The
capacity of the human mind to conjure up
imaginary problems has long intrigued and amused
me.
During my first year out of
seminary I occupied the drafty attic bedroom of a
hundred-year-old home that I shared with other
members of the Sons of Thunder, a Christian music
group I directed. This rundown house, an
abandoned monastery bordering a cemetery, had
been donated to our use for a dollar a year plus
some TLC. It needed much more than we could ever
give it. One look and you knew it had to be
inhabited by something.
Early one morning I awakened and
edged myself to the side of the bed. As the
surroundings of the room gradually came into
focus, I suddenly realized I was staring at . . .
a bat, clinging to the wall in front of
me. I darted out of the room, slamming the door
behind me, and ran downstairs yelling for help.
Duane, the band's technician, calmly arose, got a
broom (the standard bat-combat weapon), and
marched upstairs as I tagged behind, mulling over
recent news stories of rabid bats biting children
in local parks. He boldly entered the room.
Mustering some courage, I followed and flipped on
the light switch.
The bat was no longer on the wall
where I had spied him, so we began a careful
search of the room, finding nothing. The windows
were shut tightly, and there was no apparent way
a bat could have escaped these confines. Duane
concluded I was bats and went back to his
room.
I sat down on the bed bewildered,
wondering if I could have dreamed the whole
thing. Finally I decided to try to go back to
sleep. I reached over and switched off the
ceiling light, then took a final glance at the
spot on the wall where the bat had appeared.
To my astonishment, in that very
location was a shadow with the precise dimensions
of that unwelcome visitor I had glimpsed a few
minutes before. I looked at the window where
sunlight was pouring in and realized that a torn
shade was casting this illusion on the wall,
bearing striking resemblance to the winged
creature I had seen. The ceiling light had washed
the shadow out when I turned it on.
Sitting on the bed that early
morning in a semiconscious state, I had stared at
a simple shadow. But with the blurry vision of
just waking up, I perceived something more. My
mind registered a gigantic creature of prey,
about to make me a candidate for a painful series
of rabies shots!
Problems Real and Fanciful
My encounter with the imaginary
bat stands out in my mind as a telling reminder
of my capacity to create imaginary problems. I'm
reminded how easily I can envision problems where
none exist and blow real ones out of proportion.
Of course, my talent for doing
this is shared fairly universally among those of
our species. We are uniquely gifted as humans at
ruminating. We can dwell on some imagined future
fiasco to the point that we're practically
certain it will occur; our fears may even prevent
us from taking a vital step forward. Yet so often
our apprehensions bear no more relation to
reality than the mirage I saw in my bedroom that
morning.
I think of the story of a young
man who ran out of gas on a lonely country road.
Seeing a farmhouse in the distance, he began
walking up the half-mile drive toward it. After
going only a short distance, he began to worry. They
probably won't have any gasoline. As he got
closer, his fears increased. If they do,
he thought, they probably won't want to share
it with me. As he approached the farmhouse,
his fears got out of hand. They'll probably
get angry with me for trespassing and order me
off the premises, he fretted. Exhausted, he
arrived on the front step of the home. Before he
could even knock, a smiling, elderly lady
answered the door and began to say, "My dear
boy! What can we do to help?" -- but he cut
her off, exclaiming, "Keep your blasted
gasoline!" and rushed away.
Like the young man, we each have
powerful mental generators capable of giving off
images of failure, images which can stifle us
when we want to take certain steps. As one
psychologist puts it, we
"catastrophize." We think,
She will never want to go out with me, so why
bother phoning her?
The teacher will never grant me an extension
on my paper, so no sense asking.
My friend will only laugh at me if I
apologize; no use trying to talk the problem
through.
That firm will never grant me an interview. If
they do, I'll certainly not impress them, so I'm
better off not inquiring.
Yet obsessing about the
possibility of failure can cause us to miss
opportunities which actually will open to us.
Grasshoppers and Giants
A stunning example of
catastrophizing in Scripture occurs when Moses
sends twelve spies on a reconnaissance mission to
Canaan, in Numbers 13. After they return, a full
ten of the twelve are able to see only immense
problems in capturing the promised land, to the
point that they are paralyzed from going ahead
with the task.
"We are not able to go
up against the people; for they are stronger
than we." So they brought to the people
of Israel an evil report of the land which
they had spied out, saying, "The land,
through which we have gone to spy it out, is
a land that devours its inhabitants; and all
the people that we saw in it are men of great
stature. And there we saw the Nephilim (the
sons of Anak, who come from the Nephilim);
and we seemed to ourselves like grasshoppers,
and so we seemed to them." (Num 13:31-33
RSV)
The spies foresaw only disaster
if Israel went into Canaan. What is striking is
that God had already assured them that they would
be victorious. When God spoke to Moses about
sending out the spies, he said, "Send men to
spy out the land of Canaan, which I give to
the people of Israel" (Num 13:2). The
purpose of the spying escapade was not to
determine whether they could be
successful, but to determine the how-tos--the
logistics of the military mission. Yet the spies
had such fertile imaginations that they magnified
the obstacles, to the point of convincing
themselves that God couldn't possibly give them
success.
One of the factors which most
frightened the Israelite spies was the physical
size of the Canaanite men. They saw them as
"Nephilim"--literally, giants.
Archeology has shown that the people of Canaan were
indeed larger than the Israelites; the spies
didn't fantasize this perception. But they
severely misunderstood the implications. They
assumed that the men of Canaan would think of
them as pushovers. "And we seemed to
ourselves like grasshoppers, and so we seemed
to them." The evidence indicates just
the opposite. Rahab the Canaanite harlot later
summed it up:
"I know that the LORD has given you the land,
and that the fear of you has fallen upon us,
and that all the inhabitants of the land melt
away before you. For we have heard how the LORD dried up the water of the
Red Sea before you when you came out of
Egypt, and what you did to the two kings of
the Amorites that were beyond the Jordan. . .
. And as soon as we heard it, our hearts
melted, and there was no courage left in any
man, because of you; for the LORD
your God is he who is God in heaven above and
on earth beneath." (Josh 2:9-11)
Among the twelve spies only
two--Joshua and Caleb--were able to see things
from this perspective. "Do not fear the
people of the land," they declared,
"for they are bread for us; their protection
is removed from them, and the LORD
is with us; do not fear them" (Num 14:9).
The rest saw only doom. Through their powerful
mental images, they created problems which did
not exist. And these problems, however imaginary,
were fully effective in immobilizing them--even
in the face of God's blanket promise of victory.
What is most surprising about
this incident is that the men sent on the spying
mission were the leaders of the twelve tribes of
Israel. The ten who brought the gloomy majority
report were among the most intelligent, spiritual
individuals in the nation. This suggests that we
will not necessarily avoid the tendency to
catastrophize simply because of our education or
even our spiritual experience. It's human nature
to fall into this pattern.
Taking Heart While Taking
Control
A day does not go by in your life
or mine when we do not confront very real
problems--ones which Christ wants us to deal with
prayerfully and seriously. But Satan will do his
utmost to make us live in a world of illusion. He
will, if he can, get us to paint
worst-possible-case scenarios and to dwell on
them to the point that we believe them
wholeheartedly.
We need to learn to recognize
this thought pattern for what it is and to call
its bluff when it occurs. Here are three
suggestions which can help us resist the tendency
to catastrophize:
Learn to outwit your catastrophizing. If
you find yourself worrying about a misfortune
occurring in your life, remind yourself that the
vast majority of calamities you envision never
come about. Then take comfort: the fact you are
worrying about this possibility means it probably
will not occur. In other words, remember that
your predictions of disaster are usually wrong,
and take encouragement from that! I personally
find this particular mental twist quite helpful,
and it often helps to jolt me out of my times of
obsessing.
Learn to laugh at yourself. We who obsess
over problems take ourselves too seriously. We
take our ruminating too seriously and our
predictions of doom too seriously. If we can
learn the art of laughing at our tendency to
catastrophize, it will do much to bring the bats
and giants down to size.
Learn to think of God's grace dynamically.
John 1:16 promises that Christ gives "grace
upon grace" to us as Christians. The Greek
literally means grace following grace, or fresh
grace every split second of our existence.
Our anxieties result in large part from trying to
predict how God might provide grace to
handle some future problem. We can never foresee
this, though, for it is characteristic of grace
that it is given at the moment needed and not
before. The promise of Scripture is simply that
when we need God's assistance, it will be there
for us. In all likelihood what we dread will not
occur. But if it does, God will give us exactly
the grace required for handling that predicament.
We need to dwell on this remarkable promise, but
not burden ourselves with trying to anticipate
how God will do it.
Moving Forward
Do you find yourself facing a
seemingly insurmountable problem? A broken
relationship that appears beyond healing? A
course you just can't crack? An exasperating
financial roadblock? A friend who shows no
interest in coming to Christ?
Don't ignore your feelings of
discouragement and frustration. But be careful
not to let them become the controlling factor in
your life. Remember that Christ sees our lives,
and our dilemmas, in an infinitely more creative
manner than we do. Focus as much as possible on
his love, his power, and his desire to work out
his very best for your life. Ask him for clear
vision to see the bats as shadows and the giants
as men who have lost their protection. Believe
that he is for you and can guide you into a very
good solution.
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