The Slough of Despond — When Faith Sinks (Bunyan’s Wisdom)
⏱ 13 min read
You have been a Christian long enough to have walked through it more than once. The morning you could not pray. The week the verses sat on the page and said nothing. The month the church coffee tasted of nothing, and you sat in the pew and went through the motions, and the singing happened around you while the inside of you did not move. The Slough of Despond. Bunyan named it three hundred and fifty years ago. He named it because he had been in it. He wrote Pilgrim’s Progress from a prison cell in Bedford, where the despond was a daily reality, not a literary device. The map he drew in that book has been honest with the church ever since — and the loud piety has, on the whole, declined to use it.
This is a slow read with Bunyan, with the Pilgrim’s Progress page open, on the question you asked when you typed what is the slough of despond into the search bar. Probably you asked it because something about the phrase rang true and you wanted the source. Possibly you asked it because you are in the Slough right now, and you wanted to know if anyone old and trustworthy had been there before you. Both are good reasons. We will read slowly. The 140-day contemplative companion to this whole conversation is the Christian Healing Journal, built for the long stretch of healing that walking out of the Slough actually takes — not the quick crossing the cheerful piety pretends is possible.
The scene itself, slowed down
Open the book at the second chapter. Christian — Bunyan’s pilgrim — has just left the City of Destruction, with the burden on his back. He has not been on the road for an hour when he and his companion Pliable step into a place Bunyan describes as a very miry slough in the midst of the plain. They fall in. The mud holds them. Christian, who has the burden, sinks faster.
Bunyan writes:
“They drew near to a very miry slough that was in the midst of the plain, and they being heedless did both fall suddenly into the bog. The name of the slough was Despond. Here, therefore, they wallowed for a time, being grievously bedaubed with the dirt; and Christian, because of the burden that was on his back, began to sink in the mire.” — John Bunyan, Pilgrim’s Progress
Read that twice. Two things matter.
First — they being heedless. The pilgrims did not fall into the Slough by sin, by neglect of doctrine, by misreading the map. They fell in by being heedless — by not paying attention to the ground for a few minutes early in the walk. Bunyan is not making a moral judgement here. He is describing a feature of the road. The Slough is in the way. The pilgrim who walks the road will, sooner or later, by inattention or fatigue or sheer ordinary humanness, step into it. It is part of the path.
Second — Christian, because of the burden that was on his back, began to sink. The thing that made the Slough dangerous was not the Slough itself, but the burden Christian was already carrying. The same mud is around Pliable, who has no burden to speak of — Pliable wallows for a moment and then scrambles out and turns home. Christian, with the weight on him, sinks. The despond becomes deeper for the soul that came into it already carrying something.
That is the part the cheerful piety does not understand. The Christian who falls into the Slough has not failed because she sank. She sank because she was already carrying something the lighter walkers were not. The grief. The chronic illness. The years of small unattended faith-injuries that became the burden. The exhaustion of holding people. The marriages that ground down. The accumulated weight of a long walk, made heavier by the fact that the walking itself had become harder. The same Slough is around her that is around the others. She sinks faster because the burden is real. (For the longer-form sister read to this one — written for the woman whose burden has been the burden of loss specifically — a devotional for the woman healing after loss is the slow letter.)
Why the Slough is in the way
In the next paragraph of the book, the pilgrim Christian, sunk in the mire, is met by a man named Help, who pulls him out. Christian, dripping mud, asks the obvious question — why is this slough still here? Why has the King of the Country not had it drained? It is one of the most quietly revealing exchanges in the book. The answer Help gives — Bunyan writing slowly, with the patience of a man who has thought about this for years — is this:
“This miry slough is such a place as cannot be mended; it is the descent whither the scum and filth that attends conviction for sin doth continually run, and therefore is it called the Slough of Despond. For still as the sinner is awakened about his lost condition, there arise in his soul many fears, and doubts, and discouraging apprehensions, which all of them get together, and settle in this place; and this is the reason of the badness of this ground.” — John Bunyan, Pilgrim’s Progress
Read that whole paragraph again. Such a place as cannot be mended. The Slough is not a flaw in the road that the King has overlooked. It is a necessary feature of the road. The descent whither the scum and filth that attends conviction for sin doth continually run. The Slough is where the soul’s own honest reckoning with itself drains. Every fear the awakened soul has ever had. Every doubt. Every discouraging apprehension. All of them settle in that one low spot in the country, and that is the reason of the badness of the ground.
Sit with that for a minute. Bunyan is saying that the Slough is the place where the soul’s own honesty about itself collects. The honest believer — the one who has actually looked at her sin, her brokenness, her need — has the Slough in her path because she has done the looking. The Christians who never fall into the Slough are not the more advanced believers. They are, often, the ones who have not yet awakened far enough for the fears and doubts and discouragements to settle anywhere.
This is the inversion the cheerful piety cannot survive. Falling into the Slough is evidence of the awakening, not evidence against it. The pilgrim who has begun to see herself clearly will at some point find herself in the mud, because the mud is where the seeing-clearly drains. The right response is not to be embarrassed by the sinking. The right response is to recognise the Slough for what Bunyan said it was — a feature of the awakened walk, met by Help, crossable by grace, not the end of the road.
A pause, here, before the next passage. The body. The Slough has been in the room while you have been reading. Notice where you are carrying it — the chest, often. The low part of the throat. The held breath that has not gone all the way down for several paragraphs now. Let one slow inhale come past the chest. Let one slow exhale go out. The body has been a faithful carrier of the Slough’s weight. The body is also one of the places where the lifting begins, when it begins. You are not asked to feel anything after the breath. You are asked to let the breath happen. That is enough.
The stones in the Slough
Here is the detail Bunyan adds next, and most readers miss it.
The Slough, he writes, has been the swallowing up of many, but the King’s labourers have also, by direction of His Majesty’s surveyors, been employed about this patch of ground, to mend it. Yea, and to my knowledge, (says Help) here have been swallowed up at least twenty thousand cartloads, yea, millions of wholesome instructions, that have at all seasons been brought from all places of the King’s dominions; and they that can tell, say they are the best materials to make good ground of the place: if so be, it might have been mended; but it is the Slough of Despond still, and so will be when they have done what they can.
And then, the line worth keeping near the page:
“True, there are, by the direction of the Lawgiver, certain good and substantial steps, placed even through the very midst of this slough; but at such time as this place doth much spew out its filth, as it doth against change of weather, these steps are hardly seen; or, if they be, men, through the dizziness of their heads, step beside them, and then they are bemired to purpose, notwithstanding the steps be there.”
Read that again, more slowly. There are certain good and substantial steps, placed even through the very midst of this slough. The steps are there. Bunyan does not pretend the Slough has no way through. He says the way is steps — discrete, solid, prepared by the Lawgiver — and that the steps run through the very midst of the slough, not around it. The pilgrim does not avoid the Slough by skirting it. The pilgrim crosses the Slough by finding the steps inside it.
But — and this is the part that makes Bunyan honest in a way the cheerful piety cannot copy — at such time as this place doth much spew out its filth, as it doth against change of weather, these steps are hardly seen. When the despond is at its worst, the steps are hardest to see. The steps have not been removed. They are still where the Lawgiver placed them. They are just covered, temporarily, by the filth the Slough is spewing. The pilgrim, in the bad season, must trust that the steps are still there and put her foot down anyway.
Men, through the dizziness of their heads, step beside them, and then they are bemired to purpose, notwithstanding the steps be there. The dizziness is real. The misstepping is real. The sinking, in the bad season, can be the result not of the absence of the steps but of the despond itself making the head dizzy enough that the foot misses the stone it was aimed at.
This is the Bunyan inversion. The Slough is not crossed by not being despondent. The Slough is crossed by finding the steps the Lawgiver has placed inside it, one at a time, by feel if necessary, in the seasons the head is dizzy and the eyes cannot find the next stone. The steps are not insights, in Bunyan’s grammar. They are the promises. The verses. The small daily disciplines. The acts of obedience the soul can perform even when the soul does not feel anything. The despond does not remove them. The despond hides them. The pilgrim’s work in the Slough is not to make the Slough disappear. The pilgrim’s work is to find the next step, put her weight on it, and step.
The 140-day form of this same practice — the page that already has the next step prepared for you, the verse already chosen, the small structure for the day the head is too dizzy to invent one — is the Christian Healing Journal. It is what Bunyan’s steps look like in modern devotional form. A page a day. One step. Then the next. Built for the woman in the Slough who has had enough days of dizziness that the steps need to already be there when she opens the book. (For the prayer-side companion to the same practice, prayer for healing — 7 honest prayers with Bible verses walks the prayers themselves; for the prayer-for-the-mind-that-won’t-stop side, prayer for anxiety and overthinking is the slow late-night companion.)
The Interpreter’s lamp
There is a second passage in Pilgrim’s Progress that the woman in the Slough needs and almost never hears. Christian, later in the book, comes to the house of the Interpreter, who shows him a series of small parables made into rooms. In one of them, a fire is burning against a wall, and a man stands behind the wall pouring oil onto the flame to keep it alive — though, on the other side of the wall, another figure is trying to put the fire out by pouring water on it. The fire keeps burning because the oil is being supplied secretly, where the figure with the water cannot see it.
The Interpreter says:
“This is Christ, who continually, with the oil of His grace, helps the work already begun in the heart; by the means of which notwithstanding what the devil can do, the souls of His people prove gracious still.” — John Bunyan, Pilgrim’s Progress
Stop on that for a moment. The oil of His grace, helping the work already begun in the heart. The fire is not the pilgrim’s effort. The fire is the work the Lord has already begun. The despond comes against the fire like water against a flame. From the front, the fire should be out. From the front, by every visible measure, the soul should be done. And yet, says Bunyan, the souls of His people prove gracious still — because behind the wall, where the despondent eye cannot see, Christ is continually pouring the oil of His grace onto the flame.
This is the secret architecture the cheerful piety cannot describe, because the cheerful piety only knows how to read the front of the wall. The front of the wall is the visible Christian life — what the woman in the Slough can see of her own faith. From the front, the fire looks like it is going out. From the front, the prayer feels empty. From the front, the scripture feels flat. From the front, the despond is winning.
Behind the wall, where she cannot see, the grace is being supplied. The fire is being kept alive by a Christ she is not currently feeling but who is, in Bunyan’s grammar, continually — the word matters — continually with the oil of His grace, helping the work already begun in the heart.
The pilgrim’s job in the Slough is not to see behind the wall. The pilgrim’s job is to trust the architecture — to believe that the supply is happening where the eye cannot follow it, and to keep finding the next step in the mud. The fire is not going out. It only looks that way from where you are standing. The Lord has not stopped pouring the oil. He never has. The souls of His people prove gracious still. That is the Bunyan promise. Hold it.
What “what is the slough of despond” actually means for your week
It means you are in the same country Christian walked. The despond is not the verdict on your faith. It is the low ground where the awakened soul’s own honesty drains. The steps are in it. The oil of His grace is being supplied to the fire on the other side of the wall. The pilgrim’s work is small and slow — find the next step, put your weight on it, step. Then find the next one. Then the next. The crossing happens by stones, not by jumps.
(For the wider letter to the woman in the long hard year — the depleted version of this same posture — christian journal prompts for women (healing after a hard year) is the slow letter, not the cheerful list. And for the broader sibling reading from a different older voice — Augustine on the why of the suffering and the silence — see why does God allow suffering — Augustine’s answer in City of God and why does God feel so distant — the restless heart of Augustine.)
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Closing
The Slough of Despond is in the path of every awakened soul. Bunyan said so. The steps are in the Slough. The fire is being kept by an oil the despond cannot reach. The crossing is by stones, slowly, sometimes for years. You are in the same country he was.
The slow practice we just walked has its 140-day form in Christian Healing Journal. One stone at a time. A page a day. Built for the woman who has been in the Slough long enough that the steps need to already be on the page when she opens the book.
