Php 4:6 Do not be
anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with
thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. Php 4:7 And the peace of God, which surpasses all
understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Php 4:12
I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every
circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance
and need.
One of the greatest difficulties Christians face is how to
deal with the trials and stress of everyday life. I am of the opinion that these are more
difficult for most of us to handle in a biblical, God-honoring way than those
trials that might be described as very severe, life threatening or even
persecution for the faith. I say this
because it seems many times that the ordinary problems; those common to us all
many times just aren’t handled well by we who claim to trust in the one, true
God.
The title of this article lists perhaps the three main ways
stress is handled in our day; legal drugs, illegal drugs and alcohol. I believe all three do the exact same thing
regardless of the potential danger of taking illegal drugs; they all numb the
mind. Now I realize that there are in
some cases physical problems that can and should be addressed by medicine, but
I am speaking about the everyday, garden variety way we handle the stress of
big and small problems. There are two
things I would like to point out concerning the way Christians should handle
their anxiety.
First of all I think we sometimes are hypocritical in the
idea that getting a prescription from the doctor for something to “calm” us
down is somehow seen as different than smoking some weed or running home to
have a stiff drink. I am not talking
about whether something is legal or not but whether we are really handling
stress in a better or fundamentally different way just because a doctor has
prescribed a drug instead of us taking something not prescribed. I wonder if prescriptions are an “acceptable
sin” in some cases. At the end of the
day tranquilizers “force” a calmness upon us that did not come through the
Spirit working in us.
To illustrate I know that if a member came over to the house
Sunday evening and found me smoking a reefer and I excuse it by saying that the
stress of church lately is really getting to me and so I just had to take the
edge off; I am pretty sure I wouldn’t get much sympathy, nor should I. Yet if I go over to a member’s house who is
struggling with some area that is causing them a lot of emotional and spiritual
stress and they tell me that the doctor has prescribed something to calm them
down I would be in big trouble if I suggested that that is no different than
drinking or illegal drugs. It might be
more socially acceptable but in all cases we have given up the fight. So first of all let’s be honest enough to
admit that drugs are drugs, numbing the mind is numbing the mind, escaping our
problems is running from them rather than fighting through them.
One reason I believe this is because whatever the Bible says
about how we deal with our problems it was true and had to work in the day it
was written. In other words biblical
stress management must be able to work when there are no prescription drugs
available. Throughout most of church
history Christians had to be able to deal with life in a God-honoring way and
they had to do it without the aid of drugs.
So whether some drugs can be considered okay is not the point, but that
the Bible with the Spirit of God must be able to be sufficient for every situation
or their power becomes highly suspect. If
Christians in the early church could handle stress without tranquilizers then
we had better be able as well.
Secondly, if the above is a legitimate proposal then however
Christians deal with their problems without altering their minds and bodies but
instead using the Word of God must be a more God-honoring way to handle
stress. Of course books could and have
been written on this subject but let me just suggest a couple of guidelines.
First of all I believe God is honored by using our minds in
difficulty not by numbing them. I think
the Bible teaches us to dwell upon the promises of God, the truth of the Bible
and the goodness of God and let these things work in us rather than
chemicals. Paul said in the above verses
that he has learned to be content. He
doesn’t say that he has found a doctor who has helped him a lot. The Truth sets us free as we are able to work
through trials in a way that uses them as an opportunity to serve the Lord not
as an excuse to “forget about life for a while”.
Next, why do we assume that God wants us to get rid of
stress as quickly and as easily as possible?
Probably the most important thing in all this is the danger of assuming
that it is perfectly okay to get over it as soon as possible. By this I mean that I believe God is more
honored as we work through and endure our trials by gaining strength from his
word and our love for him and proving that he is sufficient than by us “ignoring”
difficulty by sleeping through it.
Take Job for instance who didn’t have a doctor to push some
drug off on him. He had to just sit and
take it and I don’t read where he did so with a bottle of scotch in his hand. He had to live with grief, and depression, a
nagging wife and judgmental friends and struggle with it all. He couldn’t run from it but it was his
struggle that makes up the bulk of the book.
As he grapples with what was going on in his life and as the Lord
reveals truth to him, he comes out on the other side the better for it. Can’t we say that if Job was medicated throughout
the process the book would have never been written?
All this to say that it is the pain and the stress of life
that give us the opportunity to show how much Christ means to us and the best
way to handle these things is through truth and perhaps most of the time it is
the struggle that we try to avoid through substance abuse that is the whole
point of the Lord sending trouble to begin with. Should we not try to struggle as those who
love the Lord above all else? Or are we
to think that we are to lie down and go to sleep and do our best not to think
about our problems?
I know a lot can be
said about these things. I am not trying
to make definitive statements that all prescription tranquilizers are sinful or
that it is necessarily a sin to have a drink in the evening but clearly there
is potential dangers with these things.
I am saying there is a better, Christ honoring way that tackles life and
not sleep through it. So let’s not give
up the fight from the start. It is the
fight that proves our love for the Lord.