The other day I was told that an old high school friend of mine had died. The fact that he died almost a year ago did not blunt the shock because I was just finding out during that conversation.
Of course, he would’ve been about the same age as myself. Now what shocked me was not that he had died (after all, people die all the time of many things). But that he died of a combination of anxiety, alcoholism and the medications used to treat those. Now I knew the man (well, as a younger man then, but still…) and he was anything but anxious. Over confident maybe, but anxious no. And in those youthful years many drank to excess on most weekends, so he was no standout from that perspective either.
Hearing that leads one to wonder. Surely the alcoholism existed at least in part as a control mechanism to manage the anxiety. As someone who’s suffered from anxiety (albeit moderately) in the past, I can vouch that it’s profoundly uncomfortable and therefore an immediate cure will absolutely be sought (if at all possible). But however it happened, it’s shocking that a death should occur because of it. After all, neither anxiety nor alcoholism necessarily kills you directly (exception for alcohol poisoning of course). I won’t rant about the medications or the health care system either. I will simply point out that the world’s method of curing him obviously failed miserably.
I don’t think that’s because the world doesn’t have smart enough doctors, or that we don’t have a good enough medical system. I don’t think that’s because the medications weren’t of high enough quality or sufficiently available. All of those issues I’ve seen before on my travels to 3rd world countries. They don’t exist as true issues in Burlington Ontario Canada.
And there may be a few thousand reasons WHY he had his problems. That’s not the point - you can never go back in time and erase WHY a problem started, and the solution cannot be found without recognizing the problem to start with. So the root cause of such problems is effectively irrelevant (from an ultimate end game perspective). Ergo, I think what ultimately did my friend in is a failure to recognize the cure for his problems. Anxiety and alcoholism are, after all both cured by the same cure we have for sin. A cure the world in all its education and with all its organizations and structures doesn’t like to even mention, let alone concede too. Faith in Jesus Christ.
If you have a knee-jerk reaction against that statement, I caution you to consider carefully WHY that is so. Because there are countless individuals who can testify that faith in Christ has cured them of myriads of diseases. Now it’s true that He doesn’t miraculously heal all, and sometimes specifically DOESN’T heal. Yet 100% of the cases of sin brought to him are cured and where He doesn’t heal He grants grace to endure. The only thing Christ refuses to cure is unconfessed sin.
Maybe if someone had told my friend of Christ he’d still be here (and that’s a profoundly sad thing to write). Maybe if our society - including organizations and structures like our health care system - would recognize all the good that Christ does as easily as it recognizes its problems, we’d be a better society. And we’d undoubtedly have a few more friends.
