Day 11: The Pressures of the World

The problem of mental torment is one of the most common problems of our age. Praise God, that He promises us deliverance from this mental torment. Today we will make a start on how we can obtain release from it.

We need to understand that, in our contemporary culture and civilization, we are exposed to many different kinds of pressures, and they seem always to be increasing, never diminishing. They would be far too numerous to attempt to name them all, but let me just give you some simple examples.

One common form of pressure is peer pressure from our own particular group, our own age level, our own social level – the pressure to conform, to be like the rest of the group. This is manifested in a very obvious way when children are in school together. There is a pressure to do what all the other kids are doing. For instance, a child may be pressured into smoking marijuana because all the other kids are doing it. Or using swear words or unclean words simply because everybody else is doing it and not to do it makes you stand out like a sore thumb.

The pressure goes on as we grow up in life – in upper brackets it's known as "keeping up with the Joneses". The other family across the street has got a new car, so we have to have a new car; they built a swimming pool, so we have got to build a swimming pool. There is an almost ceaseless pressure to be like others and to keep up with others, often in a way that's contrary to our own inner nature and real personality.

Again, another obvious pressure is economic pressure, the pressure to earn enough to satisfy your material desires and to provide some security for your old age and to do the things that people do. And most things in that order – the key to being able to do them is money. So there's a continual pressure to get money. And usually, no matter how much money people get, it never seems to be enough.

Then there are some more basic pressures. The mere pressure to survive, as for instance in the fight against disease. Many people have had a condition diagnosed, which in a shorter or a longer term is likely to prove fatal. So you may be one of those fighting against a disease in which the prognosis is that it's going to take your life, maybe in a few months, maybe in a few years. And so you have this kind of sentence of death hanging over you – a form of pressure.