The
following blog entry is adapted from a chapel meditation given by Dr. Wolff on May 7, 2014.
I John 3:18-24 The Message
My dear children, let’s not just talk about love;
let’s practice real love. This is the only way we’ll know we’re living truly,
living in God’s reality. It’s also the way to shut down debilitating
self-criticism, even when there is something to it. For God is greater than our
worried hearts and knows more about us than we do ourselves.
And friends, once that’s taken care of and we’re no
longer accusing or condemning ourselves, we’re bold and free before God! We’re
able to stretch our hands out and receive what we asked for because we’re doing
what he said, doing what pleases him. Again, this is God’s command: to believe
in his personally named Son, Jesus Christ. He told us to love each other, in
line with the original command. As we keep his commands, we live deeply and
surely in him and he lives in us. And this is how we experience his deep and
abiding presence in us: by the Spirit he gave to us.
As a
psychologist I have spent many years being trained in how to be aware of
people. Really much of my academic work has been to think about how people’s
feelings, actions and perceptions all work together to form them. And perhaps
you’ve heard the jokes that people tell psychologists when they’re introduced;
“Don’t analyze me,” “I better watch what I say around you,” or “can you read my
mind?” To me those oft-repeated jokes, while funny and corny, also betray an
inner sense of worry that we have, “what will happen if I’m truly seen by
someone? Will I be unmasked? What will really be known about me?”
1 John seems to
speak to that a bit, he reminds us that, hey, we all have that debilitating
self-criticism, that inner voice that can plague our thoughts with reminders
that we aren’t any good, or aren’t very capable. I don’t know about you, but I
am visited by those kinds of thoughts on occasion. I suspect most of us live
with some worry about our ability to measure up. We’re frequently aware of the
ways in which we aren’t good enough. This is a paradox, though, for the
generation of the “selfie”, that despite our focus on ourselves and our usage
of things like social media to “announce” the smallest detail of our lives, we
still live with uncertainty and insecurity about our worth and value.
The author Anne
Lamott puts it quite well in her book, Bird by Bird (1995). This is a book on
how to write, but as is characteristic of Lamott, there is a fair amount about
the human experience as well.
“If you are not careful, station KFKD will play in
your head 24 hours a day, nonstop in stereo….Out of the left speaker will be
the rap songs of self-loathing, the lists of all the things one doesn’t do
well, of all the mistakes one has made today and over an entire lifetime, the
doubt, the assertion that everything that ones touches turns to shit, that one
doesn’t do relationships well, that one is in every way a fraud, incapable of
selfless love, that one has no talent or insight, and on and on and on” (p.
116).
I suspect that
many of us can relate to Lamott’s radio station analogy, that in the very
moment we ready ourselves to do something difficult or challenging we are
plagued by negative thoughts about ourselves. I know that I have had those
moments when preparing for class or even before getting up to share this chapel
meditation. Maybe like me you’ve heard
the phrases in your head “Why did they ask me to do this? I don’t have anything
to offer. This is going to be a disaster!”
All of this is
what we psychologists often call negative self-talk, and some of us struggle
with it more than others. And as I John references, it’s even harder to shake
because often pieces of it contain truth. When 5% of our critical thoughts contain
some truth, we hear that 5% amplified as through loud speakers blaring
throughout our minds, often blocking our ability to do or think about much else,
leaving us stuck.
What follows
this critical attack on our sense of self? Well, many of us shake it off, we
combat it with good thoughts or reminders about our capabilities. Perhaps we
even remind ourselves about our worth in Christ as the scripture suggests. But
for others of us this negative thinking will lead to feelings of depression and
anxiety. Worry might overtake us for a while, and we find our belief in
ourselves shaken.
So what is
anxiety? Most professionals agree that anxiety is a series of worries about
everyday events, fears about the future and apprehension regarding social
interaction. All of us will experience brief periods of worry in our lives. In
fact, as I often quote to my students before an exam, a moderate amount of
anxiety can be motivating! It helps us to study harder and become more
prepared. But once that worry becomes more extreme and excessive, it can become
paralyzing.
The statistics
suggest that a great number of us are familiar with feelings of worry.
According to the National Institutes of Mental Health 40 million Americans over
18 in a given year could be diagnosed with an anxiety disorder. That’s about
18% of the population over 18 years old (Anxiety Disorders, 2014).
Additionally, the Association for University and College Counseling Centers
continues to note that anxiety is the most predominant presenting concern among
college students who are seeking help from college counseling centers (2013).
And these numbers don’t include those of us who just get caught in the grip of
worry occasionally. What this suggests to me is that I John’s acknowledgement
of our self-debilitating criticism is an accurate reflection of our human
condition. Most of us know how that feels. We can relate to feelings of anxiety
because we have known them.
A band I enjoy
is the Wailin Jenny’s; they have kind of a guitar folk style, and as a preface
to one of their songs, they offer this introduction:
“But even if you don’t consider yourself a chronic
worrier, I think there are times in all of our lives where we find that our
mind is not with us at a particular moment. It’s not seeing anything that is
actually going on in front of us. Its running the little films of our lives in
our head you know of what maybe shouldn’t have happened a few weeks ago or what
is going to go wrong a couple of months from now or go right a few months from
now. It’s just not with us, and I think that the antidote to worrying is being
in the moment. So I wrote this song to remind us to be mindful.”
The singer goes
on to offer a song called, Begin that
focuses on staying present where we are at any given time. Mindfulness is an
increasingly popular term within the psychological community. It’s been
integrated into several mainstream treatments for anxiety, like Cognitive
Behavioral Therapy. Over and over studies of the effects of mindfulness in
psychology say, yes it works! It helps people cope with feelings of worry.
But what is it?
It’s a practice of staying present in the moment and really focusing on the
what is going on around you rather than letting your mind wander off ahead of
you into the what if’s. I also hear a nod to a practice of mindfulness in 1
John. It’s a specific kind of acknowledgement that abiding in God’s presence
keeps us grounded and mindful.
When I read this
passage in I John, I can’t help but feel openness, a sense of space enlarging
before me and an awakening hopefulness. It’s sort of the same feelings that I
have had during the last few weeks when it became clear that spring is sticking
around. The life-giving greenery around me in contrast to the cold, snowy, dark
winter that we’ve just come out of is refreshing to my spirit.
That feeling of
freedom that the passage suggests is in direct contrast to the chains that
anxiety shackles us with. Such freedom
seems to be possible both due to the acknowledgement of our struggle and a
response that God knows us better than we know ourselves.
Does this lay
out a formula for eliminating anxiety and worry from our lives? No, it does
not. The organic methods of the Holy Spirit are much more complex than that.
What I see instead is the offering of hope for our troubled and weary selves.
The wonderful line, “truly living in God’s reality,” feels like a promise to
me, one that I’m not even sure I can fathom. I’m encouraged by it, but also
left wondering, what does that mean? What does it look like? Especially when we
are weighed down by troubles, what is God’s reality?
The passage
seems to suggest that there is something that can change simply by living in
God’s knowledge of us, rather than our definition of self. It’s a good reminder
that our sense of our own identity is ultimately limited. As is our vision of
the world. God’s is greater and much clearer.
There is also
the reminder to love one another. The passage doesn’t use the word “authentic”,
but it’s a good word for our era. To love each other authentically. To really
see each other, worries and imperfections and all. One of the great privileges of being a
psychologist is sitting in a space with people that eliminates the need for
social convention. Therapy often allows us to simply be present with each
other, to sit in the moment and really listen. It’s always remarkable when
strangers allow me to enter in to some of the messiest parts of their lives.
It’s an act of truly being seen and heard by someone else. One of the things
I’m most grateful for is the way it has changed me, and taught me to really
look at the person in front of me.
And outside the
therapy room in all aspects of our lives, we are presented with opportunities
for authenticity, or to worry about how we are perceived or we worry about
taking relational risks. Will the other person reject our attempt at
authenticity? Or will it be received with love and tenderness? I find myself
worrying about those things in my day-to-day life.
So this passage
in I John is a good reminder that God’s promise is real, and it’s inviting us
into freedom.
References:
Anxiety disorders. (2014). Retrieved April 17, 2014
from http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/anxiety-disorders/index.shtml
Association University and College Counseling Center
Directors. (2013). Annual survey. Aurora, IL: Author.
Lamott, A. (1995). Bird by bird: Some instructions on writing and life. New York, Anchor
Books.
