ADDING GUILT TO ANXIETY
Cecil Hook

We all have heard those lessons about worrying. Selected passages are emphasized: “I tell you, do not be anxious...” (Matt. 6:25-34); “Have no anxiety about anything” (Phi. 4:6). The conclusion: It is sinful to worry because we are commanded to have no anxiety about anything. Such a simplistic explanation does not always help the listener.

Let’s suppose that you are diagnosed as having a malignancy, and 1 advise, “Just don’t worry about it!” Your business is failing, and I urge, “Don’t be concerned.” Y our daughter is missing, and I admonish you, “It is a sin to be anxious!” A world is dying in sin, and I explain, “You should carry no burden of care, for anxiety is sinful!” Those answers are as inappropriate as telling a person not to become hungry when he has no food, not to hurt because of a smashed thumb, or not to grieve for the companion taken by death. Such advice may seem pious and high-sounding, but it is impractical and guilt-inducing. It would demand the stifling of basic feelings and emotions which social beings share, and it would add a weight of guilt to the burden of concern.

To seek to relieve anxiety by asserting that one is commanded not to worry is no more effective than trying to produce faith by declaring that one is commanded to believe. To be effective, we must teach what will relieve anxiety and what will produce faith.

Jesus had extreme anxieties. His temptation was real, and it brought overwhelming concern. In the garden he “began to be greatly distressed and troubled … My soul is very sorrowful, even to death …” (Mark l4:33f). In the depth of distress he prayed, “Father, if thou art willing, remove this cup from me … there appeared to him an angel from heaven strengthening him. And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly and his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down on the ground” (Luke 22:41 f). And think of this: “In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard for his godly fear” (Heb. 5:7). Does that sound like one who had no worries?

These passages reveal such intense anxiety in Jesus as he approached the cross that he feared that the trauma would kill him physically before his atoning sacrifice could be completed. But the Father heard his loud, fearful cries and sent an angel to sustain him, thus saving him from that abortive death.

Life with no anxieties does not exist. “Look at the birds,” Jesus urges in teaching us about anxiety. I watch the birds eating crumbs on the patio. They make a few quick pecks and then look around to see if they are in danger. Their constant anxiety causes them to interrupt their eating every few seconds. And have you not seen the anxieties of a mother bird as she watches her fledglings leave the nest and begin testing their wings? Evidently, Jesus’ teachings about anxiety have some limitation in their application. When Jesus taught “Do not be anxious about your life,” he must have been setting an ideal to be sought rather than commanding the absolute achievement of that state of mind in all circumstances.

Paul had anxieties. After Epaphroditus had recovered from near death, Paul sent him to Philippi “that you may rejoice at seeing him again, and that I may be less anxious” (Phil. 2:28). Anxiety over Titus moved this devout preacher to walk away from an open opportunity to preach at Troas: “When I came to Troas to preach the gospel of Christ, a door was opened for me in the Lord; but my mind could not rest because I did not find my brother Titus there. So I took leave of them and went into Macedonia” (2 Cor. 2:12). Also he wrote of “the daily pressure upon me of my anxiety for all the churches” (2 Cor. 11:28).

When Paul urged the Philippians to “have no anxiety about anything,” he must have considered that to be a sublime state of mind which he himself had not reached rather than an absolute achievement of mental discipline necessary for salvation.

Some anxieties are helpful. They stir us to appropriate activity to relieve the need or solve the problem. They move us to treat our cancer, search for the missing child, work to evangelize the lost, and to pray and depend upon God.

A courageous man once stated, “I enjoy myself most when I am scared.” He was spurred to do greater things then. Fear, rightly directed, is the father of courage. It stimulates the adrenalin and brings out the best in us.

Some anxieties hinder. Anxieties must be acted upon or they can become paralyzing. One of the words used by Jesus means more literally “to draw in different directions, to distract.” When we permit worries to build so as to distract us from trust in God or from acting to solve the source of the anxiety, then Jesus would rebuke us also with “Don’t be anxious, you of little faith.” But to bear guilt for weakness of faith would only add greater burden by further straining the faith that allowed the worry in the first place.

Some anxieties help us to attack our problems to solve them; others tend to enlarge and multiply the problems. Some worries lead to joy; others rob of all joy. Jesus would have us to be free of anxieties, not because total mental discipline which overrides emotions is necessary for salvation, but so that we may enjoy a fuller, happier life as a disciple. Mary V. Littrell expressed it nicely in this little poem:

 

A traveler crossed a frozen stream

      In trembling fear one day;

Later a teamster drove across,

      And whistled all the way.

 

Great faith and little faith alike

      Were granted safe convoy;

But one had pangs of needless fear,

      The other all the joy!

 

 

 —1350 Huisache, New Braunfels, Texas 78130

 

Law is the embodiment of the moral sentiment of the people. —Sir William Blackstone