Did Paul Problematize Anxiety Because He Was Ignorant of Psychotropic Drugs?

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Christ Alone and the Hope of Salvation

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The issue is that humanity is in sin, and the wrath of almighty God is hanging over our heads. They will hear his words, they will not act upon them, and when the floods of divine judgment, when the fires of wrath come, they will be consumed and they will perish.

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Jesus is saying there is a group of people who will hear his words, they will act upon them, and when the floods of divine judgment come in that final day, their house will stand.

Why Paul’s Command Against Anxiety Is Not Outdated

Welcome to Bible Bash, where we aim to equip the saints for the works of ministry by answering the questions you're not allowed to ask. We're your hosts, Harrison Kerrig and Pastor Tim Mullett, and today we seek to answer the age-old question, did Paul problematize anxiety because he was an ignorant first century Jew who was unaware of the effectiveness of antidepressants?

So this is a bit of a comically long title question, but Tim, why don't you just kick us off by answering this absurd and comical question that I've posed for you today?

Sure, yeah.

Well, when you think about a question along those lines, that certainly isn't the kind of question that most people are verbalizing. So I meet very few people, particularly in counseling, who are going to word their objection essentially to what Paul is saying and what Jesus is saying along those lines, but then if you think about the actual logic of what they're saying, it's hard to escape the conclusion that many people really do believe that we've learned significantly more about anxiety today than we did.

You know, first century Jews might have known about anxiety, and there are many, many people who essentially believe that anxiety for them is a quasi kind of medical problem that they need antidepressants or some other form of anti-anxiety medication to take in order to help them to deal with basic problem of anxiety or worry.

So there's a great many people who basically respond to Paul's instruction, do not be anxious for anything, with a comment to essentially say that they're not Paul, or often they'll even say they're not Jesus, and that may be good enough for Paul, it may be good enough for Jesus, but they're different.

And science has essentially taught us now that this is basically a mental disorder, and so it is what it is, and so really there might not be a whole lot of people who are going to phrase their objection in quite that way unless they basically just chucked any belief of the Bible a long time ago, but functionally that's exactly what they're saying by their actions.

Anxiety as a Human Problem and a Worldview Problem

Yeah, and obviously, you know, I think it's pretty safe to say if you are a person with a beating heart in your chest, then you've probably dealt with the issue of anxiety in your own life. It seems just like, for human beings, it seems like an inevitable, you know, sort of trial or emotion or whatever you want to call it that everyone experiences multiple times during their life, not even just one single time, multiple times, honestly probably even multiple times a day.

And so I can understand in one sense why there are plenty of people who are looking at what Paul has said in Scripture and saying, all right, you know, cool, good for you, Paul, but I'm a normal human being.

Yeah, like you're saying, anxiety is essentially the human problem when you think about it, and so there's nothing that's more natural or normal for fallen human beings than to worry or to be stressed out or to be anxious because deep down we know that we are not in as much control as we think.

There's been plenty of situations that all of us have found ourselves in that seem to be totally and completely out of control, that are hopeless in certain ways, that we don't know how to handle them.

And we all realize that we're not God, like in a certain sense. We know that we can't just speak things into existence, and in order to make any kind of plans, we're dependent on a great many things to happen, and our plans often are subject to futility in that kind of way.

And so it's completely normal and rational and reasonable for fallen human beings without God, particularly to be filled with anxiety and worry, for sure.

Yeah, and it seems when you read something like what Paul says in Philippians when it comes to anxiety, it seems like Paul has a totally different view of anxiety compared to what we as a society in general, how we think about anxiety, and people who are tempted to be anxious often.

It seems like Paul has a totally different mindset and a completely different approach to anxiety than what most people today would suggest when they're giving advice, when they're dealing with it themselves.

So primarily what I mean for us today is, it seems like, like you said a moment ago, anxiety is more often than not categorized as a biological issue, whether it be certain chemical imbalances that you have, or you've experienced some sort of traumatic event in your life that has now given you a basically get-out-of-jail-free card excuse to feel anxiousness all the time.

And so I wanted to just kind of pick your brain and maybe see if you could give us an explanation for why it is that it seems like nowadays we are categorizing anxiety as primarily a biological issue to begin with, when it seems like maybe Paul wasn't treating it that way.

So why are we doing what Paul wasn't seemingly doing?

Sure. Well, yeah, I think with the advent of secular psychology, one of the things that's happened is that sin categorically is now being labeled as sickness or illness. And the early psychologists, they had an intentional agenda that they set out to accomplish.

And they realized, I mean, for many years, if you had a problem, you would essentially go to talk to a pastor about that kind of problem. And your early psychologists for it in general, they were the kind of individuals who were self-consciously attempting to set out to create an alternative to soul care, to what they understood as soul care.

And individuals today, they know that the DSM, the Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, this is what psychologists use to make their diagnosis. But everyone knows that this is essentially psychology's Bible at that point.

And so now we're dealing with a scenario or a situation where individuals set out to provide an alternative to soul care that was basically materialistic and based on the assumptions of evolution. And so if there is no God, then there is no such thing as objective morality.

That's the way it works. And psychology is not dealing with what you might describe as objective morality. Psychology is dealing with what is, and essentially is an attempt to categorize what is. And there really is no objective overarching morality that undergirds psychology in that kind of way.

So when you think about these kind of things, we're living in a society that's been heavily psychologized essentially. And the truth is that if we are just matter that's evolved over time, just complex life forms that evolved from simplistic life forms, and there is no such thing as objective morality, there is no such thing as objective truth, then what you're going to do is you're going to look out at the world and you're going to see that some individuals seem to be much more prone to worry or anxiety or fear than others.

And what you're going to do is you're going to ask, well what are normal levels of anxiety, worry, and fear? And then when you see abnormal levels of anxiety, worry, and fear, you're basically just dealing with a different metaphysic.

You're dealing with a different understanding of morality at that point. And you're just looking at what is and you're basically trying to categorize what is. And any deviation from normal is not going to be viewed in moral terms.

So any deviation from the normal is just going to be assumed based on an atheistic materialistic kind of ontology at that point. What you're doing is you're assuming that there must be some kind of organic problem that is causing this divergence from what is considered normal, if that makes sense at all.

So whenever you see something abnormal, someone prone to different kinds of worry, you're going to assume it must have a material biological root cause to it essentially. And so when you think about anxiety in that kind of way, it's basically just assumed to be some kind of medical problem despite the fact that we have no science that is demonstrating that this is a medical problem.

This is just an assumption that we're taking by faith, that it must be medical and it must not be their fault because we're not even thinking in moral terms at that point. We don't have a doctrine of sin that is undergirding this project essentially.

So we don't believe that individuals are created in the image of God nor moral beings and there is no transcendent being that's in control of everything that exists. And so worry is just seen as the normal state of affairs and essentially it must be some sort of medical problem.

So when you think about what psychology is actually doing at that point, there's basically five major types of anxiety disorders in the DSM. You have what's called general anxiety disorder, you have obsessive compulsive disorder, panic disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder and social anxiety disorder.

And so these are the five major labels that are being put on this and there's this assumption essentially that these are all basically biological in nature and it's not something that can be proven, it's just something that must be assumed.

It's a presupposition essentially in order to do business. And so now we're living in a society that's so dominated by psychology that we adopt all of these labels and we basically when's the last time you heard anyone challenge something like obsessive compulsive disorder in any way?

Or when is the last time you heard anyone challenge post-traumatic stress disorder in any way? I mean essentially anyone who has one of these labels, you perceive them instantaneously to be a victim of some kind of biological problem.

The same thing with social anxiety disorder or general anxiety disorder, all of these, panic disorder, you assume based on the labels that there must be some kind of organic ideology that undergirds the problem, that they must be some kind of victim and we're trained in that and that's the air we breathe and that's where all of our sympathies go and so that's part of what's happening there.

Yeah. Oh, keep going, keep going.

Well, it's basically just a clash of worldviews. You have a worldview that's just materialistic and atheistic based on evolution that basically just assumes everyone's basically good. So then you look at an individual who seems to be struggling with some problem and you consider them basically good and then you extrapolate out from that that they must be a victim then.

There must be some kind of glitch in the programming and that's the only thing that you can think of. But then the problem is that biblical worldview basically says that we're all created evil and we refuse to honor God in our thoughts and our foolish hearts become darkened and so we're given over to all sorts of problems and thoughts and behaviors that are moral in nature instead of just being fundamentally everything must be some kind of glitch essentially.

Genesis, Evolution, and the Roots of Modern Confusion

Listening to your response there, one of the things that I couldn't help but thinking, and this is just a side note, not necessarily directly related to anxiety, but isn't it pretty interesting to think about all of the issues that are presented when you adopt a worldview based on evolution?

I remember I just read a book by John MacArthur that was titled The Battle for the Beginning and it's this book explaining why it's so important that we read the creation account in Genesis and take God at His word there.

And the reason for that, according to MacArthur, was because the way that you interpret the first few chapters in Genesis is going to inherently affect the way that you interpret the rest of the Bible, basically.

And I think what he really meant there was the way that you view how everything came to be, how all creation came to be, is directly related to how much you trust God's word.

It's true, and I think the way that this debate has often been approached in the Christian world is essentially you put this belief in creationism alongside some sort of old earth cosmology along those lines and try to argue that good Christians can disagree on this and it's not really all that important and it's just interpretation of the literary genre of Genesis and all that.

But then the problem though is that this is a significant difference of starting point that you're putting here. You obviously have pressure from the outside to believe in an old earth and some kind of theistic evolution or something along those lines.

That's not coming from the text itself, but it's more than just a debate over creationism over some sort of theistic evolution. It's a debate essentially over God's ability to define the world that we live in, to define the parameters of the world.

And it's not just, as you're saying, it's not just some sort of secondary issue that good Christians can disagree on. It entirely does matter whether or not we believe that everything came from a creator God or if human beings essentially are evolving from simplistic life forms.

And this is just an example of that. How do we view people? Do we view people as fundamentally sinful or do we view people as just matter that's constantly changing over time? And this is where you get all the transgender, the logic of the transgender movement is essentially founded on this belief that we can be whatever we want to be because that's essential to how we're created even.

And so there's ramifications to toying around with Genesis at a variety of levels. And obviously Genesis, if you want to look at what's actually happening in Genesis, you're going to see that basically every single major confusion in our society right now is all centering around a straightforward interpretation of Genesis.

So the Bible tells us that we're distinct from the animals. The Bible tells us that God created man in his own image. God gives us a definition of marriage within the opening chapters of Genesis. God tells us the basic human's fundamental problem in Genesis.

You can think about the world that we're living in right now and all of the sexual confusion that's out there, all the gender confusion that's out there, all the confusion as it relates to mankind's place in the world, whether or not it's ethical to eat animals, how do we relate to animals, all these sorts of things across the board you're finding in the opening chapters of Genesis.

And so that's absolutely right.

Yeah, I just wanted to bring it up because I know in a few different episodes, and not even just in podcast episodes, but even just in the lessons that we teach on Wednesday nights at our church, so many of them involve having to explain when it comes to various topics and what is the popular worldview of unbelievers.

You pretty much always have to explain that materialistic worldview that they have.

Yeah, all those basic worldview questions, who are we, where do we come from, where are we going, they're all right there. There's no way to build a biblical worldview apart from looking at Genesis' answers to those questions.

Who are we, where do we come from, where are we going, they're all right there.

Right. Now getting back to the actual topic at hand, anxiety specifically, you were talking about basically people are viewing this as a biological problem. Popular psychology has given us, I think you said, five different primary categories of anxiety to diagnose people with.

So the follow-up question I wanted to ask with that is, if they think it's a biological problem, normally when you have any kind of biological problem, there's certain tests that you can run. So for example, say I fell and I hurt my arm really badly and I think I broke it.

I'm not sure. It looks normal, but then I can't really move it very much. It's incredibly painful. So I'm going to go to the doctor, and the doctor's going to run a bunch of tests to tell me whether or not my arm's broken.

And there's going to be clear evidence that the doctor can see and then interpret and then diagnose me with that evidence that he's now gotten through x-rays and whatever else they need to do. So the question that I wanted to ask you now is, what exactly is—well, I'm assuming there is a process like that when it comes to psychologists who are trying to diagnose people who are prone to anxiousness.

So what exactly does that process look like? If it's a medical problem, there's got to be some kind of process, right?

Why Anxiety Is Not a Medical Diagnosis

Yeah.

You would think.

You would think. So this is a little bit complicated in that you have these different labels. So I just gave you five different labels for the major types of anxiety disorders. So you have general anxiety disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, panic disorder, post-traumatic stress, social anxiety disorder.

But what's happening, though, with these labels— and we've talked about this on various episodes— is these labels are just descriptions of individuals' thoughts and behaviors. And so these are the labels that are put on an individual after all the medical tests come back empty, essentially.

So after you run all the medical tests and there's nothing wrong with an individual, they're going to get one of these labels if they describe themselves as being worried or anxious, and sometimes even if they're not.

So there's a variety of medical conditions that can produce what you might describe as anxious feelings. And so we're going to describe anxious feelings as something like a simple physiological distress that's resulting from some sort of pathology or evidence of tissue damage or malfunction in some kind of way.

So there's a variety of things that can happen that can produce in an individual what you might describe as anxious feelings, but then that's different from anxiety or worry as we commonly understand that.

So I just gave you a few medical things that can happen that can produce anxious feelings, but that a person can have anxious feelings all day long without being worried. So we have to kind of think through how these things actually work, but like a person who's having a heart attack, they're going to have what you might describe as anxious feelings, right?

So there's going to be something wrong with their heart at that point, but then a person can have a heart attack without worry. So worry is a moral response. Hypothyroidism can produce what people might describe as anxious feelings.

Lung disease. In some drugs and medications, often when individuals are taking a lot of different drugs like aspirin, ADHD medication, asthma medication, there's a lot of caffeine. If you drink a lot of caffeine, you're going to have anxious feelings.

I mean, I know that when I was in Bible college and seminary, I drank so much caffeine that my eyes would twitch. But certainly my heart raced, but then that would just be simple physiological distress resulting from some sort of pathology at that point.

Like that's not worry. That's not anxiety. That's just me being hyped up on caffeine. But then your typical, if you just think about how one of these labels functions, we'll just talk about general anxiety disorder at this point and just talk about how they're actually diagnosed someone with general anxiety disorder.

So you're going to get diagnosed with general anxiety disorder if an individual basically has what's deemed as excessive anxiety or worry occurring more days than not for at least six months about a number of events or activities.

So you have to have, there's a checklist on how to figure these things out. So does the individual have excessive anxiety occurring more days than not for at least six months? Does the individual find it difficult to control their worry?

And then is the anxiety or worry associated with three or more of the following six symptoms essentially? So it's more often than not for six months, they are not able to control it and it's three or more of the following six symptoms.

Okay.

So only one,.

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Only one of these additional symptoms is required in children. So here are the six, the restlessness, feeling keyed up or on edge,.

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Muscle tension, six, sleep disturbance. And so you have to have three of those six symptoms. It needs to be, cause a clinically significant distress or impairment in social or occupational or other important areas.

And it must not be attributed to, and this is the key to what you're talking about. It must not be attributed, attributable to physiological effects of a substance or another medical condition. Example, hypothyroidism.

So like this is basically anxiety or worry that doesn't have a medical cause. Does that make sense? And it's not better explained by some other medical disorder. So basically this is just a label that psychologists are putting on individual by asking them,.

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Are you worried?

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It's also leading to three or more, three of the six,.

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Et cetera. So this is not a medical disorder.

This is just a simple description of individual's thoughts or behavior. It says nothing about the ideology behind it at all.

It's just a,.

It's just a label that we put on people. It sounds like it's a medical label when it clearly is not.

So it's basically the same processes, you know, when you have a kid going to visit the doctor or going to see the nurse at school or something and they say, you know,.

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They scraped their knee. The nurse asks the kid, how bad does it hurt. On a scale of,.

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Objective, you know, objective scale.

It's just a categorization of like behavior. Like it's just a categorization way to categorize certain thoughts or behavior. That's all it is. It's not telling you anything about the origin of that behavior or thoughts.

I mean,.

To say someone is worried because they have general anxiety disorder is like saying someone is nervous because they fidget.

Like, uh,.

It's just like, it's just a way of basically categorizing certain phenomenon and giving it a certain label. But people think that this is like a medical diagnosis or there's something organic wrong with the person.

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Well,.

You must have general anxiety disorder. That's not telling you anything significant there.

Right. Now,.

If you've listened to the show a lot, you know,.

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When it comes to trying to accurately define terms, we like,.

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What, what specific things are and what they mean and how he views them. And so Tim, you know, so we've been talking about society and how society would define anxiety,.

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What, what does the Bible have to say,.

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About anxiety? Like if we wanted to have a, a clear biblical definition, where would we go?

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Where would we go in scripture? And what would that definition from script from scripture end up being?

Fear, Worry, Concern, and Anxiety in Scripture

Yeah,.

Harrison, I think it's a really hard question to answer because this, this is a word that basically is,.

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It's not hard to know what the Bible says about it. What's hard is that it's a word that is,.

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Has so many different uses at this point that, when people, there's a sense in which everyone knows what the word means, like anxiety is, but then we use it so much and it can describe,.

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Such a wide range of phenomenon that essentially what you have to do is you have to think through like a lot of different categories as it relates to.

This word.

So there's a lot of things that a person could be communicated, communicating when they're using that kind of term. And so you have to think,.

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Through. What does the Bible say about,.

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A lot of different categories of things. Does that make sense?

Okay.

Yeah,.

I think so, but explain a little.

All right.

So,.

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Basically anxiety is,.

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You can talk about anxiety, you can talk about worry, you can talk about fear. And so if you're trying to describe what is anxiety, there's just a lot of different types of fear in the Bible. And then there's,.

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Anxiety in the Bible. So Paul says, be anxious for nothing, but with everything, the prayer and supplication with Thanksgiving, let your request be made known to God. Jesus tells us,.

You know,.

Why do you worry about your life? So you have like words like worry in the Bible. You have words like anxiety in the Bible, and then you have different words related to fear. And because anxiety is so closely tied to fear, then you have to think through what does the Bible say about fear?

What does the Bible say about anxiety? What does the Bible say about worry? And then deal with each category individually in order to just make sure you're not talking past each other. If that makes sense.

So,.

Uh,.

Biblically speaking, I just try to run through a little bit of a list here, but like biblically speaking, there's six different types of fear that can happen. Some of them are going to be moral. And then some of them are going to be not moral.

Uh,.

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And there could be more, I've just given you a rough list here,.

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One type of fear is what you describe as startle fear.

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Example of that would be Ruth laying at the feet of Boaz. He woke up, he was a little bit startled,.

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I think most people would be a little bit.

Yeah.

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That would be kind of a, most people would, wouldn't really consider that to be a moral issue to be startled at that.

Point.

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They feel with a lot of anxious thoughts about a particular topic and they get themselves all worked up to where they're a little bit stressed out. Pretty easy, but most of mostly startle, like the startle impulse is just a normal, natural response that individuals have to,.

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Danger that can somewhat be helpful at times.

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If you get startled, you might have a rush of adrenaline that helps you get out of there.

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Like a concern, like what you might describe as a genuine kind of concern. So Paul in Philippians two 20 says,.

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I have no one like him, like Timothy, who will be genuinely concerned for your welfare.

Uh,.

So you have this idea of startle in the Bible. That's the type of fear you have concerned in the Bible. It's the type of type of fear. You have the idea of respect in the Bible, which is also a type of fear.

So we're told to fear the Lord, our God,.