more on being a chronically anxious society

I am continuing my reading in Edwin Friedman's book A Failure of Nerve, and am finding myself constantly nodding and wearing out my highlighter.

Friedman holds that the chronically anxious society will focus on the symptoms of its anxiety and mistake them for the causes of that anxiety—be they violence, crime, drugs, "red-vs.-blue", unemployment, etc.—rather than focusing on "the emotional processes that promote those symptoms and keep them chronic....

[T]he more systemic chronic anxiety becomes in any [relationship system], the more likely that relationship system is to stay oriented toward its symptoms, or the more likely to engage in 'foreign entanglements'—wars and international crises for nations; intense struggles at neighborhood swimming pools, religious institutions or school boards for families—as a way to avoid facing the emotional processes that are driving that [relationship system] to become symptomatic" (Friedman, 60). 

The only exit from chronic societal anxiety is through the path of acute and more painful examination of the causes of the anxiety. This requires a self-differentiated leader who has the vision to lead into and through the deep pain of systemic healing. Without this, the system will invariably choose the chronic but endurable pain of the symptomatic over the acute pain of healing—think "arthritis" vs. "hip replacement", or "toothache" vs. "root canal".

The church in the West is, I believe, undergoing this societal regression. We find ourselves reacting to the world around us, getting involved in battles with the culture, feeling the symptoms of being an organization that more and more is viewed as arcane, meaningless, pointless—even dangerous. Where Christianity was once the warp and weft of Western culture, we now find ourselves relegated to the rag-bin of society... at least in the culture as it is conveyed by the entertainment and news industries. As we feel our influence and even meaning slipping into the "laugh-track" category, we are more and more drawn to focus on the symptoms of our anxiety, ignoring the primary causes of the fear.

Many leaders are content to rail against the symptoms, be they abortion, divorce, pornography, the "big one" i.e., same-gendered sexuality, or any number of societal ills. But seldom do these leaders address the deeper cause: the Church's failure to engender discipleship in her members.

H. Richard Niebuhr, in his seminal work Christ and Culture (1951), discussed five models of the influence of Jesus on culture. I believe the most accurate of those five models is that of Christ as Transformer of Culture. This model understands the role of Christians to be the conversion and redemption of culture so that all of society may be about the work of the Kingdom of God. It is only when Christians are faithfully following Jesus—acting as disciples, not just churchgoers—that this transformation is possible.

Self-differentiated Church leaders must address this root cause of our chronic anxiety as the people of God in order to begin to relieve that anxiety so that the disciples of Jesus can fulfill their call to bring the transformative work of Jesus to the broken world around us.

leadership in an age of anxiety

It is becoming clearer and clearer to me that the world is, as my coach Kirk Kirlin says it, accelerating toward the abyss—aboard a bullet-train to Hell, if you will. We who follow Jesus know that only in the radical transformation of society by the Truth of Jesus Christ can we hope to see the brakes applied to that train.

And yet most of us simply sit back and shake our heads, and wait for someone to take up the crusade.

I am forced to ask myself this question: Who will exhibit this leadership if not you? What, Don, are you waiting for—someone else to lead? (Well, yeah, frankly...)


In his book A Failure of Nerve, Edwin Friedman posits that we are living in what he terms "a society in regression"; that is, a society where the breakdown in relationships engenders chronic anxiety. Such a society is earmarked, Friedman says, "by increasing polarization, rigidity of belief, clouded vision, and an inability to change direction." He compares the scourge of political correctness to the Inquisition of medieval Europe, declaring both to be the result of a culture-wide regressive emotional state [p. 52]. This anxiety is characterized by five characteristics of chronically anxious families: intense reactivity of members to events and each other; herding, i.e., placing emphasis on togetherness above individuation and causing everyone to adapt to the least mature members; blame displacement, focusing on being a victim rather than taking personal responsibility for their own destiny and being; a low threshold for pain that breeds a quick fix mentality; and the lack of well-differentiated leadership, "which both stems from and contributes to the first four" [pp. 53-54].

The solution to the anxiety, Friedman declares, is real leadership. In order to break through the regression, real leaders must lead. This means that they must self-differentiate, that is, be sufficiently aware of and in touch with their own personhood that they are not drawn into the anxiety of those around them, and be willing to allow others the consequences of their own actions. When a self-differentiated leader comes to the fore, says Friedman, the anxiety of the system around him begins to lessen.

If we hope to see society transformed by the Gospel, we must see ourselves transformed by the Gospel. If we long to stop the train speeding toward Gehenna, then we must stand firm in our faith and
lead. We must not allow ourselves to be herded into a 'lowest common denominator" society, but rather accept responsibility for our own choices and recognize that we are called to be a non-anxious presence in the world around us.