Test Anxiety

The latecomers settled themselves into the Sunday school class where I was substituting for the regular teacher. I began the lesson by passing around tablets of paper and a box of pens and asked everyone to take both paper and pen. The comfortable and welcoming atmosphere suddenly electrified with tension and anxiety. These older adults, most of whom had been attending Sunday school and church for years and years, found themselves emotionally in a threatening school setting and simply froze up.

I quickly explained that I was not giving a test. Instead, I would be reading the story of King David’s involvement with Bathsheba and its eventual resolution, and I wanted them to listen and make notes of the decisions David made along the way. Then we spent a few minutes discussing the whole concept of "test anxiety," laughed about the class reactions and began our lesson.

However, this wave of anxiety that gripped everyone intrigued me. What caused the fear? Were they afraid that someone might test them on their biblical knowledge? Or was it just something about the idea of takings tests in general that everyone found distasteful?

I think much of the anxiety arises from the fact that tests expose our interiors and provide a form of accountability that most would rather escape. And if we base how much we are worth on our grades, the pressure to perform can wipe us out. Just the week before I taught this Sunday school class, I had been putting a quiz on-line for some students in a seminary. As I read the quiz, I realized that question five gave away the answer to question four. So I set it up so they couldn’t go back and change their answers. Was that a mistake! I was inundated with e-mails from frustrated students. Many of these students have already seen middle age, and would call themselves mature. It fascinated me that they weren’t bothered that they missed a basic question. They were bothered because they didn’t get the grade they wanted. They let the grade measure their worth, rather than the mastery of the material.

In an academic setting, tests expose our study habits, our ability to remember certain facts, terms, formulas and concepts. Personally, I think quizzes and tests unfairly measure intelligence and abilities. Many people take written tests poorly and live with lasting damage when poor scores, not really reflecting knowledge or intelligence, hold them back. So lots of factors create this whole generalized feeling of test anxiety. We add to the fear of exposure a generalized resentment that arises when we must live up to standards that are imposed on us, rather than our own standards.

Just by their very unfairness, quizzes and tests serve as very useful pictures or metaphors of life itself. The daily events, the joys and frustrations of life, opportunities and irritations, great accomplishments and devastating tragedies—all these are often unfair and our responses to these experiences leave us exposed for evaluation by others. We could equate the quizzes to the everyday challenges of life—routine work, childcare, financial pressure, daily responsibilities, time with friends and family, traffic jams and the like. The tests relate to the larger, and sometimes more traumatic life changes—such as marriages, births, death, accidents, job changes—that everyone undergoes over a period of years.

I think the quizzes, perhaps because of their frequency and their inescapability, serve to expose us more fully than the major tests. When we know one of the big tests is coming—an upcoming birth or marriage, or perhaps the illness of a beloved family member, we work to prepare for it and know in advance that we will need to make adjustments. In an unexpected tragedy, many function in a state of numbness or with previously unseen courage and strength for a period of time. But the quizzes . . . as the saying goes, "The devil is in the details." And also, by the way, is the angel. We can’t escape them. They are everywhere. And the details of our responses tell others, and ourselves if we are willing to look, a great deal about our characters, our beliefs, and our habits, both positive and negative, holy and unholy.

For example, a mother with several young children has just spent a rare full day alone doing a major housecleaning. For the first time in several weeks, things are picked up; floors swept, mopped, vacuumed; table surfaces dusted; bathrooms disinfected; laundry washed, sorted, folded and put away. A great sense of satisfaction settles in her soul; order has come from chaos. Shortly thereafter, the children burst in the door, grimy, tired, a bit whiny, needing their mother’s attention. They drop their jackets and sweaters at the front door, track grass and mud onto the carpet, head to the kitchen for snacks. They start jostling one another and promptly spill juice on the floor. The barely potty-trained three-year-old suddenly looks up and says, "oops" as a puddle starts dripping from his chair. And her husband, who has nobly taken the children out for the day, says, "They are all yours, honey. I’m off for a game of racquetball. Hope you got a good rest today."

Any halfway normal woman here will have a number of immediate reactions. Someone who doesn’t have a moment of frustration and irritation would probably be just a bit out of touch with her own feelings. Who enjoys seeing the results of a day’s work quickly destroyed? But the way she handles this quiz can give her an enormous clue into her own maturity as a child of God. An acknowledgement of the irritation, perhaps a deep sigh, and then a chosen patience to clean up the urine-soaked toddler suggests that this is a women who loves herself well enough to grieve over the destruction. She also loves her children well enough to accept that they are indeed children and can’t be expected to act like adults. In other words, she passed with flying colors. Surely God says, "Well done, my daughter."

Suppose she gives in to her irritation? Not a mother exists who has not done so. She yanks the soaked toddler out of the chair, with frustration and a sour expression strips off his clothes, yells at the other children to pick up their dropped jackets and go to their rooms and leave her alone, and, on the way to get some dry clothes, slams the door behind her husband. Now, what aspects of her character has she exposed?

There are lots of possible answers here, because we don’t know the full circumstances of her life. She may be seriously under-supported by her husband; she may not be feeling well in other ways. But whatever else is going on, she is treating her children in a way that she probably doesn’t want to be treated herself. She gives in to her irritation. Her words and actions lack gentleness, kindness and compassion and suggest that she values a clean house more than she values the emotional health and well-being of her children. Perhaps God is saying, "My daughter, how do you want Me to treat you when you mess up My creation? If you would like for Me to be patient with you, my dear child, perhaps it would be good if you could show a little patience with your own dear children."

So, did she flunk the quiz? If we were answering that question for ourselves, many of us would quickly say "yes, and I’m no good." But unlike the more rigid academic system, our gracious God seems always ready to give another opportunity to pass. What happened with King David? He managed to flunk a lot of quizzes in a short time. He pursued Bathsheba, a married woman, and she gets pregnant. He tries to cover it up by manipulating her husband, a man named Uriah, to go home and have sexual relations with his wife so he will think the baby is his. When that doesn’t work, he arranges to have this amazingly upright man killed. Frankly, what we have here is a case where Uriah passed all the quizzes while David quite thoroughly flunked. And for a while, it looked like David was going to get away with it. It’s another example of the unfairness of life.

What does God do with David? Does God cast this man away? I probably would have. Enough is enough, after all.

But God keeps after him. When David finally realizes what he has done, and how enormously wrong it was, he passed the next quiz with flying colors. What did he do? He repented. He changed his mind. He was grieved at what he had done. And he accepted the forgiveness made available by the grace of God.

In an academic setting, one flunking grade may be enough to end a promising career. Too often, we carry that attitude over to ourselves and forget that forgiveness and reconciliation are always ours.

How many of us waste out lives condemning ourselves for our humanness? I know I’ve struggled with self-condemnation. But there is a better way. Look at Jesus’ standards of right living. Even a lustful look makes us fully guilty of adultery. That’s a wonderful thing to know. The more aware we are of our inability to measure up, to pass the quizzes, the more joyously we can receive forgiveness freely offered.

In the life of grace, where we live as loved and cared-for children of God, one flunked quiz simply opens the door to take another quiz. Knowing this, we can actually free ourselves from the paralyzing feeling that test anxiety produces.

The mother in our scenario whose irritation took over when she dealt with her children always has another choice before her. Like David, one described as a man after God’s heart, she can show herself a woman after God’s heart by her repentance. It’s a simple three-step process. The first step: acknowledge what you did. Speak the truth about it. You blew it. I blew it. We all do, over and over again. The second step: go to God and ask for forgiveness. The third step: receive the forgiveness freely offered you. This is probably the hardest for most of us. We tend to beat ourselves up and stay in our guilt. But when we do that, we can’t give healing or forgiveness to anyone else. If the mother in our story will accept healing from her own bruises in God’s arms, she can then gather her emotionally bruised children in her arms, tell them she’s sorry, kiss away their tears, and clean up the messes with a renewed spirit. No, she didn’t flunk. She just needed to take the quiz again. Thanks be to God the opportunity always awaits us.