C. S. Lewis’ imaginative book The Screwtape Letters is a fictional story which records a series
of conversations between a couple of Satan’s demons. Screwtape, the senior
demon, explains to the junior devil, Wormwood, why they must tempt humans to
worry and not trust God. Screwtape says,
“There is nothing like suspense and anxiety for barricading a human's mind
against the Enemy [God]. Our business is to keep them distracted, thinking
about what might happen to them.”[1]
Screwtape’s comment gives us an insightful window into the
root of worry. Anxiety over the unknown is motivated by the fear of what could happen. A person who worries is
apt to let their imagination run wild with all kind of possibilities that they
have no control over. J.C. Ryle once said, “Half of our miseries are caused by
things we think are coming upon us. All
our fret and worry is caused by calculating without God.” Holocaust survivor Corrie
Ten Boom added, “Worry is an old man with bended head, carrying a load of
feathers which he thinks are lead.”
A few years ago, a major university did a research project on
the things we fret about. Here are the results: 40% of what people worry about
never happens. 30% of stressors have already happened and you can't do anything
about the past. 12% fretted what others said about you, which most of the time
is uncontrollable. 10% of worry deals with health issues and worrying will only
make that worse! That leaves about eight percent of the things that are
considered to be real problems...and worry will not do any good with these
either![2]
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus warned against worry as
joy-killer to the Christian life, “Look at the birds of the air: they neither
sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are
you not of more value than they (Matt 6:26)?” Jesus’ point is that worry is
irrational. His argument moves from the lesser to the greater. If God can give
and sustain the life a bird, then surely He can do the same for you and me.
Jesus also defines worry with an interesting word picture.
The Greek word in the text is merimno,
which is the combination of two smaller terms—merizo, which means “to divide; and nous which means, “mind.” The idea is that the worried mind is one
that is being pulled about in opposite directions. The worrier has their mind
divided, or torn between fear and faith. What Jesus is saying here is quite
powerful. In essence, worry comes from a heart of unbelief. Worry is a form of
practical atheism, because it assumes there is no good God watching over us.
The reason why God doesn’t want us to worry is so that we can
focus on what is truly important—building the kingdom of God. The Lord takes
care of our physical needs so that we can busy about His work. Tomorrow will
take care of itself, if today we decide to trust Jesus.
–DM
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