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Can Worry Help You?

Truth in Love 93

Trusting in God's sovereign care and faithfulness is the cure for worry and fear.

Apr 5, 2017

Heath Lambert: On February 28th, The Wall Street Journal ran an article entitled, “Don’t Worry If You Always Worry, It May Help You”. The article was by Elizabeth Bernstein and talked about the problem of worry, relying on the testimony of experts in the field of psychology. Worry is, of course, a problem that is experienced by everyone in the human race sooner or later, and it’s something that the Bible spends a great deal of time talking about. On the podcast this week, we want to analyze Bernstein’s article, talk about how she understands the problem of worry, and see how that relates to what Jesus says about the problem of worry in Scripture.

Bernstein lists three different kinds of worries. She talked about adaptive worry, which she describes as a good kind of worry and helps with problem-solving. She talked about chronic worry, which is a kind of worried where people worry all the time about all kinds of things. She talked about pathological worry, also people who worry all the time about all kinds of things, but in pathological worry, it affects your actual day-to-day functioning. After Bernstein described those different kinds of worry, she talked about several different causes of worry and she quoted a number of experts, in the therapeutic and psychological community, saying the causes of worry relate to genetic causes, relate to environmental causes, and have to do with triggering brain areas that maintain arousal which are related to fear. The last part of Bernstein’s article talked about what people can do to help address the problem of worry when they struggle with it and need to change. She said you should start with a reality check asking if the emotions that you’re feeling are equivalent in intensity to the situation you’re worried about. Dr. Judy Rosenberg, a psychologist quoted by Bernstein, said that the answer to that question is usually no. She went on to talk about telling yourself a better story and making a plan to deal with the anxiety. She talked about setting a timer, allowing yourself to worry for 15 minutes as much as you want, and then to stop. She moved on to talking about yelling “Shred!” inside your mind and picturing your worries going through a paper shredder —visualizing them being destroyed— and then she talked about distracting yourself with music, exercise, a book or a movie, and pointed out that it’s hard to focus on the negative when you’re enjoying yourself. So, Bernstein summarizes for us the cons of worry as she reports on them, the causes of worry as psychologists report on that, and some help for worried that people have. And what we want to do is ask whether or not this is the biblical idea of worry and whether this is the biblical idea of how to help.

Jesus, in His Sermon on the Mount, as He talks about the problem of worry and anxiety, has a very different opinion than the one reported in this Wall Street Journal article. Jesus, first of all, starts out actually quite controversially saying that all worry is wrong. In Matthew 6:25 He says, “for this reason, I say to you do not be worried about your life, as to what you will eat or what you will drink, nor for your body as to what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing?” in verse 31 He says, “do not worry saying, what will we eat? Or what will we drink, or what will we wear?” He says, in verse 34, “so do not worry about tomorrow.” Jesus says “don’t worry, don’t worry, don’t worry.” This breakdown of different kinds of worry in Bernstein’s article is very sophisticated, but to the extent that she makes a separation between worry that’s good and worry that’s harmful, the article disagrees with the statements of Jesus Christ where He says all worry is wrong. It is wrong for Christians to worry.

It’s wrong for Christians to worry because, as He makes clear in the sermon, people are called to trust the sovereign care of God. In Matthew 6:26, Jesus points to the birds of the air. He says, “they don’t sow or reap or gather into barns and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than they?” He goes on to point to the flowers in the field and He says, “observe how the lilies of the field grow, they do not toil nor do they spin. Yet I say to you, that not even Solomon in all his glory clothed himself like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the furnace, will He not much more clothe you?” Jesus is pointing to the birds of the air, He’s pointing to the grass of the field and He’s saying, “This is a demonstration of the sovereign care of God.” He says, “God loves the birds, God loves the grass and God uses His sovereignty to care for those aspects of His creation” and then the question which comes on the heels of that is so important. He says to the people listening, He says, “do you think that God loves you less than He loves those things?” He says, “don’t you think God loves you more than the birds of the air and the lilies of the field?” Jesus is pointing to the sovereignty of God, the power of God to provide for His creation. In addition to that, He’s pointing to the love of God. God uses His sovereign power, His limitless power, to provide for those He loves and it’s in that context that Jesus looks at people who are tempted to worry and He says “you of little faith”. The problem with fear, the problem with worry is that it is a demonstration of little faith. A person who is worried is a person who is not resting in, trusting in, and hoping in the sovereign care of God to take care of all that they need.

That’s why all worry is wrong because all worry is an example of faithlessness. It’s an example of someone lacking trust in the good care of God to provide what they need in life. One of the realities that the article promises is good news for worrywarts. Bernstein says “good news for worrywarts —new research illuminates what leads to excessive worrying and what can be done to stop it.” Bernstein promises good news, but Christians will know that good news is not found in new research or in new techniques, but good news is found in an old, old gospel about a Son of God who lived a perfect life and died on the cross and rose from the grave to set people free from their sinful self-obsession that leads to worry and to turn their hearts to God, who loves them with an everlasting love and who wants to meet every real need they have in Him.

The Bible doesn’t eliminate a process for this kind of help, this kind of redemption. The Bible talks about being transformed by the renewing of your mind. It talks about taking thoughts captive to Christ. In that way, there is some truth in the steps listed by Bernstein about a reality check and telling yourself a better story, but those things aren’t true because psychologists in the 21st century came up with them. They’re true because God revealed such a process of thought renewal, of mind transformation, in the text of Scripture. And we also need to know that the important part about that process is not the steps that were to take —though those are important— but that is underlined by the person of Jesus Christ. Steps to tell yourself a better story, to make a plan, if they are not founded in Jesus Christ will be founded in the effort and the energy of a sinful person who’s struggling with worry and we need to be honest as Christians that we know we do not have the power within ourselves to make the changes that Jesus Christ demands of us. And so, even when we use a biblical process to engage in change— and we should use a Biblical process to engage in change we need to realize that that process is going to be informed by resting in the power of Jesus Christ, trusting in His care for us to set us free from worry and to give us hearts full of faith.

Bernstein tells the story of Penelope Malone, a 63-year-old retired, payroll company manager from Atlanta who was filled with worry after she got a speeding ticket. She says she fretted about it every day, all day long, for over a month. She describes herself bolting with worry out of bed at 4:00 a.m. like a piece of toast, coming out of the toaster. What somebody like Penelope Malone needs is not the self-centered steps to turn away from worry that are reported about in this news article and that come from secular psychology. What Christians need to be convicted about afresh is that Penelope Malone needs to hear the gospel. She needs to hear real good news. She needs to know that she is a sinner who’s characterized by worry because she’s characterized by an absence of faith. And she needs to hear the real good news that when she turns from her sin to Jesus Christ, she will be forgiven of that sin and be pointed to a Father who loves her and who can care for her every need. Of course, Christians shouldn’t be upset about an article like this. We understand that lost people are going to say things like this. What we should not believe, as Christians, is that there’s some sort of profound answers in the pages of The Wall Street Journal that we don’t have in the Word of God. Christians have such rich resources in the Bible – resources that can really help Penelope Malone, resources that can help each one of us when we struggle with worry. We need to have great confidence in our God, that He loves us that He gave us what we need in the Bible, and He gives us what we need to turn from fear to faith.