Near the end of his Letter to the Philippians, St Paul encourages his readers to think about “whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, anything that is excellent or praiseworthy.” Paul goes on to assure people that a result of thinking this way is that the “God of peace” will be with them. With those words, Paul reverses an expression he had used a little earlier: “the peace of God.” There is a close connection indeed, between knowing the God of peace, and knowing the peace of God.
Culture
In many respects, contemporary culture, via our communications media, coaches us to think, feel and respond in a way that is the exact opposite to the wisdom offered by St Paul. Our news broadcasts and newsfeeds say to us, in effect: ‘Whatever is fake, dishonourable, unjust, impure, unlovely, ungracious, mediocre and unpraiseworthy, think about these things. They won’t bring you peace, but at least you won’t be missing out.’ In a sense, we’re being warned: either carry the burden of limitless bad news, or be unprepared, caught out, taken by surprise…
It can hardly come as a surprise that a steady diet of bad and sad news will have a detrimental impact on our outlook and thinking; that it will condition us to think negatively, to interpret events and circumstances in a bleak way. There is not much to be said for an attitude of naïve optimism (though it almost certainly beats determined pessimism!), yet it is only wise to guard against having our thoughts and feelings excessively conditioned by negative input. Such conditioning can make us less able to see and rejoice in what is good, true and lovely.
Our faith is not confined to the realm of the supernatural. It offers the very best psychology, and even when contemporary psychology does not realise it, it is often capitalising on insights known to faith for millennia. Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) is an approach to mental healing and health that has at its heart an insight St Paul would have approved, and which his teaching can help us to live by. CBT insists that there isn’t a direct route from events to feelings, but that between the things that happen, and our feelings about them, are our spontaneous, automatic thoughts about reality.
Subtle
Those spontaneous, automatic thoughts can be subtle and fleeting, but they are like a filter that colours our perception of events. If I habitually think negatively about myself and others, or if I’ve been coached in the view that the world is a threatening place, then I’m more likely to interpret events negatively, and accordingly, to experience negative feelings such as sadness, anger and anxiety. CBT trains people to spot their negative automatic thoughts, and to question them, so that they can develop healthier, more balanced thinking. This is not Pollyanna psychology, or merely positive thinking, nor is it about denying real threats or challenges. It is, rather, about the unlearning of patterns of thought that skew our perceptions and pull us down.
A common negative thought pattern, and one that we would have to acknowledge is culturally sanctioned, is ‘catastrophising.’ This, as the term suggests, is the anticipation of catastrophe, even when something relatively minor goes wrong. In the world of the ‘catastrophist,’ there is no middle ground between peace and apocalypse, between complete accord and all-out polarisation. There are no windy days, only the spectre of climate collapse; there are no minor disagreements, only entrenchment in radically opposed worldviews (in those examples, incidentally, is another cognitive distortion that CBT addresses: all-or-nothing, black-and-white thinking).
Our faith does not issue bland reassurances, or pretend that God will shield his children from suffering or disaster. But it invites us out of the cul-de-sac of fear and anxiety, by insisting that reality is, finally, in God’s hands rather than spiralling out of control. And this reassurance, far from preventing us from taking reality seriously, frees us up to do what we can. Fear, on the other hand, is not just a poor counsellor; beyond a certain point, it paralyses, impeding whatever little we may be able to do.
Christian faith would have us look at the world, not through a murky filter of fear, but through the clear lens of God’s providential care and final triumph. Many ideas and thoughts clamour for our attention; we live in an attention economy, in which fear and anxiety are among the most prominent ways of grabbing our attention. As Christians, it is our blessing and our prophetic challenge to cultivate a specifically Christian attention; an attention to what is true, honourable, just and praiseworthy. In this way, we can maintain our balance, and – to paraphrase another expression from St Paul’s letter to the Philippians – shine as lights of hope in a world often mired in sadness and anxiety.
This is the third instalment in Fr Chris Hayden’s series, ‘Faith in a time of anxiety’.