The Arrogance of Worry

When we dread some coming event, it shows that we are thinking in terms of mustering up sufficient power within ourselves to handle the task alone. Scripture teaches us that every ripple of energy we ever expend comes to us as a gift from God, in whom we live and move and have our being. In fretting we snub that power source and look to our own resources. The Bible calls that "works" and says that we do it in order to boast.

So, worry is a form of boasting! When we act as if we should be able to handle something without God's empowerment, we imply that we can. The serpent's lie from the Garden of Eden still appeals to us: "You will be like God -- if you take matters into your own hands".

The misuse of responsibility. Someone has defined worry as taking on a responsibility that God never intended us to have. Sometimes people use fear in the opposite way, to avoid ordinary tasks and their consequences. They follow the motto: "Nothing ventured, nothing lost.". They thus refuse to inch the human enterprise forward by venturing for the possibility of gain. Phobias represent an across-the-board way to avoid venturing. An agoraphobic woman, for example, who does not leave her house, certainly avoids doing anything blameworthy or embarrassing in public.

One woman used several phobias as excuses for saying no to certain activities. She did not want to say no outright in words, because she equated it with loud, out-of-control anger that she feared she might lapse into if she ever let herself express candid refusal. She lived by the absurd notion, "The world is too fragile to survive the full force of my fury if I let it loose".

An overly conscientious male client obsessed and fretted over the possibility that his wife might leave him as his mother had left his father years earlier. He still felt responsible for that breakup of his childhood family. "It was something about me that I didn't do right", he insisted as we discussed why his mother left. He wanted to regard it as his fault, because then he could cling to the belief that it came under his control, and therefore he could prevent Mom from leaving. His self-condemnation provided him a feeling of protection against vulnerable dependency on the integrity of loved ones.

An Antifear First-Aid Kit

An obsessive mother could hardly get out of her head the thought that, if she picked up a butcher knife at home, she might stab her baby son with it. She changed that obsession by putting it to work. Every time that automatic thought came to her, she deliberately pictured herself instead doing something positive for her son (like rubbing his body with a soothing lotion while humming to him), and a second positive thingwith the knife (like slicing watermelon).

When you fearfully ask yourself "What if…?" proceed consciously and deliberately to answer the question with a series of the worst outcomes you can imagine. Then enumerate three benefits within each one of those tragedies. Find something you can like about every outcome that you do not like. Many of the horrors you imagine will consist of losses (death of a loved one, loss of your own health or property or status in life). And every loss carries a built-in benefit: it frees you for a new attachment, with new experiences and memories you could not have had if the former good situation stayed the same.

Do an energy conversion. An electrical powerhouse converts the energy of heat into the energy of motion, and that into the energy of electricity. Convert fear into enthusiasm. Both grow from a common root called excitement or arousal. You can just plain deliberately say, "I can hardly wait for X!" where X represents something you fear and prefer to avoid. Find some aspect about X that you can genuinely welcome, if only the chance to see what it's like.

Put worry to work. Use each occasion of dread as a reminder to take one small, constructive step. A salesman, worried about slow business, decided to use each awareness of worry as a signal to set one lunch appointment with a potential business contact. A mother, fretting about her teenage son out late with the car, chose to let each furrowing of her brow trigger into thanking God for one specific excellent memory from the sixteen good years she already had with her son.

God does not give us fears; he offers peace instead. So, Satan, our adversary, entices us to worry. He hates it when we praise the majesty of God and adore Christ as Lord. So, if we make our worries reminders to praise the Lord, Satan soon forsakes his promotion of worry in us. Say aloud in your mind when you realize you are worrying "Ah, thank you, Satan, for reminding me to praise my wonderful Lord Jesus Christ". Then tell Jesus that he is the excellent King of kings and Lord of lords.

Use worries as windows into your soul. Whatever you worry about losing may constitute an idol that you worship more devotedly that you do the living God. If you worry about looking foolish in front of other people, then you fear losing their admiration. Proper concern to show common courtesy carries with it no compulsion. When you desperately must assure yourself that people think well of you, then let your anguish tip you off to your pagan worship of created things rather than the Creator.

Instead of trying to stop your fearing, redirect it. Turn that energy of worship back to its rightful object. See a terrifying picture of yourself powerless before an overwhelming display of God's destructive power, from which he spares you, at his mere pleasure, with no obligation to you to do so. For example, picture yourself walking up a mountainside gully between steep, unclimbable walls. Suddenly, down the gully toward you thunders a furious avalanche of boulders twice your size. As they come to you, each one skims past your body a hair's breadth away, leaving you untouched. Deliberately turn your fearful tendencies toward the constructive project of developing within yourself that awesome fear of the Lord that gives you wisdom.

Rethink the unthinkable. Many people fear loud, angry voices from loved ones. They live by mottoes like "Peace at any price" and "Don't rock the boat". Strong-willed adults or children in their lives too easily dominate them by threatening to get mad. These fearful people chose, in a forgotten moment in childhood, to regard raised voices as "intolerable". In counseling I ask them to bring the matter up for a vote again in their soul's inner congress. "This time", I urge, "relabel loud voices as 'unpleasant' and decide to tolerate them rather than avoid them at the cost of suppressing your own opinion around someone who disagrees with you".

A Picture of Security

You misplace your fears. You show greater awe for your bogeyman than for God. God alone deserves your fear. He alone controls your heartbeat at his whim. A mere puff of his breath could snuff the flickering candle flame of your life before you draw your next breath freely from his vast ocean of air. He and none other keeps your fragile planet in orbit and on axis and in one piece. He holds you and your eternal destiny in his hands, with or without your permission, whether you like it or not......

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