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In my annual report, I noted that we are living in unprecedented times. Wherever we might fall on the political spectrum, the headlines are ones that ones that we never expected to see in American media. And it makes us anxious.
Anxiety comes up when we are uncertain about what will happen next - when we cannot anticipate the future because it does not conform to the pattern we are used to. All change brings a level of anxiety (even good and anticipated changes) until we get used to all that the change brings. Right now, the changes - the political and social realities - are coming at such a rate that we do not have time to get used to one before the next one hits. It doesn’t help that the survival of media in all forms - television, radio, print, or social media - is dependent on keeping our attention. The many reporting outlets compete for our views by activating our anxiety, just enough to get us to watch, or read, or click.
All of this makes the work of being community - or being church - far more difficult. We have all been operating at a higher than usual baseline anxiety for years now. Fears about the direction that our country and our world are taking, maintained at a relentless pace, have elevated the amount of anxiety that is “normal” in our systems.
In our bodies, anxiety sits in our nervous systems - an adrenaline rush that never fully resolves, keeping us on high alert for the next headline, the next outrage, the next shoe to drop. When activated sparingly - in immediately stressful situations like an accident - our anxiety response can serve to get us to safety. When activated continually, it overwhelms our nervous systems; we become irritable, impatient, suspicious, and pessimistic. When the natural defensive and survival systems of our bodies are running continually, we see threats and danger everywhere.
This all matters because when our nervous systems are on high alert, when our anxiety is elevated, our brains become quite literally wired to bypass the parts of our brains that think and reason. We become more likely to react on pessimistic impulse than we are to really think through a situation and apply logic and reason. But any relationship - including those that bring us into community as a city or as a church - needs us to be able to think, not just react. Trust, vulnerability, compassion, empathy - those are all functions of our thinking brains, not of our anxiety. They are, in this time of widespread high anxiety, deliberate choices we need to make, not just for the sake of community but for the sake of our faith.
One of the most repeated phrases throughout the scriptures is “Be not afraid.” Even without the understanding we now have about the brain and nervous system, our ancestors in faith knew that fear breaks down the social bonds we rely on. Jesus’ call to love our neighbors and ourselves is a call to choose relationship even when anxiety is high. It’s a reminder that we can override the nervous system that is pushing us to pessimism and suspicion; we can activate our reason. We can decide to engage in good faith. We can follow the call to love one another as Jesus loved us.
The world might be anxious. But we don’t have to be. We can be people of faith; we can choose love.
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