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

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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.

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.

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 in the

Bible a long time ago, but functionally that's exactly what they're saying by their actions.

Yeah, and obviously, 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 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, 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 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 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 in terms of 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 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 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, 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 symptoms.

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 etiology 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.

It 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 a 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.

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, well, 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 the problem, though, is that this is a significant difference of starting point that you're putting here.

And 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.

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. 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.

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.

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. 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.

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.

The question that I wanted to ask you now is, 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.

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

Yeah. You would think. You would think. This is a little bit complicated in that you have these different labels.

I just gave you five different labels for the major types of anxiety disorders. You have general anxiety disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, panic disorder, post -traumatic stress, social anxiety disorder.

What's happening though with these labels, and we've talked about this on various episodes, is these labels are just descriptions of individual's thoughts and behaviors.

These are the labels that are put on an individual after all the medical tests come back empty essentially.

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.

There's a variety of medical conditions that can produce what you might describe as anxious feelings.

We're going to describe anxious feelings as something like simple physiological distress that's resulting from some sort of pathology or evidence of tissue damage or malfunction in some kind of way.

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.

I'll just give you a few medical things that can happen that can produce anxious feelings. A person can have anxious feelings all day long without being worried.

We have to think through how these things actually work. A person who's having a heart attack, they're going to have what you might describe as anxious feelings.

There's going to be something wrong with their heart at that point, but then a person can have a heart attack without worry.

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 know that when I was in Bible college and seminary,

I drank so much caffeine that my eyes would twitch. Certainly my heart raced.

But then that would just be simple physiological distress resulting from some sort of pathology at that point.

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.

Just talk about how they actually diagnose someone with general anxiety disorder. 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.

You have to have—there's a checklist on how to figure these things out. 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? Then is the anxiety or worry associated with three or more of the following six symptoms essentially?

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.

Only one—note this—only one of these additional symptoms is required in children. Here are the six.

The restlessness, feeling keyed up or on edge. Two, being easily fatigued.

Three, difficulty concentrating or mind going blank. Four, irritability. Five, muscle tension.

Six, sleep disturbance. You have to have three of those six symptoms.

It needs to cause 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 attributable to physiological effects of a substance or another medical condition.

Example, hypothyroidism. This is basically anxiety or worry that doesn't have a medical cause.

Does that make sense? It's not better explained by some other medical disorder. Basically, this is just a label that psychologists are putting on the individual by asking them,

Hey, are you worried? Essentially, yes, I'm worried. I've been worried for six months or more, and it's caused me problems in my work.

I'm not able to go to work or take care of my responsibilities. It's also leading to three of the six—restlessness, being fatigued, difficulty concentrating, irritability, muscle tension, sleep disturbance, etc.

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 label that we put on people.

It sounds like it's a medical label when it clearly is not. It's basically the same process as when you have a kid going to visit the doctor or going to see the nurse at school or something, and they say,

Hey, they scraped their knee. The nurse asks the kid, How bad does it hurt on a scale of one to ten?

Not exactly the most objective scale.

It's just a categorization of behavior. It's just a 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. To say someone is worried because they have general anxiety disorder is like saying someone is nervous because they fidget.

It's just a way of basically categorizing certain phenomenon and giving it a certain label, but people think that this is a medical diagnosis or there's something organic wrong with the person, but then this is the label you put on someone after all the organic causes are ruled out, essentially.

It's just a subjective, Hey, are you worried a lot? Yeah, I am. That's about it. That's messing up my life.

It's like, Well, you must have general anxiety disorder. That's not telling you anything significant there.

If you've listened to the show a lot, when it comes to trying to accurately define terms, we like to let

God just tell us what specific things are and what they mean and how he views them.

Tim, we've been talking about society and how society would define anxiety, how society quote -unquote diagnoses anxiety in people.

What does the Bible have to say about anxiety? If we wanted to have a clear biblical definition, where would we go in Scripture, and what would that definition from Scripture end up being?

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

I mean, it's not hard to know what the Bible says about it. What's hard is that it's a word that 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 such a wide range of phenomenon that essentially what you have to do is you have to think through a lot of different categories as it relates to this word.

So there's a lot of things that a person could be communicating when they're using that kind of term, and so you have to think through what does the

Bible say about a lot of different categories of things. Does that make sense?

Okay, yeah, I think so, but explain a little more. All right, so basically anxiety is—you can talk about anxiety, you can talk about worry, you can talk about fear.

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 anxiety in the Bible. Paul says, So you have 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 biblically speaking, I'll just try to run through a little bit of a list here, but 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. And there could be more,

I'm just giving you a rough list here. So one type of fear is what you describe as startle fear.

An example of that would be Ruth laying at the feet of Boaz. He woke up, he was a little bit startled. I think most people would be a little bit startled.

Yeah, I'd be a little freaked out. Find a strange woman resting at your feet. But that would be kind of, most people wouldn't really consider that to be a moral issue, to be startled at that point.

Now, there's some people that startle maybe too easy, because they're maybe filled 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 easily.

But mostly startle, like the startle impulse is just a normal, natural response. That individuals have to danger that can somewhat be helpful at times.

If you get startled, you might have a rush of adrenaline that helps you get out of there. So you have this idea of startle, and then you have a concern, like what you might describe as a genuine kind of concern.

So Paul in Philippians 2 .20 says, I have no one like him, like Timothy, who will be genuinely concerned for your welfare.

So you have this idea of startle in the Bible, that's a type of fear. You have concern in the Bible, it's a 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 and do all the statutes and rules that he's commanded us to do. So you have respect is a type of fear that's distinct from the idea of concern and startle.

You have like a cowardice or fear of man. So that's a failure to do what's morally required of an individual, because they care too much about what others think about them and not enough about what

God thinks. So you have startle, concern, respect, cowardice, fear of man.

You have terror. This would be inappropriate for the Christian to have terror or dread.

So Exodus 15 .16 is an example of this. Terror or dread have fallen upon them because of the greatness of your arm.

They are still as a stone till your people, O Lord, pass by, till the people pass by whom you have purchased. So when individuals encounter the reality that God's coming in judgment, they often respond in this terror that is an appropriate kind of fear, but it's a type of fear.

If you understand who God is and how terrifying he actually is, it's an appropriate kind of fear for those who are objects of his wrath to actually have when he comes in judgment.

And then you have anxiety is also a type of fear as well. Does that make sense? So you have these different types of fear, but then if you were to try to think, well, what's the difference between anxiety and worry or something along those lines?

So what you have to do is you have to try to put together, well, what's the difference between anxiety?

What's the difference between worry and what's the difference between genuine concern? And that gets you in the ballpark of the discussion.

And those things are all going to be different from those other types of fear that I mentioned. Does that make sense? Yeah, and I was actually going to ask you about that because I know, obviously we've talked about Paul a little bit and his command to the church in Philippi to not be anxious in anything.

But then at the same time, there's other letters that he writes where he said, he's basically like, hey,

I'm really worried about you guys. I have a lot of concern for this specific church.

And so in one sense, if you read

Scripture in a very shallow way, I could see someone easily taking away that Paul is basically being hypocritical, where he's telling one group of people, hey, don't be anxious.

But then he himself is anxious. And so I wanted to get some clarification there anyways to basically say, what's the deal?

It seems like the only two options are either Paul is actually just being hypocritical here or he's using these words in different ways, and one is appropriate while the other is not.

So what are your thoughts on that? Yeah, well, essentially, if you're going to try to think through what

Paul is actually saying there, a good place to think about it is the Philippians 2 .20 passage, where he basically is saying that Paul has no one like him who would be genuinely concerned for your welfare.

And that way, he's using two Greek words there. One is merom nao, and the other one is ganesio.

And essentially, that's what he's describing as a genuine concern. And so there is this category in the

Bible of a genuine concern, and then there's a category for anxiety, and then there's a category for worry.

So you just want to think through there's three different categories there. There's a kind of concern that's genuine, and then there's a kind of concern that's not genuine.

And that kind of gets you in the ballpark to try to make the kind of distinctions that you really do need to make as you're trying to think through these categories.

Now, I mean, typically when I'm counseling people, there's no one who's ever going to say, hey,

I'm worried all the time. Well, there may not be no one, but there's very few people who are going to say that, particularly with someone like me.

They're going to say, hey, I'm not worried. I'm concerned, right? So I'm just concerned.

But then looking on the outside, it's like, hey, it looks like worry here. But you might not be able to persuade them on the first round that what they're calling concern is actually worry, but you do need to try to make these distinctions in general.

And I could just give you a simple way to try to distinguish these things in order to make sense of what we're even talking about here.

But first, I think maybe it would be helpful just to try to distinguish anxiety from worry.

So anxiety generally is what you might describe as a fear of judgment that is in response to a conscience that has been defiled.

So an example of this would be Proverbs 28 .1, which basically tells us, the wicked will flee when no one pursues, but the righteous is bold as a lion.

So this anxiety is like this idea of a fear of judgment. So when

God was basically telling the Israelites that they were going to be exiled, God says about the

Israelites that they would be put to flight at the sound of a leaf, essentially. So this is this idea of the wicked fleeing when no one has pursued them.

Essentially, whenever we sin, sin psychologically destabilizes us, if you want to put it that way, in such a way that we are suspicious of individuals around us.

We're constantly looking over our shoulders. We have this sense in which we're guilty and there's no way to fix it.

That's often why little children will come up to you and they'll tell on themselves, essentially. It's because they're dealing with this fear of judgment, this anxiety, this fear of judgment that comes from this violated conscience.

And so when you have a child who essentially comes up to you and says, Hey, I didn't eat the cookie today. But one of the things that you can be confident about is that they probably did eat the cookie.

I didn't eat the cookie. As you see the cookie crumbs on their face. So you can be pretty confident.

But that's kind of the fear of judgment that comes from a defiled conscience at that point. And that's why Adam and Eve are hiding themselves in the bushes after they sin, is because they know that they experienced this guilt and this shame and condemnation.

And they were looking over their shoulder. They knew that God was going to see at that point.

But not only did that put them in enmity with God, that put them in enmity with each other at that point.

So generally speaking, anxiety is going to be this fear of judgment that comes from a defiled conscience, when individuals are destabilized as a result of their own sin.

And then worry, on the other hand, if you want to distinguish worry from anxiety, worry is going to have a specific kind of issue that the person is failing to trust

God in over and against anxiety. So the idea of worry is that typically if you're going to come up to someone and you say, hey, why are you worried?

They're going to be able to give you an answer to why they're worried, if they accept that they're actually worried. Does that make sense?

So if you say, hey, why are you worried? They're going to say, I'm worried about the job. I don't have a job right now.

I need a job. I'm worried about the tests I'm going to take. So with worry, worry is a failure to trust

God with some kind of situation that you can identify. Whereas with anxiety, if you ask someone, why are you anxious?

Typically they're going to say, I don't know. They don't know why. They just feel unstable all the time.

They don't quite know what it is that's causing that. So then if you want to try to distinguish that from what you might describe as a genuine concern, well, we're living in a world right now that is damaged and has damaging effects of sin.

And there's plenty of things that are concerning. There are plenty of things that should trouble us. There are plenty of things that we should be in prayer about.

But then you distinguish worry from this genuine concern. And you ask yourself, is my concern consuming?

Is this all I'm thinking about? Am I characterized by peace in this moment? Or am

I just characterized by fear in this moment? And is it proportional to what's actually happening?

Or is it disproportional to what's actually happening here? So if someone says, I'm suffering from this constant concern that the aliens are going to come and take me away or something, whatever that is, it's not based on reality.

And it's not based on, I guess, out -of -proportional kind of fear or the kind of person who's afraid of stepping on a crack on the sidewalk because something like that, maybe they'll have bad luck or something.

It's just like, this is out -of -proportional. This is not genuine concern. It's not based on what's true and what's right, what's honorable.

Does that make sense? Yeah, so I guess the follow -up question to that is then, if Paul is giving a command, do not be anxious in anything, is he using,

I mean, when we read that word anxious, are we to understand that he's saying, don't be the person who is essentially afraid of judgment?

Or should we read that as, hey, don't be the person who is worried about specific circumstance that's definable in your life?

What exactly is he speaking of here? Yeah, no, that's fair. I think part of the problem is that you have words that are overlapping.

And so in English, the idea of anxiety and worry, they're very close synonyms. But then you need, part of the problem is that even in Greek, they're close synonyms, like the idea of meramna.

That's a word that can mean anxiety. It can mean worry. It can be concern. It's a word that's very flexible, that can mean a lot of different things just depending on the context.

And so what you have to do and trying to distinguish anxiety and worry in the way that I've distinguished it, you just have to have some way of describing those two separate phenomenon.

So if you want to call anxiety this fear of judgment, that's fine. If you want to say worry is a failure to trust

God with things that he's promised to take care of, or trust him with life in general, that's fine.

That's fair. Those are distinctions that we can, if you use those as stipulated terms, essentially, that gets you somewhere.

It's useful. It's useful as a way of communicating. But then the problem is you're just dealing with terms that have some sort of overlap there.

So when Paul was saying, hey, don't be anxious for anything, he's saying, don't be worried about anything. That's kind of what you're getting at.

Don't be worried. Don't be worried about anything. Jesus says, don't worry about your life. Those are two worry passages.

You're just using words that have overlap, if that makes sense.

Okay. Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense. So I don't think any person – you've counseled a lot of people who have been dealing with some form of worry or anxiety.

Have you ever had any of them that came to you and they said, hey, you know what? I'm actually – I'm really glad that I'm dealing with worry right now and that I feel like I'm defined by that.

Have you ever had anyone tell you that? Most people don't go there immediately. Most people don't –

I mean most people don't have the kind of moral self -awareness to say, hey,

I'm simply worried. I mean even the way you described it just now, being someone who's like largely sympathetic to what we're talking about or mostly sympathetic to what we're talking about.

We just naturally speak the language of victimization. We say like someone who's dealing with anxiety, right?

I mean it's just – it flows off the tongue and it's just so hard. I don't even talk like – I don't even speak that way and it's just so hard when you're constantly living in a society that uses victim language in every single way related to this topic just to be clear -headed and to use the language the

Bible uses. But then if we would actually use the language the Bible uses and speak about it the way the

Bible speaks about it, I would say that if a person came into counseling and said, hey, I'm simply worried and I can't stop.

I need your help. That's half the battle is defining it in that kind of way.

And I expect that that kind of person would have much greater success in actually repenting of their worry than the kind of individual who basically perceives himself to be suffering from anxiety.

But no, it's pretty rare. Yeah, I figured it was going to be pretty rare. I've never met anyone who said that they were happy.

I'll avoid the dealing with – obviously, I need to repent and sackcloth and ashes for saying dealing with anxiety instead of categorized by anxiety or something along those lines.

I've known a few. I've known a couple, but not many. Okay, all right. There's a few out there, I suppose.

But anyways, back to the question I actually wanted to ask. I think it's a safe bet to say most people don't want to have to deal with their anxiety or however you want to say it.

So we get that part of it. It's not a fun thing to confront.

It can cause a lot of damage if we let it get out of control, especially.

But in terms of the way that God views anxiety, he's given us a command to resist anxiety and to repent of it and never allow ourselves to be worried or anxious.

So why exactly is he so concerned about whether or not we're categorized by or even overcome by anxiousness?

Sure, yeah. And I think that kind of question is essentially coming from – the reason why we ask that kind of question is because fundamentally one of the things that we've been trained to do is we've been trained to think of the

Bible as fundamentally a book that's about us. And so the

Seekers Instinct movement basically has taught us to view the Bible that way and to treat the Bible in that kind of way.

And so there's this kind of hidden assumption behind that kind of question that lies behind the preaching of many pastors, particularly those in megachurches.

And that's the assumption that I'll obey the Bible if it benefits me in some kind of way.

And so we're basically asking the question, what's in it for me? And that's essentially what pastors are doing when they're teaching their congregation week in and week out at many, many churches is they're treating the

Bible as it's a book that's – what's in it for me? It's chicken noodle soup for the soul.

That's right, yeah, that's right. So then the Bible is basically kind of reduced in that way to a book that helps me to do life and a book that helps me to be a conqueror and all that, be an overcomer, to quote

Mandisa. So we're told to conquer, but then we turn it into an identity and that kind of way.

But here's the thing. So when you think about the way the Bible is actually written, the Bible is a book about God and a book about God's glory.

The major theme of the Bible is God is a glory -seeking God essentially. And so when you think about anxiety, why anxiety is a problem, it's not fundamentally a problem because it's unpleasant.

That's not why it's fundamentally a problem. The reason why anxiety and worry are fundamentally problems is because they reveal a deep -seated – particularly if you want to distinguish it the way

I described worry. Worry basically reveals a deep -seated lack of trust in the character of God essentially.

So when you're worried, what you're doing is you're essentially calling God incompetent. You're basically telling

God that your problems are bigger than he is and that he can't handle your problems.

He doesn't know how to deal with your problems. Somehow your problems are bigger than him.

And I think that this is profoundly insulting to the kind of God who is the biblical

God who actually made us. This is basically spitting in God's face and calling him incompetent.

But I don't think that we think about it that kind of way. But then that's fundamentally the nature of the problem is that it's basically calling into question the character of God.

Absolutely. One of the things that I've started teaching my daughter recently as she's started to get a little bit older.

Hopefully, she can soon begin to understand some of these things. But she will have moments where she gets very upset very quickly.

For example, if she's really hungry, she might see my wife or I getting food out, preparing it.

But then we're not going to give it to her right away just because for whatever reason, circumstantially, whether it's we're traveling and we can't feed it to her right now because it's a really messy meal or whatever the reason is.

She'll see the food. She knows that we know as her parents that she's hungry.

And yet she also sees that we are not immediately giving her food yet. And so she'll start freaking out, crying, screaming at the top of her lungs.

Because in her mind, we must not know what she wants and what she needs.

But the reality is as her parents, we know what she needs and we want to take care of her.

We love her and we cherish her and we want to meet her needs. But then sometimes it can't always be immediately for whatever reason.

And so I often tell our daughter now, Hey, you need to trust that your parents love you and want to take care of you and are going to do that.

And so everything that we do is for your good. So when she starts freaking out, part of what she's doing there is she's essentially demonstrating a lack of trust that her parents actually know what is the best thing for her in certain situations.

So we're trying to teach her at an early age. Hey, trust us because we know what you need and we're going to give it to you.

And it seems like this is a parenting is in so many ways a reflection of God's relationship with us.

That's why he calls us his adopted children in Christ. And so it seems that this is pretty much a similar thing, except obviously he's perfect.

Well, that's the funny thing about it. And I think I noticed the same kind of thing with our first child, particularly when he was an infant and really young.

And I mean, it's just what you describe. I mean, you're sitting there warming up the bottle and they're screaming their head off. And it's just like, man,

I'm literally about to put it in your mouth. Yeah. Calm down, man. It's not there immediately.

So you're never going to give it to me. I mean, it's just like, you know, then right when you do and grab onto it, you know, real quick.

And like as if, you know, it was ever in question, you know, but then it makes those passages you're talking about.

You know, your Heavenly Father knows what you have need of even before you ask. You have, you know, very, it's like a very clear object lesson as to how stupid and insane we actually are when we worry because we're like that.

You know, if there was anything that we needed, God would give it to us if it was that essential.

And if he's not giving it to us, it must be that it's not good for us. But then, you know, in our pride and our arrogance, we think that we know better than him.

And, you know, somehow he's asleep at the wheel and he doesn't know what he's doing. And, you know, and that's what's so, you know, insane and obscene about it.

But then now we have like, what we have is we have this, you know, quasi medical label that we can put on our distrust.

It gives us the ability to claim that triumphant victim label, you know, as we distrust

God and shake our hands at him and insult him to his face. And that's what's so particularly insidious about these labels is that they essentially give us this quasi scientific justification to essentially spit in his face and call him incompetent.

Yeah. So in summary, anxiety, worry, these types of things are essentially us stating to God or demonstrating to God that we don't actually trust that he, number one, knows what we need.

We don't actually trust that he is faithful to fulfill specific promises that pertain to our certain situation.

So overall, you know, we're basically saying just like from the beginning, if you go back and read in Genesis, hey,

God, we know better than you. It seems like that's kind of, is that a fair summary?

Basically, yeah. I mean, we think, you know, if, if, um, if we were running the world, we would relate to worry, you know, uh, worry.

We're typically, we're basically saying, you know, if we ran the world, we know how better to run the world than what you do.

Right. For sure. And, you know, if we were in charge, then everything would be great and right and wonderful. And your plan essentially is terrible and worthless and you don't know what you're doing and you're incompetent.

Okay. And you're withholding something good that we need, you know, essentially, that's the argument of Satan at that point. You're, you know, uh, there's this thing that we need in order to be okay that you, you know, are jealously holding on to and not giving us because you're just tyrannical mean and needlessly restrictive and everything else.

Okay. Uh, so obviously, you know, any, any, uh, born again,

Christian is not going to want to, uh, remain in that kind of state where they are, they are demonstrating to God that they don't trust

God. So what would be your advice, Tim, when it comes to, uh, how

Christians should repent of their, um, their anxiety?

What, I mean, what, what advice do you typically give to the people you're counseling? Yeah. I mean,

I think if we're talking about anxiety, we talk about worry, uh, whatever, whatever you call these two things, like if you, if you're talking about this fear of judgment that results from a defiled conscience, you know, generally speaking, um, one of the things that you have to do with that.

So we'll just talk about the, you know, what you might describe as anxiety over and against worry. If you try to distinguish them in this way, but this fear of judgment, one of the things that's going to happen is like you're dealing with that kind of person.

Like it's like, here's the problem. You can't have like a one size fits all counsel to everyone. So if you have the kind of person who's basically just saying they're anxious all the time, you say,

Hey, why? And they say, I don't know. Right. Well, whatever that is, it's not worry because they don't know why they're anxious all the time.

They're just always on edge all the time and they don't know why. And so typically at that point, what you need to do is you need to talk to them about, you know, how they're handling their life.

You need to ask them, you know, do you have any unconfessed sin in your life? You know, it might be that they, you know, they stole something at work.

It might be that they, you know, are addicted to some kind of drug.

It might be that they're doing things on the internet that they shouldn't be doing, you know? So with that kind of person who is constantly on edge, who basically is fundamentally destabilized in that way, what you want to talk to them about is how are you living your life?

How are you spending your time? Uh, you know, the kind of person who's binge watching Netflix all day long and never takes care of their responsibilities.

They may be constantly anxious, but the problem is like, you know, you ask them why they don't know. Well, they're not going to connect it to the fact that they're living a worthless life.

Does that make sense? Yeah. And so with that kind of person, typically what you're wanting to do is talk about, ask them very specific questions about how they're living.

What are they doing? How are they spending their time? Is there unconfessed sin there? You know, uh, that, that kind of stuff.

And you might need to tell me what your day is like. What do you do on a typical day? You know, how are you living? You know, um, you know, and, and it might be that what you're encouraging them to do in those moments is just to pursue faithfulness, to pursue a life worth living, to, you know, to pursue, uh, not just, you know, spending, devoting all their time to worthless or selfish things.

And so that kind of person might find that, you know, if they get off the couch and get up and move around and do something productive and worthwhile, they don't feel so unstable anymore.

Does that make sense? Mm -hmm. Now, if you just go up to that person and say, man, I'm just anxious all the time.

You say, well, the Bible says, quit worrying. Do you see how that didn't help them at all? Yeah. It didn't help.

Just stop it. It's like, well, I don't know how to stop it. Right. Well, the problem is that they're not worried. There's nothing they know that they're worried about that they can tell you.

They just, they're living a worthless life and they feel condemnation as their normal state of affairs. And it doesn't do just to go up to them and say,

Hey, you know, there's no, therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Like, yeah, you might, they might have a lot of sin that they need to repent of, uh, in order, you know, in order for that to make sense.

Does that make sense? Mm -hmm. And so it's not, it's not just that you can claim that problem, uh, promise that there's no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus when you're perfect or something along those lines.

But if you have all these huge life dominating sins that are in your life that are robbing you from joy and keeping you from joy, like the solution is repentance by God's grace and through his power, through the power of his spirit, you need to repent.

And then like you can, um, you know, as you're repenting, there is this reality, Hey, we're never going to repent perfectly, but we shouldn't be mastered by sin, uh, mastered by all these life dominating sins.

And the kind of individual who's mastered by, you know, life dominating sin after life dominating sin and living a functioning, essentially worthless life, they need to be taught, you know, the gospel and how we respond to the good news.

And they need to be taught the basics of the Christian life and how the Lordship of Christ applies to their situation and everything else.

So with that kind of person, you need to talk through how are they living their life? What are they doing with their time? Uh, you know, are there secret sins there?

That's, that's what you need to do there. Uh, with the person who's worried, uh, typically, um, you know, I just try to walk them through, um, just a checklist as far as that goes.

So first thing I try to tell the person who's worried, you know, I'm worried about the finances or I'm worried about, you know, will

I ever get married or I'm worried about, um, you know, a test that I'm going to take or whatever else.

Uh, step one is always going to be take responsibility for your worry. Uh, so, you know, as long as a person believes that, that their worry, like they're the victim of their own worry, that their worry is not their fault, they're never going to turn from it.

Uh, so in order to actually repent of worry, you have to take responsibility for it.

So like all sins that we commit, um, the Bible says, do not be anxious about anything. So if you're worried about something, you essentially, you need to repent of it, but you're not going to repent of it.

If it, if you believe fundamentally deep down, this is not your fault, it's a biological problem. This is, you know, you're a genetic problem.

You must have some sort of chemical imbalance or whatever else in your brain. And like, you're, you're, you're just going to be mastered by this forever until you say, this is my fault.

So, um, and that's just simply responding to the reality of what the passage is saying. Do not be anxious about your life, you know, as Jesus says, or Paul says, do not be anxious about anything.

Uh, but then, um, beyond that, you know, I think there's a few steps there. Um, so you want to identify the object of your word.

So, uh, Paul says, do not be anxious about anything. So you ask yourself, Hey, what is my anything here?

Right. What is the anything? Okay. So, uh, so identify the object of it.

What is it? What am I worried about? Like, what, what is that thing? You know, so you might ask a few questions like, you know, if only, you know,

I had X, I would have peace. You know, what is that thing? You know, uh, financial security, safety.

If only someone loved me, you know, if only, you know, that kind of stuff. What, what is the anything there that you're worried about?

Uh, then what, one of the things you want to do at that point is evaluate the object of it. So evaluate the object of your worry.

So you first take responsibility, identify what you're worried about, then you evaluate, uh, what does

God say essentially is the question about my anything. Uh, so, uh, meaning like, you know, sometimes we can be worried about good things and sometimes we can be worried about bad things.

Does that make sense? Yeah. So like, if it's something bad, you know, like, um, uh, you know, like, um, like I'm, uh, well, you can think of any kind of, uh, sinful thing at that point that a person might be.

I'm worried that, uh, my boss is going to catch me for stealing all the money at the job. Right.

All right. So you want to evaluate what does God say about it? And, you know, so some things can be bad like that, but then some things can be good.

And I'm worried about, um, you know, I, I'm going into a conversation, it's going to be rough and I want,

I don't want the other person to know that I care about them. And, and I want them to know that, um, you know, that I don't hate them and, but I know that I'm going to have to have a hard conversation.

So that could be a good thing to say, Hey, like, what does God say about it? Oh, God wants you to have a good relationship with people.

Like, uh, you know, so far as that goes, all other things being equal, like God wants you to love other people and care about other people.

Desire to have good relationships with them. That's a good thing. Uh, so you, you know, what you want to do though, the

Bible says, do not be anxious about anything, but with everything by prayer and thanks, uh, supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God.

So as you evaluate this object of it, you say, is it something I can pray about? Typically, if it's something bad, you can't pray about it.

Does that make sense? Um, explain that a little more. Well, I'm meaning like,

I can't, you can't ask God for it. So the Bible tells us like the answer to one of the solutions to worry is to ask

God. Right. So don't worry, but ask God for what you need. Well, the problem is, it's like, Hey, you know,

I'm worried about getting caught because I stole all the money at the work. Right. It's like, well, can you ask

God to not let you get caught? Well, not really. That would be an interesting prayer for sure.

Lord, Lord, I need to quit worrying about this. I just need to ask you, Lord, just let me get off scot -free, you know, don't let anyone.

So no, I mean, so like, if no, then repent of the wicked desire right there. Right. And then if it's a good thing, ask him for it.

So Lord, you know, help me find a spouse. Like I'm worried about finding a spouse. Like you're, you can, you're in the cattle on a thousand

Hill and you can send the guy over here to me. Uh, it's not really all that hard. You know, or you can send the right lady over here to me.

Like you, you're in control. You can do this. I trust you. You know, so what you want to do is ask God for it.

And then, um, so, you know, take responsibility for it. Identify what you're worried about.

See if, you know, evaluate, evaluate what you're worried about. Can you ask God for it? Or if not, then you need to repent of it.

Lord, there's a wicked desire right here. I have this terrible, and I pray that you take it from me. Right. Uh, but then, um, then, you know, there's a step that people often forget as it relates to worry.

And you need to ask, like, have I faithfully pursued this desire essentially? Uh, so when you're thinking about it, um, you know,

Nehemiah 4, 9, uh, you know, they were being threatened with attack by the enemies of God.

And they said they prayed to our God and they set a guard as protection against them day and night. And so, um, you know, examples of this would be individuals who worried about a job, but won't refuse to look for it.

Right. So you don't just sit there and pray, Lord, give me a job. Lord, give me a job. You need to go put out resumes. You need to do some search, searching.

You need it. So you need to have, I faithfully pursued this. And there's plenty of things in life that, you know, if God wants you to take steps and, um, and pursue, and he may never answer your prayer until you choose responsibility.

So if you're the kind of individual who refuses to work and just says, Hey Lord, you know, you say you're going to take care of all my, everything

I need. It's like, yeah, he may, but not, you know, that may not mean that you have your house and your phone and your Netflix, if you refuse to get off your butt and work.

Right. You might have to scavenge some bugs on the side of a road. But, um, anyway, so I have that faithfully pursued it and then just choose peace.

So peace is a choice. Peace is a choice that we make. We choose to have peace, a heart that trusts in the

Lord will have peace, essentially. So peace is a byproduct of this heart that trusts in the

Lord. It's, it's not, um, you know, many people are anxious and worried. They're sitting there, Lord, give me peace,

Lord, give me peace. But what they're praying is they're praying for the byproduct, uh, what they should be praying for. Is Lord help me to forgive me for my lack of trust in you and help me to trust you.

And the person who actually trusts the Lord will have peace at that point. Does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah. And God promises peace for the person that does that.

Right. So, so if, if someone is going about this the right way and they are legitimately saying,

Hey God, you know, I've screwed this up royally. Yeah. I need, I need your forgiveness and I need you to help me turn away from these things.

And I want to commit to turn away from these things, uh, specifically not trusting you.

Then essentially what God promises at that point is, Hey, that person will, uh, they will have peace.

Not like a, you might get peace along the way. Maybe, you know, it's, it's a promise.

If you repent of your worry and you say, Lord, this is my fault. Will you forgive me for it? And you trust him, you trust the

Lord, you'll have peace. Yeah. Which is a good, which is a great promise.

I mean, that's a, that's a pretty amazing thing that, uh, God is telling us.

So people should really be encouraged. I think sometimes people kind of read a passage like this and they say to themselves, you know, uh, kind of what we were talking about at the beginning of the episode.

Yeah, that's great for Paul, but what about us normal people? Well, the part of the problem is that we don't know who

God is. And so like they're like, it's like, how do you trust someone you don't know?

And that's a problem. And so if you don't know anything about God, you don't understand who he is. And I mean, um, you know, part, part of the problem is that we do, as we said before, we read the

Bible and it's such a man centered way that it's all about us and trying to figure out how we can fix whatever problems we have in life.

The problem is that Bible is a book about God. And, you know, as you read through the Bible, you encounter this

God who created the heavens and the earth, who made everything. And if you know him, like it's impossible, like if you really know him, like Bible, Jesus says,

I've come to give you eternal life and eternal life is that you may know, you know, God and Jesus Christ who sent.

And so the more that you know about God, the more that your faith grows in your trust grows. And the more that you have something to latch on to, you know, faith is a gift of God.

Trust is a gift of God is a confident expectation that God will do what he promises to do. And if you know who he is, the peace is going to result from that.

So you're not just praying for like this disembodied peace. What you're doing is you're, you're filling your mind with the character of God as you encounter him in the

Bible and you're trusting him based on how he's revealed himself to be. And the result of that will be obviously a peace that surpasses all understanding.

So earlier in the episode, we talked a lot about the fact that our society views anxiety, worry as sort of a medical problem.

It's a biological issue. And so one of the responses that psychologists will typically have is they'll prescribe you antidepressants.

And that's part of our title question. Paul, Paul didn't know that we would one day have antidepressants.

And so, so part of what we were asking was, hey, maybe, maybe Paul was just giving us an outdated command that was good for people who didn't have antidepressants.

But now that we've got them, we can kind of just chuck this one or file it away in the, in the obsolete category or something.

If, if there is such a thing as the obsolete category when it comes to God's commands for us.

But if we're talking about the Christian who is trying to turn away from anxiety, who is trying to flee the temptation to worry, should that person as part of that process turn to antidepressants as part of the solution?

Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, I think essentially when you're thinking about what's actually happening at this level, it is,

I'll say a word about the comparison first and then talk about what you're saying. But I mean, it is, you have to understand that this worldview is such an attack on the sufficiency of scripture.

It's unbelievable how much of an attack on the sufficiency of the Bible that you're actually talking about at that point.

I mean, essentially what you're saying is that for 2000 years, give or take 50 years, we basically had a book that told

Christians that they were in sin if they worried. And now what we've realized in the past 50 years is that basically the entirety of the

Christian church for the past 2000 years has been misdiagnosing what's actually happening.

Yeah, that's a pretty profound statement. I mean, it's unfathomable hubris and arrogance when you think about it, that basically you have a book that was basically leading people astray for 1950 years before the advent of secular psychology.

I don't know how you can even remotely believe in the sufficiency of scripture and believe something along those lines.

That you have a book that's just saying that people are sinful and wrong, because it was just so ignorant and didn't understand how human nature actually worked.

And I mean, so why would you trust the Bible on anything if it could get something so common, so wrong?

For so long, to where basically every pastor for the first 1950 years of church history was basically just deceiving his people because he just was missing this key bit of scientific truth that was withheld.

What you don't have at that point is you don't have a book that's actually sufficient in any way. So there's that, but then answering your question as it relates to can antidepressants be one step along the path.

The problem is they don't work. They don't statistically perform much better than a placebo. They have horrible side effects.

And some of those side effects include individuals being mastered by the creation.

Paul says, all things are lawful, but I won't be mastered by anything. So you have fundamentally a pill that doesn't work.

It doesn't perform better than a sugar pill. It has all these horrible side effects. And it is like the

Bible says that weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty in God for casting down strongholds and arguments and every high thought that exalts itself against the knowledge of God.

This is just a carnal attempt to pursue the kind of biblical change that God wants us to pursue.

The Bible gives us different types of weapons. And so when we look to physical objects to fix spiritual problems, that's fundamentally an assault on the sufficiency of the scripture at that point.

And these weapons are not going to be any help to us in restraining flesh. You can take a pill all day long.

It's not going to expand your knowledge of the character of God. It's not going to help you grow in trust and dependence on God in any way.

You're just fighting the battle in a different way. All you're going to do is tranquilize yourself. That's all you're doing.

Numb your thoughts so that you don't have to think anymore. I know that there's different types of medication that's prescribed for anxiety along those lines, but that's one of the main ones.

But I'm just trying to say that you're trying to fix a spiritual problem with something physical and it's not going to work for one.

All you're going to do is just be a drug addict for the rest of your life until you wake up or repent by God's grace.

It's not going to help. It has all these side effects and it reveals a deep -seated distrust in the

Bible and God. Harrison, you will never meet the person who is taking antidepressants who is filled with a confident trust in the character of God.

You will never meet that person who is just overflowing with thanksgiving for the God who made them and confidently trusting in the sovereignty of that God and has this sure anchor in their soul that knows that God has it.

I agree wholeheartedly with that, especially knowing the people that I've spoken to personally who would attest to the same thing.

It just didn't help them. Oftentimes, it made them feel worse overall.

Like you were saying, it has a lot of really negative side effects to it.

It reinforces in their mind this notion that they're fundamentally to their core flawed in a way that's irreparable.

It's not like traditional medicine. It's called medicine, but it's not like healing anything.

Nothing's being fixed. What you're reinforcing in the mind of that individual is that they're fundamentally broken and damaged beyond repair.

People have latched onto that broken label to describe themselves. You're flawed.

You're fundamentally flawed and this medicine is never going to fix you. It's just going to help you. You're like that wheel or whatever that has the duct tape around it forever.

It's fundamentally broke and it's limping along and hobbling along. Maybe it keeps you together, but there's nothing that's more demoralizing than that kind of perspective of yourself when you think about it.

I'm sure there's going to be plenty of people who are listening to this episode who are saying to themselves, maybe

I'm not the one who is personally being overcome by anxiety.

Perhaps there's someone I know, whether it's a family member, a friend, whoever, that is prone to anxiety.

They are prone to worry. They are prone to distrust God's promises. What would you say and what would you give in terms of advice to that person?

How would you tell them to minister to whoever this is that they know is facing anxiety and probably being overcome by it?

The person who's trying to help the person who's overcome by it? Yeah, the person who wants to minister to someone who is anxious or worried all the time.

I think you want to ask a lot of questions to figure out what you're even talking about. What kind of fear are we talking about here?

What kind of concern are we talking about here? I think a lot of it just depends on what kind of scenario are you in.

Is this like the fear of judgment kind of anxiety that comes from a defiled conscience?

At that point you're talking to that individual about the basics of what it means to be a Christian and living a life worth living and turning from sin.

So with that kind of person, you want to give that kind of help and that kind of advice and not just, hey, stop worrying a man because that isn't going to help because it's just something different.

With the people who are worried, I don't know that the stop it, stop worrying, just repent of it is the only thing you say.

I'm not going to beat up on someone who comes along and says, hey, repent of it, it's wicked. I'm normally kind of encouraged by the fact that they're thinking about it in a biblical way, but there's more to it for sure.

I think that with that kind of person, what they need is they need to have their view of God enlarged and expanded.

They need to have someone talk through some very practical things.

There's a lot of people who are worried and they're going to be worried for the rest of their life until they somehow start choosing more responsible actions that they need to take and think through some of those things.

The kind of person who's just worried and they don't have a job and they're running out of money, but then they refuse to look, that kind of person does need to have someone tell them to repent, but part of what they need to repent of is being so lazy and not looking.

Does that make sense? Yeah. I think just depending on the situation that you find yourself in,

I wouldn't go in and try to fix everyone's medication issues. People just are on these drugs that you get off of them really quick.

You can have crazy thoughts that you're on because you're so mastered by this chemical and there's safe ways to transition off of those things.

I wouldn't declare war on the medication. I wouldn't declare war on that.

I would just basically teach them to trust the Lord, teach them to read the Bible, that kind of thing.

Focus on the areas that are...it's very hard to imagine the kind of person who's reading the

Bible three hours a day instead of watching Netflix three hours a day who's filled with worry all the time.

Yeah. And so often it's just like they don't have enough in their brain to even know how to...like

they're just pursuing worthless things and they don't know God at all. And so trying to think through how can

I help them to know God better? It might be that the byproduct of that is that they don't worry as much.

Yeah. I wouldn't think about it in some kind of simplistic way that basically just you take someone who's bone ignorant about the

Bible who never reads it and then tell them, stop worrying. It's like, I can't. It's like, well, yeah, I get it.

You don't know God. Yeah. Does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah. And I guess

I...oh, did you have more to say? No, no, that's fine. I think there's just not a one -size -fits -all approach to that, but just don't let them put...don't

talk about it as if it's a medical problem. Talk about it as if it's a spiritual problem. So reject the medical language, reject that kind of worldview.

Talk about sin, righteousness, judgment, repentance, trust, those kind of things. Yeah. And I assume there's probably an element of some of the questions you're saying that you ask when we were talking about this earlier, meaning, hey, okay, so you're worried, you're anxious.

Why? And depending on the answer to that question, you might have a few different questions that you ask.

So if they say, hey, I don't really know why. I'm just anxious or I'm worried all the time.

Then you kind of want to start treating things like...one of the first things you want to start asking about is, hey, is there unrepentant sin in your life, whatever.

And then if the answer is, well, actually, it's this specific thing. I just lost my job and I don't know how we're going to make ends meet.

Then you start saying, well, okay, let's look at what does

God say about money and provision, for example. And let's start looking at those things and saying, what does he promise?

What does he not promise? And kind of go from there. Yeah. So why are you anxious?

I don't know. Yeah, I'm going to talk about how they're living their life and then confess sin. Why are you anxious?

Well, I'm worried because X, then certainly. One of the things

I'll ask them is, hey, have you asked forgiveness for it? Have you repented of it? And then good questions you can ask along those lines are just, what is your view of God in this situation?

And you might get a lot of interesting responses to that one. What's your view of God in this one?

And I had a guy, I asked him that and it's just like, I just feel like a dirty puppy in a white room.

But I mean, it's like that kind of individual has a reason to worry.

You know what I mean? They're not confident about where they stand with God, period. So why would they confidently go to him in prayer?

And a lot of times like with individuals who are dominated by worry, there is this fundamental, they don't feel reconciled with God, period.

I've asked him over and over and over again. He doesn't listen to me. He doesn't whatever. And so you got to think through, what does it say about their relationship with God at that point and try to go there also.

Yeah. Okay. Well, I guess in closing, is there anything that you want to bring up that maybe we didn't touch on during the episode?

Yeah. I mean, there's no more hopeless view than the view that anxiety or worry are just fundamentally a material problem.

I mean, it's just a hopeless way to look at the world. I mean, I understand if you believe that people are basically good and you're sentimental about the nature of humanity and you take

God out of the equation, we're just the product of random time and chance. I get how you get there, but then the problem is from a biblical worldview, we're born sinners.

We're born fundamentally in rebellion against God and the Maker. And the best thing that you can do, honestly, is if anxiety is a sin problem and worry is a sin problem, if these things are sin problems, there's hope that you can repent of them and you don't have to be characterized by worry and anxiety your whole life.

I mean, I can just look at my own life and see that there were times in my life where I was absolutely dominated by worry, anxiety, and fear.

And I can tell you by the grace of God, my own testimony, that I'm not mastered by these things anymore and haven't been mastered by these things in any comprehensive way for years.

I think everyone goes in and out of times where they might be tempted to worry, even faithful Christians, but you don't have to be dominated by these kind of things.

And there's no more oppressive, hopeless situation than to get one of these stupid, ridiculous labels put on you to where you think fundamentally that this is going to be the rest of your life.

If it's a sin, you can turn from it with God's help and by His grace. If it's sickness, you're in trouble.

Yeah, absolutely. I think part of why we wanted to talk about this is just so many people, it seems like so many people, it's an inevitability that people are going to be anxious or going to be worried.

And the truth is, God has given us hope for this that no other worldview can offer overall.

And it does require us to humble ourselves and recognize that we've committed wrong.

But then the great thing is God says that He offers forgiveness to all those who ask it of Him.

And so we can be reconciled back to God for these things. There's a hope there that is not going to be offered anywhere else.

And so our hope is that this episode has been helpful for you guys, that it's been eye -opening in certain ways.

And certainly, if you're the person who is constantly worrying, who is constantly anxious all the time, then reach out to us at our email address.

Email us and let's get in touch and let's talk about these things. If you don't want to be mastered by these things anymore, reach out to us.

And if you're the person who has friends or family who is overcome by these things, who has let themselves be dominated by anxiety, then share this episode with them and tell them the same thing.

They can reach out to us as well, and we'd be happy to talk with them and counsel them through some of it.

So we want to thank you guys for listening. Really, really appreciate all the support, and we look forward to having you guys on the next episode.

We hope you have been encouraged and blessed through our discussion. We thank you for all your support and ask you to continue to like and subscribe to Bible Bashed and share our podcast with your friends and on social media.

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Now, go boldly and obey the truth in the midst of a biblically illiterate world who will be perpetually offended by your every move.