Anxiety (1)

“Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, . .”  Matthew 6:25 ESV

Anxious – “Please, don’t let anybody leave me.”  Jessica Lynch

Most of us will never know the horrors that Jessica Lynch suffered at the hands of her captors.  But we immediately know the feeling expressed in her plea.   Out of her suffering, she begged not to be left alone.  Her voice may not have been strong, but the message certainly was.  Even though she was now safe in the hands of the Marines, she was afraid.  Even though the worst was over, her anxiety was undiminished.  Don’t leave me!  Not even for a second.  Don’t even turn away for a moment.  Don’t let anybody leave me.  I am afraid to be alone.  That pain strikes us in the heart.  No, Jessica, we are not going to leave you.  You’re safe now.  It’s OK.  As human beings, we hear much more than Jessica’s plea.  We hear her trauma and her fear.  We identify.

These are times when people turn to God.  God hears us too.  He understands our suffering and pain.  Yeshua suffered at the hands of his captors.  He was tortured.  And he knew the agony of being alone.  It was as real for him as it was for Jessica Lynch, except that no one sent the Marines to rescue him.  His captors put him to death in an excruciating way.  But he did not echo Jessica’s plea.  He said something entirely different, so different that it’s hard for us to see how it can be true.  Yeshua told us not to be anxious about our lives.  When we look into the eyes of Jessica Lynch on that stretcher, her body broken and battered, how could we possibly say to her, “Don’t be anxious for your life”?  It seems so insensitive, so out of touch with what happens to us.  What could Yeshua have meant by such a statement?  Why does the son of God tell us not to worry?

Almost 80 years ago, one of the greatest thinkers of the modern age confronted the implications of Jessica Lynch’s plea and taught us something profound about who we are.  Martin Heidegger performed forensic magic on what it means to be human.  What he discovered is so essential to understanding ourselves that it is worth serious consideration.  Heidegger clarified what we have always known about ourselves but were unable to articulate.  We are creatures of anxiety.  Anxiety defines us.  If we are human at all, we know that anxiousness is rooted deeply within us.  The real question is not, “Are you anxious?” but rather “Why are you anxious?”  Denying that we have anxiety about life is about as truthful as denying our racial heritage.  It is just a fact of being human.  But we will never be able to move from the stretcher of Jessica Lynch toward the feet of the man on the cross until we understand why anxiety is so much a part of what it means to be alive.

Let’s start with Heidegger.  Understanding what he says demands clear thinking.  We will begin to see why we are the way that we are, and why Yeshua’s remark seems so incredibly impossible to do and so amazingly wonderful to believe.

Heidegger’s analysis of being human discovered that under normal conditions, I seek to establish meaning and purpose for myself by projecting goals into the future.  These goals become the possibilities of my existence.  As possibilities, they set the stage for how I would like to see myself—how I project what I think that I am.   Because my projections are possibilities, they are not what I am today.  They are what I hope to be in the future.  That future may be only a minute away or it may be years distant.  If I am an Olympic athlete, my future may be projected only a few seconds from now—I want to win the gold metal in the 100-meter dash—only ten seconds away.  As an employee, I might project my future into my retirement—several decades away.  The projection of my future is what distinguishes me from animals.  I am able to see myself as something other than what I am now.  I use this ability in order to set goals, create plans and accomplish tasks.  Whether I am planning for the battlefield or the bank account, my possibilities shape how I behave.

But there is another element to this idea of projecting possibilities that is deeper and destructive.  Anxiety does not come from planning possibilities.  Anxiety comes from the fear that my projected self-image is powerless when it confronts the uncertain future.  It is perfectly normal for me to care about my life.  It is completely human for me to imagine, plan, and act on my cares about life.  But when I am anxious, I am not focused on my care for life.  I am focused on the issue of power.

Anxiety calls into doubt my power to control the outcomes of my future plans and acts.  Anxiety means I am never at home with the present and the past is dead to me.  Whatever happened yesterday will not comfort me now because my past cannot guarantee my future.  We all know the disclaimer “Past results are not a guarantee of future returns.”  Anxiety discounts my past.  It makes me forget my history.  Anxiety says, “How do you know that what happened before will happen again?  You can’t be certain.”  Anxiety makes me distrust my past history no matter what it is.  In the spiritual realm of my life, anxiety makes me question God’s past concern for me by telling me that I can’t count on Him in an unknown future.

Furthermore, anxiety robs me of my present.  The oppression of anxiety is its ability to remove me from my present reality.  I fret.  I worry.  I stew.  I begin to see my life in terms of “What if?”  Since by its very nature the future is unknown and uncertain, I am always left insecure.  Anxiety is not about sudden turns of events that dramatically alter our expectations of the future.  Anxiety is about projecting possible sudden turns of events before they occur as if they are absolutely going to happen.  Anxiety is living life in the fear that they will occur.

Tomorrow we will see how Yeshua answers this very human proclivity toward fear of the future.

Topical Index: anxiety, fear, powerlessness, control, Matthew 6:25