Anxiety and the Myth of Personal Autonomy

Copyright  by Shea Oakley

All rights reserved

One of the causes of anxiety in life is the erroneous belief that we must do everything that is required of us on our own, without outside help. We find ourselves feeling overwhelmed when this conscious or unconscious mindset possesses us. Whenever a mountain must be climbed, but the face of it appears too shear to do so, anxiety is ready to make its presence known. This is a universal human experience and few believers are automatically delivered from it as an immediate result of conversion.

The tendency to feel like we must face our challenges alone is particularly common in the present-day West. This is because our culture’s emphasis on personal autonomy and power has created a zeitgeist that not only says we can overcome all obstacles in our own strength, but expects us to. The myth of the rugged individualist is very much operative today, especially in America, and those our society holds up as heroes are usually those who have bought into this myth. The result is a lack of understanding about human limitations and a tendency to look down on those who acknowledge these limitations. We are expected to succeed in this life as if we can do this without help. This expectation has undoubtedly added to what has literally been called “The Age of Anxiety.”

But human beings are dependent creatures. This is explicit not only in the pages of the Bible, but also in the realm of natural reason. Just as we know that our physical existence is sustainable only by the intake of food and water that comes from outside of us so, also, it stands to reason that our emotional and spiritual health is dependent on that which comes from outside. Angry hermits may well be able to physically endure their self-chosen isolation, but they pay a terrible price for it. Their spirits die. Ted Kaczynski, the notorious “Unabomber” of recent American history was an effective hermit for decades. What he was not was sane. In cutting himself off from people he began the long descent into madness and, ultimately, to behavior not only destructive to himself but to others.

No man is an island, or at least no man can be an island and avoid dire consequences for his soul. Christians are called to acknowledge this reality, a reality that reveals to us just how desperately we need help to climb the mountains of life and, at the same time, directs us where to look for that help.

The categorical imperative of the Christian life is that we must seek help from two places: directly from God Himself and through His people; very much in that order. To live as a Christian is to daily depend on both sources to give true life and to enable the meeting of the myriad challenges of existence in a terribly fallen world. Our spirits only thrive when we embrace our absolute need for relationship with our Lord and with our brothers and sisters in Him.

As we progressively accept this need, surrendering both our false sense of independence and our confidence in any ability to overcome purely on our own, we can begin to lose our anxieties and replace them with real peace in the face of adversity. The level of anxiety we continue to feel informs us to what degree we have grown in our recognition and acceptance of our requirement for the support of God and our brethren. It is a bellwether for our progress in both spiritual wholeness and health because, in the end, we are called to live not only for others, but from others.