ANXIETY

How does the Gospel address the central issue of anxiety? What does the Word of God have to say about this aspect of the human condition?

Archibald Hart, in Overcoming Anxiety, believes we have many different forms of anxiety. There is worry anxiety, which is the excessive obsession with imagined fears, expecting the worst, and bracing for catastrophe. There is also fear anxiety, which is anxiety over real fears, threats or demands. The anxiety is exaggerated, excessive and debilitating. Then there is existential anxiety, in which we see our existence as meaningless, death as extinction, and concern that we have no value. As Kierkegaard writes, “Deep within every human being there still lives the anxiety of being alone in the world, forgotten by God, overlooked among the millions and millions in this enormous household.” Then there is panic anxiety which is mostly brought on by prolonged stress or over-demand. Chemical imbalance in the brain is due to lack of natural tranquilizers, causing systems to become hyper-active and easily panicked. Phobic anxiety refers to the phobias, or unrealistic fears we develop of things, people, and places, leading to extreme and unreasonable avoidance of these places or objects. Lastly, general anxiety has no focus. It is ‘free-floating’; it comes and goes leaving a sense of vague uneasiness that is felt all the time without having any real idea why or what causes it.

Dr. Hart, who is a Christian psychologist, and former dean of the Graduate School of Psychology at Fuller Theological Seminary, provides a test by which you can check to see how anxious you are. He asks the following questions:

1. Do thoughts that you can’t stop keep moving through your mind?
2. Do you often feel you must take tranquilizers or drink alcohol before social engagements of performances?
3. Do you spend a lot of time worrying that bad things may happen to you?
4. Do you become extremely uncomfortable when you find yourself the center of attention?
5. Do you worry intensely about dying or about having something terrible happen to you?
6. Do you find it difficult to relax or fall asleep at night?
7. Do you avoid open spaces, crowded places such as shopping malls, or closed places?
8. Are you afraid of leave home without being accompanied by someone you know?
9. Are you afraid of airplanes and flying, even on major airlines?
10. Do you experience a sudden racing of the heart, difficulty in breathing, sweating, dizziness, or light-headedness?
11. Are you sometimes suddenly overcome by an intense fear that something terrible is going to happen?
12. Have you gone to an emergency room or doctor at least once in the past six months, fearing a heart attack, only to have the medical examination reveal no problem?
13. Are there such things that you feel you must do repeatedly – such as wash your hands, check the front door or windows – despite your efforts to resist?
14. Do you worry a lot about your body or feel sure you have a disease, even though doctors say you are in good health?
15. Do you suffer from numbness or coldness of your hands, or do you experience strange feelings such as crawling or itchy sensations on your arms or legs?

He says that if you answered yes to any of these questions, you may be suffering from some form of anxiety. The more yeses you checked, the greater your ‘anxiety score’; more than four yeses suggest that you should seek professional help for your problem right away.

What does the Bible have to say about anxiety? Adam and Eve, in the Garden of Eden, are innocent of sin. They are given freedom to eat from any tree in the garden, but they must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Soren Kierkegaard, in his classic, The Concept of Anxiety, writes that this prohibition induces in Adam and Eve a state of anxiety because it introduces the possibility of freedom. Once Adam and Eve know that they can disobey God, they desire to do so. Yet they dread that desire. They do and don’t want that freedom because there is nothing but themselves to stop them from sinning.

We all experience this when we find ourselves in a dangerous situation, such as walking along a cliff and knowing we could fall or jump if we chose to; or whether driving along a road at night and a car approaches the thought may go through your mind, “I could drive right into him.” This ‘could’ is freedom, and it creates anxiety. In a sense lack of freedom takes away anxiety. Kierkegaard put it this way:

“Anxiety is freedom’s possibility, and only such anxiety is through faith absolutely educative, because it consumes all finite ends and discovers all their deceptiveness. And no Grand Inquisitor has such dreadful torments in readiness as anxiety has, and no secret agent know as cunningly as anxiety how to attack his suspect in his weakest moment or to make alluring the trap in which he will be caught, and no discerning judge knows how to interrogate and examine the accused as does anxiety, which never lets the accused escape, neither through amusement, nor by noise, nor during work, neither by day, nor by night. Whoever is educated by anxiety is educated by possibility.”

It is apprehension about the possibility of the future, about our actions, and what may happen to us, that educates us about the fragility of life, and how we cannot depend on earthly finite promises. Anxiety then serves to reveal to us that we cannot trust in this life. In fact anxiety leads us to faith, for we can only trust in God. Anxiety then, instead of being an instrument of torture to be resisted, is welcomed because it leads us where we wish to go – to trust in the eternal. “Then anxiety enters into his soul and searches out everything and anxiously torments everything finite and petty out of him, and then it leads him where he wants to go.” This is constructive anxiety which delivers us from dependence on transitory things which we have valued too much, and give us the faith and wisdom to find peace in the eternal.

This is what Jesus is doing with the disciples on the lake. (Matthew 8:23-27) A furious storm comes up, and threatens to swamp the boat. The disciples are afraid they are going to drown. They are filled with anxiety. They are apprehensive about the possibility of the boat capsizing. Anxiety is doing its work, filling their minds with fear of ending their earthly lives. They are caught at a weak moment, when even the bravest of them is found to be frightened. They are trapped on a small boat in the middle of a storm that may consume them. The strong, able, self-sufficient fishermen like Peter, John and Andrew, are not able to cope with the elements. The financial geniuses, like Matthew, who have been able to protect their security with sufficient funds, are at a loss. They can’t buy their way out of this life-threatening situation. No matter whether they are healthy, wealthy or wise, they are unable to provide a solution. They are being educated by their anxiety that nothing they can do will save them.

So it is with us. We are all in the same boat. The storms of life rage around us and within us. Our anxieties lead us to see that we cannot get out of our predicaments in this life on our own. Anxiety enters our soul and searches out everything, and anxiously torments everything finite and petty out of us. We finally realize what really matters, and how things which we thought were so important years ago, no longer matter. Anxiety is leading us where we want to go. Where is that?

Right in front of us! Jesus is resting peacefully in the same boat with us. He is not bothered by the storm. Why is that? Because he does not trust in this world, but in his heavenly Father’s care. He knows who is ultimately in charge. Don’t you wish you could rest as peacefully as he does? You can, if you are willing to let anxiety lead you to faith.

The anxiety of the disciples leads them to Jesus. They wake him up and cry out, ‘Lord, save us! We’re going to drown!’ They are having a panic attack and fear that they will not be able to breathe. They already envisage the water suffocating them, and sinking to the bottom of the lake. Jesus diagnoses their condition: ‘you of little faith, why are you so afraid? Trust me. I gave you life. I forgave you. I gave you meaning in life. I gave you a mission in life. I gave you love and something to live for, the gift of eternal life. Don’t you think that I can take care of you? Can you not use the strength of faith that I have given you to deal with your fears of extinction?’

Then, to prove that such faith is real he rebuked the wind and the waves, and it was completely calm. Can you believe that Jesus will do that for you?