Today’s Devotional: Paranoia
Have you ever gotten worked up about a situation only to learn that you had the facts wrong?
This happens to me far more than I’d like to admit. I’ll read too much into a comment or someone’s silence and then my imagination starts working overtime. I interpret the silence as bitterness or the comment as incendiary. Soon enough, I’ve worked myself into a totally unfounded anger or fear. Then, a day or two later I find out the truth and it makes all that worry and anger disappear.
Blaine Smith of Nehemiah Notes writes in a recent article about this kind of thought pattern. He relates it to paranoia and points out how it can be destructive to our mental health and our relationship with God:
When it comes to imagining what others think of us, it’s easy to fall into a pattern of expecting the worst. Paranoia is what we often call it lightheartedly today. This is our popular adaptation of the psychiatric term, of course. Clinical paranoia is a serious psychological problem. True paranoids are pathologically suspicious of others’ motives. Many suffer psychotic delusions about being watched or persecuted.
Most of us are not about to join a local militia to defend ourselves against “the encroaching evil forces of government.” Nor do we imagine that aliens have implanted listening devices in our ears. Yet we do spend considerable energy worrying about what others think of us. We may instinctively assume that others don’t like us, even when no evidence suggests this is true. Harboring such suspicions is a serious enough problem for many of us, that it helps us to have a word for it–even if we use that term somewhat tongue-in-cheek.
The tragedy is that even this “normal” paranoia can hinder us from realizing our potential for Christ and experiencing his abundant life. Our negative assumptions about what others think can cause us to expect failure at points where God intends us to succeed. We may fail to recognize golden opportunities he’s presenting to us, in relationships, career and other areas. We need to recognize this mentality for what it is. And we need to take steps to ensure that it doesn’t become a controlling factor in our life.
Read the rest of Blaine’s article for practical steps to take to combat paranoia.
Have you experienced the same sort of thought pattern? How do you combat it and speak truth to the situation?
We are far too selfish in today’s modern society. We are indoctrinated into the theology of “me first” and “what’s in it for me?” from early childhood on.
Big business and corporate America has us believing if we don’t have “this” or wear “that” or drive “that car” or eat at “this place” then we must somehow be losing a game we didn’t even know we were playing. We are taught to be winners, and to “go for it” and to “be somebody.”
Paranoia is just fears about self. As individuals we feel we are so important that somebody wants to do us harm or take something from us. When the reality is far fewer people are actually thinking about us than we think, because everyone is too busy thinking about themselves to care about anybody else.
This is counter to what God wants us to be — servants.
Jesus taught that the least will be the greatest and that the last will be the first in Heaven. Jesus — God in the flesh — knelt down and washed feet. He touched the sick, the unclean and the leperous. He walked among the lowest and healed them and fed them and taught them. Jesus was not interested in what those people could give Him, but He was interested in what He could do for them.
We need to pray, to meditate, to walk with God and learn the Word and put it into practice. The process of sanctification automatically causes one to be more humble and selfless.