Anxiety, Healing and the God of Provision

These are thoughts inspired by a wonderful sermon I heard by Luke Powery of Duke Divinity School.  I appreciated everything about his sermon, but I was left thinking that there were still some unaswered questions.  Listen to the sermon first, if you like:   Calvin College Symposium on Worship--Luke Powery Sermon, Saturday.

Succinctly put, my internal response to Powery's sermon was, "There's a deeper aspect to this that I'm not quite hearing."  Powery masterfully demonstates how anxiety is an enemy to the theological virtues of faith, hope, and love.  The more anxiety, the less room for faith, hope, and love.  The less room for God, and the less room for love of neighbor.  He also talks about the "contagious" aspect of anxiety, how anxiety can spread from person to person if you aren't careful.  In addition, he menions the addictive side of anxiety--how anxiety can become so all-consuming and central to one's life that it actually becomes idolatrous--that it displaces God at the center, and people actually go out of their way to maintain their high level of anxiety.  Why?  Because they've become so accustomed to it, they don't know how to live without it.

To me, that's not terribly shocking.  Most of us, when doing significant psychological and spiritual work that entails a major change of life, both interiorly and exteriorly experience the jarring cognative dissonance of adjusting to a "new normal".  Sometimes this "new normal" is so foreign it feels wrong for a while, or in some cases, people feel a loss of identity--they are so used to thinking of x dysfunctional or broken aspect of themselves as being a part of who they really are, they don't know what to do when that aspect disappears, changes, or becomes healed.  There is a period of time in which you have to fumble around until you adjust to the "new you" who is actually just a "more healed you".  In any case, I think I've seen lots of people "worship at the altar of anxiety" as Powery says, sometimes in more or less superficial ways.  He says this can ruin your relationship with God because it really is idolatry and you can't serve two masters.  I have seen it take over personalities and compromise one's sense of identity because x person cannot imagine not living without being the one in control of the cosmos (and I've seen that in myself).  His is the more serious point, though--he's describing one who has really lost the battle of idolatry and is in some serious need of rescuing.
   
Powery goes on to contrast the picture of the anxious soul with the picture of the Providing God.  God is the one who has given himself to us in eucharistic gift and eucharistic sacrifice--he has given us himself, he has guarded us against the tyranny of the devil.  So why don't we believe him?  Why do we have such little faith in the presence of such a great God?  Why do we end up having "theological amnesia", as Powery puts it?  That, by the way, is a great way of describing what happens to someone who is truly consumed by anxiety--the anxiety is just so overwhelming it swallows up the knowledge of God and annhilates it in the anxious soul.  We just don't and can't remember anymore who God said he is and what he is like when we're drowning in anxiety.
 
But why the drowning aspect?  It is one thing to be embroiled in conflict with anxiety, and quite another thing to be overwhelmed to the point of drowing in it.  (This isn't an altogether inaccurate description of what some composes some forms of depression.)  Yet another, perhaps, to give up and just fall down and worship the false god.
 
I am sure there are any number of explanations and some of them are probably just fairly cut-and-dry theological accounts of both idolatry and pride.  When we are at the center of our own cosmos and self-reliance is our default mode, frankly, anxiety is just realism.  Fearfulness and anxiety are normal responses to a chaotic and unfriendly world . . . if human beings are the ones with the most chance of having control over the world.  It takes a lot of work to root out this idea and replace it with a lived doctrine of creation, where God is the God of order and the origin of all things--such that he is in control by virtue of being the Creator, and by virtue of the world being ontologically dependent on him for existence.  (I will explain that more in another post sometime.)
 
But there's also a side to this that is both about formation and development, and is also relational, and for that I speak out of my own experience of reflecting on God's provision for several years.  I've known for a very long time that I've had issues with God's provision.  When I was younger--say in my early college years--I used to have this invisible roller-coaster ride with God that it took me a long time to see properly, and then begin to understand.  It would go something like this: I would find myself drifting away from God (in the emotional sense) and becoming angry with him.  I would avoid prayer and Scripture reading until it made me miserable.  At some point, perhaps a few weeks later, I would inevitably find myself at Psalm 104, weeping, with little understanding as to why.  And the cycle would repeat itself, and did repeat itself about twice a year for two years or so as I slowly began to realize that I didn't really believe in God's provision.

In my heart, what I really believed is that I was left on my own to cope with all the craziness of life.  While most of the time I had enough optimism and naivety and natural resilence to find this exciting and adventuresome . . . deep down inside, my soul was suffering because God never made it to cruise about the cosmos on it's own.  We are made for God, and we are made to live with God, from the deepest and most inward and invisible parts of our hearts to the most external and visible parts of our lives.  Every moment is suppose to be caught up in both dependence on and partnership with God, and while I didn't understand either very well, I was especially clueless about the former.

At some point after college, I went to a parish retreat that was a real step forward in healing in this area.  Unbeknownst to me, there was a real blockage in my ability to understand God's love for me and his provision because "deep down inside" I thought he was unwilling to help me and resented my dependence on him.  I had picked that up from some unfortunate family dynamics, which brings me to my point about development and formation.  From an early age, we all learn what "love" is from our families of origins--and sometimes those families of origins have either broken or wicked definitions of love, which we absorb in childhood without the ability to reflect on what we absorb.  We carry that into adulthood and oftentimes we project these definitions onto God--and sometimes even, we hate God because we imagine he is like the earthly people who failed to love us in the ways that we needed to be loved, or failed to provide for us in the ways that we needed to be provided for.  Oftentimes, we don't even know this is going on, and we certainly don't understand the maelstorm of anxiety and anger that rises from needs being unmet and for generally being maladjusted to the world around us.

The answer to this I think is both theological and experiential--like most healing.  Central to this is genuine reconciliation with the True God, which involves renouncing all the idols and all the lies that consume our imagination about our Father, Son, and Holy Spirit who love us very much.  That task really is theological, because it is only the study of theology that can correct our ideas about him.  But this is also relational--for obvious reasons.  If you've been "friends" with someone who you thought was a jerk for years, and the friendship was equal parts tolerance and affection, only to find out after ages and ages that the person wasn't the jerk you thought he was and was in reality a great deal better and nice than you had imagined . . . well, that would change the nature of your relationship with that person.  It would open up things because you'd be able to trust that person more.

One could sum up my supplementum to Powery in this way.  There is an element to combating anxiety that is the cognitive side of faith: we are all in need of theological therapy at one point or another, and "believing the right thing" can make a difference.  But we also need a deeper change of heart, a deeper reconciliation with God, and a deeper experience of God's provision: it is these things that result in true healing for those who are drowning in anxiety, and this is a costly transformation that is the work of years in relationship with the Lord.  And we don't talk enough about the spiritual work that takes years to accomplish.

Iron Man and the Quandary of Self-Love

"You're tiptoeing, big man. You need to strut."

Tony Stark (Iron Man) to Bruce Banner (Hulk)


Rewatching The Avengers the other day, this snippet of a conversation caught my eye.  When I first encountered Tony Stark and the Iron Man movies, I wasn't a terribly huge fan of Stark's "text-book narcissism" as Black Widow put it in her report to Nick Fury.  But he's starting to grow on me.  One of the reasons he's starting to grow on me is because his very narcissism presents a challenge and a question to the audience: what exactly is the difference between narcissism and proper self-love?  And given a good definition, how do we actually go about recognizing that difference in the field, per se?   

One of the challenges of Tony Stark's case is that he is an exceptionally skilled individual who believes that he is an exceptionally skilled individual.  That's not the problem, and it certainly isn't the part that makes him vulnerable to the charge of narcissism.  In recognizing his own genius and achievement, he's just being honest.  Being honest--at least in good moral psychology, Christian and pagan--is one of the things that leads you to self-knowledge.  In acknowledging that, Stark is just being a realist.

The real reason people say Stark is a narcissist is because he is a) thoroughly devoted to self-pleasure and feeding his own interests without proper courtesy and attention to others and b) because "the rules don't apply to him."  But that isn't the thing I'm most interested in.  The thing I am interested in is the way in which Stark's advice to Banner was actually hitting on something good.  The following conversation gets at the heart of things a bit more.  When Tony Stark suggests that Banner will be "suiting up" with the rest of the Avengers, Banner replies:

"Ah, see. I don't get a suit of armor. I'm exposed, like a nerve. It's a nightmare."

"You know, I've got a cluster of shrapnel, trying every second to crawl its way into my heart.  This stops it. This little circle of light. It's part of me now, not just armor. It's a terrible privilege."

Banner responds: "But you can control it."

"Because I learned how."

"It's different."

Stark says, "Hey, I've read all about your accident. That much gamma exposure should have killed you."

Banner replies: "So you're saying that the Hulk, the other guy, saved my life? That's nice. It's a nice sentiment. Saved it for what?"

Stark: "I guess we'll find out."

With a wry smile from the resident Hulk, "You may not enjoy that."

Tony Stark: "You just might."

It may be true that Stark's enjoyment of the Hulk's destructive tendencies isn't terribly wise or constructive.  But the movie goes on to prove his perspective to be the right one.  Whatever burden the Hulk side of Banner might be, he's also a terribly effective asset equal to the task of taking on Loki single-handedly and dealing some serious damage to the Leviathans.  

What struck me, however, was more the enjoyment side of Stark's remarks.  Stark's not just egging Banner on to higher heights of self-esteem--he wants Banner to let go and enjoy himself.  He wants him to enjoy the destructive power of the Hulk, and see the power and hope for a more constructive use of the Hulk, even if it seems unlikely that the Hulk be fully trained to saddle.

Aside from the exaggerations of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, there's some very good advice there.  We spend a lot of time not enjoying ourselves.  We spend a lot of time berating, criticizing, and finding fault with ourselves.  We spend a lot of time in self-hatred and we don't spend a lot of time in appreciation and delight and even in glorying in ourselves.  But proper self-love is difficult to think about well.  How do I love and really celebrate and enjoy and even glory in the part of me that is good and wonderful and fearfully made by God without being a narcissist?  How do I love myself because God has loved me and wonderfully made me and destined me for glory rather than loving myself simply out of a false sense of ownership?  How do I balance the call for self-denial and proper abandonment of one's self and the call to the celebrate one's own goodness?

We are all faced with the quandary of reconciling loves--love for self, love for God, love for other created things, and we only succeed in reconciling loves when we know, understand and have been converted to the true purposes for which we love.  When I love myself and God for my own sake, I may not do wrong, but I haven't done much good either.  Self love, when it is the beginning of loves, is not a bad beginning.  It, however, is a terrible end for love--love of self and God for one's own sake must mature into something else or it will turn into narcissism.  (Narcissism is real life is much less attractive than narcissism enacted by Robert Downey, Jr.)  

When the world becomes contracted such that I--myself--am the only reason and purpose for which I love, my world becomes a false and ugly alternate reality.  Self-love is meant to be a natural tutor and example which shows us how it is we might love others.  The instinct for self-love does not have to be taught, though the maturation of it does, and self-love matures as the love of self is submitted to the love of God and the love of others.  It requires having our ideas about love submitted, transformed, and joined to the will, wisdom, and love of God.  And it requires a lot of obedience and renunciation and suffering--in many ways, we seem to lose much of ourselves before we find ourselves again, secure in God.

But during and after all of this transformation, when our loves change and are matured into ripeness--when we begin to see ourselves in God's light, purpose, and love, a wonderful thing happens.  We are freed, as Teresa of Avila told us so many years ago, to love ourselves for God's sake.  Having learned already to love God for his own sake, having seen God at the center of the cosmos and not ourselves, we begin to see ourselves again.  We perhaps catch a glimpse of ourselves out of the corner of our eyes and find that we are wonderfully and beautifully made.  And we begin to find out why God was so interested in the first place--we see what he sees, we find beautiful what he finds beautiful, and we find those things in ourselves.

As Bernard Lonergan and Henri de Lubac taught me, the first and most precious gift that God gives to us is ourselves.  We are meant to accept our lives as occassions for joy and goodness and to understand that there is more to the Creation than what is broken and damaged and harmful.  For some of us skeptics, joy and delight and acceptance of what is good in ourselves is most difficult because we think the most honest or the most rigorous or the most intellectual thing to do is to identify what is wrong rather than what is right.  But no matter what darkness exists in the human soul, it cannot overcome the brightness of creation, for the beauty of Creation is upheld by the hand of God, redeemed in the Resurrection of the Son, and preserved and guarded until the end by the work of the Spirit.

But we are called to a holy joy in ourselves.  We are called to take the same joy in ourselves that God does.  It isn't the only joy we have, and it isn't the most important joy we have.  But it is the very first gift God gives us and we are meant to come full circle in loving ourselves for his sake.