Overreacting

Ever since hearing of the quake and tsunami devastating northern Japan we've been glued to news reports about the efforts to cool down the Fukushima Dai-Ichi reactors.  Every newscast carries animation to help us understand how the reactor core and cooling processes work to keep the radioactive rods from overreacting and melting down.  We know the rods are kept in a protective sheathing to contain the radioactivity and then immersed in water to keep them from overreacting.  The steam produced in a controlled system turns turbines to make electricity while pumps continually push fresh water into the reactor core.

Without a constant supply of water to properly dissipate the heat of the rods, the sheathing melts, the radioactive material is exposed, and the best anyone can hope for is containtment.  That's a partial meltdown.  A total meltdown is when the overreacting material melts through the concrete and steel housing designed for containment and makes contact with the soil and groundwater.  From there the fallout spreads to impact every system on earth.

Overreaction occurs when coolant systems fail.  Meltdown occurs when containment systems fail.  Fallout is the irreversible damage done.

Now, it may be too soon to use this story as an allegory for spiritual development.  It may feel like I'm belittling a truly tragic set of circumstances which, if the worst case scenario plays out, will have immense global implications on world health, food supply, marine life, economics, energy policy and foreign policy.  Fukushima Dai-Ichi could possibly be remembered as the single most devastating event in human history.  Even if the best possible solution plays out, there is no doubt this will find its way into the arts as an apocalyptic metaphor representing the volatile combination of technological hubris, human complacency and natural disaster.

That said, the teachable moment shouldn't be lost.  A great hindrance of spiritual maturity is anxiety.  Overreaction occurs when coolant systems fail.  Meltdown occurs when containment systems fail.  Fallout is the irreversible damage done.

Anxiety, not doubt, is the opposite of faith.  Doubt assumes a bit of faith because it motivates us to find answers to questions that aren't currently known or obvious, demonstrating that the person having doubts somehow believes there is an answer yet to discover.

Anxiety is a loss of faith.  It is believing that whatever is pulling the rug out from underneath you will succeed and take you down.  It is a loss of faith in the One who said, "In this world you will have trouble: but fear not! for I have overcome the world."  It is giving in to the crisis of the moment without holding on to the hope we have in Christ.  Anxiety produces panic (which is the opposite of peace), douses hope, and stresses out those closest to us with worry for our well being.

Anxiety is also a normal part of life.  God built us with the capacity to be anxious.  But why?  For what reason did God build this into our being?

Properly controlled, anxiety is a gift, making us aware of where in our life we have not yet fully invested trust in God.  We hit these anxious moments and can turn to God in prayer, knowing that we are invited to cast all our anxiety on him, instructed not to worry about tomorrow, constrained to put all our hope and trust in God alone and nothing (or noone) else.

Anxiety by its very nature resists control.  It will take over our lives if we let it.  It will combine with every other anxiety-producing element of life, seep through whatever containtment mechanisms we've constructed, and cause fallout in the form of stress-related disease either in self or in the system's symptom-bearer.  That fallout can be almost any malady from a reduced immune defense to ulcers to addictive patterns developed as containment mechanisms.  It can destroy relationships and not only keep an individual stuck in an immature cycle, but can even restrain an entire family, company, or church with self-defeating fear and self-destructive behavior.

Anxiety resists containment.  We want to mitigate the anxiety we feel so we share it.  We tweet and update statuses and text so the world will know that something isn't right with us.  We may even try talking to another person.  That, however, isn't preferred.  It's almost as though we'd rather have the sympathy of many than the counsel of one.  Oddly enough, if you weigh it out, sympathy is anxiety's best friend.  It makes you feel good to receive sympathy, so you actually retain anxious patterns to get a greater payout.

But God did not make us to be driven by fear.  God made us to live by faith and has given us two truly effective means to deal with the anxiety in our life, namely thinking and prayer.

Thinking is severely underrated as a spiritual discipline, probably because we don't do it very well.  We may let our minds race and lose sleep "thinking" about whatever problem is in front of us, but that's not thinking.  That's really just rationalizing and validating worry.  Thinking is about gathering facts, recognizing limits, and finding creative solutions with those facts within those limits.  Thinking is using the forefront of your brain so we don't cave in to more automatic, emotionally driven reactions.  Thinking generates considered responses.  Worry generates knee-jerk emotional reactivity.

Thinking is not a bad thing for people of faith to engage.  God, who created us in God's own image, is the one who created the laws of phsyics in a logical manner to give order to the universe.  As God's own, we are blessed with a certain capacity to reason and find order where anxiety prefers to be locked in chaos.  Now, we're only given about 3-1/2 pounds of grey matter to work with, so thinking has natural limitations.

Prayer is the other tool God gives.  We're not very good at this, either.  Maybe it's because we don't really pray, but rehearse our worries over and over and over again in order to justify our fear before God.  We don't really give it over to God whose limitless love conquers all fear.

Prayer, of the kind that releases anxiety, is engaging in a conversation with God through stillness and listening.  It is founded in a faith that trusts in the Maker of heaven and eart, believes in ultimate and complete redemption through Christ, and finds its form in relation to the Holy Spirit.  Prayer is a humble revelry in the whole of God's Triune Being, one in three and three in one.

These are anxiety's coolant systems which need to be constantly applied to prevent meltdown.  The containment system is direct communication.  Rather than spreading anxiety to the world and heaping your worries on top of others, spreading chaos, it is always, always, always best to communicate directly and individually with the one you identify as anxiety's source.  That's containment.  That's keeping the issue between two people rather than passing dirty laundry along to friends and family.

Employing these three things in steady, constant measure - thinking, prayer and direct communication - won't magically end all the anxiety of life, but it will help you mature in your faith by teaching you to stay cool in order to prevent emotional meltdown and fallout.

Be at peace,
Pastor Dave