Anxiety is Not Irreverence: Suffering Faithfully

“Irreverence!” he declared as he slammed his palm onto the wooden pulpit. A brittle silence briefly hung in the sanctuary. The congregants present continued to stare blankly at the preacher, waiting for his next line. It came quickly. “Anxiety is ultimately irreverence to God.” Elise’s ears (name changed) rang as she looked at her pastor, astonished, as her frustration ripened into anger. Her head thumped and her heart felt tight against her ribcage as the room began to fade out of view, and suddenly became clear again.

Elise quickly felt shame creep up her throat as she sat in one of the lonely pews, as if her countless efforts to calm the battle in her mind were rendered futile by the man up front. He believed she just had to give it to God and get over it, rendering her daily cries to the same Lord worthless. Irreverent. His may as well have put it bluntly, “anxiety is not that bad,” taping a superficial band aid over a mental bullet hole.

Anxiety, of course, is an emotion, one that at times is completely appropriate. It is not bad to feel anxiety, nor should we always treat it as a clinical thing. But what we often mean by the term—and what I mean here—is persistent, disruptive anxiety, what we might term clinical anxiety. Again, it is not bad to feel it, but nor should we fear it. Quite often our fear of more anxiety itself creates a feedback loop; we become anxious about the fact that we may become anxious, thus spiraling out of control. At other times, a trigger sets us off, and we find the anxiety runs away with us. Instead of experiencing anxiety and stress as a normal part of life, we end up with disruptive and maladaptive responses to the emotion.

When we think about suffering, we sometimes approach it with the wrong theology, expectations, or perhaps the wrong passages to truly empathize with and encourage those who are struggling. Many of those struggling with mental health issues like anxiety disorders or depression have tried many ways to get better with no results, and fight intense battles every hour, sometimes without hope. The same goes for grief. Simply saying “get over it” rarely works in real life. We must develop a robust theology of suffering and perseverance to combat a theology of quick fixes or instant healing.

The biblical authors are psychological realists. They have no problem using graphic language to convey different truths about suffering. Lamentations 3, one oft-quoted passage of joy and encouragement, begins with twenty verses of intense lament, where the author vividly depicts a desperate, and at times hopeless, situation. We often miss the intensity of the author’s grief and sense of abandonment because at times we tend to focus mostly on the deep joys, skipping what’s equally important in the deep sorrows. In other words, the second half of this passage is more often discussed than the first. And those undergoing suffering—anxiety, depression, physical ailments, loneliness, grief, or any other kind—need to know that the Bible legitimizes their struggle with suffering and gives language and a pattern for suffering faithfully.

The first 20 verses of Lamentations 3 describe suffering better than surface-level maxims about the subject. While this is no exhaustive account of the subject, I hope it to be an encouraging perspective for engaging with it.

“I am the man who has seen affliction under the rod of his wrath,” begins the author of Lamentations (v.1). God “has walled me about so that I cannot escape; he has made my chains heavy,” he writes (v.7). “Though I call and cry out for help, he shuts out my prayer,” he laments (v.8). Again, he adds, “my soul is bereft of peace; I have forgotten what happiness is” (v.17). Does that sound relatable? I remember when I read this, struggling with clinical depression, I felt relieved that someone took my subjective suffering seriously.

Theologians today often talk about the concept of the “already but not yet.” This is the idea that the Kingdom of God has come but is not yet fully consummated. In Romans, Paul lays this out well. He writes that we, along with all creation, “groan” inwardly for the day we will have our tears wiped from our faces (Isaiah 25:8). Yet, he paradoxically notes that “in this hope” we are already saved (Romans 8:24). We grin with a tremendous hope, but we groan as we patiently, and eagerly, wait for the Lord. When the word “patience” is used in the New Testament it often connotes the concept of long-suffering, conveying the idea that patience is not only difficult, but the very idea of patience may mean waiting amidst difficulty.

Likewise, when the Israelites were released from bondage in Egypt, their sojourn in the wilderness was not their final destination. While God was among them, tabernacling with them, and leading them in and through the desert, they looked with anticipation toward the land that God had been promising them and their fathers (Exodus 34:4–14; 40: 34–48). They, like us, were in this “already not yet” tension. One of the things this means is that since Adam and Eve, all humanity groans as we live, breathe, and experience the consequences of sin in the broken world that it has created as we long to enter the promised land, even though God is near to us today (Isa. 41:10; Revelation 21:4).

Augustine, who was another psychological realist, understood this tension well. In his famous The City of God, which was written during the Visigoth sack of Rome (the equivalent of an attack on New York City), he tells his readers that complete happiness is impossible in this life. Happiness, for Augustine, is found in desiring and acquiring the Supreme Good (God and the good life found in and through God). “And as we cannot attain to this in the present life,” he writes in Book XIX, “however ardently we desire it, let us by God’s help accomplish at least this, to preserve the soul from succumbing and yielding to the flesh that lusts against it, and to refuse our consent to the perpetration of sin.” Augustine is saying that as long as we live in a world where the flesh lusts against the spirit, we cannot live completely happy lives, because sin steals, kills, and destroys (John 10:10). But he also notes that our groaning can propel us forward in hope.

“Salvation, such as it shall be in the world to come, shall itself be our final happiness,” he adds, “For in this abode of weakness, and in these wicked days, this state of anxiety has also its use, stimulating us to seek with keener longing for that security where peace is complete and unassailable…The peace of the celestial city is the perfectly ordered and harmonious enjoyment of God, and of one another in God.” Therein lies our hope that Paul talks about—not that everything is perfect, but that everything will be redeemed, and good, and as it should be. What’s more, we have an incentive to continually hurl our broken selves to God.

We’ll consider the topic of anxiety to build our framework for suffering faithfully. Persistent, disruptive, perhaps clinical-level anxiety seems to have an involuntary nature about it. It’s not exactly a kind of anxiety you can think your way out of or calm yourself down from. Somebody can’t necessarily control when they have moments (or attacks) of gripping anxiety, or when it manifests itself in a prolonged migraine, stomach pain, or waking up in the middle of the night and being unable to fall back asleep. Some friends of mine who struggle with this have even said they can feel nauseous for hours at a time. Anxiety may be deeply embodied.

For someone who does not suffer in the same way, such clinical anxiety can be difficult to understand. When someone’s immediate, involuntary response to a situation is intense anxiety, learning to live through and conquer it becomes exceptionally difficult. In this case, it’s like the anxiety has seeped so deeply that one may feel dissociated from their body. What does it look like to approach the topic of anxiety with a robust theology of suffering and perseverance, instead of a weak theology of instant healing?

The first idea we must wrestle with is that true healing will take time. The stories of the Bible are rife with people who spent their lives waiting. Importantly, this isn’t a passive, “sitting around” kind of waiting. But an active waiting where God will provide for us and meet us through ordinary means. This means using wisdom to lean into your community, and perhaps find a good therapist, a good psychiatrist, a good doctor, and to set up good, everyday routines, while continuing to work or go to school. Importantly, this list here is not exhaustive. Making wise use of these means are some examples of intentional, active waiting.

To use Joseph’s example, the author of Genesis tells us that he was seventeen years old when he was sold to Potiphar in Egypt (Genesis 37:2, 36). This event is a stark contrast to the dreams that God had given him, where his brothers and parts of the cosmos bowed down to him and he ruled over them (v.5–9). From a hope of rulership to the reality of slavery, it’s easy for us to infer that Joseph may have felt betrayed, confused, fearful, and perhaps anxious. But while in Egypt, God blessed Joseph’s work, even while enslaved (39:3–6). A principle to extract for our purposes is this: Just as Joseph was faithful with what he had, so too can we strive to be faithful with the little we think we have as we weather the storm of anxiety.

What does this look like practically? While each person is different, perhaps ponder what gives you any amount of relief. Would a walk every morning help? Would a weekly evening out with friends ease some of the pain? What about a better bedtime routine and more rest? How could your pastor or friends in your life provide comfort and wisdom? These little things, alongside consistent Scripture and prayer, as well as doctors and other ordinary resources, may help you to begin weathering the intense storm.

How is this faithful? If your body (and by implication, your mind) is a temple, and you are taking good care of it, you are being obedient (1 Corinthians 6:20). However, here is the key: you have to find what healthy rhythms work and are in line with Scripture, and stick to them. Persevere with them. Joseph worked and waited, perhaps groaned, to use Paul’s language, for a long time before he reached the highest mountain top (Gen. 41:46).

The second idea to grapple with is that while human beings are not brains on a stick, as René Descartes would have us believe, God has given us minds. One’s mind can be a powerful weapon. Mental habit formation, like many other forms of therapy, can be a helpful practice. Again, this takes time and repetition.

Paul knew a thing or two about this. “We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God,” he writes, “and take every thought captive to obey Christ” (2 Cor. 10:5). Again in Philippians, “whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is…lovely…think about these things” (4:8). One of the implications of both passages is that we can and must reach for external truths to tie our minds down, preach those over ourselves, and the feeling may follow. Paul doesn’t say we can arbitrarily download the tranquility of the throne room into our minds, but he does imply that the mind is a powerful tool we can use in the pursuit of peace.

Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones, in his book, Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Cure, helps color in the picture of what this looks like as he examines the author of Psalm 42:

“I suggest that the main trouble in this whole matter…in a sense is this, that we allow our self to talk to us instead of talking to our self,” he says. “Take those thoughts that come to you the moment you wake up in the morning. You have not originated them, but they start talking to you…Now this man’s treatment [in Psalm 42] was this: instead of allowing this self to talk to him, he starts talking to himself. ‘Why art thou cast down, O my soul?’ he asks. His soul had been depressing him, crushing him. So he stands up and says: ‘Self, listen for a moment, I will speak to you.’”

The Psalmist was indeed being crushed. The poem has some parallels to Lamentation 3 in terms of a graphic outcry to God. The Psalmist says his tears have been his food as he is taunted by his enemies (v. 2), as he recalls and longs for better days with those near to him (v.4). The interruption of the lament in verses 5 and 11 are not erratic moments of euphoria. What the Psalmist is saying sounds more like this: “I can’t bear to praise you right now God, but I know I’m going to make it through to the other side because of You, and that’s why I have hope.” This is the message he keeps telling himself. He admits the anguish, but crucially holds fast to hope.

“The main art in the matter of spiritual living is to know how to handle yourself,” Lloyd-Jones continues. “You have to take yourself in hand, you have to address yourself, preach to yourself, question yourself. You must say to your soul: ‘Why art thou cast down?’”

Then here’s the kicker, as Lloyd-Jones concludes the first chapter of his book: “And then you must go on to remind yourself of God, Who God is, and what God is and what God has done and what God has pledged himself to do. Then having done that, end on this great note: defy yourself, and defy other people, and defy the devil and the whole world, and say with [the Psalmist]: I shall yet praise him for the help of His countenance.”

The third idea, and perhaps the most important, may also be the most difficult. Amidst the struggle, amidst the internal wars raging day to day, between antidepressants or going to therapy each week, one must learn to accept the battle and the suffering. In her book, Suffering is Never for Nothing, Elisabeth Elliot calls acceptance “the key to peace in this business of suffering,” precisely because suffering is not in vain.

What she means is that God’s love and will “will command nothing less than the very best for us. The love of God wills our joy.” What a difficult statement to read if you consistently can’t get enough sleep or feel dissociated from your body, isn’t it? In these moments perhaps it is not the power of God that we may doubt, but his character.

The temptation to believe that suffering is evidence of a lack of love or goodness from God is almost intoxicating. Hence, we need to exercise the incredibly difficult, voluntary, and willed act of acceptance by acknowledging that God will redeem and use one’s anxiety for good. To be clear, anxiety is not good. Yet, God uses even awful things somehow for our good. This applies to any kind of suffering received rightly. He promises to do so. This doesn’t mean that we stop praying for it to end or stop hurling our emotions at God like in Psalm 42 or 88. In fact, Scripture encourages us to do so (Matthew 11:28–29). However, it does mean that the immediate answer to our prayers, like Paul’s in 2 Corinthians 12, may be a loving “No. Wait and trust me. You’ll see the results later.”

“So, when the answer was no about the thorn in the flesh, and was the answer of Jesus’ prayer in Gethsemane, we know that there’s nothing wrong with praying that God will solve our problems and heal our diseases and pay our debts and sort out our marital difficulties,” Elliot writes, “It’s right and proper that we should bring such requests to God. We’re not praying against His will. But when the answer is no, then we know that God has something better at stake. Far greater things are at stake. There is another level, another kingdom, an invisible kingdom which you and I cannot see now but toward which we move and to which we belong.”

When we accept, we can move, hope, and expect. Elliot’s next piece of advice is to then “just do the next thing.” Are you weeping? Finish weeping and take a shower. Are you exhausted when you get home? Cook a meal and say a prayer. Finish the memo, attend the meeting, go to your 5p.m. therapy appointment and God will meet you there. But it’s also more than that. This arduous season of life will be used, somehow, some way, just like Joseph’s time in Potiphar’s house and in prison, for something greater than you can imagine. Just as with Joseph, the same God is in the same business of exceeding our expectations today (cf. Ephesians 3:20). God is inviting you to stay tuned as he provides for you minute by minute. The Psalmist acted in acceptance and hope as he preached to himself in Psalm 42:5, accepting his suffering because he knows it will come to an end:

“Why are you cast down, O my soul,
and why are you in turmoil within me?
Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,
my salvation and my God.”

Now, don’t misread me here. Somehow, some way, God will use it for good, but we may never have our Joseph moment. We may never see what that good is, having to live merely by faith in the belief that God is still in control, does still love us, and is still good. And, while recognizing that, we should long for victory in this current life and use ordinary means like the ones I’ve mentioned so far to help battle anxiety here and now. The Westminster Confession tells us that “God uses ordinary means to work out his providence day by day,” but also that “he may work without, beyond, or contrary to these means.” While God may choose to heal suffering mysteriously and surprisingly, medicine, therapy, regular exercise, and the community of believers around us are ordinary and good means that God has given us to use. Take advantage of them all.

However, these things alone will not fix us. Augustine reminds us again in The City of God that by the commands of our Father, one “finds three things he has to love—God, himself, and his neighbor—and that he who loves God loves himself thereby, it follows that he must endeavor to get his neighbor to love God, since he is ordered to love his neighbor as himself…and consequently he will be at peace, or in well-ordered concord, with all men, as far as in him lies.”

Yet even so, complete and total healing from all our ailments will only be a reality when Jesus returns. Because of this, we continue to groan, and we will certainly weep, but we should also hope eagerly and full of expectation because we ultimately live in a story of victory. In The Return of the King, J.R.R. Tolkien brilliantly illustrates what freedom from our anxiety, depression, or any other ailment can look like in this life, but especially the next:

[Sam]:“Gandalf! I thought you were dead! But then I thought I was dead myself. Is everything sad going to come untrue? What’s happened to the world?”

A great Shadow has departed,” said Gandalf, and then he laughed and the sound was like music, or like water in a parched land; and as he listened the thought came to Sam that he had not heard laughter, the pure sound of merriment, for days upon days without count.”

Hence, we lament. We lament because things are broken and because our struggles are vivid, graphic, and tragic. We lament because things are not yet as they should be. But we can endure patiently because we have a tangible and ultimate hope. This is the hope that will allow us to lament and propel us to grip the truth that though there is grief, the Lord’s love is near and new every morning, and he will eventually bring us out of the storm. That’s the other side of the story that we must move into, and the place to which the author of Lamentations directs us (3:22–33). Once we understand and sit in deep sorrow, the joy of hope and future deliverance also deepens.

As the Lord speaks through Isaiah:

“Listen to me, you descendants of Jacob,
all the remnant of the people of Israel,
you whom I have upheld since your birth,
and have carried since you were born.
Even to your old age and gray hairs
I am he, I am he who will sustain you.
I have made you and I will carry you;
I will sustain you and I will rescue you” (46:4, NIV).