Paranoia, long before it became a psychological term, served as a fitting antonym for not just trust, peace, but love. We know this in part because the Apostle Paul, under the inspiration of the Spirit tells us in I Corinthians 13 that one of the defining qualities of love is that it “thinks no evil.” This doesn’t mean that the more love I have the less evil I will think. Rather it speaks of how love causes us to look at others, how it removes from us the temptation to think the worst of them, to believe, for instance, that they are out to get us. Love looks at the beloved and believes, hopes, trusts that the beloved desires only blessing for the lover.
Paranoia, like sin, began in the garden. Satan, in order to deceive Eve, had to persuade her not only that God was wrong, “You will not surely die” but that God was withholding blessing from her, that He was not willing to share the knowledge of good and evil. He got her to believe, despite the overflowing of blessings He had already given her and her husband, that He was selfish, that He was only looking out for Himself.
Which is why our sins not only give rise to the wrath of God, but also to His hurt. Wrath says, “How dare you defy Me when I am the maker of heaven and earth?” Hurt says, “How could you think that of Me, after I have loved you so well?” I suspect that most of us think that the burden of helping a loved one deal with paranoia is the frustration of trying to diminish their fears. We want them to be blessed with peace, but their fears get in the way. That may be a frustration, but it is not the real hardship. The real hardship is being suspected by those we love.
Sin is not sickness in the sense that it’s something that happens to us, over which we have no control. It is however, sickness in this sense- it is truly twisted and unnatural. It is bad enough that we might distrust those who love us well, who are among the most trustworthy on the planet. How much worse is it to distrust, to suspect with all the fervor of a rabid dog, the one who loves us not just well but perfectly, infinitely and unchangeably? The One who not only has love, feels love, shows love, but who is love.
He is the Great Physician. He is healing us. But how often when He draws near, to pour into us the water of life, to inject us with the balm of Gilead, do we look at Him with terror in our eyes, screaming at Him to keep His hands off us. He is not a God who will love us if we learn to obey Him. Rather He is the God whom we will obey as we learn that He loves us.