in conflicts, from the Vietnam War to the Iraq War.

This man was worth emulating. My psychotherapeutic practice reflected that.

As a therapist, I often tried reframing a patient’s worldview when he was in distress, as Coffin did. His approach fit best when I faced a client suffering from self-doubt and wondering whether he could meet a towering challenge. I asked questions to do this—to flip his view of himself and what the future still had to offer.

To someone who contemplated suicide, a friend might say, “Oh, but you have lots to live for,” and then name some reasons why his companion should not end his existence.

Instead, I wished to know, “Why haven’t you killed yourself?” I pursued an answer that attached the individual to life. Perhaps it was his faith, affection for his children, and the goals he hoped to achieve. In evoking his motives rather than those I could have created for him, he took ownership of the worth of his existence and its purpose.

With those who doubted they could defeat their depression, get another job, or find love, my question was a bit different. “Tell me about the moments you felt like this before, when you thought you couldn’t overcome your sadness or whatever was bringing you down.

Before asking such questions, I was confident I would get the response I sought. I trusted the client’s words would reveal resilience, strength, and the man’s remembered episodes of triumph, affirming his ability to bounce back. When he gave me what I wanted, I said, “You just identified the things you’ve conquered, haven’t you?

Yes.

Do you believe you still have those capacities, those skills, that courage within you?

Yes.

He was saying yes to life — his own.

In the video above, Reverend Coffin tells a similar story about a well-known man of his time, a dying friend, Norman Thomas. Like his old comrade in arms, Reverend Thomas was also a social activist, but unlike Coffin, he was a presidential candidate on multiple occasions.

He had also lost his faith.

In the YouTube clip, Coffin doesn’t tell his ally why he should believe in God. Instead, he flips the question of whether God believes in him and shows him love. The response he gets from his dying colleague, a man he called Big Daddy, is worth the 65 seconds it takes to watch the clip.

I hope you do.

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The painting at the top is Easy Dark by Julie Mehretu, 2007. It was sourced from Wikiart.org/