A few decades ago—when van Agt was prime minister, for example—an elderly statesman and his wife committing suicide together with the assistance of a doctor would have horrified the country. Now, it is portrayed as a peaceful sendoff—a downright Dutch way of doing things. That may well be the case. On April 1, 2002, the Netherlands became the first country in Europe since Nazi Germany to legalize euthanasia. Since then, the Dutch euthanasia regime has persistently expanded: in 2004, the Groningen Policy laid out the framework for euthanizing infants (who cannot consent); and, the rules have since been expanded to permit euthanasia for all children.

On February 5, 2024, former Dutch Prime Minister Dries van Agt died holding hands with his wife Eugenie in his hometown of Nijmegen. Both were 93; the elderly couple chose to die by euthanasia. The Rights Forum, an organization founded by van Agt, released a statement on February 9: “He died together and hand in hand with his beloved wife Eugenie van Agt-Krekelberg … with whom he was together for more than seventy years, and whom he always continued to refer to as ‘my girl.’” According to the non-profit’s director, they “couldn’t live without each other.”
Unsurprisingly for a couple of advanced age, the van Agts had experienced health difficulties in the past several years, with the former prime minister suffering a brain hemorrhage in 2019 while delivering a speech on behalf of the Palestinian cause, to which he devoted the last two decades of his life. Press reports did not disclose his wife’s challenges, but instead emphasized that they wanted to die together in what is colloquially referred to as ‘duo euthanasia’—when a couple receives lethal injections simultaneously.
Andreas “Dries” van Agt served as prime minister of the Netherlands from 1977 until 1982; throughout his career, he served as both a leader of the Catholic People’s Party (KVP) and the Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA). In 1999, after a visit to Israel, van Agt began advocating for the Palestinians—The Rights Forum advocates a “just and sustainable Dutch and European policy regarding the Palestine/Israel issue.” A joint statement released by King Willem-Alexander, Queen Máxima, and Princess Beatrix praised his “administrative responsibility in a turbulent time” and his “striking personality and colorful style.”
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God subjected everything “under the sun” to futility in hope. Hope is the opposite of depression. God made everything vapor under the sun in hope that you’d start looking for what is not under the sun. God is not under the sun and apart from Him, you can’t eat or enjoy anything (2:25). So, stop being apart from Him. Please God, by not living just for what’s under the sun. Get wisdom and knowledge and joy (2:26), and a life that’s not a vapor, not just wind chasing. Everything under the sun is in bondage to futility. So, what’s the use? The use of putting everything under the sun in bondage to futility was so that you would look higher than the sun and have the freedom of the glory of the children of God, through Jesus Christ. Ecclesiastes’ use is to take our depressed stare off things under the sun and set it on things above.

Twenty years ago, I was depressed. I was 37 years old living in a nice home in Kentucky. Just a couple of months earlier I thought I was set up for the life I had been working so hard for. I was driven. After three years of 17 hour days of an MDiv program with Greek and Hebrew flashcards, after a missionary stint in Ethiopia, I bull-dozed my way through a Ph.D. program, while working – walking outside in 30 below degree weather in Chicago, hunched over in my car, writing academic papers at 3 am. I had arrived, finally, I thought, where everything would pay off: church, academics, success. It all turned to nothing. So, I sat in the recliner, staring out the window, staring at nothing, with the tv on but not really watching, a freezer full of ice cream which I didn’t eat because I just didn’t care and thought, ‘what’s the use?’. There’s good news for depressed people in Ecclesiastes: you’re right. What is the use?
First, the facts. What are the facts, you depressed people? The “preacher” tells us. He’s the philosopher king, the wise man and he’s going to tell us the facts.
The facts are “vanity of vanities.” The word literally means “vapor,” like a puff of wind, like that mist that comes from vaping. You see it for a few seconds and it dissipates. Everything “under the sun” is like that. Except, it gets worse. It’s not just vapor, it’s the vapor of vapor. If vapor could produce a vapor — if the whole universe were vapor and in that vapor universe there was its own vapor — that’s what everything is like, under the sun.
Under the Sun
“Under the sun” is the qualifier, specifying what exactly is vapor. Not everything but everything “under the sun.” What is “under the sun” is the world we can see; what can be observed; the horizons of this world; the things we see and touch and taste; the work we can do, the things we can achieve with our bodies or minds. That’s the stuff that’s vanity, vapor, meaningless, for nothing. Of course, for most people, that’s their whole lives. They live constantly for what is “under the sun” and so, for them everything is meaningless and they don’t know it and if they find out, without God’s word, they’re going to be very depressed. They’re going to be staring out the window thinking, ‘What’s the use?’
The fact is, under the sun, you’re getting nowhere. “Sixteen tons and what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt.” What’s the gain if you work 14 hours a day, 7 days a week, for years, to make a life for you and your family and your family doesn’t care? I know a couple who did that, who grew a successful business; were able to branch out to 2 restaurants, move to a nice house near a golf course and their daughter grows up, goes away and never wants to visit. What did they gain by all their toil? (1:3.) “Gain” means profit, end up with more than you began with. Your work has gained you this that you can point to: a house, a bank account, a car. “Under the sun,” people think they’ve gained if they end up with more money and stuff than they started with, than they were raised with. “He who dies with the most toys wins,” they think — except they don’t really think or they’d see that here, under the sun, no one gains because everyone ends up with exactly what they came with: nothing. Hearses don’t pull U-Hauls, no trailers full of their stuff going to heaven. We all end as empty-handed as we started. So, what’s the use?
The fact is we’re never satisfied. “The eye is not satisfied with seeing nor the ear filled with hearing” (1:8.) You never watch a movie that is so good, you’re satisfied never to see another movie again. You never hear a song so fulfilling that you’re happy to never hear another song again. It’s addiction. Now with our phones we can feed that addiction. We can be constantly staring down, looking at something, listening to something and we never have enough of it and we never learn that we’ll never have enough.
The fact is that we’re not really getting anywhere, under the sun. “What has been is what will be and what has been done is what will be done” (1:9). The more things change, the more they stay the same. Is there anything that is really new (1:10)? ‘Ah, we might say back, living in an age of rapid innovation, the iPhone is new, the internet is new.’ Maybe, but what we do with it is the same. Nonsense, looking at cat videos, ranting about politics, porn. Archaeologists dig up pornographic sculptures from Pompeii or from the Canaanites and with our smart phones we’re conveying the same content. Same song, different verse.
Maybe, we’ll think, we’ll make a difference. We’ll write a book or an article or a song or build a building or give the money or be the parent who will be remembered. But how many people do you know from the past? Do you know your great grand-parents? How many of your eight great-grandparents can you name? What makes you think your great-grandchildren will know you? I don’t mean to depress you. Those are just the facts.
Wind Chasing
The facts are that everything, under the sun, is nothing; that it’s going nowhere and try as hard as you can, you won’t change that. You’ll be forgotten just like you forgot your ancestors. You might think that’s brutal, but those are the facts. What I can do, though, is understand it.
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I make no apology for being an advocate against spiritual abuse. So when James writes that “This dynamic [of pathologizing discomfort] is evident throughout the broader Christian subcultures that have embraced a more activist approach to church abuse,” I can only conclude that he is not reading the right advocates.

Samuel D. James has given some additional thoughts on “church abuse activism” generated by books like When Narcissism Comes to Church by Chuck DeGroat. I published a response to James’ prior critique of DeGroat last November, and feel the need to do so again, but with some hesitation. I hesitate, because I believe there are different strands of “abuse activism”, and what I want to defend is probably different than what James wants to critique. His examples come from the milieu of social media. My experience in advocating for abuse survivors comes from flesh and blood experience of witnessing church abuse. If we are careful in distinguishing our dialogue partners, I suspect (or hope, at least) that James and I would have substantial agreement. The danger is in addressing different enemies while arguing as if they are the same. So, caveat lector; or, caveat apologiste: let the apologist beware.
What pushes me past this hesitation is that influential evangelical leaders seem to really like what James has to say about spiritual abuse. Justin Taylor retweeted (twice) James’ initial review and Dane Ortlund praised this second piece.
So, a pastor who as been accused of abusing spiritual authority commends an article on spiritual abuse. Hmmm. That gives me pause. Well, not pause, because I’m taking action by writing. But it’s certainly a red flag for me. Now onto the material itself.
I don’t find a whole lot new in James article. Indeed, it’s strange to me that he hasn’t actually addressed the “pointed pushback” he reports:
“My review of When Narcissism Comes to Church generated some of the more pointed pushback I’ve ever received from those I would consider generally in my theological/political tribe.”
James conveniently passes over the majority of Mike Cosper’s 3,000+ word constructive criticism. For those who like what James has to say, I can only hope that you do the hard work of studying his critics even if he doesn’t. I don’t mean any offense by that. It’s just that Substack is a medium for richer dialogue that social media doesn’t allow, yet James spends more time critiquing social media tweets than he does engaging 3,000+ word responses (including my 3,000+ word response, but that I understand, I don’t realistically expect James to read my writing because I don’t have any kind of online platform). Given the greater potential of long-form writing vs social media, I would welcome some true back-and-forth dialogue with James in a spirit of genuine Christian catholicity.
Given that he presents similar ideas in this second piece, I will be re-using some of my previous responses. Here is how James restates the main point of his first review:
“The decision that DeGroat made to emphasize psycho-therapeutic categories and marginalize concepts like sin and repentance is consistent with the framework he establishes, wherein the definition of a narcissistic, abusive person is highly contextual and depends mostly on how the people around that person feel about him.”
I commend James for softening his critique here. Where he initially said DeGroat “abandoned” theological language of sin (2x in that review), now he says DeGroat “emphasized psychology” and “marginalized Biblical concepts”. Still, emphasizing one domain of discourse does not logically require marginalizing another, and as I pointed out before, DeGroat is quite comfortable and adept at using biblical language and concepts. This means DeGroat does not believe there is an inherent incompatibility between psychology and Scripture. I believe James is reading DeGroat with a presupposition that DeGroat does not share, and charitable reading requires acknowledging those differences.
More to the point, here is how I restated James’ main points from his initial review:
First thesis: Biblical categories are superior to psychological categories, and psychological categories are harmful/heretical.
Second Thesis: Biblical categories allow us to come to true and accurate judgments, whereas experiences and feelings do not.
The rest of James’ article after that quote about emphasis and marginalizing, which was initially behind a paywall, is all about how “we’re seeing a pathologizing of personal discomfort”. But James focuses his attention at “online therapy culture”, whereas my concern is the local church. I am going to skirt that online discussion entirely, except to say that any analysis of cultural influence between social media and church is going to be complex and multifaceted. So, I am wary of any reductionistic assumptions that because “pathologizing of personal discomfort” is happening online, it’s obviously happening in churches.1
This is where I think we are talking about different cultural forces. And I am concerned that pastors will take James’ critique of online spiritual abuse discourse and apply that to their local church in defense of truly abusive behavior. To that I say, anathema.
Theology vs Psychology?
Back to the first thesis. Are Biblical categories really superior to psychological ones? I believe James’ approach suffers from an overworked antithesis principle similar to movements generated by Cornelius Van Til, Jay Adams, and the nouthetic counseling / ACBC movement. That is a big debate, and in a short response I can’t do much better than quote from Eric Johnson:
“In transposition, in order to understand the lower order [e.g. biological, psychological] properly and more comprehensively, the knower interprets the dynamic structures of lower orders from within a higher order of meaning…This process is a hierarchical transposition, by which the meaningfulness of the lower order is redesignated, so that the higher order gives the lower-order information a new depth and significance.”2
This comprehensive perspective, or what Johnson terms “complex theocentrism,” contrasts “simple theocentrism” and “religious dualism.”
“Religious dualists focus on the highest order of human life—the spiritual—and see it as so much more important than the other orders of the creation that the latter are neglected or seen as unworthy of serious attention, or, in the most extreme versions, are interpreted as being antithetical to the spiritual realm…Christian models of counseling that focus exclusively on God and sin and downplay reference to biological and psychosocial influences may have fallen under a gnostic spell.”3
Johnson calls for “a more profoundly theocentric approach” than dualism:
“Upon greater reflection and in light of Scripture, all the created aspects of human life are recognized as important because they are made by God. Therefore, for God’s glory every aspect must be “given its due,” corresponding to its particular significance in relation to God…Contrary to religious dualism, a more thoroughgoing theocentrism understands that God is honored by an appropriate regard for all that he has done and made, including those created strata of lesser significance.”4
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1 This really isn’t my concern, but it’s also worth noting that James (and many other objectors) missed David Dark’s actual wording, which pointed to Keller’s statement as a reflection of “the language of spiritual abuse.” He did not say, “this is spiritual abuse.” As such, the statement merits dialogue, not dismissal as “gross overreaction”.
David Dark’s Inner Psychic Revolution @DavidDark
This is the language of spiritual abuse.
“Nothing more important for a Christian to do than to read right through the whole Bible over and over and over, at the very least once a year. You have to keep checking and refining your beliefs by immersion in the Scripture.”
2Eric L Johnson. Foundations for Soul Care: A Christian Psychology Proposal. IVP Academic, 2007, p. 366, emphasis original.
3Ibid., p. 357.
4Ibid., p. 359.
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