Anxiety
By Stephen Terry
Our lesson this week speaks of anxiety and
how trust in God is a panacea for anxiety. Several verses are given to
encourage us to trust, including these two.
"but whoever
listens to me will live in safety and be at ease, without fear of harm.”
Proverbs 1:33
"Are not five sparrows sold for two
farthings, and not one of them is forgotten before God? But even the
very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not therefore: ye are of more
value than many sparrows." Luke 12:6-7
These could be strong incentives not to
worry, but are they strictly true? The real story is far more complicated.
In regards to the
first verse, we have the case of Job. Did he listen to God? He was so close to
God that He held him forth as an example of faithfulness. (Job 1:8) But was he
harmed? Absolutely! He lost everything except his wife and his life.
Job's suffering was not only heavy on him. It lay heavy on his wife as well.
His situation brought them great anxiety. God eventually restored
all to Job and more, but Job probably spent the rest of his life worrying about
what else might happen when serving such a capricious God. God must have
explained all to Job or the details would not be in the Bible, but His speech
at the end of the book did not go very far to resolve anxiety. He essentially
says that His ways are beyond understanding. Get used to it. "Listen
to God and live in safety and be at ease?" That's sort of like
telling some one to shut their eyes and trust you right before you "sucker
punch" them.
Then there is the
example of the sparrows that is meant to relieve our anxieties. These
same sparrows fly into windows with a sickening thud, and are later found dead
on the ground with a broken neck. Some might say that is man's fault for
inventing window glass, and maybe they are right. But still God is
supposed to be looking out for them. If He is caring for the birds, how does
one explain the almost five thousand red-wing blackbirds that fell dead from
the sky in
Some clues for eliminating anxiety can be
found in the final chapters of Job as well as in Habakkuk 2:20 and Romans
9:14-18. We ultimately have little control over what happens to us in this life
on earth. We are simply pawns in a war between light and darkness personified
in God and Satan. (See Job 1) There is little we can do to resist these
forces in their efforts to achieve supremacy in this conflict. Pain feels
the same whether it comes as a result of God's action or Satan's. As Job, we
can only endure. Job wanted to bring his case to trial, to protest the
injustice of his treatment. However, to bring someone to court, the
plaintiff must have a means to compel the defendant to appear. Since no
one can compel God, the case cannot be tried.
In the end, the only decision to make is
whether or not we trust God that all will finally be perfect. For some this is
very hard to do through the pain of their present existence. Job's end is
meant as an encouragement to those who suffer now. But there have been
many through the ages who have died under great
torment who never saw an end like Job's in this life. They went boldly to
their fate, resolved to endure for a hope for something better later. The
Bible tells us much about this future hope. This is why Christians speak so
much about faith. This belief in a future hope sustains that faith. (Hebrews
11:1)
The reason for not being anxious is certainly
not because the Christian has a magical protection from God. Rather we cannot
compel God to relieve suffering and are powerless to remove suffering from the
world. God is not a slot machine where you put in the right prayer or
incantation and all suffering vanishes allowing the sufferer to resume his or
her normal activities. Jesus words in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew
6:25-34) are more in the vein of "You cannot do anything to change things,
anyway, so stop worrying about it." We are led to the conclusion
that in the end, there is little we can do so just trust God that it will all
work out. While that sounds a lot like the exasperated parent who tells
the recalcitrant child "Because I said so, that's why!" As the
child's trust must finally depend upon a belief in the parent's reliability, so
must the Christian depend upon God. That hope and
trust is the message of the entire Bible.
In the words of Jesus to Thomas, His doubting
disciple, "Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed:
blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed." John 20:29 Or
to paraphrase this in the context of suffering and anxiety: "Job, because
you saw a good end, you have believed: blessed are those who have not seen that
good end in this life, and yet have believed."
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