Freedom in Anxiety

One could call man's freedom "freedom in anxiety" or "anxious freedom."

-Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology II

Every once in a while I get an itch to get into some nice, dense theology.  It's usually inspired by something particular: today it is anxiety.  There are obvious acute anxieties: illnesses, death, major life transitions, conflicts within the congregation and a fairly long list of other anxiety producing events.  However, there is another sort of anxiety that generally afflicts us on an existential level, that rarely gets any airtime outside of theological/philosophical discussions.  Tillich notes that, "through Soren Kierkegaard," the Danish word Angst, "has become a central concept of existentialism."

However, I think that angst, has become something that we generally associate with adolescent alienation more than an actual "grown up" struggle.  This is a rather keen example of how overusing a word can warp it's actual meaning.  What Tillich describes, and what Kierkegaard was always going on about is the essential nature of our being as "fallen" creatures.  We have been given awareness of infinity and yet are confronted with our finitude: "(God) has set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end." (Eccl. 3: 11)

Thousands of years before Kierkegaard or Tillich, Quoheleth knew angst, he defined and described "anxious freedom."  What the "wise" have always known is that this condition is a result of our estrangement from God.  That is what led me to Tillich this afternoon, estrangement, his favorite word for our "fallen" condition.  It's a much better word than separation.

If I were to say that my wife and I are separated, meaning that I am at my office and she is at our home, unless I supplied the context, people would assume that we were in fact estranged and in the process of getting a divorce.

Estrangement is a spiritual condition.

It is a spiritual condition that produces anxiety.

Separation can be the physical manifestation of a spiritual condition, it can be a way to attempt to resolve the anxiety created by estrangement.

The problem that we face is, depending on your theological perspective, you cannot actually separate from God, because God is the essence of all that is, God is being itself.  If you separate from the essence of all that is you become nothing.

Fortunately for us, God gives us the freedom to be estranged without having our state of being absorbed into the void.  Our awareness of that estrangement is the thing that keeps us in that rather tenuous balance between complete oneness with God and being lost in nothingness.

Kierkegaard and Tillich alike recognize how precarious our situation really is.  Tillich cautions us against hubris, which he defines as "elevation of self," rather than simple "pride."  Hubris, is the fatal flaw in many general systems of thought devised by brilliant humans, because of our "greatness" we are in danger of building spurious platforms that put us (or so we think) on equal footing with God.  Hubris is what allows us to brazenly declare that God is dead, or that God does not exist, or that we have no need of God any longer.  All attitudes which primarily serve to deepen our estrangement from God and increase our anxiety.

Oddly enough, hyper-theologizing can cause the same effect, when we think "too much" about God our anxiety can go into overdrive.  When we focus on the obvious symptoms of our estrangement, which we call sin, we can become anxious that God's wrath is certainly about to strike down upon us.

Take another look at the Gospels and notice how many times Jesus told people not to be worried, not to be afraid, to lay their burdens down and trust in God.  It's all over the place.  He was trying to help people deal with the anxiety that estrangement produces.

Rather than taking away our freedom, Christ gives us a way to deal with the angst created by our estrangement: a liberal application of mercy and grace, a demonstration that God's love can conquer our seemingly intractable existential dilemma.