Fighting anxiety

Righteousness: What does it look like in a pandemic?

We’re reminded of our fragility and the fragility of our resources, our lack of control, our equality, our pain in being isolated

Don’t be anxious, prioritize the eternal and God’s glory

The Sermon on the Mount and Human Flourishing: A Theological Commentary Matthew 6:25–34

The big question that the argument of 6:25–34 raises is, why is this such a big issue? That is, why the rebukes in 6:27, 30, and 32? And especially, why does Jesus up the ante so high in 6:32 by making anxiety a matter of who is a true follower (those with the heavenly Father) and who is an outsider (gentile)?

The answer is that, consistent with the sustained argument throughout the Sermon, anxiety is an example of double-souledness; it is the opposite of the singleness that marks the whole-person virtue of the follower of Christ. As with the other kinds of examples Jesus gives throughout the Sermon, we do not have here the whole picture or a comprehensive catalog of every detail of the human life. These exhortations against anxiety about food and clothing are not arguing against the proverbial wisdom of preparedness or saving and planning for times of need; they are not saying that growing crops or owning more than one shirt (or a closet to hold them in) is wrong. Rather, these instructions are driving at the inner person or heart issue. The issues of food and clothing are treasure-heart matters (6:21). The person who lives in anxiety about providing for himself or herself reveals and perpetuates a double-heartedness, a splitting of the soul between the now (where the heavenly Father meets us) and an imagined (dreaded) future of need. This normal human experience is ultimately a lack of faith and therefore in need of instruction and reproof.

Matthew 6:19–34 and Human Flourishing

When we step back and examine 6:19–34 as a section, we can see that it flows logically as one unit. The kǝlāl, or heading, is laid out in 6:19–21, understood here to refer to real money and riches (as opposed to its more metaphorical use as “treasures in heaven” as part of 6:1–21). This leads naturally to the warning in 6:22–24 against double-souled greediness. Christian disciples must be singular in devotion. If not, the result will be anxiety, which is the focus of the exhortation in 6:25–34. The alternative to doubleness, or put more positively, the way to serve God rather than money, is to seek first God’s kingdom and his righteousness, which will result in gaining all that one needs (6:33), true human flourishing.

Herein lies a deep irony of human existence. According to Jesus’s teachings, when people seek to keep everything together and provide for themselves apart from God, the result is not the sought-after peace, but rather, anxiety. That is, there is an organic connection between the warning against greed in 6:22–24 and the exhortation against anxiety in 6:25–34. Greed causes anxiety. It is the non-God-directed heart that is laying up earthly treasures that ironically does not have peace. But the people who live like the flowers and birds, apparently foolish from the world’s financial perspective, are the ones who are free from anxiety. They seek first God’s kingdom and as a result get all their needs met without anxiety. This is not to say that all anxiety is caused by greed; there are many other sources of anxiety, real and perceived. But it is to say that greed will inevitably result in the double-souled anxiety that is the opposite of the human flourishing to which Jesus is inviting his hearers.33

In one way we think a great deal too much of the atomic bomb. “How are we to live in an atomic age?” I am tempted to reply: “Why, as you would have lived in the sixteenth century when the plague visited London almost every year, or as you would have lived in a Viking age when raiders from Scandinavia might land and cut your throat any night; or indeed, as you are already living in an age of cancer, an age of syphilis, an age of paralysis, an age of air raids, an age of railway accidents, an age of motor accidents.”

In other words, do not let us begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation. Believe me, dear sir or madam, you and all whom you love were already sentenced to death before the atomic bomb was invented: and quite a high percentage of us were going to die in unpleasant ways. We had, indeed, one very great advantage over our ancestors—anesthetics; but we have that still. It is perfectly ridiculous to go about whimpering and drawing long faces because the scientists have added one more chance of painful and premature death to a world which already bristled with such chances and in which death itself was not a chance at all, but a certainty.

This is the first point to be made: and the first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together. If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things—praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts—not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds.

— “On Living in an Atomic Age” (1948) in Present Concerns: Journalistic Essays

By seeing the ways God provides

By reminding ourselves of who God is

By prioritizing what matters eternally

Not your desires but how can I walk with God today?

“Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities. All is vanity” (). It’s so easy to lose perspective in the midst of the madness of our lives. Our days are so filled with people and projects, works and wish lists, homes and holidays, that we can struggle to distinguish the important from the urgent. We lose ourselves in the midst our lives.

Perhaps this crisis is showing us what to concern our lives with. Perhaps it’s teaching us what’s really important in our lives and what is vanity.

Perhaps this crisis is reminding us what we should concern our lives with. Perhaps it’s helping us to distinguish between what’s meaningful and meaningless. Perhaps the Premier League, or that new kitchen, or that Instagram post aren’t essential to my survival. Perhaps the coronavirus is teaching us what really matters.  - Mark Oden, a pastor in Naples

By trusting God’s grace every day

Martin Luther - “Since it is generally true of Christians that few are strong and many are weak, one simply cannot place the same burden upon everyone.”

Not “What would Jesus do?” but “What if it was Jesus?”

“This I well know, that if it were Christ or his mother who were laid low by illness everybody would be so solicitous and would gladly become a servant or helper. Everyone would want to be bold and fearless; nobody would flee but everyone would come running… If you wish to serve Christ and to wait on him, very well, you have your sick neighbour close at hand. Go to him and serve him, and you will surely find Christ in him…”

Practical Suggestions to Fight Anxiety and Seek God’s righteousness

Take walks around your neighborhood

Call elderly or at risk people

Take time to reflect on your life, what it’s about and your relationship with God - take a Sabbath

Spend time in prayer

Find ways to serve others

Read this passage and meditate on it

Where’s your heart? Is it too caught up in what you can make of this life?

Be the church

Habakkuk 3:17–19 ESV

17 Though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines, the produce of the olive fail and the fields yield no food, the flock be cut off from the fold and there be no herd in the stalls, 18 yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will take joy in the God of my salvation. 19 God, the Lord, is my strength; he makes my feet like the deer’s; he makes me tread on my high places. To the choirmaster: with stringed instruments.