Gospel Prism

When I was in seminary, a young Japanese woman was found dead in her dorm room.  She had been missing for a couple of days, and she was discovered by a friend.  She had apparently committed suicide.  Many of us knew her and so this hit pretty close to home.  Perhaps even more telling was the fact that this was a seminary, a place where people are trained to help those contemplating such things.  There is nothing more sobering than to realize that seminary is definitely not insulated from the realities and consequences of sin.

But also, she was an Asian-woman, and in reading this article today, I realize that this sub-group has the tendency to fall into depression in ways like none other.  Here is what the CNN article says:

My sister had a really low self-image. She thought of herself as ugly,” she says. “We grew up in Houston in the ’70s and ’80s, and at that time in school there were very few Asian faces. The standard of beauty she wanted to emulate was white women.” In college, Noh’s sister had plastic surgery to make her eyes and nose appear more European-looking.

Heredity, Noh says, also plays a role. She says in her study, many of the suicidal women had mothers who were also suicidal. She says perhaps it’s genetic — some biochemical marker handed down from mother to daughter — or perhaps it’s the daughter observing the mother’s behavior. “It makes sense. You model yourself after the parent of the same gender.”

As varied as the causes of depression, Noh says she saw just as many approaches to overcoming it.

While some women in her study did seek help through counseling and prescription drugs, most of her subjects were ambivalent or even negative about counseling. “They felt the counselor couldn’t understand their situation. They said it would have helped if the counselor were another Asian-American woman.”

These women found help through their religious faith, herbs, acupuncture, or becoming involved in groups that help other Asian women.

“It shows the resourcefulness of these women,” she says. “They had really diverse healing strategies.”

But this is every reason why the Gospel IS the only solution to such things and every thing else affords temporary answers.  If only such women could realize that their beauty and value rests not in what the world thinks of her but rather what Christ has done for her.  That no beauty or intelligence could ever define her, as television would have such women think.