Spiritual Hiccups - Worry, Anxiety, and Priorities

We live in anxious times.  People are worried about the economy.  They are worried about terrorism.  They are worried about partisan gridlock focused always on the next election and rarely on doing what is good for the country.  And I have observed something over the years.  We are rarely at our best when we are worried and anxious.  We become reactive and lose some of our capacity for thoughtful decision making.

One of the interesting places this can be seen is in small, dying church congregations.  The closer a congregation gets to death, the higher the anxiety tends to be.  And while this worry may provide an incentive to do something, observation and research have shown that the closer a congregation draws to death (similar things can be said of many other institutions), the more difficult it becomes for it to do the things that might help it revive.  When a congregation gets anxious and worried about survival, its actions tend to exacerbate rather than cure its crisis.

Jesus seems to think that worry comes from a lack of faith.  It is the product of chasing after things that cannot really give meaning and life, or it is an inability to trust that God will provide.  Our culture has worked very hard for decades to create the first kind of anxiety.  Much of the advertising aimed at Americans is designed to create anxiety, an anxiety that will be alleviated if only we purchase this product or that.  But as soon as we buy into this, we're hooked.  There is always one more product, or a newer and better version of the one we just bought.  And of course our very economy itself is now dependent on this anxiety cycle.  It requires ever increasing levels of consumer spending to sustain itself.

I wonder what Jesus would say to us if he came today?  The people he spoke to, telling them not to worry about what they would eat or drink or wear, lived in a more subsistence economy, with most people more focused on daily bread than on building wealth or deciding between a 40 inch or a 52 inch flat screen TV.  And what does it mean for us when Jesus says, "But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well."?  Will we get our new TV if we focus more on God's work?  Or do we stop worrying about TVs altogether when we are focused on building the world God envisions?

I do enough worrying of my own that I have a hard time answering such questions.  So perhaps I should simplify things by instead asking what it would look like for me to strive for God's kingdom and righteousness, and letting the other stuff sort itself out. 

Think how freeing that might be, to find a driving purpose in life not set by advertisers and not designed to hook us into a never ending cycle of consumption.  Think how good it might be to measured on nothing more than our faithfulness to God's cause.  Think how freeing from stress it could become content with God' provision.  I wonder if I can do more than think about it.

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