We—you and I and the society we live in—are frantic with worry. Worry is part of our culture, an expectation of responsible people. 

Most of us don’t even realize we’re consumed with worry. When I asked several people to tell me about their experiences with worry, most indicated they don’t consider themselves “worriers.” Then they went on to tell me about their struggles with worry, some of them describing sleepless nights and disruptions to relationships caused by worry. A few described panic attacks and other symptoms of runaway anxiety. But almost no one wanted to be labeled a “worrier.”  

One reason you and I worry so much is embedded in the world around us. We are surrounded not only by reasons to worry, but also by people who want us to worry because it makes them feel better about themselves or because there is profit in fueling our fear. Whether we realize it or not, we are under pressure to conform to a self-feeding culture of worry. 

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01.  Manufactured Worry

In his 1999 book, The Culture of Fear, Barry Glassner describes how powerful people play on our fears for the sake of getting our attention, enriching themselves, or making themselves even more powerful. He addresses several societal scares that were exaggerated or even invented, but which haunted the national conscience: things like road rage, violent crime waves, health risks, and travel safety. In the book’s introduction he says, “The short answer to why Americans harbor so many misbegotten fears is that immense power and money await those who tap into our moral insecurities and supply us with symbolic substitutes.”Barry Glassner, The Culture of Fear: Why Americans Are Afraid of the Wrong Things (New York: Basic Books, 1999), xxviii.

Glassner argues that focusing on these problems, blown out of proportion or even trumped up, distracts us from paying attention to what actually matters and what we might be able to change. This culture of fear plays on our anxieties, coming and going without resolution, moving from one fear to the next, leaving a residual sense that we must do something—so we worry over things that may or may not be significant or even real. 

Then again, some of what worries us is all too real. 

Here are some of the things we worry about. 

Work. Good employees worry about their jobs. We really worry when the economy is not booming—but we don’t stop when things are going well. We worry about losing our jobs, finding jobs, getting noticed at work, being asked to do more than we can handle, not being challenged, making the right impression, being overlooked for advancement, not getting everything done, making mistakes, and keeping our organizations afloat. Some of us work too many hours, long past the point of productivity, simply because we can’t bring ourselves to let go and walk away. Others stop working at the end of the day but mentally never leave work. While technically they’re engaged with their families, friends, and God, they are always giving the best part of their thought life to worrying about work. 

Parenting. We worry that our kids are not eating right, that they’re eating too much or too little, that they don’t have enough friends, that they have too many of the wrong friends, that they don’t have the right clothes or the right attitude. We worry that their grades aren’t high enough, that their backpacks are too heavy, that they aren’t having enough fun in school, that they have too much fun in school, that they don’t believe in themselves or they don’t appreciate the value of a dollar. We worry that they’re being bullied, they’re bullying someone else, they’re falling behind educationally (when they’re three years old), they’re not being challenged, they will miss out on opportunities. Parents also worry (a lot) that someone will snatch our children off the street. 

Civic Issues. Concerned citizens worry about the economy, the education system, the health care system, the political system. We worry that the “right” candidates won’t get elected, the “wrong” candidates will, things won’t change, things will change, our fellow citizens won’t care about what we care about, interest rates will increase, standards of living will decrease, we might not get ahead. We worry that our voices won’t be heard, that our voices will be the only ones saying something unpopular, that our votes won’t make a difference. We worry that we won’t get what we need, that others will get something they didn’t earn, that what we have will be taken away. 

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02.  Too Much Information

Being informed citizens is easier than ever; unfortunately, it can also be hazardous to our mental health. In efforts to boost ratings and maintain our prone-to-wander attention, news media present several new things for us to worry about each day. One woman told me she refuses to watch the news because “it propagates worry. It feeds our fears.” Another friend takes a different approach and refuses to turn away because she wants her theology to be realistic about the world we live in. It’s hard to know which point to embrace on that strategic spectrum. 

Broadcasters flash compelling headlines and teasers that encourage us to click on links or tune in to what they say, often with very little substance in the actual stories. “What killer may be lurking in your refrigerator? Find out on the ten o’clock news,” they say. Tune in for the actual story, and you might find out that if your milk is more than six months old, it could contain bacteria that will make you sick. That’s the killer in your fridge. Now on to the next story about a cat and a dog who have forged a friendship against all odds. 

Social media has dramatically increased our ability to worry publicly over people and places we don’t know, and cause others to worry over them too. When one person with an influential voice sends a message highlighting an announcement, a cause, or the plight of someone in need, that message can make its way to a vast potential audience in a matter of seconds. Suddenly millions of people receive alarming news, perhaps with horrifying images and very little context, usually with no guidance on how to respond meaningfully and helpfully. We don’t even know whether what we’re hearing or seeing is true. 

Every week is a new campaign to “raise awareness” of frightening realities, often among people who are already quite aware of those realities. Our inboxes are full of spam emails, forwarded by people we respected until they got too much time on their hands and started sending a steady stream of alarmist messages, troublesome myths, and nagging urban legends. Except for the most gullible among us, we are constantly fighting a battle to discern true information from false—and sometimes losing. We have access to more information than we can actually process, which comes at us at a pace and with a force we can’t possibly absorb. One suburban mom told me she now understands the urge people feel to move to a place where they believe they can escape the technology-laced world, “to separate their family from being bombarded with nonstop messages and unavoidable visuals.” 

When we receive such messages, whether real or not, we feel as if something is expected of us and our lives should be different somehow. So we go ahead and worry because we don’t know what else to do, any calm response feels callous, and forgetting about what we read or saw is not an option. 

A constant barrage of increasingly targeted marketing messages creates in us a sense of urgency about things that don’t actually matter at all. Do babies need an electric warmer to heat their wipes? Is it really important to kill 99.9 percent of germs on the inside of my toilet bowl? And just how white do my teeth need to be? 

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03.  Worry Is a Problem

Because worry is so pervasively embedded in our culture and our daily experience, it’s easy to dismiss it as benign when done in moderation, or simply as a widespread bad habit. It’s socially acceptable even among Christians, who occasionally become aware that our worry is excessive and sort of apologize for it without repentance: “I know I shouldn’t worry so much.” 

Yet we are called to live and think differently. The fact is worry is destructive. And a look through Scripture shows us that worry is sin—a rebellious activity that creates distance between God and us. Voluntary worry is essentially a spiritual problem, which ultimately cannot be overcome merely through an act of the will—the solution is rooted entirely in who God is. God has repeatedly told us not to worry, not only in the well-known words of Jesus recorded in Matthew 6, but also throughout the Old Testament and in the epistles to the early church. 

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04.  Follow the Shepherd

Essentially, all worry comes down to a matter of trust. God asks us to trust him, and he presents such trust as the antithesis of worry. When we fail to trust God, we behave like frantic sheep that have forgotten they’re following a shepherd. Sheep are made to follow one leader. If that leader is a good shepherd, they will have all they need. 

If a flock of sheep were to stop trusting their shepherd and decide to go it alone, instead trusting only in themselves and their fellow sheep, they would find themselves wandering aimlessly in panicked circles. When danger arrived, they would be frantic with misdirected running, trying to get away from the threat but not knowing where to go. And if they trusted the voices of those who would gladly prey on them—like foxes, wolves, and bears—they would find themselves a quick dinner. How ridiculous it would be for sheep to behave this way with their shepherd standing among them, calling to them and showing them the way to go. 

When Jesus traveled throughout the region around the Sea of Galilee, he created a stir by preaching and healing people he met. Vast numbers came to see him, and he was moved by their aimless desperation: “When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them because they were confused and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd” (Matthew 9:36, NLTScripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2007 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Streams, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved. ). What an apt description of our culture! May we place our trust in him and instead conform to these words: “My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me” (John 10:27).