Transferring our worries to another

A friend of mine's sister-in-law is moving into a smaller living space, so she had to get rid of a few things. But not her "worry dolls." I had never heard of worry dolls. I have heard of worry beads and voodoo dolls, but worry dolls is a new one on me.

My friend explained that the muñeca, originating in Guatemala, is just what it sounds like: You transfer your neuroses to the doll and let her have it instead of you. You express your fears to it, and somehow this relieves yours.

Children probably naturally do this anyway. We all projected our thoughts and feelings onto our dolls (or our fire trucks) as young kids. Perhaps some of us never graduated from that. The Apostle Paul says:

"When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways" (1 Corinthians 13:11).

But even when we "give up childish ways," we do not outgrow having to tell our anxieties to someone. God wants to be the one we tell them to:

"Cast your burden on the LORD and he will sustain you" (Psalm 55:22).

Near the very center of the Bible is a call to take refuge in God and not in man:

"It is better to take refuge in the LORD than to trust in princes" (Psalm 118:9).

If this is the case with princes, how much more dolls!

I believe there is something profound afoot here, in this matter of "transference"-transferring one's anxieties from oneself to another. It is close to another idea: imputation. It must be very hardwired in us to do that if the urge will find its expression even in someone who does not believe in God.

"It reminds me of that old joke-you know, a guy walks into a psychiatrist's office and says, 'Hey doc, my brother's crazy! He thinks he's a chicken. Then the doc says, 'Why don't you turn him in?' Then the guy says, 'I would, but I need the eggs'" (Woody Allen in Annie Hall).

We all need to cast our anxiety on someone or something. But we may as well cast them on God, who is the Father of all comfort (2 Corinthians 1:3), and not on a cloth facsimile of a child.