A report published this week by
the Mental Health Foundation found that 77% of people in the UK find
the world a more frightening place than in 1999.
The charity considered that there is a “climate of fear”
which was fuelled by the media and politicians which is making
people more anxious.
Younger people are apparently more likely to be anxious about things
than older people, and women are more than twice as likely to report
experiencing anxiety than men.
The charity’s concern is that the incidence of anxiety
related conditions is on the increase and those who suffer from
anxiety are much more likely to experience health problems such as
heart disease, gastrointestinal troubles, asthma and allergies.
The charity has called for
treatments such as cognitive behavioural therapy and free self-help
books and leaflets to be more readily available.
Kent University sociologist Frank Furedi argues that what is
needed is a “more robust communal infrastructure so that people
don’t feel alone.” The
report highlights the fact that many people who feel increased
anxiety also feel more isolated.
We can surely understand and sympathise with those who find much about the modern world disturbing and frightening. Anxiety is both the product of personality - some people are more laid-back than others - and circumstances. The world we live in has many potential threats and if you dwell on them they will leave you very anxious indeed. But the solutions offered are not really the answer because they do not go to the heart of the problem. They are useful as far as they go but they need to go deeper. The fact is that men and women have always had an innate anxiety and uncertainty within them. That is why issues like self-assertion are so emphasised in some quarters as an antidote to the anxieties people feel. When circumstances begin to be adverse, or people’s perception of the world is that it is more dangerous and threatening, this innate anxiety comes to the surface and can become very dominant.
The Bible sums it up as being “without God and without hope”. The problem is that deep down people do not know who they are. So they feel adrift in a “sea of confusion”. Popular scientific descriptions of mankind as being merely an advanced animal do not sit comfortably with the deep inward sense that we are in fact something very distinctive. And so human behaviour indicates that ‘gut feeling’ of personal worth and value and they behave better than they are described. But when threats and dangers arise there is not just the natural reaction of self-preservation and defence of our own, there is also a deeper sense of vulnerability. The Bible describes this in various ways, and one of the most telling is about those who have denied God. It says they encounter “a fearful waiting for judgement”. So people find themselves without any sort of hope or confidence about the future, and anxiety takes over. With some that anxiety becomes a most destructive force.
The Bible teaches that human beings are “made in the image of God”. That means we are all made for God - made to know God; to delight in God; to worship God; to serve God. We are designed to find our meaning and value in God. Once you remove the idea of God from your thinking then the conscience loses its power to restrain the arguments of fear and to testify to the stabilising reality of God’s control and power. Putting it another way, once you devalue that deep seated awareness of the Divine that is within you until it has no impact on your thought and life, and once you decry the testimony of your own mind that “God is” then your are left adrift on a stormy sea with no anchor or rudder. Then people become vulnerable to all kinds of fears and dreads.
This does not mean that Christians do not feel anxious and know serious anxiety states. We are all human beings and are subject to the weaknesses of our humanity, especially as sinners. At the same time, sadly, too many Christians do not think through what they believe and so become prey to the disturbing and disruptive influences of an unbelieving world around us. And, of course, we are all different people and some have a more anxious disposition than others. But the difference with Christians is that they know who they are - children of God, purchased by the blood of Christ, loved by the Father and indwelt by the Eternal Spirit. Christians know that their lives are in the Sovereign hands of a Loving God, and that “all things work together for good” for them. Christians have the most solid and caring community that the world has ever seen in the Church. These things give a level of certainty and confidence to life that cannot be found anywhere else.
It is then at such disturbing times as we now live in - times with the threat of terrorism, times of social disturbance with an increased incidence of violence due to crime and binge-drinking etc., times of financial meltdown and economic instability, times of uncertainty about employment and even housing, times of family distress and breakdown - in such times Christians should and do stand out in their quiet confidence in God and in their sense of self-assurance that they belong to One who is greater than all the threats. This is not escapism but realism. The escapism is in those who need the props of materialism and possessions, self-indulgence and drink and drugs, and all the chimera of our modern society. The reality of the Gospel is not only seen in the strength of the arguments for it, but more powerfully it is seen in the disposition and joyful confidence that a true Believer in Jesus Christ knows. The Apostle Paul put it like this - “I am not ashamed, because I know whom I have believed, and am convinced that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him for that day.”