My dear Christian, I hate to say it, but you’re a sham! You go around professing you have this faith in Jesus Christ. You proclaim, “Jesus, I trust in you!” You insist that this all-good, all-knowing, all-powerful God is always with you. Yes, you say these things, but your behavior gives you away! Indeed, you are stressed-out bearing the weight of so much busyness. You are dissipated and overwhelmed by endless troubles. “You are anxious and worried about many things” (Lk 10:41). If you really trust Jesus, why don’t you listen to him when he says, “I tell you, do not be anxious about your life” (Mt 6:25)? Go on, Christian, explain yourself!
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How is the anxious Christian to respond? It is true, we who claim all our trust is in Jesus are anxious and worried about many things: paying down the credit card, trying to find a good job, raising the kids right, saving enough for retirement, making authentic friends, getting the right politicians elected, finding the right person to marry, discerning a vocation, and the list goes on. In fact, if to be a Christian is to “have no anxiety at all” (Phil 4:6), then are all Christians frauds, masquerading under the guise of trust in Christ?
Simply put, followers of Christ do, in fact, have many things to be anxious or concerned about. It would be disordered for a father not to be concerned with supporting his family, for example. Following Christ does not mean he is going to take away our objects of concern/anxiety. In fact, the more we love, the more we are concerned for the good of the things we love, and living in Christ leads us to overflow with love! However, our concerns should be transformed in Christ: we know that our all-powerful Lord governs all things through his providence and that “all things work for good for those who love God” (Rm 8:28). Thus, we are of good cheer! Yes, we do have things to be concerned about, but these concerns do not overwhelm us with feelings of anxiety. No, in Christ, we have peace.
Yet, we often don’t have peace, we are often anxious. In those moments, have we failed to really trust Christ? Not necessarily. Trust is a choice, not an emotion. Just because one chooses to trust Christ does not mean he will always feel at peace. This is because our emotions are wounded by sin, and they often fail to fall in line with what our mind decides. The good news is that the more concrete acts of trust in Jesus we make—such as telling him we trust him in spite of the anxiety we feel—the more the emotions will tend slowly and begrudgingly to get in line. Still, in this life, our emotions will never completely cooperate.
All this said, we still cannot find the final solution to anxiety simply in our own choices to trust God. Admittedly, Christians do often make choices that undermine their trust in Christ. Wounded by sin, it’s not just our emotions that tend to disorder: our free wills are also quite weak and our intellects quite dim. In the final analysis, it is only by God’s free gift that we are able to truly trust him. We cannot do it by our own power alone.
Thus, the only way authentically to trust God and to overcome anxiety is by God’s grace. This grace does not replace our free will; rather, grace transforms us inwardly and makes us more fully free, more fully ourselves, and more fully in the image of Christ. Living in grace, we will still have many concerns to deal with and will still occasionally feel anxious. Christ does not take away these pains. This is so that we may offer them up and become united with him in his Passion. Indeed, it is only through the cross that we reach heaven, that abode where “the peace of Christ beyond all understanding” (Phil 4:6) reigns, of which we now in this life have but a foretaste.
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Image: Karl Thienemann, Der Taschenspieler
