“Anxiety in a man’s heart weighs him down, but a good word makes him glad.” – Proverbs 12:25
One of my biggest beefs with sociology is that it tends to be heavy on problems, light on solutions. In its zeal to be labeled as science, it strives to appear objective. Sociology collects heaps of data in order to draw correlations or visualize cultural trajectories. But then, by its own constraints, it has nothing more to say. The problems pop off the page while the solutions are left up to…well, someone! The government, maybe?
Contemporary Christian writing has largely taken the same course. Fortunately, the Bible has a different approach. Take anxiety for example. This proverb doesn’t spend any time analyzing why your parents, career, the economy, or climate change have made you anxious. Social media is an environment that incubates anxiety, but it didn’t create it, otherwise Jesus wouldn’t have had to preach about it.
The Bible assumes anxiety is just there, in the air we breathe.
Therefore, in fighting anxiety, let’s go beyond one more prohibition (less screens), and look at how God pushes from the opposite direction. He tells us to bring a good word.
How to bring a good word
1. Talk about positives
What unexpected blessings did you receive? What good things caught you off guard? What small joys filtered through the noise? If you practice talking about these things, you’ll have to think about them, which means you’ll start looking for them more. You’ll begin seeing the world in a new light.
You’re swimming upstream here. How natural it is to complain about a superfluous email; how unnatural it is to admire the beauty of a bird in your backyard! But it’s good words like these that add color to a world grayed out by daily stress and global tragedies.
2. Compliment when it gets you nothing
I find it fairly easy to encourage other people. It creates a warm, cozy feedback loop where Dan feels good, so Dan will probably want to make me feel good. That’s fine. Jesus constantly encourages those around him. It shows a spirit of grace when you catch people doing good.
But if you want to really start fighting anxiety, start complimenting people who aren’t around, when you’ll never know whether they hear what you say. That’s a culture-changer. Anxiety plays the recording of what you fear other people are saying behind your back. What if you were to start speaking more like God’s Spirit does, who confronts personally and honors extravagantly?
3. Talk about the goodness of God
This is more than the power of positivity or a gratitude journal. The goodness of God alleviates more anxiety than a swaggering self-confidence because it frees you from that dreadful cell of…you. The antidote to anxiety is basking in the truth—God’s got this.
You pause toiling up the mountain of self-actualization to take a breath and look around. And while you’re paused, reflecting on the goodness of God, you will remember how much better it is to enjoy the mountain, to enjoy the wonder of a creation that’s just there than it is to puff up and down it just so you can tell other people you did it.
