Recently I was reading through the Sermon on the Mount and I had to stop and chuckle. I got to the passage where Jesus is teaching not to worry about food, water, and clothing (Matthew 6:25–34), and I noticed for the first time that the editors of the New American Standard Bible entitled that section: “The Cure for Anxiety.” That’s quite a claim. I thought to myself: Does Jesus possess the cure for anxiety? If so, a lot of psychologists and drug companies are in trouble!

What drives you? Why do you do the things you do? In essence, who are you? Our sense of self is shaped by many factors—family dynamics, culture, and religion to name a few.

Biological Needs for Security

One of my teachers, Thomas Keating (the founder of “Centering Prayer”), reminds us that our biological needs actually have a big influence on who we are—or perhaps more accurately, who we’re not.

From the moment we’re born we experience primordial needs for affection, security, and control. It’s perfectly natural. We need positive reinforcement that helps us know we are loved, safe, that there’s nothing to fear.

The Innate Need for Love

As infants we have an innate need to experience love—without it, we wither. If we don’t feel safe, our development is further impaired. And without some sense of control, the world is something to fear. But like Scripture teaches us, at some point it’s time to grow up. Problem is, we often don’t know how. So we cling to what Keating refers to as our “programs for happiness.”

As adults, our basic childhood needs for affection, security, and control now entrap us—we are held captive to gratifying our needs. Satisfying our needs has become a program in our minds that betrays us. We are adults, behaving like children, begging people and circumstances of life to help us know we are loved, safe, and don’t need to be afraid. And so we unconsciously take from the world around us to feed a need that God alone can satisfy. And time and again, people and circumstance fail us, disrupting our happiness. We are slaves to our programs for happiness and need to be set free—free to make a conscious choice for God, self, and others.

The Peacemaker

Take me for example. I am the only daughter, the middle child between two brothers—a classic setup to assume the role of peacemaker in the family, which I did. I tended to the needs of my immediate family as a child, then the needs of my immediate circle of friends as a teenager, and then the needs of my co-workers in my young adult years. I didn’t think twice about it. Nothing wrong with being a peacemaker. It’s a good thing. But the motivation behind it was often distorted. Unconsciously I was habitually satiating my need for affection. I needed to be needed to feel loved. A subtle form of exploitation—using someone else to gratify my need for affection and desire to feel loved.

Contemplative Prayer

Contemplative prayer cuts to the heart of our unconscious motivations. By yielding our mind, heart, and body to God in regular contemplative practice, these deeply ingrained programs for happiness loosen their grip, allowing us to grow up.

When we let go—through prayer—into the God who alone can meet our every need, we are freed from our compulsions to satiate our own needs. From a place of liberation, we can then give and receive freely. Being transformed through contemplative prayer, we take on the mind of Christ—we live more often from a place of knowing that we are loved, safe, and have no need to fear. We receive from the Source and from the Source we give to the world.

Who are we? We are not our needs for affection, security, and control. As Jesus so desperately tried to help us realize, we are children of God—totally loved, totally safe, without need to be afraid.  

Watch over your heart with all diligence, for from it flow the issues of life (Proverbs 4:23). In these words, the Old Testament educational literature makes a sweeping indictment against the educational model of the twentieth century. It is good to know something about science, history, geography, math, and literature. But the central task of a robust, wise education, parenting, and of life itself is to mind one’s heart: to guard it, to care for it, to search it out with God, to understand and open to the truth of its pains, sins, virtues, and need for change with oneself, God, and others. For from the heart all the issues and ways of our lives will pour forth. Augustine sums up this wisdom well in his Soliloquies, where he dialogues with Reason:

Reason: What do you desire to know?

Augustine: I want to know God and the soul.

Reason: Nothing more?

Augustine: Nothing at all.

I hope you’ll forgive me, but I’m going to talk like a psychologist for a minute. I’m not always like this. Sometimes, I’m an actual human. I experience injustices like we all do, and I respond emotionally. When I talk about those experiences to my wife, children, or friends, I use terms like injustice, transgression, unforgiveness, resentment, bitterness, grudge, and vengeance imprecisely. But, when I speak as a psychologist, I distinguish among those terms because those fine distinctions can help people deal with injustices and feelings of resentment and bitterness.

The Table: Your work is deeply connected to human growth and formation. In your experience, how do people grow?

Todd Pickett: A book length response could only begin to do this question justice. I’ll say two things, however. First, we are relational beings, and we must be loved into change. Most of our sin and dysfunction has come from our defensive strategies, trying to secure ourselves in the absence of the deep belief that we are loved. And since only God can love us perfectly, that relationship is the deep center of our growth. Second, we need to see or construe the world truly at the deepest possible level, inscribing our worldview into our very bodies through the habits and practices we perform before God and within our communities (e.g., the church).

The Table: Your background is in Classics and English literature. What has a study of human thought and writing, old and new, taught you about the human condition?

TP: Finite sufferers. Those are the words that come to mind when I think of the human condition as framed through narratives—tales, novels, and poems. I think it was Kierkegaard who said we are finite creatures with an ability to imagine the infinite, whose pursuit of the ideal is always complicated and frustrated by our weakness and limits. As a result, we constantly feel the gap between our lives now and what we imagine they could be (I’m pretty sure my dog Winston doesn’t experience that). Add to this that we live in a web of life, where we must “suffer”—in the old sense of the word—all that happens around us and to us, from the powerful and tenacious formation that happens to us as children to the inevitable losses we experience as we age. Nearly all narratives, therefore, are U-shaped, where a character who woke up that day expecting to carry on with their agendas suddenly must “suffer” something or a series of things that takes him or her down a different direction—a father’s ghost returns (Hamlet), an inheritance comes out of nowhere (Great Expectations), a wizard comes to town (The Hobbit). How people “suffer” these kinds of events, how they struggle down through and emerge from them, is the arc of most stories. And this is rather like life, although life is certainly more complicated than the most complicated story. Whether that suffering can be redeemed depends upon the larger story of which I see myself a part. That’s where the paschal, metanarrative of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection comes in—itself a U-shaped narrative.

The Table:  How can the practice of reading and reflecting on great literature form the human heart?

TP: Stories are certainly trainings in desire, whatever else they may be (and that includes the mini-stories of a poem, metaphor, or image). They appeal to our imagination (the almost unconscious way that we “image” the world), which is arguably the basis of our desire. Stories that we feel capture us do so because they are resonating with our experience of the world, shaping how we construe the world in our deepest places—the heart.

The Table: What are some examples of literature (human or divine) that has changed you?

TP: For me, Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov unpacks a world where shame and guilt drive much of human life, demonstrating that we must despair of ourselves if we are to really receive the gospel deeply. I think that’s true. In terms of more modern fiction and poetry, I would say Wendell Berry’s works show the goodness and beauty of a life lived simply and honestly, inspiring me to flee the madness of machines and consumerism. Have these works really changed me? I think that depends more on my response to the work—what I do when I close the book—than the work itself. I guess in Dallas Willard’s terms, they have given me “vision.” It remains to be seen whether I have the “intention” and actually follow the “means” by which transformation into that vision can take place.

The Table: What’s on your reading list these days?

TP: This summer I read James K.A. Smith’s Imagining the Kingdom, William Dyrness’s Theological Poetics, Malcolm Guite’s Faith, Hope, and Poetry, Iain McGilchrist’s The Master and His Emissary, and The Physical Nature of the Christian Life (Brown and Strawn). All of these ask—from a spiritual, historical, psychological, or neurological perspective—have we not underestimated the power of narrative, image, metaphor, and symbol in the formation and deep structure of our lives? Could it be that we are formed more powerfully by these deep orientations than by conscious thought? And how can our thinking move from the so-called head to the heart, and, finally, into the body?

The Table: What religious practices or liturgies do you find most profitable in fostering spiritual growth? Spirituality doesn’t seem like a one-size-fits-all sort of thing, but are there consistent patterns of effective practices?

TP: Well, all Christians are called to the classical, biblical practices of prayer, service, worship, fasting (or detachment), chastity, confession, study, etc. But there are still choices to be made within the context of the individual. For instance, Richard Foster, in his book, Prayer, identifies at least thirty different kinds of prayer in Scripture. How do I know which practice of prayer to engage more intentionally in a particular season of my life? This is where we need to discern with the Spirit. My own calling recently has been to trust God more, to be freed from worry and the selfishness that worry causes. What is called centering prayer (to “be still and know” that He is God, Psalm 46:10) has become an important rhythm for me in that journey.

The Table: Christianity has a long history with contemplative practice. What is the role of contemplation in personal growth? What is the meaning of contemplation, psychologically and spiritually?

TP: The term “contemplation” has both general and specific meanings. Generally, contemplation is a “beholding,” a gazing upon or chewing upon something that allows it to go deeper than thought, to become an image or relationship embedded in our hearts, from which our life flows (Proverbs 4:23). It is an extension of what the Scriptures call “meditation”—as in Psalm 48:9, “Within your temple, O God, we meditate on your unfailing love.” And this suggests that contemplation is relational. It is not just thoughts about God, but placing ourselves, as it were, “before Him.” We behold Him as if He were actually here (which He is). This is Paul’s prayer, that we would know the love of Christ in a way that “surpasses knowledge”—which is a relational knowing (Ephesians 3:19). Put another way, in contemplation we are practicing the command to “be still and know” that He is God (Psalm 46:10). Like other practices, contemplative practices have developed from seeking to understand how we might carry out certain commands of Scripture. Christian practices of contemplative prayer, then, are simply ways we make ourselves available to the Spirit, whose work it is to give us the capacity (“power”) to know God more deeply and intuitively (Ephesians 3:16).

The Table: Is there a theological or psychological distinction between the mind and the heart? How should we understand the difference between these two aspects of our inner life?

TP: When we see these terms, it’s tempting as moderns to assign “mind” to the activity of thought and “heart” to feeling. However in Scripture, the heart includes the activities of thinking and feeling, as well as choice (the will). In fact, more often than not, the heart in Scripture thinks, as in Proverbs 23:7–8, where it says, “As a man thinks in his heart, so he is.” We should not draw a hard line between thought and affect (feeling) in Scripture, or in life. Both participate in knowledge. When used on its own (“mind of Christ,” I Corinthians 2:16) or in conjunction with heart (“your hearts and minds,” Philippians 4:7), the term “mind” may be highlighting one’s deep belief, one’s intuitive as well as reasoned perception of the world, which includes the appropriate feelings or affect (like trust) that deepen our discernment.

The Table: What understanding of the human heart must we have to engage in intentional, thoughtful soul care?

TP: The heart is the place of deep belief, our “unconscious theology,” where what we really believe lives. With this in view, Proverbs 4:23 urges us to “watch over your heart with all diligence, for from it flows the springs of life.” In other words, we should know what is in our heart because our lives simply flow from that—for good or for ill. While we may sincerely believe the truths we hold, still there are beliefs that lie at a deeper level still. For instance, I may believe in God’s providence, that He is in control and seeks my good. However, my anxiety may tell me that this belief in God’s providence does not go all the way down in me. I may find I don’t trust Him with my whole heart. That’s good information, and something that may become a calling for me, whether for a season or for a lifetime.

The Table: How do you understand the integration of psychology with spiritual formation?

TP: Among other things, psychological study and therapy attends to our relational histories, how these have formed us, and how they affect, even unconsciously, our view of God and relationship with Him. If Christian spirituality is about my spirit living in dependence on and communion with God’s Spirit, then the wisdom psychology brings to our relational dysfunctions is crucial. Our memories, wounds, fears, addictions, or attachments—all of which are aspects of our psychology—also have a direct affect on our relationship with God and others. And usually to some degree, these operate on us below the surface of our normal awareness. Psychological study and therapy can bring much of this to light in helpful ways that open us to the Holy Spirit’s deep work of healing and sanctification in us.

The Table: Who are your spiritual mentors?

TP: I’ve been undoubtedly blessed by my colleagues at the Institute for Spiritual Formation at Talbot School of Theology, whose words and lives continue to mentor me. I’ve also had two spiritual directors in the last ten years who have been crucial to my ongoing formation. And, of course, there are a host of authors.

The Table: What is the proper posture or disposition of a person seeking spiritual transformation?

TP: That’s easy: humility, springing from the awareness of one’s need. I can do nothing apart from God (John 15:5).

Surprisingly, the Bible treats the heart as the place where we do our thinking—we think in our hearts, not our heads. For, “Out of the heart come evil thoughts” (Matthew 15:19)—those thoughts are not always noble. What else does the Bible have to say about the heart?

• “Mary kept all these things, pondering them in her heart” (Luke 2:51)
• “The word of God…[pierces] to…the thoughts and intentions of the heart” (Hebrews 4:12)
• “Out of the heart come evil thoughts” (Matthew 15:19)

In our culture we regard our ability to reason as one of the highest aspects of human personhood, but forget how often we employ that faculty in less-than-noble pursuits. The biblical Greek word for thinking actively, like when you’re thinking something through, is dianoia, and it often includes selfish fantasies, plotting, and scheming:

• “The imagination [dianoia] of man’s heart is evil from his youth” (Genesis 8:21)
• “He has scattered the proud in the imagination [dianoia] of their hearts” (Luke 1:51)

So if the heart is where humans do their thinking, where do they feel emotions? The strongest emotions, as well as the deepest thoughts, are said to arise from “the inward parts,” the bowels and kidneys, as we might refer to “gut feelings.” That sounds coarse in our culture, though; so modern English translations usually substitute something more polite, located higher up in the body.

• Psalm 16:7 in original Hebrew: “I will bless the Lord who has given me understanding; in the night also my kidneys instruct me”
• King James Version, 1611: “My reins also instruct me” (reins being an archaic term for “kidneys,” as in “renal function”)
• Revised Standard Version, 1952: “In the night also my heart instructs me”
• New American Standard Version, 1971: “My mind instructs me in the night”

Apparently, over the centuries, everything’s been rising. Maybe in a hundred years we’ll read, “My hat instructs me”!

But it’s not a matter of substituting “bowels and heart” for “heart and head,” for the Scriptures don’t share our view of emotion as an equal-and-opposite alternative to reason. Our assumption is that people tend toward one function or the other, and we deplore the waves of emotion that undermine reason, or the coldness of solitary reason that stifles the heart. But the Scriptures don’t view them as opposed or parallel faculties.

In the Scriptures, having emotions is not a function or action, parallel to dianoia thinking. A specific emotion, like anger, might prompt a biblical character toward an action, but the person wasn’t engaged in a distinct process of emoting at the time, as opposed to thinking. He just got angry, and acted it out in a particular way. He probably was thinking, actually. He was thinking about something that made him mad.

This makes sense when you think about it. Reason and emotion actually are not separate. When we feel an emotion, it is because of a thought we’re having—often enough, a completely logical thought. And we all know how our emotions subtly influence our reasoning. These are two aspects of a single process, not opposites or alternatives.

Here’s another difference. The Scriptures’ use of “heart” is much broader than ours today. The heart was seen as the center of a person’s entire being. It was the place inside where thoughts, emotions, memories, fantasies, will, and desires all bubble together as in a cauldron. (While the deepest thoughts and feelings are registered in the “inward parts,” the usual source of both is the heart.) The heart includes both good and bad elements; as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn said, “The line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.” The heart is the home of our inner self, and the place where Christ must rule.

You might well ask why this difference of viewpoint matters. It’s because, when we agree with the cultural assumption that human beings are composed of two opposite functions, reason and emotion, it damages our witness. If human beings don’t have anything but reason and emotion, there is no way God can communicate with us. All our claims about God can be ascribed to emotions. We often hear people say, “You can’t reach God with your mind, only with your heart.” But, as those terms are defined today, it means that any claim of contact with God has no rational basis and is merely emotional. Something like St. Paul’s conversion cannot be claimed as real in an objective, “true for everybody” sense. It’s real only in a subjective, “true for me” sense. Maybe he just had an emotional crisis and hallucinated the whole thing. No prophets heard the voice of God. Moses thought he saw a Burning Bush because of he was lonely and discouraged. When the whole population of the Hebrews drew near the smoke-shrouded mountain, and saw lightning, heard thunder and “the sound of the trumpet growing louder and louder” (Exodus 19:19), it was a case of mass wishful thinking.

When we agree with our culture that all experiences of God are solely emotional, it seriously limits our ability to speak the truth of Jesus Christ in the public square.

But the New Testament offers us a different understanding of the composition of a human being, and, as a result, a different understanding of human contact with God. I began to glean this after I became Eastern Orthodox, twenty years ago. When I started reading Eastern Christian writings, from the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and Slavic countries (reaching back to the first century), I had the feeling that something here was really different. It was hard to pin down just what it was. One thing I noticed was that a Greek word, nous (pronounced “noose”), kept popping up. It would appear just like that, un-translated and undefined. Apparently translators thought there was no accurate equivalent in English. It was a concept we just don’t have.

This was in the days before Google, so to figure out what it meant I kept writing down whatever I thought the definition was, as I read along. At one point I had six definitions. But eventually I grasped that it means the human faculty that understands, discerns, or comprehends.

This is something we do with our minds, all right—when it appears in the New Testament, it’s usually translated “mind.” But it’s not active dianoia thinking, like thinking through a problem. It’s the receptive faculty of the mind.

You can picture the human mind as having two gears, forward and reverse. Forward, dianoia, is when we’re thinking something through, actively reasoning. Reverse, nous, is when we are grasping or comprehending something. This is our faculty of discernment, comprehension, understanding, perception, awareness. It’s how God can make contact with his people, can convey something to them directly, and it has nothing to do with their emotions.

Forty years ago I had a miraculous conversion to Christ, kind of like St. Paul’s. I was a new college grad, hitchhiking around Europe, and at that time calling myself a Hindu. But when I was touring a historic church and stood looking at a statue of Christ, I suddenly heard a voice speaking to me—not with my ears, but interiorly. It spoke with such authority that doubt was impossible. What the voice said was, “I am your life.”

When I tried to describe this to people afterward, the best I could describe it was, “It was like there was a little radio in my heart that I never knew was there. Suddenly it switched on and I could hear a voice.” When I met the word nous in Eastern Christian writings, at last I had a name for it; the nous is that “little radio.” And every one of us has one. We are made that way. Because God wants to be in communion with his people.

Let’s look at how the word is used in the New Testament. When Christ appeared to his apostles, after the Resurrection,

• “He opened their nous to understand the Scriptures” (Luke 24:45)

He didn’t render the apostles better at thinking logically about the Scriptures, but opened their understanding. Suddenly they could see his Incarnation, Crucifixion, and Resurrection foretold throughout the Old Testament. St. Paul says,

• Christians “have the nous of Christ” (1 Corinthians 2:16)
• “Be renewed in the spirit of your nous” (Ephesians 4:23)
• “The peace of God which passes all understanding” is actually “The peace of God which overflows the nous” (Philippians 4:7)
• “Be transformed by the renewal of your nous” (Romans 12:2)

The nous is not a special spiritual faculty; it is how we perceive everything. It is how the mind receives and assimilates information. If you open the door and it’s raining, your senses of sight, smell, hearing, and touch all transmit their perceptions to the “central office,” the nous. You then process that incoming information and discern that it is raining.

This first-hand, direct experience of something, which we register by means of the nous, precedes thoughts and feelings. To put that another way, after we perceive something we may well have rational thoughts and feelings about it, but the actual perception came first. After you realize it’s raining, you may have some rational thoughts (“I’d better take an umbrella”) or feel some emotions (“I get sad when it rains”). But both came after that primary perception of rain. The perception itself was not due to your thoughts or feelings, but was derived from objectively real phenomena. If God communicates with us, we are likely to have a number of thoughts and emotions afterward! But that doesn’t render the experience itself unreal.

As if the heart-mind confusion weren’t enough, we also have a linguistic tangle because, in English, we use the word “feelings” to mean two different things. We can “get a feeling” and perceive something, or sense something. Maybe we have a “gut feeling.” That would be “feeling” in the sense of the nous. The old Star Wars hero Luke Skywalker had to learn to “feel” the Force; he had to learn how to perceive and tune into something that, in the movie’s world, was objectively real.

But, unfortunately, we use the same word “feelings” when we mean emotional reactions—hurt feelings or sad feelings. Star Wars villain Darth Vader should have resisted his vengeful feelings. For Luke “feelings” are perceptions, and for Darth “feelings” are overwhelming emotions. Same word, different meanings; no wonder we’re confused.

But if everyone has this capacity to hear God’s voice, why don’t we? Because the nous is fallen. Just like everything else in Creation. It perceives inaccurately. How many of the conflicts between people are caused by simply not understanding each other accurately—misreading what others say and do. Your damaged, darkened nous might tell you that someone is looking at you funny, when they’re not looking at you at all. The devil makes a playground of this. St. Paul says of nonbelievers,

• “Their very nous … is corrupted” (Titus 1:15)
• “[They live] in the futility of their nous” (Ephesians 4:17)

The nous doesn’t much want to hear God’s voice. It would rather keep itself distracted with a ceaseless stream of incoming sensory data—images, sounds, physical experiences, favorite foods, and so on. When people say that you need silence to hear God’s voice, it doesn’t mean that you should try to be vacant and empty (which would be a spiritually dangerous, actually). But we need quiet at times of prayer because all the busy-work our nous wants to chew over keeps it filled to capacity, and not sensitive enough to register the “still, small voice” (1 Kings 19:12). If you were at a noisy party and someone asked you a very important question, you would want get away someplace quiet to think about it. That’s why we need silence, when we pray. We’re trying to listen, to learn how to listen.

I didn’t know all this when I joined the Eastern Church. I thought it was just a matter of changing to a different denomination. But to my surprise, the Eastern Christian tradition turned out to be not merely an ecclesiastical institution or set of theological doctrines, but an active science or program of inner healing. In the Christian East, we are seen as sick with sin, rather than merely guilty of it; sin pervades us and our world. Like air pollution, it damages everyone, including the innocent, and gives power to the evil one. Sin is death.

So there’s a sense of urgency about overcoming this creeping toxin. We don’t need only to be forgiven for our sins, but also to stop sinning and stop contributing to the misery of the world. Christ came to take away our sins (1 John 3:5)—not just the penalty for our sins, but the sins themselves. Sin is infection, not infraction. It matters, when we resist it.

Eastern Christianity is a method or program of strength-training, so we can gain power over our compulsions to sin, and continuously grow in union with Christ. It shows us how to fast, pray, and love others such that the damage of sin begins to be healed, and the light of Christ begins to spread. Though I had no idea that’s what I was getting into when I converted, it turned out to be what I had sought all my Christian life.

Now most of my work is aimed at helping Christians of all denominations understand and implement this “science” of transformation in their own lives. A significant part is recognizing that our “head-heart” division is not Biblical or true, and learning that the nous exists and needs healing. This alternative understanding of the makeup of the human person restores to us the possibility of authentic communion with God. That’s what the world is longing for.

It’s a mistake to live as though eternity happens after death. If daily life moves like clockwork, “stopping for no man,” then eternal life moves like a river under the surface.

The Greeks had words for both: kairos and chronos. Chronos is man-made, incremental and sequential, it gains value as it accumulates—as money does. Kairos is infinite, uncountable, and always fully present—it means grace, where every moment offers a chance to start anew in a fresh Eden.

We are suspended between the two times, made of dust with eternity in our hearts. We are tuned to live in kairos, each moment fecund, inexhaustible, and intended for our pleasure. What if the curse of the Fall was to be banished from grace time and doomed to live in the man-made tyranny of chronos? And how would we live if we knew that we are still surrounded by Eden, our access restored by Christ’s death and resurrection?

For more from this issue of the Table Journal, click here. 

The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me; because the LORD hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted … to comfort all that mourn; to appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness; that they might be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the LORD, that he might be glorified. (Isaiah 61:1–3)

 The word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account. (Hebrews 4:12–13)

For millennia the Christian community has had its own models of how to “mind the heart.” And we see in Hebrews 4 three things that distinguish Christian “inwardness” or “self-examination” from Buddhist and secular mindfulness.

Anxiety crept into my world in my mid-thirties, unsuspecting and stealth, as most trials do when you are already in a freefall. The panic arrived four months after I landed on the streets of New York, having relocated from the suburbs of Atlanta with three children, two toy poodles, one husband, and our minivan.

We’d moved from south to north, suburbs to city, margin to constraint. Yet I carried a gnawing feeling that the move was less driven by the demands of running our non-profit, but more by my personal conviction that I wasn’t living this one life well.

New York was my reckless abandon. To sell almost everything, break from the comfort we’d created, and begin fresh. It was easier, in some ways, to take this route, than try to revamp our current context. All or nothing in most pursuits, this marked a pattern I began to see when looking back over my life in the months that followed. But here I go getting ahead of myself.

The panic attacks began on a flight in mid-October, when the air was crisp and cool. Fall marked my favorite of seasons, brimming with pumpkin-spiced lattes and savory scones, but this year, fall yielded fear instead, in airplanes, subways, elevators, and crowds. Within two months, I’d become crippled.

This crippling creates a much smaller, fearful version of your once creative self. Doubts and fears plague your plans, and you slowly retreat. Most interestingly, it continued to surface in surprise situations that I thought were within my safety zone. As a result, my resilience slowly faded while the anxiety grew.

For eighteen months I fought this, with moments of reprieve and relapse throughout. Toward the end, surrender arrived in a way that’s virtually impossible to describe. In a crescendo moment, I cried out desperate midnight pleas for rescue, and in grace, it came. During the weeks that followed, a truth began to crystalize:

Have you ever felt angry at God? If you have, rest assured that you’re not alone. In one large survey, about two-thirds of Americans said that they sometimes felt such anger.1 Studies suggest that when people focus on specific negative life events—for example, economic or family hardships, serious illness, psychological upheaval, physical pain, or bereavement—about half of those people report some negative feelings toward God. These negative feelings can include anger as well as more subtle feelings such as frustration, disappointment, and mistrust.

When Do People Get Angry at God?

In most cases, people become angry at God when they perceive that God is responsible for something harmful or unfair. These include the sorts of events that insurance companies would call “acts of God”—devastating events that can’t be easily blamed on another person, such as natural disasters. But it doesn’t take a tsunami or a hurricane for people to get angry at God. People can blame God even when another person is clearly to blame—for example, in cases of abuse, abandonment, or wartime atrocities. In such situations anger often centers on God’s seeming refusal to intervene to prevent evil or suffering: “Why do you allow people to do terrible things?” “Why don’t you stop them—or at least punish them?” Anger can also focus on disappointing events that are not necessarily traumatic, such as injuries, financial problems, or failure to get a coveted job.

Emotional Correlates of Anger Toward God

In emotional terms, is it a serious problem to get mad at God? Usually a brief flash of anger is unlikely to have major consequences for a person’s well being. Anger toward God shows clearer associations with emotional distress (e.g., depression, anxiety, physical symptoms) when it becomes more like a grudge—when it is intense, frequent, chronic, or recurring.²

Think for a moment about your inner monologue. What is the quality or character of your thoughts? If you introspect for a while, you start to realize that many of the interior attachments you experience are not really you. But as soon as you recognize that the anxieties and thoughts of compulsion, self-condemnation, or false shame you might be experiencing are foreign intruders, their control over your life begins to fall away. This is the power of mindfulness. The goal is to ensure that your true values are in the driver’s seat of your life.

What Is Mindfulness?

Mindfulness is readily describable as a clear-minded third-person perspective on your inner experience. It is a way of focusing attention on your inner experience that accentuates your capacity to recognize whether your current state of mind is wholesome or unwholesome. This kind of attention brings into focus an important question: Are the thoughts I am experiencing in-sync with my true values?

Mindful awareness is experienced as direct contact with reality, in effect, as standing face to face with what’s really there. One important aspect of real mindfulness is that it bridges the gap between judgmental and non-judgmental self-awareness. You need the non-judgmental aspect to access the content of your interior life. If you’re trying to filter or judge what comes in, you won’t be able to get the data on what’s happening with your interior awareness. This means that you won’t be able to find out what’s going on inside of you, and the foreign intruders will actually go unchecked. To ignore or minimize the presence of these emotions will lead you to fall back into the same unhealthy responses that have become locked into your brain as habit loops.

Look Inward, Observe Your Thoughts

The power of mindfulness allows us to break the grip of these habits. When you observe intrusive thoughts, you have to be in an assertively judgmental frame. It is very important to note that we are using the term judgmental here positively, in the sense of making a clear-minded, discerning assessment of the contents of your mental life. The key is to ask yourself whether these thoughts are in line with my true values, or whether they are deceptive brain messages taking me away from my real goals?

For example, when you’re feeling agitated, mindfulness trains you to place a label on that thought. Placing a label on the thought is what it means to take a third-person vantage point on your own thoughts: you’re looking from the outside to see what’s going on inside. When you give the thought a label, you give yourself a chance to discern whether it is wholesome or unwholesome. If the agitation is arising from a selfish motive, you can step back and reassess whether this thought is in line with your true values.

This kind of assessment is judgmental in the good sense of the word because it involves both recognition and discernment. You often have little to no direct control over the impulses, sensations, or desires you experience. These kinds of experiences are largely just the result of how your brain has been wired earlier in your life. But you do have control over how you respond to theses mental states. This is when you start to realize that these thoughts and feelings are not who you really are, and you don’t have to let them take over!