What Is the So-Called Dark Night of the Soul?

Question 11160.

Dark night of the soul is a phrase that originated with the sixteenth century Spanish mystic John of the Cross, and it has since entered common Christian vocabulary to describe something rather specific, a prolonged, often severe experience of God’s apparent absence, deeper and longer than ordinary spiritual dryness, sometimes accompanied by real doubt about whether God is present or listening at all. I want to take this experience seriously, examine it against Scripture directly, and offer honest counsel rather than either dismissing it or wrapping it in more mystique than it deserves.

It is worth saying at the outset that while the term itself comes from a Catholic mystical tradition I do not follow in its wider theology, the underlying experience a dark night describes is genuinely biblical. Believers throughout Scripture have walked through seasons of felt divine absence far darker than ordinary dryness, and we should not let unfamiliarity with the label keep us from recognising the pattern when it appears in our own lives or in the lives of those we shepherd.

Biblical Examples of a Genuine Dark Night

Job endured something considerably heavier than ordinary difficulty, crying out, “Oh, that I knew where I might find him, that I might come even to his seat!” (Job 23:3), describing a God who felt hidden precisely when Job needed Him most visible. The psalmist behind Psalm 88 goes further still, ending the entire psalm on an unresolved note of darkness, “you have caused my beloved and my friend to shun me; my companions have become darkness” (Psalm 88:18), with no upward turn at the close, an honest inclusion in Scripture that tells us God does not require every prayer to end resolved before He will accept it. This is a dark night in its rawest, most unresolved biblical form.

Jesus Himself Entered This Dark Night

At the cross, Jesus cried out in genuine anguish, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46), the language of Psalm 22 given voice at the most extreme point of felt abandonment any human being has ever experienced, the actual weight of sin separating Him, for that moment, from the Father’s presence. If the sinless Son of God experienced something rightly described as a dark night, then no believer walking through felt divine absence should assume their experience proves some unique spiritual failure on their part.

What Distinguishes a Dark Night From Ordinary Dryness

Ordinary spiritual dryness tends to be a flatness, disciplines that once felt vivid now feel routine. A dark night runs deeper, often involving genuine doubt about God’s presence or goodness, sometimes triggered by prolonged suffering, unanswered prayer over years rather than weeks, or trauma that has shaken previously settled convictions. It is not the same as apostasy or a loss of genuine faith, since the very anguish of the experience usually reveals a heart still oriented toward God even while unable to feel Him, much the way Job kept addressing God directly throughout his ordeal rather than simply walking away in silence.

What Scripture Does Not Promise

Scripture never promises a Christian will feel God’s presence constantly, and emotional experience of God has never been the biblical measure of whether He is actually present or whether your standing before Him remains secure. Eternal security rests entirely on God’s faithfulness to His own covenant promise, not on the consistency of your felt experience of Him, which means a believer can walk through the darkest of these seasons while never once having been abandoned in reality, whatever it may have felt like at the time.

Walking Through a Dark Night Without Manufacturing False Comfort

Resist the temptation, both from others and from yourself, to manufacture an emotional resolution before it is genuinely there. Stay in community rather than isolating, since a dark night carried entirely alone tends to darken further, while one shared honestly with a trusted friend, pastor, or counsellor often finds its edges more bearable. Keep bringing the anguish honestly to God in prayer, in the manner of Psalm 88, rather than performing a peace you do not yet feel, and trust that His faithfulness does not depend on your ability to sense it on any given day.

How Pastors and Friends Can Help Someone in a Dark Night

If someone you love describes something like a dark night, resist the urge to hurry them toward resolution or to question the legitimacy of their faith because of it. The friends who helped Job least were the ones offering tidy theological explanations for his suffering. Presence, patient listening, and gentle prayer offered alongside someone in a dark night will usually do far more good than any well meant attempt to talk them out of the darkness before its time.

Practical Steps During a Dark Night

If you recognise yourself walking through a dark night as described here, a few practical steps tend to help even when they cannot resolve the underlying darkness itself. Keep a simple written record of your prayers and honest thoughts, since looking back later often reveals a faithfulness you could not perceive in the moment. Maintain the basic rhythms of church attendance and Christian fellowship even at reduced capacity, since isolation nearly always deepens a dark night rather than easing it. And do not hesitate to seek a medical evaluation alongside spiritual care, since prolonged depression can present with similar symptoms to a spiritual dark night, and wise care often needs to address both dimensions together rather than either one alone.

Above all, resist any voice, inside or outside your own head, that tells you a dark night proves your faith was never real. The very fact that the darkness troubles you, that you long for a light you cannot currently feel, is itself evidence of a heart still oriented toward God rather than away from Him. That orientation, however dim it currently feels to you, is precisely what faith looks like from the inside during a dark night, and it is exactly the kind of faith God has promised never to despise or discard.

Distinguishing a Dark Night From Ordinary Discouragement

Not every hard week qualifies as a dark night in the sense this article describes, and it is worth keeping some proportion here. Ordinary discouragement, a difficult season at work, a temporary setback, a single disappointing prayer left unanswered, is a normal part of life in a fallen world and typically passes within days or weeks without requiring the deeper counsel this article has offered. A dark night, by contrast, tends to be prolonged, often stretching across many months, and carries a distinctive quality of felt absence rather than mere circumstantial difficulty, a sense that God Himself, not just your situation, has gone quiet.

Naming the difference matters because it affects how you respond. Ordinary discouragement usually responds well to the normal rhythms of prayer, fellowship, and patience. A genuine dark night may need more sustained, patient companionship from others, and possibly professional support alongside pastoral care, precisely because its depth and duration place a heavier strain on a person than a difficult week ever could. Either way, you are never expected to walk through either experience alone, and reaching out for help is always a legitimate, faithful response rather than a mark of failure.

Holding On When Feeling Offers Nothing to Hold

There is an old, simple picture that has helped many believers walking through a season like this, the image of a ship’s anchor, unseen beneath dark water, holding fast to a seabed the sailor above cannot see and cannot currently feel the benefit of, yet the anchor holds regardless of what the sailor can perceive from the deck. Your standing before God, secured entirely by His own faithfulness rather than by your emotional experience of Him, functions in exactly this way. The absence of felt closeness does not mean the anchor has slipped. It usually means only that the water above has, for a season, turned dark and difficult to see through clearly.

Church history is full of believers, some of them among the most fruitful the faith has ever produced, who walked through seasons resembling what this article describes and came out the other side with a deepened, more settled faith rather than a diminished one. This is not a promise that every dark season resolves quickly, some genuinely do not, but it is a reminder that such seasons have never been outside the range of ordinary Christian experience across two thousand years of church history, and that many who have walked this road before you found, eventually, that the darkness was not the final word.

However long this particular season lasts for you, you are not required to manufacture feelings you do not have in order to remain faithful. Faithfulness in the middle of felt absence looks exactly like what you may already be doing right now, showing up, praying honestly even into apparent silence, and refusing to let go of a God who, whatever it currently feels like, has never once let go of you.

A Final Thought as You Wait for Morning

Night, in Scripture, is never presented as the final word. The Psalms that begin in genuine darkness are followed, book by book, by psalms of unrestrained praise, and the overall shape of the Psalter itself moves steadily from lament toward jubilant worship across its full sweep, even though individual psalms along the way, like Psalm 88, never quite resolve on their own. That larger shape matters. It tells you that your own current chapter, however dark, is not necessarily the final chapter of your story, even if it currently feels that way with every fibre of your being.

I do not say this to rush you toward a resolution you are not ready for, or to suggest the darkness will lift on any particular schedule. I say it only to remind you that morning has come, eventually, for every believer whose story we have on record in Scripture, however long and however dark their particular night happened to be. Yours is not the first such night in the long history of God’s people, and history, alongside Scripture itself, gives good reason to expect it will not be the last word over your life either.

A Closing Word for Those Reading on Someone Else’s Behalf

If you have read this far because someone you love seems to be walking through something like this, the most valuable thing you can offer is steady, patient presence rather than urgent solutions. Resist the instinct to hurry them toward relief, and resist any temptation to question the sincerity of their faith because their experience does not match your own. Simply stay near, pray for them consistently even when they cannot pray easily for themselves, and trust that your quiet faithfulness may become, in time, part of how God carries them through to the other side of what they are facing.

One last thought worth carrying with you. The disciples spent that first Saturday, the day between the crucifixion and the resurrection, in exactly this kind of darkness, grieving a death they did not yet know would be undone within hours. They had no way of knowing morning was already on its way. You may not be able to see your own morning coming either, not yet, but their story stands as a permanent, recorded reminder that God’s silence on a Saturday has never once been the end of His story with His people.

So, now what?

If you recognise yourself in this description, take it as permission rather than alarm. You are not the first believer to walk through a dark night, and Scripture has already made room for your experience without demanding you fake your way out of it. Stay close to your church, keep speaking honestly to God even when the silence feels total, and hold on to the fact that His faithfulness has never actually depended on how present He felt to you on your worst day.

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46, ESV)

Related reading: What Is Spiritual Dryness, and How Should I Respond?, What Is Biblical Lament?, and How Does the Spirit Minister to Believers in Doubt?