Anxiety for Worst-Case Scenarios (Anxiety Series 6)

Let's Define Anxiety. I use a public comment to springboard us into defining anxiety

Defining anxiety—the time has come. A reader commented on my article, Trust the Father,

The problem with the word “anxiety” is that it is rather flexible (not unlike “love”).

The thoughtful comment was lengthy and is public. I quote it throughout this first article as the entry point to define anxiety. My friend Brondt is the commentator, and I got his permission to use his remarks as a springboard for this and other articles.

Superficial Anxiety

Brondt presents a weakness in my Anxiety Series—namely, I have not defined anxiety.

As I explained in my reply, the missing definition was intentional. I limited my Anxiety Series (so far) to a commentary on a selection out of the Gospel of Matthew chapter 6. Jesus does not define anxiety in the passage, so I overlooked it with intention. Why? Because of what my friend points out—anxiety (the word) is flexible. It triggers different people, differently.

For some people, anxiety strikes them in the following way, also well-articulated by my friend.

In the Sermon, I think Christ is talking about the sort of anxiety that affects everyone in their day-to-day life, the sort of anxiety that says, "How am I going to pay rent next month?" or "Can we afford to have kids?" These are very much in the vein of choosing between trusting in God or trusting in Mammon. Neither, I think, are what modern psychiatry means by "anxiety" (though psychological anxiety can certainly manifest in these sorts of worries too).

In the Matthew 6 passage, Jesus speaks about food, clothing, and extending life. Certainly, as Brondt says, anxiety refers to mundane concerns, such as paying rent or practical necessities for parents.

These concerns may appear superficial in today’s world, and in his last line, Bront points out that these do not seem to mesh with what a psychiatrist means by anxiety. Superficial concerns fail to address chronic, debilitating anxiety. I respect that.

Debilitating Anxiety

With characteristic eloquence, Brondt speaks for many sufferers when he explains,

I'm sure, given your experience, that you have seen those people who are simply unable to control their anxiety, even by "trusting in God." As someone for whom this is a struggle, literally everything in my life is a source of anxiety. Does my wife love me? Am I going to get fired today? Am I going to die painfully in a car wreck on the one-mile drive to the grocery store? Is this chicken going to make me sick? And so on. 

While there is definitely a need to trust in God even in these things, it is distinctly different than the ordinary focused sources of anxiety that strike the average person. The psychological anxiety is so overwhelming as to cause paralysis, panic attacks, and deep (almost suicidal) depression. Drugs do not fix the problem, to be sure, but they suppress the anxiety enough that a person can get a handle on it and actually trust in God. 

Brondt highlights the other side of anxiety—the darker, disabling side. He correctly hooks anxiety and depression together. This is the side of anxiety that folks spend years on medication trying to solve. As a past client of mine put it, anxiety is “the hamster wheel of insanity” spinning unquiet thoughts into one’s head.

Allow me to suggest that Jesus houses all experiences anxiety in his use of the word, not just the mundane, superficial concerns.

Jesus Speaks about the Worst Cases of Anxiety

Remember Jesus spoke in the first century. In ancient times, people constantly struggled to survive, focusing on food, clothing, and prolonging life. This is the pinnacle of worst-case scenarios.

If the anxiety Jesus spoke of includes the worst-cases, it encompasses all lesser cases of anxiety.

A widow, for example, who lost her husband and had no son faced destitution. Most people back then lived in extreme poverty, so rent wasn’t an issue. Not dying was their chief concern—food, life extension. Disease had no vaccines, so illness was a virtual death sentence, as was gaining a disability. Losing an eye or a limb, for instance, meant the family must bear the burden. Barring that, one begged. Leprosy was incurable and cast one out of civilized society.

The examples could go on.

So, Jesus actually includes all experiences of anxiety in his three analogies of food, clothing, and life extension (Matthew 6:25-30). See my articles, Creation Reveals God, and Lifespan Analogy.

The Ancient Context

In ancient times, people were divided into two broad categories: the Haves and the Have-nots. The Haves were the elite class—political and religious. Everyone else—the vast majority of people—lived in various levels of servitude and enslavement to support the elite class as the Have-nots. Have-nots rarely climbed into the Haves category.

The widow’s options were begging, servitude or slavery, or prostitution. This is something modern Westerners can hardly imagine. Disabled people or slaves relied on others who prioritized power over sacrificial love.

Jesus revolutionized the world by teaching sacrificial love. Power was all anyone knew before Jesus. Before him, ethics meant living by the pagan code of society, the fundamental ethic of which was power. This code included sanctioned exposure of unwanted babies, killing slaves as a legal right, raping women and children as a cultural trope.

War and violence were commonplace. Whoever won a war often enslaved the people, or killed the men and male children and captured the women, or subjugated the populace under their rule.

Jesus speaks in this context: Roman-occupied Judea. This is why the Judaic leaders needed Pontius Pilate’s permission to crucify Jesus. They were not their own rulers.

When Jesus three times commands, “Do not be anxious” in Matthew 6:25, 31, and 34, he is speaking to an audience composed mostly of these Have-nots. He speaks into the worst cases of human suffering, deprivation, risk, unpredictable malice of the Haves, and survivalist-mentality running on a razor’s edge of consequences.

Imagine their anxiety for a moment.

Our Modern Experience of Anxiety

Brondt takes the plight of ancient peoples seriously. He is a man of integrity and Christian feeling. When he says that psychiatric drugs “suppress the anxiety enough that a person can get a handle on [anxiety] and actually trust in God,” he highlights that we modern people have an advantage over the ancient audience. Today, we can mollify intense suffering as they could not.

And yet, Brondt helps us see just how intense our modern experience of anxiety is when he says,

In the grip of such anxiety, not only is it impossible to trust in God, it is impossible even to believe that God cares for us at all.

To this I replied, “I’m not sure there can be a more non-biblical belief than that.” Although my statement was perhaps too pointed, I stand by it. Notice I did not say “unbiblical,”—my original word choice. I amended it to “non-biblical.” Why? Suggesting Brondt was unbiblical would have been an insult. He is expressing his own, modern experience of anxiety, which takes courage and faith.

Brondt’s is Thomas’ Faith and Love

When Thomas missed the post-Resurrection visit of Jesus to the other Apostles, he exclaimed, “Unless I see in his hands the print of the nails, and place my finger in the mark of the nails, and place my hand in his side, I will not believe” (John 20:25). Thomas was not an unbeliever. Return to the first sentence Brondt said, where he mentions love. Brondt makes a key, intuitive link. Thomas loved Jesus so much that he could not bear the appearing of Christ to be untrue.

His love would not allow him to accept the Resurrection as a mythology. This is tremendous faith. When Jesus appeared just to Thomas the next Sunday, he exclaimed, “My Lord and my God!” without sticking his hands in Christ’s wounds.

Brondt has that kind of faith, that kind of love. He refuses to trust God on a just-so story, a cliché of faith, blind faith. Brondt wants the real thing, like Thomas. So should we all.

Trust is Possible and Biblical

So, regarding impossible trust, “non-biblical” is more correct. Perhaps my exegesis of Matthew 6 in the Anxiety Series was inadequate and caused Brondt’s possible misunderstanding (exegesis is a fancy word defined as the drawing-out of meaning from a text).

If Jesus teaches us anything, it is that trust in God is never impossible. Trust relates to loving God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength (Mark 12:30). Anxiety, trust, and love interconnect.

Conclusion

Jesus speaks into the worst-case scenarios and commands us “Do not be anxious.” The command expects our ability to follow his guidance. My article, Life Giving Commands, addresses this.

Therefore, the sentiment of impossible trust is non-biblical. I respect this experience—which I have shared. But it is not (non-) what the Bible (biblical) teaches about anxiety.

And yet, Brondt issues an important challenge to me. He wants me to take seriously the dark side of the modern experience of anxiety. I must turn to a sober reflection of defining anxiety in its complexity and human experience.

In upcoming articles in the Anxiety Series, I strive to wrestle with what “trust the Father” means—defining trust. I strive to define anxiety and its deeper relationship to fear—both natural, God-given fear and the pathological fear that runs amuck as “the hamster wheel of insanity.” One symptom is anxiety.

Stay tuned to the Anxiety Series!