According to the Christian faith, the fundamental human problem is not lack of material resources, unjust government, or lack of education. It is the disruption of the relationship between God and human beings. Out of this disruption, flow all of the addictions, injustices, and abuses of human life.
The Bible gives this fundamental problem a name. It calls it sin. Sin is the conditions and actions of being out of accord with what we ought to be and what we ought to do. It is first and foremost about a wrong relationship with God, but it disrupts human relationships as well.
Sin is worthy of condemnation, but when we look at it more closely, we often feel sympathy for those in sin. Why is this? Because sin is complex, not simple.
An insight I received from the study of American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr was that sin is rooted in anxiety. He said, anxiety arises out of our ability to see the world and its threats to our well-being combined with our inability to do much about them. This is not sin in itself, but it becomes the occasion for sin.
A quick perusal of the sins of the Bible will show you that this is the case. Sin arises out of people’s anxious response to threats. Cain has anxiety about his standing with God, and so he kills Abel. Joseph’s brothers have anxiety over their relationship with their father, and so they sell their favored brother into slavery. Pharaoh has anxiety over the growth of the children of Israel and so enslaves them. The people of Israel have anxiety over Pharaoh, provision, and status and so complain against the Lord. And on and on it goes.
There are two responses to the threats of this world. We can trust the Lord, or we can try to come up with our own solution. This latter response is pride. This pride that we can solve our own problems and are bigger than we are leads to disruption and dissolution.
In this series, I am going to look at one example of this. We will see how sin grows out of anxiety. The prideful response to anxiety leads to choices and actions that disrupt the family. But the good news is that God does not leave Sarah, Abraham, or Hagar in sin. He makes Himself known, and this brings a healing element into the relationship.
Sarah’s Anxiety
“She had borne him no children.” Some people do not want children, but for those who do, how painful it is to go through this experience!
Years can go by. You have your dreams of a family. You visit doctors. Nothing seems to work. People ask you without knowing the dagger they are placing into your heart, “Are you all thinking of having children?” You start to envision that the dream you once had may not become a reality.
This is a source of anxiety and a stress on a relationship for almost anybody, but there are two things that must have made this situation even more stressful.
In the society in which Abraham lived, the status of a woman was tied much more closely to child-bearing than it is today. Sarah was not going to start her own not-for-profit, find a career, or engage in a hobby that would make her a social influencer. Being a homemaker was pretty much it. And it wasn’t working out well.
The second thing that could have made it more stressful was the promise of God. God had promised to Abraham that he would give him descendants, even though he had not had any children yet. This might seem like a comfort, but consider. He had not yet clearly said that Sarah would be the mother of his descendants. In addition, how often do we get anxiety about what God’s promises for our good will look like? They may not turn out how we think. We can especially worry about this when it takes a long time.
Sarah and Abraham had waited a long time for the fulfillment of this promise. It had been about ten years since God had told him that he would bless the world through his descendants. Year after year went by, and nothing seemed to be happening.
So, what would they do? What would you do? What do you do when nothing seems to be happening and you are worried about it?
Sarah’s Anxiety Reducer
When nothing seems to be happening, our anxiety can go up. This can lead us to want to do something to relieve the tension. Feeling out of control, we want to try and take control.
That’s precisely what Sarah did. She said to Abraham, “Behold now, the Lord has prevented me from bearing children. Go in to my servant; it may be that I shall obtain children by her” (16:2). Sarah would have a child through her servant Hagar. That child would be hers, and she would raise it as her own.
This may seem like a crazy solution, but it was relatively common in Abraham’s day. This occurs later in the book of Genesis when Jacob’s wives gave him their servants so that he could sleep with them and have children by them for them. We also have written historical records from that time that show that this was commonly done. A servant would often be given to a master, and the resulting children would belong to the master’s wife. That was a common way of dealing with childlessness in a society in which having an heir was also really important.
In light of that context, the solution seemed to solve quite a few problems. Abraham needed an heir and descendants. This would give him the basis for that. Sarah could play a key role in this because the child of her servant would be “hers.” It would also solve God’s problem because He had made a promise, and it wasn’t clear how this would be fulfilled.
So, what could go wrong? The problem was that it was contrary to God’s law. No one has said it better than Jesus Himself, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate” (Matthew 19:4–6). God had established marriage as a beautiful institution that was designed for one man and one woman for one lifetime. It doesn’t always work out this way, but this is the optimal design. Sometimes, this is broken through no fault of one’s own. However, to intentionally break that relationship is contrary to what God wants, even if the society around you says it is OK.
It was, in other words, a common sense decision that was completely wrong. What happened after that Abraham slept with Hagar illustrates the problems that occur when God’s order is broken.
But it’s important to stop here and not miss how we might fit into the story, how we might be a Sarah. We might not have a slave or give that slave to our spouse in order to bear children, but we might make decisions that make sense in the moment but are completely wrong in order to relieve our anxiety.
How often do we seek to take control of situations only to make it worse? How often do we pressure those around us to do things that will make us feel better? How often do we make rash decisions that will help relieve tension but are not prayerfully thought out? How often do we see a problem and demand that something be done about it by those around us?
Abraham’s Anxiety Reducer
What role did Abraham play in all of this? “And Abram listened to the voice of Sarai.” The NIV says, “Abram agreed to what Sarai said” (Gen. 16:2). What was his response? He just went along with it. Passivity.
This was a common response for the patriarchs, the men in Genesis. When their lives and wives were threatened, they just told them to say they are their “sisters” and then let them bear the consequences of their actions. Jacob ran away to Haran. Jacob went along with his wives’ proposals to sleep with their servants. Jacob did nothing about the rape of his daughter. Passivity was the way they responded to anxiety.
This is a very common way of dealing with anxiety. It’s easy to see the stress of the loud, angry person. It’s harder to see the stress of the passive. But running away from a problem is just as common as trying to control it.
Think back to the pandemic. Many people thought they could control it and tried to take measures to keep it under control. In hindsight, that was probably a delusion. However, many people dealt with the stress and anxiety by just disconnecting. I have a friend who had a worship leader who was part of their church plant. The pandemic hit, and he simply ghosted the church planter. He never heard from him again, as far as I know. His way of dealing with the pandemic was running away from all stress.
What is interesting here is that Sarah’s response to anxiety was trying to control what she could not and should not control. Abraham’s response was not controlling that which he could have and should have controlled. That’s passivity.
This whole dynamic is very common in relationships. One person feels like something should be done. The other person finds it easier to just go along with it. These two ways of dealing with anxiety go hand in hand.
Where do you end up just walking around problems? When do you just go along, even when the consequences are not good? Where are you not taking responsibility where you could and should?
Conclusion and Application
A lot of our reactions to anxiety are virtually automatic. We are not aware of what we are doing. So, part of finding better ways of doing things is becoming more aware of how we currently do things. Start with thinking about what causes you to feel anxious.
Then, think about how you react to that anxiety? Do you try to control? Do you run away? Or something else?
If we are going to deal with sin, then we have to look below the surface. We have to see what we are reacting to. We have to see how the common problems of life push us toward wrong solutions.
The alternative to these responses to anxiety is to learn to trust in the Lord and wait on the Lord. That’s what Sarah and Abraham could have done. God had just shown Him in a big way that He would take care of them. He had protected them and enabled them to free his captive nephew.
But how quickly we forget! How quickly we forget what Jesus has done for us. We let the anxieties of life swallow us up and then seek to get it all under control, or we run from it. The alternative is to face life as it is trusting the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who gave Him up for us all that He who did not fail to give Him up will also give us all other things as well.