What Our Anxieties Reveal

The Bible says in Matthew 6:21, "For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."

What I have come to realize, however, in the last several years and in the aftermath of my own mental health crisis, is the corollary of that statement is actually what reveals the most about a person:

For where your idols are, there your anxieties will be also.

Show me your anxieties, and I'll show you your idols. Show me your idols, and I'll show you your anxieties.

You can pay lip service all you want to worshipping God and God alone, but your fears and your responses to them will ultimately tell me what you worship.

Mine certainly told me what I worshiped.

(Hint: It wasn't God.)

I worshiped my mind - I feared losing it.

I worshiped memory - I feared forgetting.

I worshiped control - I feared not having it.

I worshiped productivity - I feared idleness.

I worshiped perfection - I feared falling short.

I worshiped my body - I feared its decline.

I worshiped intelligence - I feared foolishness.

I worshiped money - I feared its lack.

I worshiped predictability - I feared uncertainty.

I worshiped safety - I feared discomfort.

Our idols are cruel taskmasters. Mine left me lying on the floor, gasping for air, incapable of sleeping without a light on for months for fear of the night. They'll enslave us every time and make no apologies, offer no recompense for the damages inflicted. They'll leave you bloodied, battered and bruised. God speaks to the heart of this issue in Isaiah 46:6-7:

Some pour out gold from their bags and weigh out silver on the scales; they hire a goldsmith to make it into a god, and they bow down and worship it. They lift it to their shoulders and carry it; they set it up in its place, and there it stands. From that spot it cannot move. Even though someone cries out to it, it cannot answer; it cannot save them from their troubles.

Pour out your silver and gold. Fashion your idols, your little 'g' gods, and worship them.

And there your idols will stand.

Put them on a pedestal, cry out to them, beg them to save you.

But they will neither answer nor save. In fact, they'll betray you every chance they get. Our idols will always be our undoing.

My perfectionism couldn't save me. My intelligence couldn't save me. My mind couldn't save me. All of them - every single one of my idols - fell short.

They still do.

Yet, in my pride and sinful stupidity, I insist on their existence.

But praise God.

Even my pride and sinful stupidity can't stop him from rescuing me.

All other gods, all other idols, bow down to him, including mine.

God will not tolerate our idols, and neither will he negotiate with us on their existence. He'll reveal 'em. He'll strip 'em away, expose them for the frauds they are.

Because he wants to be your treasure. And he wants your heart to be with him.

"Listen to me, you descendants of Jacob, all the remnant of the people of Israel, you whom I have upheld since your birth, and have carried since you were born. Even to your old age and gray hairs I am he, I am he who will sustain you. I have made you and I will carry you; I will sustain you and I will rescue you." - Isaiah 46:3-4