So, I have to push back a little here (I will reserve final judgement until the series has ended--and maybe you address my concern in future posts): The problem with the word "anxiety" is that it is rather flexible (not unlike "love"). 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).
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.
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.
First, thank you for your remarks. I appreciate the interaction.
I’m not sure if you’re pushing back because I have not defined anxiety. As a matter of fact, I’m actually working on an upcoming article defining anxiety. You have anticipated me!
The reason I did not define anxiety so far is the Lord Jesus did not define anxiety in the text. I just went with it. I am doing a prolonged exegesis of Matthew six and attempting to apply it to contemporary concerns. Perhaps I am not as successful as I hoped. I have intentionally avoided defining anxiety precisely because the word will strike people differently.
I think for you, the take away seems to be how the word has struck you. I’m noticing some things in your remarks, that trusting God is impossible, for example. I’m not sure there can be a more non-biblical belief than that, and it betrays some pre-commitments that probably need examination with a spiritual father. Forgive me if that’s too pointed of a statement. It suggests to me serious interrogation needed of relationships between faith, confidence in what psychiatrists say about anxiety, and personal experiences of it.
But this is exactly why I am doing this work! We all bring a knot of ideas, personality blockages, and pre-commitments to these issues that obstruct healing. One of my own deep frustrations are cases just like you seem to describe, where trusting God seems to be impossible, and medication seems not to be the answer, and the symptoms are crippling, and there doesn’t seem to be hope. It doesn’t usually help to tell people that I’ve been there too, but I have. And I’m on the other side of it. It’s in my heart to share how to get on the other side of it.
And about medication, it might be good to look more into it. You’re obviously a smart guy and you know your own business and you don’t need me to tell you anything. Medications can cause or exacerbate the symptoms they are supposed to treat. We are conditioned to have an implicit trust of medication. I am planning paid-subscriber articles on these issues, so stay tuned if you feel like it would be helpful.
For now, one might read Robert Whitaker’s two books. First, Mad in America. Second, Anatomy of an Epidemic.
Thanks again for your remarks. I’m glad you felt like you could push back. Would you mind if I used your comments as a springboard for a few articles?
As I said, I reserve judgement until I have read more. I offer the comments (and the two that follow) either in anticipation of your later articles or precisely to give you additional topics (from my experience of anxiety, etc.) to consider and respond to in the future.
The question of whether or not to trust doctors and medication is noted, but we should also beware that we don't stray into a situation like the old woman in a story I once heard (not sure where, but it was an Orthodox source): she had a toothache and prayed God would heal her. She met multiple dentists who all said they could help her, but she refused their help as she said that God would heal her as she had prayed. Eventually, she prayed again about her tooth, and God told her that he keeps sending dentists to help her! My sense of things (again, from experience) is that almost everyone who talks about this issue approaches it as a dualist: either they reduce clinical anxiety to brain chemicals alone or they seek to frame it entirely as a sickness of the spirit, for which the answer is faith and not drugs. Anxiety can--and often does--slip into despair, which definitely is a spiritual sickness, but it is always worth remembering that the Church is very clear that we are both body and spirit: the one affects the other, and vice versa.
Secondly, a double note on "I have been there too." The sentiment "Trust in Jesus" is not actually very helpful, even for ordinary folk with ordinary anxieties. One needs a guide, but (as you suggest in this post) a secular approach is not it. That is why it is vitally important that Christians seek Christian therapists, and Orthodox Christians especially seek an Orthodox therapist (usually in private practice, as they will have more freedom to take a Church and Faith centred approach). Also, we are talking about recurrent anxiety that seems largely un-triggered. "I have been there too" is actually only helpful to someone like myself if by that you mean that you deal with much the same problem. Going through and surviving one or two deeply anxious periods is really not the same thing at all.
Anyway, I anticipate future articles with a great...anticipation.
I anticipated people finding the answer to “trust God” trite, cliché, and unsatisfying. But once again, I went with it, because that’s what the passage says, and I’m doing an exegesis of the passage. I had to start somewhere!
But this opens the door for upcoming articles to answer the question, what does trust mean? I’m convinced we dislike this answer because we misunderstand both trust and God, or simply because this demands some thing of us that is often quite difficult.
So, I have to push back a little here (I will reserve final judgement until the series has ended--and maybe you address my concern in future posts): The problem with the word "anxiety" is that it is rather flexible (not unlike "love"). 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).
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.
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.
Brondt,
First, thank you for your remarks. I appreciate the interaction.
I’m not sure if you’re pushing back because I have not defined anxiety. As a matter of fact, I’m actually working on an upcoming article defining anxiety. You have anticipated me!
The reason I did not define anxiety so far is the Lord Jesus did not define anxiety in the text. I just went with it. I am doing a prolonged exegesis of Matthew six and attempting to apply it to contemporary concerns. Perhaps I am not as successful as I hoped. I have intentionally avoided defining anxiety precisely because the word will strike people differently.
I think for you, the take away seems to be how the word has struck you. I’m noticing some things in your remarks, that trusting God is impossible, for example. I’m not sure there can be a more non-biblical belief than that, and it betrays some pre-commitments that probably need examination with a spiritual father. Forgive me if that’s too pointed of a statement. It suggests to me serious interrogation needed of relationships between faith, confidence in what psychiatrists say about anxiety, and personal experiences of it.
But this is exactly why I am doing this work! We all bring a knot of ideas, personality blockages, and pre-commitments to these issues that obstruct healing. One of my own deep frustrations are cases just like you seem to describe, where trusting God seems to be impossible, and medication seems not to be the answer, and the symptoms are crippling, and there doesn’t seem to be hope. It doesn’t usually help to tell people that I’ve been there too, but I have. And I’m on the other side of it. It’s in my heart to share how to get on the other side of it.
And about medication, it might be good to look more into it. You’re obviously a smart guy and you know your own business and you don’t need me to tell you anything. Medications can cause or exacerbate the symptoms they are supposed to treat. We are conditioned to have an implicit trust of medication. I am planning paid-subscriber articles on these issues, so stay tuned if you feel like it would be helpful.
For now, one might read Robert Whitaker’s two books. First, Mad in America. Second, Anatomy of an Epidemic.
Thanks again for your remarks. I’m glad you felt like you could push back. Would you mind if I used your comments as a springboard for a few articles?
As I said, I reserve judgement until I have read more. I offer the comments (and the two that follow) either in anticipation of your later articles or precisely to give you additional topics (from my experience of anxiety, etc.) to consider and respond to in the future.
The question of whether or not to trust doctors and medication is noted, but we should also beware that we don't stray into a situation like the old woman in a story I once heard (not sure where, but it was an Orthodox source): she had a toothache and prayed God would heal her. She met multiple dentists who all said they could help her, but she refused their help as she said that God would heal her as she had prayed. Eventually, she prayed again about her tooth, and God told her that he keeps sending dentists to help her! My sense of things (again, from experience) is that almost everyone who talks about this issue approaches it as a dualist: either they reduce clinical anxiety to brain chemicals alone or they seek to frame it entirely as a sickness of the spirit, for which the answer is faith and not drugs. Anxiety can--and often does--slip into despair, which definitely is a spiritual sickness, but it is always worth remembering that the Church is very clear that we are both body and spirit: the one affects the other, and vice versa.
Secondly, a double note on "I have been there too." The sentiment "Trust in Jesus" is not actually very helpful, even for ordinary folk with ordinary anxieties. One needs a guide, but (as you suggest in this post) a secular approach is not it. That is why it is vitally important that Christians seek Christian therapists, and Orthodox Christians especially seek an Orthodox therapist (usually in private practice, as they will have more freedom to take a Church and Faith centred approach). Also, we are talking about recurrent anxiety that seems largely un-triggered. "I have been there too" is actually only helpful to someone like myself if by that you mean that you deal with much the same problem. Going through and surviving one or two deeply anxious periods is really not the same thing at all.
Anyway, I anticipate future articles with a great...anticipation.
As for the medication side, see my other article,Demons or Disease?
I anticipated people finding the answer to “trust God” trite, cliché, and unsatisfying. But once again, I went with it, because that’s what the passage says, and I’m doing an exegesis of the passage. I had to start somewhere!
But this opens the door for upcoming articles to answer the question, what does trust mean? I’m convinced we dislike this answer because we misunderstand both trust and God, or simply because this demands some thing of us that is often quite difficult.