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PEACE OF MIND (John 14:27)
By Ted Schroder,
August 24, 2014
What are you seeking in life? Are you seeking peace of mind or are you trying to avoid thinking about the challenges of life and death? Many people seek peace in their lives through keeping busy so they do not have to think. Others try to escape having to face up to their problems by indulging in various addictive behaviors: drinking, drugs, promiscuous sex, shopping, workaholism, sports, exercise. We each find ways to control our anxieties. The suicide of Robin Williams, who entertained so many with his manic humor, is a reminder of the struggle so many have with depression and addiction.
Scott Stossel, editor of The Atlantic, has written a searingly honest book entitled, My Age of Anxiety: Fear, hope, dread, and the search for peace of mind. In it he reveals his own agonized search for relief from anxiety disorders throughout his life and reviews all the theories of the source of anxiety and the treatments for it. He describes anxiety as apprehension about future suffering -- the fearful anticipation of an unbearable catastrophe one is hopeless to prevent. At the root of all clinical anxiety is some kind of existential crisis about growing old, death, the loss of loved ones, the fear of failure and personal humiliation, the struggle for meaning and purpose, and the need for emotional security. It may also be fear of future accountability and divine judgment.
Anxiety may be the truest route to self-discovery. Medicating away that anxiety instead of listening to what it's trying to tell us -- listening to Prozac instead of listening to our anxiety -- might not be what's called for if we want to become our best selves. Anxiety may be a signal that something needs to change -- that we need to change our lives. Medication risks blocking that signal. Stossel cites the novels of Walker Percy who came to distrust the reductionist worldview that claimed science as the answer to all human problems. Percy came to believe that the high rates of depression and suicide in modern society were owed in part to the dependence on scientific solutions. By focusing on the biological, he said, psychiatry becomes unable to account for guilt, self-consciousness, sadness, shame, anxiety -- these were important signals from the world and from our souls. Medicating these signals away as symptoms of organic disease risks alienating us further from ourselves (cf. Walker Percy, The Thanatos Syndrome).
Our problem is that we are created by God to live in relationship with him and yet we have rejected God and decided to run our own lives our own way without reference to him. We are not designed to function smoothly without the presence and power of God in our lives. The absence of God's love and power in our lives results in dysfunction. We become anxious, fearful and depressed. We live at the level of animal life rather than as children of a loving God. Our rejection of God damages our ability to receive knowledge of God, our reason is affected, and our will is weakened and corrupted. We think that we can discern right from wrong, truth from error, but in fact we are confused and limited in our understanding. We cannot be objective because we are controlled by our desires and prejudices. We cannot stand outside ourselves and see clearly. Our perspective is limited. We think that we are capable of clear thinking when our minds are muddled and we are self-deceived. We suffer from our limitations, our misunderstandings, our vulnerabilities. We try to turn our ignorance into an intellectual problem rather than admit our flaws and weaknesses. Our thinking becomes futile and our foolish hearts are darkened. We reject the God of love who would save us from this condition. God holds accountable all those who live in defiance of him, in this life by giving them over to the consequences of their passions, and in the life to come to the pains of the hell they have chosen for themselves.
God decided to do something about our problem of rejecting him and his way. He came in the form of a man called Jesus. He came incognito and many could not recognize him for who he was. Secular man cannot see through his human disguise. The skeptic is offended by the humility and weakness of Jesus of Nazareth. Wise men, scholars and philosophers as well as religious leaders could not receive Jesus as the Savior of the world. They want to save themselves and don't want God to save them. They are filled with intellectual pride and self-centeredness. They are blind to the reality of his presence. So Jesus went, not to the wise, the influential, the elite, but to the foolish, the weak, the lowly, and the despised. He went to those who recognized their needs and were honest enough to admit that they did not know enough to save themselves. Jesus called them the poor in spirit for they admitted that they were not god and were willing to reach out in faith to receive what God had to offer them freely in Christ. Jesus offers us peace of mind. "Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.... I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace." (John 14:27; 16:33)
God intervened in Christ to save us from ourselves and the consequences of our self-centeredness. He came and lived a perfect human life, taught the coming of God's kingdom for all who would enter it as little, trusting children, and took upon himself all the consequences of our rejection of God by suffering and dying on the Cross as a substitute offering, an atonement for our sins. He defeated death and the devil, rising victorious to inaugurate a new age of the Spirit which is available to all who come to him in faith.
This is how it happened to me. I was seeking for the power to live a fulfilling life but I felt that my best efforts met with failure. I was too damaged by self-centeredness to become the person I wanted to be.
"But I need something more! For if I know the moral law but still can't keep it, and the power of sin within me keep sabotaging my best intentions, I obviously need help! I realize that I don't have what it takes. I can will it, but I can't do it. I decide to do good, but I don't really do it; I decide not to do bad, but then I do it anyway. My decisions, such as they are, don't result in actions. Something has gone wrong deep within me and gets the better of me every time. It happens so regularly that it's predictable." (Romans 7:20-25, The Message)
I was told that Jesus stands outside the door of my inner life and knocks for admission. If I opened the door and welcomed him in he would rescue me from my condition of failure and self-centeredness. I did so, and my life began to change. I began to read the Bible with new eyes, and to pray with new desire.
"With the arrival of Jesus, the Messiah, that fateful dilemma is resolved. Those who enter into Christ's being-here-for-us no longer have to live under a continuous, low-lying black cloud. A new power is in operation. The Spirit of life in Christ, like a strong wind, has magnificently cleared the air, freeing you from a fated lifetime of brutal tyranny at the hands of sin and death.
God went for the jugular when he sent his own Son. He didn't deal with the problem as something remote and unimportant. In his Son, Jesus, he personally took on the human condition, entered the disordered mess of struggling humanity in order to set it right once and for all." (Romans 8:1-4, The Message)
You are faced with the truth about yourself. You are helpless to save yourself. Your reason and will are defective. You need Christ to save you from yourself and the consequences of your self-centeredness. Life is short. If you reject God and his solution to your problem in Christ, you will face the consequences in this life and in the life to come. God loves you and wants you to open your life to his presence, his power, his peace, and his love. He has taken the consequences of your self-centeredness upon himself on the Cross. He wants you to receive him by faith and to be filled with his Spirit of new life, the gift of eternal life. Will you do so? Pray this prayer:
God, you created me, and I have failed to live up to your will for my life. I have tried to live without you and have hurt you and many others with my arrogance and insensitivity. Forgive me through Christ's sacrifice on the Cross for my salvation. Lord Jesus, come into my heart today and cleanse me of my self-centeredness. May you become the center of my new life? Fill me with your Spirit. Grant me the gift of faith and eternal life. Guide me into all your truth. Lead me in your way. Amen.
(Ted's blog is found at www.tedschroder.com His books are found on www.amazon.com. SOUL FOOD: DAILY DEVOTIONS FOR THE HUNGRY, Vol.3, July, August and September is now available.)
