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“Lexapro As A Liturgy”

“Lexapro As A Liturgy”

Mental Health, Recovery From Trauma, And Emerging Concerns About SSRI’s

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Nathan Finochio
May 03, 2025
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“Lexapro As A Liturgy”
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I was sent a video of a worship artist I’d never heard of, singing a song whose chorus contained this jaw-dropper of a lyric:

“Lexapro as a liturgy, the bread and wine and a pill for me.”

Let’s just pause and appreciate the ambition here. It’s not every day someone manages to blend the Holy Eucharist with Big Pharma in the span of one indie-folk chorus. I’ll drop the link below so you can behold it for yourself, but first, let’s talk.

See, I used to say stuff like this: “If you need a pill to bring chemical balance into your brain, it’s no different than wearing glasses.” Cute. Pastoral. Comforting. Also: Possibly wrong.

Why the change of mind?

A) Doctors were pretty sure SSRIs worked well for everyone ten years ago.
B) There wasn’t much dissent in the medical community—unless you were wearing tinfoil.
C) I wasn’t suspicious of Big Pharma or the FDA.
(This was pre-Covid, pre-red-dye-40 awareness, pre-everything that makes you side-eye cereal boxes.)
D) I was parroting other pastors who hadn’t read anything beyond their devotional app and an old Nouwen paperback.

But all that has changed.

And it’s not because I believe people who take medication lack faith, or because it’s demonic, or because I think Biblical Counseling is the cat’s meow (actually, quite the opposite).

Let’s be clear—I’m not anti-SSRI. I’m not even crunchy. I’m not here with a kombucha in one hand and a Joe Rogan episode in the other yelling, “Wake up, sheeple!” I’m just...aware now. Aware that there are seismic shifts happening in neuropsychopharmacology, and that our governments—who let’s face it, are basically cohabitating with lobbyists—aren’t too concerned with what’s actually good for human beings long-term.

I haven’t made my mind up about vaccines. Truly. But I do know I got 8 and my son is being prescribed 76. And I do know autism was 1 in 1,000 when I was a kid and now it’s 1 in 36. So forgive me for wondering if maybe, just maybe, something’s up. Is it the vaccines? The food? The wifi? The air? The freaking toothpaste?

I’m old enough to remember when my mom said fluoride in the water was “good for your bones.” Turns out—it’s basically tap poison with PR.

At some point, maybe we need to admit we’ve been doing the medical equivalent of bloodletting. Again. In baggy pants. With Clairo on in the background. And yeah—that kind of awakening is an existential gut punch. It leaves you politically homeless. Socially awkward at dinner parties. No longer confident in either side of the aisle or the pharmacy shelf.

I don’t know what you think about RFK Jr., and I frankly don’t care—but somebody needs to look into this mess with less money on the line. And if you say, “How do you know the new studies won’t be biased, too?”—then congrats, you’ve arrived at the epistemic cliff the rest of us are staring off of. Just because the house has termites doesn’t mean you nap through the collapse.

Now—back to the song. I’m not here to answer the cliché question every Christian wants to reduce this to:
“Should Christians take antidepressants?”

That’s not the point.

The better question is:
What does it even mean to pair Lexapro with the Eucharist and call it healing?
Are we saying Jesus and SSRIs are equally redemptive? That the sacrament of the table is somehow complemented—or completed—by a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor?

Because that’s a theological Rubicon we might want to pause before crossing.

Yes, God can use medical process to bring healing. Absolutely. Praise Him for surgeons and psych meds and bone grafts. But would you write a chorus that says, “The bread and wine and chemotherapy for me”? I mean, maybe? But it’s odd, right?

Because at some point, we all die. And if this thing we’re calling “healing” doesn’t last past a casket, then maybe it isn’t as eschatologically sound as we thought.

I suppose I have some questions even beyond that.

Here’s the ongoing viral clip, and my response:

round white pills
Photo by Hal Gatewood on Unsplash

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