No natural disaster caused all that carnage and ruin; the mind recoils to think that it was carefully orchestrated.
If they share the one true faith, the Kentucky farmer is no more a Christian for his serenity, nor is the New York commuter any less a Christian because of his more frequent bouts of anxiety. Christians are forbidden to “be afraid,” but God Who knows our hearts is not monitoring the amount of fear in them; He is more concerned about the place of fear in our lives.
Less than a decade after World War II, the Swiss theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar wrote an insightful little book entitled The Christian and Anxiety, in which he attempts to put fear in its proper place. The volume is a response to The Concept of Anxiety, a study by a Danish philosopher written in the mid-nineteenth century.
Balthasar writes, “Though meant to be theological, Kierkegaard's penetrating, tormented analyses were the perfect starting point for psychoanalysis and existentialist philosophy as they portrayed the depths and self-encounters of the finite mind….” Unaided, the human mind experiences vertigo when it compares its own almost boundless potential with the weakness and ineffectiveness of its grasp in specific circumstances.
Mid-twentieth-century French existentialists, on the other hand, took the widespread, post-industrial neurosis of fear and “meaninglessness” as the point of departure for a new and radical humanism which, by denying all objective values, justified self-seeking as a world view.
Balthasar does not dispute the pervasiveness of anxiety in the modern Western world, but he challenges the claim that anxiety is the essence of the human condition. “An explicitly theological investigation [of anxiety] requires that we turn to the sources of [divine] revelation and thereby turn away from the uncertainty of the present age and of human frailty.” Starting out from the human mind or soul leads the investigator into a poorly lit, endless hall of mirrors. “The true standard and guarantee is, rather, the Word of God, which speaks about mind and soul and their anxiety. This is our guarantee that we can gain some distance from the feverish questioning of the modern soul; from its culture, which is decadent and doomed to destruction; and from its religious anxiety and religion of anxiety, in which, paradoxically enough, the attempts to cure the patient venture into the disease and collapse into one with it, as if it were an unalterable fact to be accepted as a matter of course.”
Sacred Scripture speaks so often about human fear, Balthasar notes, that we must conclude that “the Word of God is not afraid of anxiety.” Chapter 40 of the Book of Sirach depicts anxiety as “something general and neutral, a basic given of human
existence.”
“Much labor was created for every man, and a heavy yoke is upon the sons of Adam…. Their perplexities and fear of heart, their anxious thought is the day of death, from the man who sits on a splendid throne to the one who is humbled in dust and ashes” (Sirach 40:1-3).
Of course the purpose of revelation is to replace the fear of uncertainty, of the darkness which precedes and follows the short span of human life on earth, with faith and hope in God. Those who refuse to hear the Word of God reap constant anxiety in this world, like the Egyptians who were smitten by the ten plagues (see Wisdom 17). Those who believe God's Word are brought out of the darkness into a place of light.
Because faith does not eliminate human frailty, a new anxiety appears: fears about avoiding sin and maintaining one's relation with God. Nor is faith a vaccine against suffering, as the Book of Job dramatically demonstrates. Balthasar astutely notes that God's Word revalues human anxiety “from God's exalted vantage point, just as everything human is clay in the hands of the Creator and Redeemer.”
The New Testament proclaims the tremendous truth that, in becoming man, the Son of God took upon himself our human anxiety. Jesus Christ agonized in Gethsemane, suffered in our place on Calvary, and experienced dereliction upon the Cross. “It is an anguish He wanted to have without any consolation or relief, since from it was to come every consolation and relief for the world. Therefore it is, in the proper and strict sense of the word, the absolute anxiety, which undergirds and surpasses every other anxiety and thus becomes the standard and tribunal for all.”
Because Christ died for us, the Christian is forbidden to indulge in radical, existential anxiety, which would be to deny the Savior's work. The perpetual identity crisis is not an option for someone who has been identified with Christ. Being Christian is being not afraid.
The Sacrament of Baptism does not exempt the recipient from sufferings and trials. On the contrary, union with Christ means taking up the cross and following in His footsteps; solidarity with other Christians puts one in opposition to the world and its ways. Yet — and this is so important that Balthasar formulates it as a “law” of Christian anxiety — our Lord does not allow a Christian to experience desolation on His account until He has delivered that individual from sin and brought that soul completely into the light of faith, hope, and charity. These three virtues may be sorely tested during sufferings, trials, or persecution, yet they are not extinguished, only eclipsed
momentarily.
During a Liturgy of the Word at World Youth Day in Toronto (July 27, 2002), the Holy Father said: “The new millennium opened with two contrasting scenarios: one, the sight of multitudes of pilgrims coming to Rome during the Great Jubilee to pass through the Holy Door which is Christ, our savior and redeemer; and the other, the terrible terrorist attack on New York, an image that is a sort of icon of a world in which hostility and hatred seem to prevail.
“The question that arises is dramatic: On what foundations must we build the new historical era that is emerging from the great transformations of the twentieth century?”
The true-believing Christian no longer needs to live in fear. To use traditional, Scriptural language: the Christian lives in the “fear of the Lord” which is the beginning of wisdom.
Michael J. Miller translated The Christian and Anxiety by Hans Urs von Balthasar for Ignatius Press.
