Is "be anxious for nothing" a good translation?

A multimedia post from my research presentation

This week I’m sharing with you the audio and visuals from a presentation I gave at the Women of Valor research colloquium on Wheaton’s campus last week. I gave a summary of my research paper on anxiety/worry in Philippians. Right here is the audio from the talk. I recorded it in voice notes in my phone so it’s not a professional recording but it should be clear enough to listen. Below the audio, I have the transcription of the talk, lightly edited for readability. The audio contains a short Q&A afterwards that isn’t in the written transcript.

(Pro tip: Rev.com has AI transcription options that are very good and much cheaper than their regular transcription services. That’s what I used here.)

How many of you saw yesterday's episode of Ted Lasso? I won't spoil it. This episode takes place in Amsterdam, and I lived in the Netherlands for eight years. So my husband and I really enjoyed the episode, especially a scene where they talk about the Dutch emotion "gezellig." And this is an untranslatable word, there's not a direct English equivalent, but gezellig is like you're with your friends, it's a relationship between people, it's not just an internal state. You're cozy, you are having something nice to drink, and it's this togetherness and family and it's this emotion concept that we don't really have in English. Cozy doesn't quite convey it. When I was living in the Netherlands, I learned this emotion concept from my Dutch friends and I learned different scenes that give gezelligheid. And I eventually began to be able to construct this emotion myself and to identify, this is an instance of gezellig.

When I moved back to the US and started doing pre-research for my dissertation, I read a book by Batja Mesquita, who is a Dutch social psychologist, and she wrote about gezellig and she said, "It's a winter emotion." And I thought, I have been learning this emotion concept for eight years, but I missed a vital component of it that a Dutch person would know. It's like warm around the fire and something hot to drink, and I missed that whole component of it.

This is a good example of how we struggle to understand emotion concepts in Scripture. If I can't truly understand an emotion from another culture that's not that different from my own, how can I truly understand the emotions in Scripture across time and space and language?  

In my dissertation, I'm working with two emotion theorists, Lisa Feldman Barrett and Batja Mesquita. And I love the two of them together because they're like BFFs, they are ladies hyping ladies. And when you read their research, they're always talking about how great the other's work is and their friendship. And it's like what we're doing here tonight, like women supporting women. I love it.

Lisa Feldman Barrett wrote a really important book called How Emotions Are Made. And in her book she says that emotions are the meaning that our minds make from our bodies' sensations. So we take our interoception, what's going on inside our bodies, and our prediction function, anticipating what's going to happen next. And our concept system of all the things we know and have experienced and we interpret that. This all happens in microseconds, and we've constructed an emotion.

Mesquita has a complementary theory about how cultures shape emotion. (See her book Between Us.) Our emotion concepts come not just from inside of us, but from our language and our parents and other socializing figures, our pastors and our teachers and the books we read.  

Emotions are not universal. They're not basic and inborn to every human. The ability to have emotions is universal, but the specific emotions that each person in each culture constructs are different. And so again, this points to the trouble we have in translating emotion in the Bible.

David Konstan has written a really helpful book on translating emotion in the Bible. And he points out that we really can't translate word for word. We have to translate the entirety of the emotion concept. Again, if I can't grasp a Dutch emotion, how am I supposed to grasp what Paul is talking about when he says, for example, be anxious for nothing In Philippians 4:6?

In Philippians, Paul is writing to a church that he seems to have great affection for. Philippi is a really long way from Ephesus and Rome, and he was probably imprisoned in either Ephesus or Rome (or Caesarea) when he was writing to the Philippians. Their friend Epaphroditus had traveled from Philippi to wherever Paul was imprisoned and was supposed to probably be helping him long term, but he got very, very sick on the journey and he was so sick he almost died. Word had probably gotten back to the Philippian churches. They were really worried about him and Paul was worried that they were worried, he was worried about Epaphrodituts, he was worried about the Philippians. Everybody's worried about everybody. There's a lot of worrying going on in this scenario.  

So Paul has this great affection for them. He wants to make sure that they are okay. So he writes this letter and he's going to send it with Epaphroditus back to Philippi, who has recovered enough to travel. Then Paul is going to send Timothy on a little bit later to follow. And then Timothy will bring back their response.

Paul uses the word merimnaō twice in the letter, once with a very positive connotation and once with a very (potentially) negative connotation. This is also a word that's used in Matthew 6 when Jesus says, don't be worried about what you're going to wear, what you're going to eat. He uses it in Luke 12 in a similar sermon. He uses it when he's talking to Martha: Martha, Martha, you're worried and distracted by many things. Paul also uses it in the Corinthian correspondence. So this is an emotion word that can be translated concern or worry or anxious, but it also has some other meanings. And so for us to understand this emotion word in Paul, we can't just map our word anxious onto it and assume that we know what Paul is talking about.  

In Philippians 2:20, Paul writes about Timothy, it's a commendation about Timothy's character that he is genuinely concerned for your welfare. This seems to be a very positive kind of concern. He is concerned for you. It's not self focused, it's others focused. And then in Philippians 4:6 after talking about some of the fears, concerns, and conflicts that are going on, he tells them, do not be anxious about anything. But is the best translation for that word our English word anxious, which now has such a medicalized meaning? Is that actually the best way to keep translating this in English?

We get our emotion concepts from a lot of places. I've been using this wonderful free app called How We Feel. You can do emotional check-ins throughout the day and you get to use all the pretty little circles and you talk about your affect and your valence and and how you're feeling. They give little one sentence descriptions of each emotion. So their definition of anxious is "worried and uneasy about an uncertain outcome."

I like to use these Little Otter emotion cards with my kids. My daughter Estel, who's with me tonight, loves these cards. And I'll say, how are you feeling? Do you wanna go through my emotion cards and tell me how you're feeling today? Let's talk about your emotions, where you're feeling it in your body, what you want to do with it. And they're these beautiful illustrated watercolor pictures, little animals. So you can have an Anxious Butterfly or a Worried Whale. And the Anxious Butterfly has "an uneasy, uncomfortable feeling often related to worry and fear." So is that what Paul means, this feeling of uncertainty, a kind of jitteryness, or does he mean having a panic attack? Does he mean an anxiety disorder? Does he mean generalized anxiety disorder, complex post-traumatic stress disorder, social anxiety? Does he mean something that you have to take medication for because your body feels like it's going to come apart in pieces and you can't control it? Is that what Paul's talking about? Like, don't do this thing that you have no control over that's happening in your body. And if we say anxious when we translate Scripture, this medicalized definition of anxiety is likely what we are going to think of in the US today.  

So is merimnaō a sin? Is anxiety a sin? Those are two different questions because those are two different culturally-bound emotion concepts.

John Piper thinks so. In his podcast, he says, with regard to anxiety, the answer is yes, "Paul and Jesus explicitly commanded us not to be anxious. So to be anxious is a sin." Is that what Paul is saying?

Or this dude, Justin on Twitter with 23,000 followers. "Anxiety is sin." And when someone called him out and said, would you really say this to someone who has anxiety? He says, oh, my wife does. "And the worst possible thing I could do is tell her is that Jesus' commands are completely out of reach and the Gospel is insufficient to overcome what God clearly calls sin. To tell a person this is merely psychological is a lie and leaves her hopeless." So he is condemning his wife's anxiety disorder. Do you wanna guess what the name of his podcast is? I am not making this up. It is the Theo Bros podcast. We have a bonafide in the wild theobro right here.

Is the medical condition of anxiety what Paul is talking about? Or the emotion concept of uncertainty? This emotion concept that comes up in our bodies before our prefrontal cortex can even engage. Our emotions happen before we can make moral decisions about them or about what to do with them. They are, in that sense, uncontrollable. Now, what we can do over time as we disciple our emotions in our life of faith is learn to construct emotions that we learned from Jesus that are most helpful for us in our lives. And we can change our emotion concepts gradually over time, but it is not something you can physically change in a moment. So when we say anxiety is sin in our sermons, what does that mean? By the way, no commentators back up the idea that anxiety is a sin. I found many examples of pastors and writers calling anxiety a sin and not a single New Testament commentary that does so, so there's a disconnect between the scholarship and the pastoring on this issue.  

So what is a possible better translation? Scot McKnight in his forthcoming Second Testament translation translates it "do not be disturbed," which I like, it's much more gentle. We don't have a medicalized meaning attached to "disturbed" in English. And so I think that gets a lot more at what Paul is doing. Paul is consoling them. Paul is encouraging them, he loves them. There is no condemnation in that letter, but it's a letter of affection and consolation and friendship. There's no mention of sin anywhere in the letter. So I think do not be disturbed possibly gets at a better meaning. BDAG gives "to be unduly concerned" as a possible translation of merimnaō. And I think that works so much better because it's maybe about the focus or the degree or the rumination on things that are hard and painful.  

The more we do ruminate on difficult things, the more we will predict and then construct those uncomfortable emotions. So there is something to be said about what we ruminate on and therefore what we will predict and construct. So maybe "stop ruminating on these things" that are so hard. Stop immersing yourself in them or soaking yourself in them. But by prayer and thanksgiving, turn them to God. It's an encouragement, not a condemnation. 

As I was writing this paper and finishing my proposal and my husband was traveling for work, our basement flooded and our washing machine broke...in two separate incidents. I have five kids. And that was a lot of laundry to wash. And I was so anxious, my hands were shaking, and I had this crushing weight on my chest. I was so anxious as I was writing this paper on anxiety, and I was thinking, this is the most ironic thing I've ever experienced. I used all my therapeutic tools from four years of trauma therapy, like somatically calming my body and changing my thoughts and taking care of myself. And I was still struggling. I said, I'm going to try Paul's advice. I'm going to pray. And I prayed, "God, I can't handle the mental load of laundry. I can't do it this week. I'm going to close the door and I'm gonna leave the piles of dirty clothes and I just have to write this paper." One of my husband's relatives lives in town and they called and said, we'd like to wash your laundry for you. If you drop it off, we will wash-dry-fold and bring it back to you. And when I dropped it off, they said, "Hey, you don't have to give laundry another thought." 

That is when I knew it wasn't just a general prayer answer, it was a very specific prayer answer. God heard me say, I cannot think about laundry. And God's people stepped in to help and said, you don't have to think about laundry. I didn't have to ruminate on it. I didn't have to worry about it because God and God's people in community stepped in to help. And there is this community element of Paul's solution as well. I'm going to send Epaphroditus back to you so that you know he is okay and you'll feel better and I'll feel better. Timothy cares about your concerns. He's gonna come too. There is this community sharing. So Paul's solution is not just isolate yourself and make yourself stop thinking anxious thoughts, but it's turn to God, don't be disturbed. God cares about you and God's people are here to care for you as well. So I suggest that we potentially consider how we translate this in English or at least how we preach about it. 

Let me know what you think about this post format! Would you like to see more emails with this kind of presentation?