January 29, 2012 - 10:15 am
The most common Christian response to anxiety is "Just relax."
Of course, when we say things like this, two things happen. First of all, when someone with anxiety hears a preacher or some other Christian say that to worry is a sin, it causes him to feel even more anxious than before – because now, on top of everything else, he has to add going to hell to his long list of stressors. Second, and perhaps more importantly, when we oversimplify the human experience with anxiety, we misrepresent Jesus, and the Bible, and good Christian theology altogether.