Worry!Worry!And More Worry!

Worrying. Everybody does it at one time or another. Most of us probably would have to admit we do it all the time. Some people do it more than others, some have more things to worry about than others. Some people don't feel they have enough to worry about, so they invent things to worry about. But the great equalizer is that whether you're a president or a principal, a doctor or a dj, a choir director or a cook- sooner or later a worry will come knocking at your door. Moses, a hebrew raised by an Egyptian pharaoh's daughter, worried that he couldn't talk right; Elijah, an Old Testament prophet, worried that King Ahab's disreputable wife Jezebel would send her goons to finish him off. And yes, even the Apostle Paul worried, whether or not it is specifically stated in the Bible, because he was human. It wouldn't surprise me if he actually worried as much, if not more, than most of us. To worry is, well, to be human.

The Lord Jesus understands that we are going to worry about things in this life, because when you come right down to it, worrying is really nothing more than a misapplication of godly concern that he places in us as humans. Like everything else in us before the fall of Adam and Eve, it originally served a very important purpose. It only became a sin when it went beyond the realm of something good and became inflated into something bad. It's one of Satan's insidious tricks, and I have seen it play out in my own life. For example, instead of just being genuinely concerned about something legitimate, some thing that God himself cares about, like the suffering of his people, I tend to overstretch concern into areas that I should not be concerned about. That's where it becomes worry. It's much the same process by which legitimate need for sleep transforms into what used to be called slothfulness- today we would probably use a word like extreme lethargy. Cautiousness at its extreme becomes stagnant inaction, basically unwillingness to act at all. Even lack of worry has a downside; too much of it morphs into callous insensitivity to something or someone.

One of the things I have learned about worry (by a very long process) is that worry is actually offensive to God, not only because it indicated a lack of trust somewhere on our part, but it's like saying to God that he really isn't big enough to handle our specific need or problem. We're in fact, if I may be so bold, insulting his omnipotence when we worry. And he also doesn't like it when we worry about our problems because it can have much the same effect as extreme carefreeness, by making us so focused on ourselves and our needs that we can become indifferent to the needs of others. This is an especially big problem for autistic/ Asperger's folks like myself who tend to fabricate their own universe of worries and concerns that they become the center of (and yes I realize that not just autistic people do this). It boils down to another major reason why God can't stand our worrying- it's a form of self-worship. Hard to believe, but true.

When we find ourselves snagged by worrying, maybe it's a good time for us to stop and see what the situation at hand is trying to teach us. We might ask ourselves, "Why am I really worried about this thing or that thing? Why is it so important to me to devote energy to it? What would really happen if I just stopped worrying about it?" We need to challenge the thing and strip it down to its bare bones. Maybe we would discover that it's not that nagging thing that really concerns us, but something else we hadn't even thought about. Food for thought, anyway.