You never do this. You always do that. We literally just talked about this. This again? You sound exactly like your parents right now. Can’t you take a joke? Can’t we just drop this and move on? Those are just some of the greatest hits of toxic communication in relationships. They are all designed to either “win” or end an argument with a significant other, and yet the inevitable result of tossing any of them into the conversation is always less like pouring water on a fire and more like pouring gasoline. But as incendiary as all of those are, there is one phrase that is, by far, the most combustible and dangerous thing you can throw into an argument.
And that phrase is: “calm down.” As a popular meme puts it:
“never in the history of calming down has anyone calmed down by being told to calm down.” “Calm down” is the Plutonium-239 of toxic communication: radioactive, unstable, and, when employed by someone who knows how to use it, the most reliable source for powering a nuclear detonation. Drop a “calm down” in a heated argument with your partner and you are going to see a mushroom cloud.
If you are the survivor of a “calm down” attack, then you know why it is so explosive. And it is an attack; specifically, it is demeaning on at least three levels. First, it implies that your display of emotion is excessive, while the person who is telling you to calm down is the one who’s acting rationally. Second, it implies that your display of emotion is unjustified, so again, you are overreacting while they are responding logically. Third, it’s an imperative statement, so the other person is implicitly assuming a position of authority to both evaluate and direct your emotions for you.
All of those things are individually corrosive in a relationship, but put them together, and you light off a chain reaction that is impossible to contain. Now: if you are, in fact, legitimately trying to the lower the temperature in an argument and feel like your partner is struggling to regulate their emotions, it is far more effective and loving to assure them that you see and hear what they are feeling and invite them to explain what’s generating those feelings for them. Once that’s out on the table, then you can work together to figure out how to change those dynamics, becoming partners in solving a problem with the other rather than opponents trying to win an argument against the other. But, no matter what you do, do not tell them to calm down.
That’s why I’ve never liked this passage from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, because on the face of it, it seems like he’s telling all of us to calm down. “Therefore, I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear…. Which of you by worrying can add a single hour to your span of life?…Therefore do not worry, saying ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’” I mean, it’s not like those aren’t legitimate things to be concerned about.
Food, water, and clothing are the most basic of the most basic needs of human survival. And Jesus is talking to people who did not necessarily know where or when their next food and clothing was coming from. Water, at least, was generally a communal resource, though still not a thing to be taken for granted in such an arid environment. But food insecurity is still a systemic injustice for us in the 21st century; the United Way of the Greater Lehigh Valley says one in every ten residents in the Lehigh Valley are food insecure, meaning they lack reliable access to affordable, nutritious food. Fifteen percent of children in the Lehigh Valley are food insecure.
And we live in a time when food insecurity and hunger are issues of distribution and access, not production; there is well more than enough food being produced on the planet to end world hunger and provide every single person on earth with the nutrition they need for health and growth. That was not the case in first century Judea; food insecurity and outright starvation was a real concern and regular threat. And the same goes for adequate clothing. Yet here Jesus is telling them and us just not to worry about food or clothing, about when or where it will come from. Really? That’s what you’ve got, Jesus? “Calm down”?!?
Well, I don’t actually think that’s what Jesus is saying. Jesus is clearly not a toxic partner trying to manipulate us. If anything, I think he’s more like Bob Marley, or more accurately, Bob Marley is more like him. Now stay with me for a minute on this. Bob Marley, of course, is the world-renowned Jamaican musician whose version of reggae music took the world by storm in the 1970s and has never really stopped; his greatest hits album continues to be a perennial best-seller, and one of his biggest hits is a song called “Three Little Birds,” which is often mistakenly referred to as “Don’t Worry About a Thing” or “Every Little Thing’s Gonna be Alright” because of the repetition of those phrases in the chorus:
Don’t worry about a thing / ‘cause every little thing is gonna be alright
Singing don’t worry about a thing / ‘cause every little thing is gonna be alright
Rise up this morning / smiled with the rising sun
Three little birds pitch by my doorstep
Singin’ sweet songs of melodies pure and true
Sayin’ “this is my message to you:
Don’t worry about a thing / ‘cause every little thing is gonna be alright”
Now, if you’re thinking, “hey, that sounds a lot like the Scripture lesson today,” there’s a reason for that. One of the problems with casual listeners of Bob Marley, and especially those who only listen to his greatest hits album, is that they tend to associate him with a kind of superficial good-vibe grooviness, and a lot of his white fans, in particular, have essentially appropriated his music that way, even if unconsciously.
But Marley was actually a multilayered artist whose music included sharp political commentary, rousing activist anthems, and theological and spiritual exploration. This song, “Three Little Birds,” is unabashedly referencing Jesus’ teachings in this section of the Sermon on the Mount. Marley practiced Rastafari rather than Christianity, but Rastafari has deep roots in Christian thought and Scripture, including a Bible based on the King James Version, and it’s clear Marley was tapping into that source for this song.
Again, this song is often interpreted as an anthem of easy-going but superficial positive thinking, but that’s only possible by disassociating it from its origins both in Scripture and in Marley’s music. In the song, Marley essentially places himself inside Jesus’ teachings about the “birds of the air,” watching these three little birds singing sweetly rather than scrambling to “sow or reap or gather into barns,” trusting that God provides for them in the order of things. Thus, their larger message to him is that of Jesus: “don’t worry about a thing.”
But this isn’t some hazy, positive vibe indifference to the challenges of reality. This song appears on Marley’s seminal 1977 album entitled, significantly, Exodus. The title refers first to a hope that his homeland of Jamaica would be delivered from the oppression of economic turmoil and political unrest that was particularly gripping it in the mid-1970s. It also referred to Marley’s personal exodus from Jamaica, because he had narrowly escaped an assassination attempt against him just three months before recording the album, forcing him to then flee the country he loved for his own safety and that of his family.
This song, then, is not an abstract, sentimental fantasy of warm tropical tranquility, nor is it a form of toxic communication. Rather, it is a prophetic word spoken both into and out of a context of economic angst, social conflict, political violence, and spiritual hunger, both for Marley himself and for the people and nation and culture that he was writing both from and for.
That is was Jesus is saying, and why and how and where he is saying it, as well. Jesus, like us in our own way, was speaking both into and out of a context of economic angst, and social conflict, and political violence, and spiritual hunger. But when he says, “do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or your body, what you will wear,” the point is not that those aren’t legitimate things to worry about, nor is it that we should just tune those concerns out and expect every little thing to work out alright somehow on its own.
Neither Bob Marley nor Jesus himself thinks that. The whole point is that everything, every thing, big and little, is in the hands of a loving God who is actively at work redeeming our world, building up the kingdom of heaven here and now so that God’s will is truly done on earth as it is in heaven. And if there’s anything that’s crystal clear in Scripture, it’s that God’s will is for a world, a realm, that is ordered according to God’s love and justice and mercy and peace, a realm in which nobody has to worry about what they will eat or drink or wear or anything else because the whole point of that world is for everyone to flourish in community and harmony and well-being in loving relationship with each other and with God.
So what is the secret to not worrying? Well, Jesus makes it much more clear than Bob Marley did: “seek first the kingdom of God and its righteousness,” he says, “and all these things will be given to you as well.” By all of these things he does not mean whatever we want, but rather what we need, the things that are necessary to live and that can cause so much worry if we don’t have them.
And we eliminate our worries for them not by positive thinking, nor by personal accumulation, but by first seeking the kingdom of God and its righteousness, because God isn’t focused on making sure we as individuals have what we need, but that everyone has what they need, that every little thing is going to be alright for everyone. So it is by seeking that for everyone that we find it for ourselves, because God’s kingdom is for the well-being of everyone.
It is that focus that is “finding true north” for our lives and for the Christian faith. The concept of “finding true north” became somewhat buzzy in corporate leadership thinking in the last decade or so as a metaphor for identifying your bedrock goals, values, and purposes as a company or leader and making all your decisions based on how they refer and relate to that fixed point.
Strangely, most of the work I’ve seen on the concept of true north misses out on at least half the power of the metaphor. True North, as you probably know, is a fixed geographic point: the North Pole, the northernmost point of the earth’s rotational access. It’s called “True North,” though, to distinguish it from Magnetic North, which is where the needle of a compass points, the northern end of the Earth’s magnetic field, but while they are roughly in the same area, especially when you are at a great distance from them, they are not the same thing.
Magnetic North shifts based on both time and your location on the earth; to be able to navigate with real accuracy using a compass, you have to know the difference between Magnetic North and True North and compensate accordingly, otherwise your compass will ultimately lead you astray because you end up being pulled according to magnetic north instead of the fixed point of True North.
The point of True North, then, is that it lets you utilize Magnetic North as an aid rather than getting pulled off track by it. That’s what Jesus means by “seek first the kingdom of God and its righteousness,” which is True North, “and all these things will be given to you as well” is Magnetic North. Those things can be a source of endless worry and anxiety and get us very lost if we confuse them with the True North of God’s kingdom and let them pull us away. But if we stay firm in seeking first the kingdom of God and its righteousness, then those things can be a helpful resource to us as we move through our lives and discipleship.
So, in this time in which we find ourselves, a time of economic angst and social conflict and political violence and spiritual hunger, of congregational and pastoral transition: “don’t worry about a thing; ‘cause every little thing is gonna be alright.” Not because it will just all work out in the end. Not because there’s nothing legitimate to be worried or anxious about. But because in continuing to seek first the kingdom of God and its righteousness, our position and our path in relation to God’s kingdom remains clear, and we can be part of God’s work in this world, here and now and into the future, to ensure that every little thing will be fully and finally good and right.