I wonder if God ever gets anxious.
Like not worried or nervous, but anxious. It’s that gut-wrenching feeling, the pit in your stomach, the racing heart, reticulating thoughts, shallow breath, “Oh God, am I going to die” feeling of a panic attack. Ya, that anxiety.
It might seem silly to think of divinity as having a panic attack, but still, I wonder. I mean, Jesus seemed to have (at very minimum) an episode in Gethsemane. The Christian scriptures tell us he “He was in anguish and prayed even more earnestly. His sweat became like drops of blood falling on the ground.” (Luke 22.44 CEB) That is some severe anxiety right there.
Jesus is God. Christian orthodoxy affirms this. So, by correlation, if Jesus experienced this sort of anxiety, God has—at very least—experienced the panic I know too well.
So, I guess it’s true that God gets anxious… at least Jesus did about the crucifixion.
***
God makes me anxious.
There’s no getting around this. God’s self makes me panic. When I stop and contemplate God for too long, I feel the familiar anxious energy rise in my chest, filling my head and settling in my upper arms. This is the stress of anxiety in my body. This is how the anxiety of God affects me.
Having anxiety over that whom I worship seems counter-intuitive for a self-professed ragged Christian, but perhaps this is what makes me ragged. I live in a tattered faith that barely hangs on most days. While I believe completely and confidently that we live fully sacramental lives consciously and unconsciously, my belief in divinity ebbs, flows, filled with the jetsam and flotsam of doubt and questions.
I think it’s these questions that cause me the anxiety the most. No, that’s not quite right. I have no problem with questions. I thrive in questions. I’m committed to discovering better questions. Questions give me a purpose, a direction, a goal. They drive me to find the bedrock and rebuild what I had to tear down. Questions are good.
It’s the answers that suck.
Or I should say the lack of answers.
Kalisto Wear was an eastern orthodox priest. He has a quote which I pretend to love, but really it haunts me. “We see that it is not the task of Christianity to provide easy answers to every question, but to make us progressively aware of a mystery. God is not so much the object of our knowledge as the cause of our wonder.” I have this problem with God causing wonder and not being someone I can study and understand. It frustrates me and causes me – that old fiend – anxiety.
See, I was raised with the understanding that theology proper is the science of God. It’s how God works, how God thinks, how God operates, traits, characteristics, and values that make up the who that we worship.
I was supposed to, someday, be able to understand and know God fully.
Shit if that didn’t fall apart.
I’m writing this book that I’ve dubbed “This Damn Book.” It’s this story of my doubts and fears, by ragged faith, and my exploration of Jesus. I keep thinking that it should be called “From Theodicy to Theosis.” Lovely ten-dollar, theological words that respectively mean the problem of evil and a good God and a divine union between humanity and divinity.
My problem with this journey—that I not only write about but actively live—is the wonder portion. I’m not good at mystery. I’m a problem solver and explorer, a wrestler and a ponderer. I want to understand. It would be appropriate to say I feel I need to understand. This mystery is something I can’t understand, something I can’t conquer.
But oh, how I try.
I try and make it all make sense. I try and fit things into neat boxes. I try and try and try and am frustrated at every turn. The more answers I find, the more questions are raised, and the more the questions come, the more I’m grasping at the unknowable, the mystery, the thing I’m not good at.
God makes me anxious.
This unknowable, this ineffable, this mystery that is the divinity we worship, this is the very thing, the very person, that I cannot know and as such cannot understand. And the lack of ability to understand makes me anxious because without understanding, how am I going to remain in control.
See, the crux of my anxiety is about control. More precisely, it’s about trust. I don’t trust others, so I have a deep, deep need to control situations so I can be assured the outcome is what I want – sometimes need – it to be. I can’t control God. I can’t make it all make sense in a tidy box. I can’t make sure that everything will work out in the end.
I feel as if I could understand God, then I would be someone who could be pious, could have a faith that isn’t ragged and torn, could be someone who is devout and holy. As it stands now, I am riddled with doubt, fear, and uncertainty. I doubt if Christianity is anything more than some metaphor or a collection of stories to make people feel better at best and, at worst, used to control people, giving those in power more and more power.
I want a solid faith. I want to not doubt, to trust, but I can’t let go of a need to understand. This probably gets into some psychological roots of my childhood and attachment theory, but suffice to say, I need to understand, to control, to get it right so that God will love me.
I fear that I am not loved by the very embodiment of love. I fear I’m not good enough, not right enough, not worthy enough. This is the root of my anxiety: fear. If God doesn’t love me, then who will.
***
What of God’s anxiety? Does Jesus’ anxiety intersect with mine at all? God’s experience (at least once) of extreme anxiety tells me that God doesn’t have to be in control. This probably sounds counter-intuitive, but it’s true. Jesus wasn’t in control at his betrayal, his arrest, his trial, or his crucifixion. It was all outside of his control.
Jesus knows what it is to have no control, yet he still moved forward. He let it happen to him, didn’t fight it, didn’t scream and cry and have a panic attack over the unknown inevitability of his death. If he can do that, can I trust in a sacramental life and the love of God whether I can understand or not?
Christian Wiman said in My Bright Abyss that “Christ is contingency.” To have faith is to hold something that is amorphous and ever-changing. It’s not to be certain and sure. The trust comes when we don’t know because if we know, we don’t need to trust.
So, I have a choice: to move into the anxious future, knowing my anxiety can’t be lessened because there is no way to know the unknowable, or fight, kicking and screaming, with the unknowable and cause myself more and more psychological damage.
Sacramental life, here I come.
I can’t let go of my anxiety, but I can embrace it, knowing that it comes from fear, and fear tells me the tender, precious places in myself. I can sit with fear long enough to find out its name is truly grief; grief over hurt and devastation and wounds that may never heal.
Jesus can live again after passing through an anxious death, uncertain if he would see the other side or not. I can pass through an anxious life, hoping for a future of resurrection into a place when the dim glass will be clear, the veil lifted, and contingency will be seen for what it is: growing life.
Friends, The Book of Common Words is 100% reader supported. Here we explore the Christian spirituality of being human through podcast, poetry, and prose about my life, art, and the Christian faith. If you would like to support this exploration, and gain early access to all the podcasts, poems, and prose, consider joining my Patreon community.
One of the best way to support my work is to share what you’ve read here with your friends and acquaintances. Every share is an invitation to our little community. Thanks!
Thank you for stopping by my little corner of the internet. If you would like to be notified and receive my posts, poems, and podcast episodes in your email, just fill out the form below.
Leave a Reply