Faithful Paradox

For those who battle clinical anxiety, it can be deeply discouraging to live in a place of continually trying to surrender fears to God, yet still experiencing the same anxious feelings over and over. I spent years feeling discouraged and defeated in my faith, believing the lie that if my faith were rightly ordered, if my trust in God were great enough, the anxiety would lift. My thinking began to shift when I recognized that anxiety was not directly correlated to the size of my faith; insufficient or weak faith was not necessarily the culprit.

Each person’s journey with anxiety will be deeply personal and requires a good amount of self-reflection and introspection. While anxiety is fundamentally a byproduct of the fall, a result of sin entering and fracturing the world, I would argue that the experience of anxiety itself is not always a personal sin.

The turning point for me was when I began to understand that simply having feelings of anxiety does not necessarily mean the anxiety itself is sin. To be sure, it’s a delicate and fine line to discern, which often falls into two extremes.

One side sees anxiety as a purely chemical imbalance; a medical issue stripped of all personal accountability. The other side insists that anxiety is always sin, regardless of circumstance.

The truth lies somewhere in the middle of these two perspectives: all anxiety is a result of living in a broken, sin-wrecked world, but not all anxiety itself is always sin. Each person who battles must learn to discern where faith must take a stand and where the body is simply experiencing the effects of a nervous system affected by the fall. These two realities are often muddy and so intertwined, it can be hard to discern where one ends and the other starts.

There are absolutely times when anxiety is sin. God explicitly tells his children, “do not be anxious,” and so the command is just that; don’t be anxious. We must, with the best of our faithfulness, battle the fears that come, fighting to submit our minds and hearts to the God who says, “look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they” (Matthew 6:26)?

There are pieces of anxiety, however, that can be a physiological response; internal reactions over which we hold little to no conscious control. The body and all its many parts have been affected by the fall which can lead to chemical imbalances, overactive nervous systems, and genetic predispositions. These physiological misfires can create very real, terrifying experiences and feelings. While these broken bodily reflexes produce anxiety, to always label them as sin is to misunderstand both the brokenness of creation and also the depth of God’s grace as he meets us in the midst of these battles.

It’s crucial to remember that no matter the depth of anxiety that persists, all that we need for life and salvation has been accomplished in Christ. “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1). God is not disappointed with the one who struggles deeply with anxiety. He’s not waiting until the sufferer figures out the right formula before he will engage their hearts. His word promises that he is near those who are crushed in spirit (Psalm 34:18), and battling anxiety is a spirit-crushing experience to be sure.

For those currently in the trenches battling anxiety, recognize that the feelings of anxiety may not dissipate, but the ongoing battle does not necessarily measure the depth or sincerity of faith. A calm nervous system cannot be a metric of devotion to God.

If anxiety is a battle that continues, the question one must return to over and over is where do you turn when anxiety persists? When the prayers are met with silence and the breathing exercises fail. When the hard fought faith seems to crumble and panic sets in. When the formulas break down and the longed-for peace does not come, where do we turn?

I used to hope and believe that turning to God would guarantee a sudden rush of peace that would make the physical symptoms vanish. What I have learned is that taking it to God actually looks a lot more like lament than relief. It has looked like telling him the fear I am experiencing feels more real and present than his promised presence and help. It’s recognizing that despite what feels very real in the moment, God can be trusted and I must remind my panic-stricken heart of this truth over and over, despite the fight-or-flight hormones that continue to rage within.

Rarely, if ever, did the anxiety lift as I discipled my heart in these truths. I do know, however, that God welcomed my crushed spirit and was a present help in trouble, even if I did not understand what that help looked like at the moment.

Encouragement can be found when we recognize that we can both battle anxiety in the flesh while we fight to remain faithful in the spirit. A discouraged heart and anxious mind can still fight to trust that God is holding them.