Introduction
All of us are creatures of habit. I am finding this to be more true as I age and reflect on life and how we, as humans, live it. We live and die by our habits. This is not a bad thing. Some clear words about how habits enable us to go on autopilot so we can devote upper mental energy to other tasks would be helpful here. It is an amazing ability to be able to have a body do this.
Your habits are also everywhere. When you brush your teeth, how you get dressed, your commute to work, the lunch break, your ride home. Unless you are one of those who have an ever-changing schedule, chances are your habits and routines are not changing every day. Some of you may despise this and want to break out of the seemingly dull monotony of it all. Still others want to perfect their habits down to the millisecond. No matter where you fall on the spectrum, we can see that we live by our routines.
It is no surprise, then, that modern man is a giant bundle of anxiety. Our society has forged itself so that we either have no clear routines or, more likely, have routines that are more shaped by an algorithm than reflection. We, more than any other society in history, are being driven by mechanical forces that have been designed to nab our attention and force us into new rhythms
.Wise Christians must be, among other things, people of the time. God has called us to live in this year, this day, and this hour. While many of us are tired and wish we were somewhere else, we need the words of Gandalf: “We must live with the time given to us.” We must see the enemy we face and go after it. It is my firm and personal observation, however, that we are failing on one particular front.
How We Got Here
I think we arrived here with good intentions. In fact, I would say it began with Gospel intentions. I remember an image of sanctification that was presented by many of my Reformed or Reformed-adjacent brethren. The idea was that external, even some “Christian,” religious practices or faiths have a view of holiness that can be described as “outside-in.” They start with externals and believe that adjusting external behavior begins to exterior transformation. The Bible, so it is argued, does not present that image. We are sanctified in an “inside-out” way. Our interior life bleeds out into our physical bodies and the world around us.
This is the kind of spirituality I thought I was to pursue. Many of us came to embrace it. We think we must eschew all external traps and ignore all outside aids and any physical improvements, waiting for our interior man to one day emerge from our interior cocoon like a fully sanctified butterfly. When this does not happen (spoiler: it never will,) we double down on our faith.
The problem is that this process is incorrect on multiple fronts. First, it ignores how God made the human person. We are psychosomatic beings. The classic way of putting it is that we are embodied souls or ensouled bodies. In other words, while it is certainly true that the soul works on the body, it is equally true that the body works on the soul. Otherwise, why would our Lord sleep when He did? Why command us to cut off our right arm in the fight against lust? Why not tell us to simply pray more or trust more? Because Jesus knew what we forget.
This brings up my second point. Much of the burden of the supposed “outside-in” approach comes from Reformed men who claim to be following in the steps of the Puritans. These men are usually saying, it is argued, that we should never have anything that smells of a Protestantism that was so clearly devoid of the Gospel. It is so unspiritual, after all.
This shows how one-sided and historically naive many modern Christians can be. To focus on one influential group, the Puritans were not the quasi-gnostics they are often presented as. In fact, they were the opposite. They understood far more than we do how we are a body-soul unity. A great example here can be found in the writings of the Puritan John Owen.
Owen was a man in touch with reality. He was Oliver Cromwell’s chaplain and helped to draft the Savoy Declaration. He also loved big Spanish leather boots and bright buttons. You would not divide up his life into sections. In no place is this more clearly seen than in his work On the Mortification of Sin. It is, in many ways, the exact opposite of what many people now expect from Owen. When he begins to give practical advice on how to fight and kill sin, his answers are solid, physical and often tangible.
Where Do We Go Now?
We must, in the actual line of the Puritans, take steps now to adjust our way of living. The problem of modernity is before us: we have lost our roots and are now driven by stimuli instead of thoughtful habits. We feel worried constantly because we cannot pinpoint where the anxiety comes from, which, of course, makes us worry even more. Yes, we are forbidden to worry. Yes, we are told to pray about these things. We are also told to discipline our bodies and get them under control. Below are some things that have helped me.
A. Go to Bed and Get Up
Your body needs a consistent bedtime and wake time. God so built your frame for this that it produces cortisol, the wake-up chemical, and melatonin, the sleep chemical, at the same time. Naturally, pushing out and rising at different times each day is asking for internal whiplash.
There is no wonder that anxiety levels are skyrocketing among Americans. Our sleep schedules no longer exist. We have prided ourselves on a fractured Protestant work ethic that bent the Sabbath. The result was burnout at levels no one has seen. A step in the right direction is to move yourself back into a rhythm of sleep.
B. Pray the Daily Office
I am showing my theological hand here. There has been no greater impact on my spiritual life than the Daily Office. This is the set of prayers, primarily one for morning and evening, set out in the various editions of the Book of Common Prayer. It has become a staple of Christian devotion thanks mainly to the BCP’s long influence on English Christianity. I have found great benefit and great comfort in these prayers.
What separates the Daily Office from other devotions is its deliberate and repetitive structure. Most devotions have a basic format with a large amount of flexibility. Every day comes with a new reading, a different insight, and at times a random grouping of Bible verses. The Daily Office comes into that devotional world with a glorious unity and structure.
The Office is designed to shape your day around pillars of faithfully praying it. As you daily confess your sins and hear God’s promise of forgiveness, as you regularly read through all 150 Psalms, your spiritual life is being moulded. Rather than chasing a new insight, you are being formed into a Gospel mould that begins to transform you. For many, including myself, it is emotionally helpful. The Daily Office format fits perfectly into my commute, and you will find yourself slowly able to follow along after about a week of listening.
C. Write
One of the hardest sources to fight is when you are worried and cannot figure out why you are worried. You have a looming feeling of anxiety, but you cannot determine what you are worried over. This in itself is worrying. After all, whatever you are worrying about could be horrible beyond imagining. But how will you know if you can’t figure it out? The “not knowing” produces yet more anxiety, and the cycle now begins a self-replicating loop.
I have found two things helpful in this situation. First is the psychological analysis provided by John Piper, which he picks up from Jonathan Edwards. Piper talks about the important human interaction between “contemplation” and “enjoying.” When you contemplate a puppy, you feel happy. If you contemplate your fear, you feel nothing. This is the way our psyche interacts with itself.
It helps your anxiety by letting you see the way you let yourself get stuck. You begin to “contemplate” why you are feeling anxious. At that moment, your mind is not focused on something concrete. You are trying to nail down a mist. You are not able to think about a tangible problem to solve. The result? More anxiety. The repeat itself, but I have found great help in seeing it for what it is. Recognizing the feeling helps it become just that: silly.
The second thing I have found helpful in this situation is the main point of this section: you need to write. Every day you need to be writing something out by hand. I want to emphasize that last point:
You need to spend time in your day to sit down and handwrite something.
I know how pretentious that sounds, but with me while I justify it.
Writing something out by hand forces you to slow down in ways typing simply cannot do. You sit with a pen and a book in front of you. You begin to form the letters with deliberate effort. You physically feel resistance as you drag the pen over the paper. The words do not come with a tap; they must be crafted. If you do this, there is an increase in your processing of what you retain. Every word becomes more thought about. You find yourself processing out words and phrases to bend better ones. Your mind builds slowly as you do this, a clarity you will not find anywhere else.
I would recommend everyone get in the habit of handwriting something every day. My mind has become clearer, and as a direct result, my anxiety has dropped drastically. A good place to start is with a daily journal. This is a place where you record the day’s events, plans, and happenings. It is more of a reflective area and less of a logbook of your day. I would also point you over to Parker Settecase, who has beautifully altered my thinking in this area and will no doubt correct my classification of notebooks.
Conclusion
This is not one who seriously disputes the fact that modern individuals are among the most anxious in history. We jump from reel to reel, post to post, all while trying to escape the looming feeling of worry that lingers on the edge of our comprehension. Many surrender to it and have stopped the fight. Still yet, there are others who fight in the standard American way of medication and self-help. That road, however, is frequently without gain.
We must begin our battle against anxiety by starting with our true enemy: ourselves. We must reassert our own personal responsibility over our emotional states. We must start by reorganizing our lives so that we manage and reduce our anxiety instead of fueling it with constant changing cycles.
Thank you. This is a helpful reminder.