Now, when I think of the word fear, I tend to think of a horror film and some of that is certainly in the emotion wheel. You can see how fear branches out into being scared, frightened and helpless. Along the same lines of watching a horror film, you see the branches of terrified, panicked and hysterical. But where the emotion of fear really hits home for me is when we get to being nervous, worried and anxious. I think all of us can relate to fear in terms of worry and anxiety.

The question I often contemplate is why are humans so prone to worry and anxiety? Part of the answer to that question can be found in our DNA. We evolved as a species to worry about our own self-preservation. From the perspective of evolution, worry and anxiety are important survival tools. The reason why we are here today is because our ancestors were worriers. The ones who didn’t worry were the ones who didn’t make it because they weren’t paying attention and got eaten by some animal.

For most of human history, humans were brutal towards each other and fear was a big part of being able to survive because it’s how one could stay alert and navigate the dangers of the world. This reality is reflected in what we read from 1Chronicles. It was kill or be killed. Look at what the scripture says: “Once again the Philistines made a raid in the valley…David did as God had commanded him, and they struck down the Philistine army from Gibeon to Gezer. The fame of David went out into all lands, and the Lord brought the fear of him on all nations.” We were always living in fear that one day a group of humans might come along, take our possessions and murder our families.

Indeed, this is why you can see heightened levels of anxiety in persecuted people groups. Just take the stereotypical Jewish mother as an example. Sure, it’s funny to talk about how much a Jewish mother worries about her children, but that worry comes from generations of persecution where people have been consistently trying to wipe the Jews off the face of the planet. So worry and anxiety serve an important purpose because they are part of how we keep ourselves safe in an often hostile and unpredictable world.

But the truth is, even though worry is a universal human trait that is built into our genes, not all humans worry about the same things. In fact, depending on who you are, where you live, your stage of life, your socioeconomic status, all these factors play into the worries that will cross your mind. Perhaps one of the most compelling categorizations of our worries comes from a psychologist in the 1940’s named Abraham Maslow, who created a psychological theory known as Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.

This theory is usually represented in a pyramid that looks like this. The way it works is that in order to move up the pyramid, each level needs to be satisfied in your life. So the first level, which is the most foundational level for everyone, is called physiological. This level is comprised of the most basic human necessities – air, water, food, clothing and shelter. When you don’t have those things, then that is all you worry about. Until you have all of those basic needs covered, you cannot move to the next level of the pyramid and focus on creating safety in your life.

Now what is safety? Safety is defined by things like personal security, financial security, health and well-being and having a safety net against accidents/illnesses and their adverse impacts. This level can mean different things to different people, depending on how well-off you are, but generally speaking, you know you have achieved this level when you are not worried about falling back down to the first level of the pyramid.

When you have all those bases covered, then you can really begin to invest in love and belonging. Maslow defines this level of the pyramid through things like friendship, intimacy and family. Now, clearly, you can be at the prior two levels and have friendship, intimacy and family. The problem is that unless the other two levels are satisfied, you can’t focus on that love and belonging allowing it to become a priority in your life. When you have to spend all of your time worrying about basic necessities or safety, it’s hard to make those relationships the central focus of your life.

But once you have those relationships, then you’ve created this social network on which you can rely for a variety of different needs in your life. Establishing strong, deep relationships with those around you allows you to step into the next level, which Maslow calls esteem. This is when a person can focus on how they perceive themselves and how others perceive them. Maslow breaks this part of the pyramid into two sections: the lower version of esteem, where we seek respect from others and, the higher version of esteem, where we focus on the need for self-respect.

This “higher” version takes precedence over the “lower” version. So if you’re stuck in the lower version of esteem, you generally worry about what other people think of you and you conduct yourself in such a way as to ensure your reputation is maintained. When you move to the higher version of esteem, you are much more worried about what’s happening internally, which means you are focused on developing the competences of strength, self-confidence, independence, and freedom.

Once you have mastered those competences, you can move onto the final level, which is called self-actualization where your focus is reaching the full potential of the person who you want to become. This usually comes out in very specific ways like being an incredible parent, an incredible teacher or an incredible businessperson. It is often expressed in creative endeavors like painting, writing or inventions. From this perspective, you’ve mastered all the other levels in the pyramid, so your worries are all about positively impacting the world with your gifts and changing other people for the better. Indeed, at this level, love and altruism are of primary importance.

Okay, so now that we’ve gone through the whole pyramid, I’m sure you’ve figured out where you are and we all want to peg ourselves as high as possible. If we did a psychological evaluation on our congregation, what you would discover is that most of us in here are hovering around the top three levels. It would look like a bell curve with some of us in love and relationships, the majority of us would be focused on esteem and then there would be some of us who were focused on self-actualization. And that’s not bad. We’re pretty privileged to be in that position.

So when we compare our congregation with the people whom Jesus is addressing in his Sermon on the Mount when he says, “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?” this entire congregation is at a totally different level than Jesus’ audience. Where is Jesus’ audience? They’re at the bottom of the pyramid. These are people who weren’t sure where their next meal was going to come from. They didn’t know if they would have warm clothes to wear because they were that poor.

Jesus’ audience was composed primarily of farmers, many of whom were essentially indentured servants to wealthy landowners. Those wealthy landowners were squeezing every penny out of them and they never knew from one day to the next if they would be evicted from their homes. Therefore, you have to appreciate that what Jesus is asking them to do is extraordinarily challenging. It’s very easy to say that God will provide for you when you have a safety net below you. It’s much more difficult to believe that God will provide for you when you’re at the bottom of the pyramid.

And yet, even though most of us in here have a safety net below us, we still worry…a lot. You would think given all of our modern amenities, where we have made our lives so much easier that our anxiety as humans would be greatly reduced or even eliminated. Instead, the most pervasive mental illness is anxiety disorder. We don’t often think of anxiety as being associated with mental illness because it is such a common aspect of our lives, but 40 million people suffer from some sort of anxiety disorder.

Interestingly, the only difference between those of us who are considered mentally ill and non-mentally ill is whether or not our anxiety is debilitating. Does your anxiety prevent you from being able to function normally? Most of us would say no, but change a few small things here or there and, all of sudden, what was previously bearable becomes unbearable.

It is estimated that for people between the ages of 18 and 35, more than 50% could be affected by anxiety disorders. Why? They’re coming of age in the middle of the pandemic. They have huge amounts of school debt. They can’t maintain a stable relationship because they have to constantly move around to find work. The world we live in right now, rather than reducing our anxiety, is actually magnifying it.

And the reason why is because anxiety, as we discussed earlier, is really designed to help us survive. So, for instance, people who live in hunter-gatherer societies exhibit almost no signs of the modern anxiety that we experience. The reason why is because their entire lives are built around survival. Every day they are going out and gathering food. Every day they are watching for predators that might attack them. They’re constantly on the move so their anxiety is designed to keep them alive.

But we’re in a completely different situation. We no longer have to struggle to survive, so as a result, our anxiety gets displaced to other parts of our lives. When you take that same anxiety that is normally reserved for survival and apply it to other areas of our lives, our anxiety can quickly snowball into an existential crisis. I’ve told you all in the past that anxiety and depression are two sides of the same coin. Anxiety can lead to depression and depression can lead to anxiety. They feed each other.

When you feel enormous amounts of anxiety, you can quickly become depressed and when you’re depressed, you start asking the question: “Why am I here? What’s the purpose of my life? What’s the point of doing what I’m doing?” You see, modern life has created such an interesting paradox because, by developing amazing technologies, we’ve made our lives so much easier. But, by making our lives easier (where we don’t have to struggle to survive), there is nothing to distract us from thinking about how insignificant life can feel.

This is where the pinball machine in our head can get out of control. Anxiety drives our thoughts like almost nothing else can. Anxiety causes you to think about certain thoughts and then those thoughts drive more anxiety. Moreover, when you feel anxious about something that is out of your control, you can obsess over it. For example, if you’ve ever been in a conflict with another person, your mind can fixate on the problem to the point where you can’t think about anything else.

The anxiety you feel over the conflict causes your mind to obsessively dwell on the problem, disrupting your routines of socializing, eating and sleeping. Everyone knows the feeling of waking up in the middle of the night and being unable to fall back asleep because your mind can’t stop thinking about the conflict. And if you’re in a state of anxiety where you’re constantly thinking about these things, that anxiety can crush us over the long haul and lead to a decreased quality of life or even suicidal thoughts.

To break the pinball machine, we really need to follow Jesus’ advice of not worrying, but that’s easier said than done. In my experience, the way you achieve the goal of not worrying is through three vehicles: prayer, meditation and therapy. All three of these are important for alleviating worry, but they do so in very different ways.

Prayer is a great tool because, when you’re bringing your worry to God, you’re basically acknowledging the problem is out of your control. By handing that problem over to God, you’re relieving yourself of the burden of worry. Prayer also enables us to let go of challenges by helping us to gain perspective on what is truly important in our lives.

Meditation is a great tool for dealing with worry because it helps us to remain focused on the present moment. The goal of meditation is to spend time observing the present, rather than thinking about the past or anticipating the future. And since much of our anxiety is linked to future events we can’t control, if you can master being in the present, then your worry and anxiety will drop precipitously.

But sometimes prayer and meditation are not enough. Sometimes your anxiety and worry are buried deep inside of your psyche. In those situations, you need a therapist who can help you identify the source of those thoughts. I’ve worked with multiple therapists and one of the most valuable things they do is help you articulate and grasp a problem you simply could never have seen on your own. By helping you to formulate your concerns into words, you become empowered to do something about them.

I utilize all three of these methods in my life and I can tell you they make a huge difference. When my mind is clear of fear, worry and anxiety, that’s when I feel most in touch with God’s spirit. And that’s my challenge for you: How much does anxiety affect your life? We’re never going to be free of fear, worry and anxiety, but we can learn to manage it. So, if you’re struggling you can pray, you can meditate, you can come see me and we can talk. Maybe I can help, maybe you need a therapist with more training, but no matter what, don’t allow your worries and anxieties to rule your life. That’s no way to live. As Jesus says, “Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.” Amen.