The Psychology of Jesus

Part 8, Anxiety and Cruciformity

Last post in this series reflecting upon the psychology of Jesus as I describe it in The Slavery of Death, just to underline the big observations and draw out the critical implication for our lives.

Again, in The Slavery of Death I focus upon the claim in Hebrews 2.14-15 that the power of the devil in our lives is our fear of death. We have traced this fear through basic and neurotic anxiety, our scarcity concerns about having enough and being enough. In our attempts to cope with these anxieties we attempt to secure and control material resources and achieve self-esteem through performing in our hero game of worth, value, and significance. And yet, these fear-driven activities never wholly or permanently solve the problem of anxiety. Materially speaking, we perpetually face a world full of real and perceived scarcity. Regarding our hero games, these also, along with our neurotic performances within them, remain chronically precarious. In the end, never enough problems continue to haunt us, and the devil uses the attendant anxieties to keep us selfish and self-absorbed. 

Jesus, by contrast, stands before us as embodying an eccentric identity, a mode of living vividly illustrated at his baptism where Jesus receives himself as a gift from the Father. Where we struggle to secure ourselves in striving for ownership and self-esteem, Jesus rests secure in his Father. And having his life rooted in the Father, Jesus is emancipated from both material and neurotic concerns. This, I have argued, seems to the distinctive mark of Jesus' psychology, his non-anxiousness. No material loss or physical threat moves Jesus. Nor did Jesus experience any neurotic shame or embarrassment when he "took the last place" in social hierarchies of value as he "took on the form of a servant."

Stated even more simply, we look upon life as something we must "win," either materially or neurotically. Jesus, by contrast, didn't need to win, which allowed him to lose when that was what love demanded.

Which brings me to the big implication I want to underline in his final post, the association between anxiety and cruciformity.

I expect you have noticed across these posts how love involves facing down both basic and neurotic anxiety. We describe love as "sacrificial" for just this reason. Sometimes the sacrifice of love is material, which exacerbates basic anxiety. At other times, love demands that we step out of the spotlight of our hero game to wash feet. In those moments, neurotic anxiety hits us hard. Across the board, love demands non-anxiousness. As it says in 1 John, perfect love casts out fear. 

The implication, then, is that love only becomes a possibility to the degree we can step into and embody Jesus' eccentric, baptismal identity. Our ability to love is directly dependent upon our capacity for non-anxiousness, both materially and neurotically. Being "Christlike" isn't, therefore, first or primarily a moral endeavor. It is, rather, stepping into Jesus' distinctive psychology. Non-anxiousness creates the capacity for cruciformity. 

Returning to Hebrews 2, all this explains why fear is the power of the devil in our lives. Anxiety is the string the devil pulls to undermine our love. To cut this string we need to cultivate the psychological capacities that make love possible. I've suggested that Jesus' eccentric identity points the way toward loving non-anxiousness. 

And critical to providing the metaphysical ground of this eccentric identity was Jesus' defeat of death itself. As John Chrysostom once observed:

The person who does not fear death is outside the tyranny of the devil...When the devil finds such a soul he can accomplish in it none of his works. Tell me, what can the devil threaten? The loss of money or honor? Or exile from one's country? These are small things to those "who count not even his life dear," said the blessed Paul.

Do you not see that in casting out the tyranny of death, Christ has dissolved the strength of the devil?