Anxiety and Authenticity - Part IV

While I don’t have answers for the causes of my anxieties, I do know what to do with the anxiety itself. Do as my therapist, a man full of faith, has taught me. Don’t just ignore the anxiety and push past it. That’s what I’ve done too often in the past. The old saying “Get a ladder and get over it” is like saying “open the presents and get on with the holidays”. When I sat down to eat that Thanksgiving turkey I didn’t rush through it. The process itself has value and there is value in learning to face the anxiety head on, not just get over it.

Face the anxiety. Process it and the thoughts that swirl around it. Feel the feelings (fear, sadness, anger). Work out the anger (good for the physical body as well). Then turn this processed anxiety over to God.

The fear, for me, comes in being out of control. When I am not in control of my world, it feels as though my world controls me – and to no good. When the fear comes, I freeze like the proverbial deer in the headlights. If I try to push past that fear without facing it, the fear stabs me in the back.

So as I process that anxiety and those feelings of fear, I learn to face that fear with the confidence that comes from what I know about God. That He is all powerful. That He is completely just and totally love. That He will indeed carry me no matter what. I am secure in Him – even when I don’t feel like it. Even when I fail.

Even when I fail. Doesn’t matter what others think. Doesn’t matter what others do. These things may change my environment, but that cannot affect my anchor, my standing, my relationship in Christ. When I am flush with a fresh word from God that He is both in control of my world and has a firm grasp on me, then my anxieties wilt. The causes of those anxieties don’t disappear – they are there as much as they ever were. But the fear of those causes fades in the face of my renewed strength.

Anxiety and Authenticity - Part II

There are times when I have wavered greatly in my faith. But I have never abandoned it.

I could not let go of God any more than I could let go of myself, including my questions. I discovered (ironically at the hands of one who worked to destroy my security in God) that God is bigger than my questions, and indeed welcomes them. Certainly that is the example shown me by the Psalmist Asaph.

Recently, Pastor Ray taught that our theology influences our actions, meaning that bad theology leads to bad behavior and good theology leads to good behavior. What I believe and what I do cannot be separated, this is true.

As an ethicist, I am often asked what ethics means? I have always said that ethics at its most basic component is living out what you believe. I can learn more about your theology from your behavior than if you just tell me what you believe. James says something along the same lines in his letter in the New Testament.

When I have struggled with anxieties and fears, I am not sure my theology has gone bad. What I am sure of is that my strength comes from having a firm grip on what I believe – or more precisely who I believe. The crux of the matter is do I really believe what I believe?

This I have seen again and again. The encouraging words of others, even my wife’s, and these various voices this morning in my devotional time, do much to help. But in the end, it is as Wilkerson writes, the word of God has to come to me.