The Anxiety Epidemic

It’s probably fair to say that we find ourselves in the middle of an anxiety epidemic at the moment. Earlier this month the Wall Street Journal had an article entitled ‘The Booming Business of American Anxiety’. The key stat was that according to a recent survey by the National Centre for Health Statistics, 27% of respondents indicated that they had symptoms of an anxiety disorder. This was up from 8% in 2019.

Between then and now of course, we’ve had Covid, the cost of living crisis and the simmering potential of nuclear war in the background.

Yet while these things no doubt have led to an increase in anxiety, people have been talking about an anxiety epidemic long before Covid. A book entitled The Anxiety Epidemic’was published in 2018 – that’s two years before Covid. In fact, an earlier book called The Anxiety Epidemic was published in 1986. A 2008 article in the Independent was entitled: ‘The anxiety epidemic: Why are children so unhappy?’ In America, a 2012 headline in the Atlantic magazine talked about a ‘National Anxiety Epidemic’. In 2016, the Observer proclaimed: ‘Only fundamental social change can defeat the anxiety epidemic’.

So while we can certainly point to potentially-anxiety increasing events over the past few years, commentators have been talking about an anxiety epidemic for quite a while.

Anxiety itself of course is nothing new. We could go back 3,000 years to an ancient Hebrew song which warns against ‘eating the bread of anxious toil’. That song is in the Bible, and we know it today as Psalm 127. We could go back to an ancient proverb, from around the same time, which is also recorded in the Bible: ‘Anxiety in a man’s heart weighs him down, but a good word makes him glad’. We could go back 2,000 years ago to Jesus, telling people not to be anxious about tomorrow. We could go to the Apostle Paul, who says: ‘Do not be anxious about anything’ – and yet who also talks about feeling the daily pressure of his anxiety for all the churches.

I’m sure we all know what it’s like to feel anxious before a big event like an exam, a job interview and so on. That anxiety is a normal part of life. But there is also a crippling kind of anxiety which can lead to us lying awake night after night, and which in certain cases can almost stop us functioning.

It’s this second kind of anxiety that has been increasing in our society in recent years. So what is the cause?

One explanation comes from German sociology professor Hartmut Rosa, who wrote a book in 2020 entitled The Uncontrollability of the World. In it, he diagnoses one of the big problems making us anxious, and suggests a cure. His diagnosis is that we are seeking to make the world controllable. The problem, in his eyes, is that we ‘tend to encounter the world as a series of objects that we have to conquer, master or exploit’. When we encounter situations we can’t control, it leads to frustration, anger and despair. What he says we must do instead is be ‘open to that which extends beyond our control’. In other words, to accept and even embrace the fact that we aren’t in control. And then we won’t feel so anxious.

As a Christian, I think his diagnosis is so close to the truth. He’s right that we become anxious when we feel like we’re not in control. Even his cure gets us halfway there: we need to embrace the fact that we aren’t in control. But Christianity offers a better answer than saying that the world is out of control, and there’s nothing we can do about it. Rather, it tells us that while we are not in control of the world, there is a wise and loving God who is. And that’s good news! 

Rather than relieving our anxiety, realising that we can’t control what happens around us will make it worse – unless we come to trust that there is a God who knows what he’s doing.

Given that anxiety seems to be everywhere today, it’s one of the topics that we’re going to be considering in a series of four special meetings we’re hosting in church, beginning this evening at 7pm. The other talks (on Friday, as well as Sunday morning and evening) will deal with Shame, Hope and Change. It would be great to see you there!

Published in the Stranraer & Wigtownshire Free Press, 31st August 2023

(The talk referred to can be listed to here)

It's Not About Where You're From

There’s a huge Irn Bru advert at Glasgow Airport emblazoned with the slogan: ‘It’s not about where you’re going, it’s about where you’re from’. The message is that wherever you might be flying to in the world, what really counts is where you’re from. And what could be a more iconic symbol of Scottishness than Irn Bru?

We don’t tend to look on it as a good thing if people forget where they’re from. If someone from Stranraer ‘made it big’ and was being interviewed on a talk show in America, we wouldn’t take it too kindly if they were asked where they were from and said ‘Glasgow’. It might be easier for the audience to locate on a map, but for us it would feel like a betrayal.

I remember heading off to university and a fellow-supporter of my local football team asking, tongue-in-cheek (I hope!), which of the two big Belfast teams I was going to start supporting. Of course the only time I actually went to either of their grounds was when my hometown team was playing – and I was very much in the ‘Away’ end. I couldn’t have done otherwise and maintained any level of self-respect.

So on one level the Irn Bru advert resonates deeply with me. Though actually, the advert doesn’t really work if we apply it to someone from a more affluent area moving to somewhere people see as less attractive. It would fairly grate on us if someone moved here from somewhere like Oxford and were always negatively comparing Stranraer to where they’re from. At times we might even feel the need to tell people ‘You’re not in Kansas anymore’ – in other words, you need to forget where you’re from and get on with things where you are. We need to live life where we are, not where we might want to be.

So the advert isn’t applicable to all situations, because there are times when we want people to stop talking about where they’re from.

There are also many people who would rather forget where they came from themselves. Not because they’re ashamed of the place itself, but because they were the victims of abuse, bullying, gossip etc. Or perhaps they did things themselves that they are ashamed of, and they know they would not be welcomed back.

In fact, one of the reasons why the message of the Bible is good news for people in those situations is because it’s actually the polar opposite of the Irn Bru advert. Rather than where we’re from being all-important, the gospel tells us that where we’re going is what matters. In fact, we could sum it up as: ‘It’s not about where you’re from, it’s about where you’re going’. That’s an important message for those who, for good reason, would rather forget where they’re from. It’s also an important message for those who think that where they’re from makes them better than others. Who think that because they come from a particular family or a particular place – or have been brought up going to a particular church – that they are a cut above everyone else. They need reminded: ‘It’s not about where you’re from, it’s about where you’re going’.

So where are you going? The Glasgow Airport advert is clearly a reference to where your plane is going to land. You can fly from GLA to 75 places – but the Bible tells us that ultimately there’s only two destinations that matter: Heaven or Hell. To continue the airport analogy, I can’t make it to Heaven by my efforts any more than I could walk to America. What really matters is who’s piloting the plane. Jesus’ ascension into Heaven means that our place there is guaranteed if our trust is in him.

In some ways, the reverse of the Irn Bru advert would be the perfect slogan to write above a church door. We have people in our church from all sorts of backgrounds. Some who’d rather forget their past if they could. Others who have had to learn that no-one has any right to see themselves as better than anyone else. The ground is level at the foot of the cross.

You might be nervous about going to a church for the first time – or about coming back to church after years away. People worry about what to wear, or about what to bring or about not having someone to come with. But none of that matters. ‘It not about where you’re from, it’s about where you’re going’. And it’s never too late to start that journey.

Published in the Stranraer & Wigtownshire Free Press, 3 August 2023

'Do not disturb' or 'Come on in'?

It’s the time of year when many people head away on holiday. Accommodation options these days are legion: AirBnBs, regular BnBs, caravans, self-catering apartments, and of course hotels. With four young children our days of staying in hotels are definitely on hold, and this summer we’re planning a house swap, which has the advantage of not costing anything!

But when it comes to hotels, one thing they all have in common are those little door hangers, which tell the cleaners whether they should come in and make up your room or not. Someone recently shared a photo of a hotel where the usual two options were put in a slightly different way. One side read: ‘I’m clean enough: please don’t disturb’. The other said: ‘I’m a right mess: come on in’.

 As someone who’s passionate about getting the Bible’s message across in everyday language, I thought they were brilliant. They perfectly sum up the only two possible responses to the gospel of Jesus Christ. Either we say to Jesus: ‘I’m clean enough: please don’t disturb’, or we say: ‘I’m a right mess: come on in’.

One of the misconceptions about Christianity that I and my fellow believers are often trying to combat is that it’s only for good people. Again and again we come up against the widespread idea that we go to church because we think we’re good, or because we think it will make us good. In fact, we’ve had people in church being told by their families: ‘you’re not good enough to go to church!’ Their families know what they’re like – or at least what they were like in the past – and think that church is no place for them.

And yet while it’s a misconception, it’s an understandable one. Undoubtedly there have been and are many who do think of themselves as good because they go to church. Undoubtedly there are those who have been regular church attenders, and have looked down on those who don’t go as somehow worse than them.

But for those who have been born again, the truth is exactly the opposite. We go to church, not because we think we’re good people, but because we know we’re not. And yet we’ve heard about someone called Jesus, who his enemies called ‘a friend of sinners’ (and they didn’t mean that as a compliment!). As New York Times bestselling author Tim Keller put it: When God opens our eyes we discover that ‘we are more sinful and flawed in ourselves than we ever dared believe, yet at the very same time we are more loved and accepted in Jesus Christ than we ever dared hope.’

Jesus once told a story about two men who went to the Temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. ‘The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus: “God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.”’ He didn’t pray for mercy; he didn’t think he needed it. He was clean enough – or so he thought.

‘But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!”’

Thinking that church is for good people leads only to pride (for those who think they are good enough) or despair (for those who know they are not). On the contrary, the Bible tells us that there has only ever been one truly good person who has ever lived – Jesus Christ. The reason he came to earth was not primarily to set an example for us (which we could never have lived up to anyway!). Instead, he came to live the perfect life that we fail to live, and then die in the place of his people.

As a result, being a Christian isn’t so much about ‘doing’ but about ‘receiving’ – receiving the free gift of new life that he offers. There are many (not least among those who sit in churches) who say, ‘thanks but no thanks’ – ‘I’m clean enough: please don’t disturb’. But by God’s grace there are others who have gratefully said: ‘I’m a right mess: come on in’.

Jesus himself says ‘Behold, I stand at the door and knock’ (Revelation 3:20). What will your response be? ‘I’m clean enough: please do not disturb’? Or ‘I’m a right mess: come on in’?

Published in the Stranraer & Wigtownshire Free Press, 29 June 2023