Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you. – 1 Peter 5:7
Even before Covid-19 went viral worldwide, social scientists were already warning about an Anxiety Epidemic in America. I preached a sermon on the subject back in 2019, when Corona was still just a mid-tier beer, and the most recent studies available showed that around one in five Americans were regularly experiencing very high levels of anxiety. Another two in five Americans reported feeling somewhat distressed in 2019, which means that most of us were worried and worn down by stress and anxiety long before we first heard the phrase, “Two weeks to flatten the curve.”
As you might imagine, little has happened over the past two years to ease America’s struggle with anxiety. Almost six million people have died from or with Covid-19, millions more have lost their jobs, tens of millions of children have fallen behind academically and struggled socially while “learning remotely,” people everywhere were encouraged to isolate, socially distance, cover our faces, avoid contact with others, stay home from church, avoid large gatherings, take two vaccine shots, and another, and another for good measure, and no matter what we all did, the virus has showed no signs of slowing down. Yesterday, more than 800,000 new Covid-19 cases and almost 2,000 deaths were reported in the US alone.
What’s really interesting about the most recent data on anxiety among Americans is who is struggling most with Covid-related stress. You might think that the people in the high-risk demographics – older folks, or people who suffer with potential comorbidities – would be the most fearful in times like these. You also may assume that people with less privilege and education would be more disturbed during a pandemic. But recent studies like this one reveal that young adults under forty – most of whom are relatively healthy and extremely low-risk of dying from Covid – are the most anxious demographic in America, and that highly educated Americans are far more likely to be anxious about Covid-19 than less educated Americans are.
What are young and highly educated Americans so worried about? Pretty much everything. Despite the odds of hospitalization or death by Covid being very much in their favor, they worry about catching the virus. They worry about spreading it to others. They worry about the world this pandemic is creating. They worry about feeling increasingly alone in a socially distanced world. They worry about their future, their career, their families, their prime years being unfairly lost to this ruthless, indifferent disease.
Ironically, one of the side effects of chronic anxiety is a compromised immune system. In other words, worrying about getting sick significantly increases the likelihood that you’ll get sick. That’s why it’s important to know what you’re up against when you’re battling anxiety.
So, what are we talking about when we talk about anxiety? In the broadest of terms, anxiety is an existential warning sign. It’s that gut-feeling of distress we feel in our bodies, telling us something is “wrong” or “off.”
What does the Bible say about anxiety? Proverbs 12 says “Anxiety in a man’s heart weighs him down,” and Philippians 4 says, “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”
Everybody seems to know that the Bible says not to worry, which explains why the only thing anxious Christians ever seem to hear from their churches is, “Don’t worry, stop being anxious, relax, and have a little faith.”
Be real with me here. What is the least helpful, worst possible thing you can say to someone who’s genuinely anxious? “Don’t worry. Stop being anxious. Relax. Have a little faith.”
Thankfully, Jesus gave us a better way to think about anxiety. Read this slowly:
“Therefore, I say to you, don’t worry about your life, what you’ll eat or what you’ll drink, or about your body, what you’ll wear. Isn’t life more than food and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds in the sky. They don’t sow seed or harvest grain or gather crops into barns. Yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Aren’t you worth much more than they are? Who among you by worrying can add a single moment to your life? And why do you worry about clothes? Notice how the lilies in the field grow. They don’t wear themselves out with work, and they don’t spin cloth. But I say to you that even Solomon in all of his splendor wasn’t dressed like one of these. If God dresses grass in the field so beautifully, even though it’s alive today and tomorrow it’s thrown into the furnace, won’t God do much more for you, you people of weak faith? Therefore, don’t worry and say, ‘What are we going to eat?’ or ‘What are we going to drink?’ or ‘What are we going to wear?’ Gentiles long for all these things. Your heavenly Father knows that you need them. Instead, desire first and foremost God’s kingdom and God’s righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore, stop worrying about tomorrow, because tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.” – Matthew 6:25-34
Now read it again. Read it out loud if you have to. Make sure you’re buying what Jesus is selling here.
First of all, yes, Jesus did say Don’t worry, but that’s not all he said. He also went on to say, Don’t worry about what you will eat, what you will wear, don’t worry about tomorrow.
Each of Jesus’ warnings about worry were in the future tense, which means Jesus is specifically warning his followers not to be anxious about the things you can’t control or change today. Then the Lord said, Tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.
When we struggle with anxiety, Jesus doesn’t look at us and say “Stop worrying or else”. No, instead, Jesus graciously invites us to reflect on what we’re anxious about and why.
There is such a thing as healthy concern. Frankly, some things should worry you and compel you to take action. If your dad died of colon cancer and you’re over 40, stop procrastinating. Go find yourself a gentle physician with smallish hands and get yourself checked! If your mom is an alcoholic and you’re starting to need a drink every day after work, it’s healthy to be a little worried about the tendencies that are within you, as long as you allow those worries to inspire you to act. If you sense your marriage slipping away, don’t mess around and make excuses. Some things that are worthy of a little worry, and they’re usually the things that are right in front of you today, the things you have the power to change.
The main reason we know that anxiety isn’t always a sin is that Jesus was perfect, but he was clearly anxious the night they came to arrest him and take him away. If you struggle with anxiety, I want you to know that Jesus knows firsthand what you’re going through, and when you’re with him, you don’t have to let your anxiety become one more thing to be anxious about.
Instead, when your anxiety threatens to take over, Jesus invites you to fix your eyes on the things of today, the things that are right in front of you, on the things you can change.
Martin Luther was a German priest and a Christian hero who was instrumental in the Reformation of the Church in the 1500s, but he was also crippled by anxiety for much of his life. As a young adult in his twenties, he obsessed over his own sins and shortcomings. He once wrote,
“I lost touch with Christ the Savior and Comforter, and made of him the jailor and hangman of my soul. This is the tragedy of our human condition, that we fall so far we can no longer see or hear the true God, and we imagine the condemning god is the only God. And then, the god we imagine becomes the God we get.”
That’s how it feels to live with out-of-control anxiety, but thanks be to God, that’s not how the story has to end. Just look at what Luther wrote next:
“…but in the one who cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” God joins those whom darkness has swallowed. In doing so, Christ un-helled hell, so there is no place any one of us could ever end up, no depth to which we might ever sink, but that even there he is Lord with us. Even there he says, ‘Come with me.'”
I’m no expert on the subject of anxiety, but through my own experience, I’ve come to understand that anxiety is often more spiritual than it is circumstantial. I believe your turning point with anxiety will come when you accept and acknowledge that God is not the jailor and hangman of your soul, but He is the One who came to un-hell whatever hell you’ve been living in. No matter how bad it’s gotten or how far you’ve fallen, He is the one who reaches out and says, “Come with me”.
That’s who God is. Jesus is who God is. You really can cast all your anxiety on him, for he cares for you.
