THE most violated commandment

If frequency of admonition is the measure, then the most disobeyed command in all of scripture is “fear not” and its variants, such as “have courage” and “be anxious for nothing.” By most accounts it appears over 350 times in scripture, and in fact some screwball numerology often rears its misguided head to claim the exact count is precisely 365, one for every day of the year.¹ Jesus says “take courage” or “do not be afraid” at least 20 times by my reckoning.

Make no mistake about it: anxiety is caused by sin. However, it is generally not the sin of the person who is anxious, but the sin of our (great)^N grand-pappy Adam.² Our fallen state has left us all with corrupted natures suffering all manner of problems that were not part of the original blueprint ³, derailments that will inevitably lead us to violate the command to “let tomorrow worry about tomorrow” as surely as the command against coveting your neighbor’s Audi. (Or, if you are into trendy grocery stores, you neighbor's Aldi.) Perhaps each of us is congenitally broken to a pathological level in one or more directions, including those who are overly prone to anxiety.

The two-part advice given to the chronically anxious Christian should be:

1. Get into the Word, because that is the common advice for everything that ails us spiritually.
2. Seek therapy and/or medical attention, because God works by secondary means and healthcare appears to be the secondary means he has provided. 

Do not, by any means rooted in self-righteousness, neglect to give advice number 2. And if you think a Christian should never follow advice number 2, do not pass Go and do not collect $200.

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¹ Color me unimpressed until it can be shown that the command appears 365¼ times.

^N That's not supposed to be a footnote, but a numerical power.

² Yes, I know that we are responsible for the sins we commit as a result of our inherited nature. Unfortunate, yes, but thems the rules. However I am not offering a theological discourse here, just a descriptive blurb.

³ Including gender dysphoria. I have heard/read more than one evangelical say that there is no such thing, implying that all people claiming gender dysphoria are more or less making it up or self-creating the condition. As if God said: as a result of the fall, people will have all sorts of problems to deal with, virtually anything you can imagine, many of which are absolutely horrifying and tragic—but not that one. Nope, that one is entirely a Palagian malady. A position which is utter nonsense and, forgive the redundancy, very non-Augustinian.