Reared in Safety and Security - Why Now So Fearful?

A good many Americans have been reared in safety and security.

But for reasons beyond my grasp, a huge industry has grown up in the land promoting fear - everything from the "fear of the stranger" to "home-invasions," the fear of which far exceeds what the stats might support.

From the constant parade of murder and mayhem on the local news to politicians who can see a terrorist under every bed, we're inundated with the words of fear.

It's making a lot of us desperate, and angry ... because fear, if sustained, becomes anger.

Fearful of so many things: terrorism, criminals, Muslims, "illegal" immigrants, anger is growing among certain segments of the population, and that's the stuff of fascism. Sustained fear and then anger weakens moral and spiritual sensibilities, reduces our capacity for compassion and kindness and stilts our vision of the world. Sooner or later, most everyone and everything becomes a threat. The ability to distinguish between reality and imagination is lost. And, makes one a consumer of "safety-devices" - everything from home security systems to white-supremacy movements.

In such a state of mind, we either move toward a highly defensive posture, a state of high-alert that saps our energy and deranges us ... or we grow up, shall I say, and take an honest assessment of our situation and ask the question: Just how safe, or not, am I?

And for those who Christians, it might well be helpful to remember what the angels frequently say: "Fear not!"

Fear, in and of itself, has some helpful dimensions - like, fight or flight, but there are other options, too.

Like the firefighters who are really afraid, but neither fight nor flee ... but run toward the conflagration in order to help others.

Jesus faced down his fears and eschewed anger, and went to Jerusalem in spite of Peter's advice to stay away from this hotbed of intrigue and danger.

Fight is certainly what many of us are choosing, turning mind and home into an "armed fortress."

Flight is a huge spiritual option for many - sort of like Medieval theologians debating how many angels can dance on the head of a pin while ignoring the hell in which most of the serfs lived.

But the third option: running toward the conflagration, and doing so with a certain amount of trust in the love of God and a sense of reality - that it may end badly if I go there, but I'll not run away, nor will I engage in needless conflict with adversaries.

Because a frightened, angry, person, is not likely to be of much help or hope to anyone.

Indeed, Jesus heals the blind and and comforts the afflicted. Here's where he's needed - people desperate for help and hope. And when challenged by his enemies, chooses non-engagement.

Those who follow Jesus (unlike Peter who didn't want to face the possibility of his own death when Jesus proclaims his own death) will move toward the conflagration with caution, of course, but with a determination to pay whatever the price might be for love, which, after all, casts out all forms of fear (1 John 4.18).

The Enemy Within

Have ya' read the latest "Layman" (August, 2010) and its "Letters to the editor"?

The anger runs deep.

And I'm sympathetic ... there have been times in my life, more than I like to admit, when anger, self-righteous anger (which, of course, all anger is, right?), ruled the day, and the night as well, violating the advice of Scripture, to not allow the sun to go down on one's anger.

The problem with long-standing anger is that it's never accurate in its assessment of the situation. Anger, like a magnifying glass, focuses the heat of a legitimate concern into a white-hot beam that destroys.

The letters in this issue reveal a loss of control. Anger has simply taken over mind and heart.

The enemy, the PCUSA, is all wrong. Which, of course, in even the worst of all times, wouldn't be true - after all, even a broken watch is right twice a day.

I feel for the letter-writers. They've painted themselves into a corner, and there's no way out for them right now. So the corner becomes home, and though the corner is always an uncomfortable place in which to live, it's defended with growing intensity, until all the corner-dwellers have convinced themselves they're living in theological luxury.

There would be a way out, if they could rise above their anger and temper their opinion with the simple reality that the "enemy" is more within them than anywhere else.

And a good dose of humility. But corner-dwellers cannot afford humility, because humility requires some sense of appreciation for the very people being vilified, and a sense of personal incompleteness - that whatever the opinion, the judgment, the theological point of view, no one has a full and complete grasp of God's truth and God's Kingdom.

We are what we are. Fully human and deeply sinful. And all the creeds in the world, and all our protestations to the contrary, our frailty and our fault remain.

Self-righteousness, amplified by limited conversation with other corner-dwellers, exits on all sides of any given question.

The challenge for any of us is this: how to hold an opinion (and that's what it all is, after all) firmly and faithfully, without drifting into ideology (always the danger, and let's just call it idolatry).

My heart goes out to the letter-writers. They're profoundly unhappy, and if they're pastors, my heart goes out, as well, to their congregations. That kind of anger walks into the pulpit most Sundays, for sure, and spills out into the pews, tainting the gospel with the aroma of rot.

So be it.

Church history is the story of our fightings with one another. I guess such will be the case until the final trumpet is sounded.

But until then, does not the gospel call us to something other than merely being angry with one another?

Is there not the Holy Spirit upon whom we can call, and whose influence might temper our restless hearts?

After all, said Paul, our enemies are not flesh and blood, but spiritual powers and principalities.

I think there comes a time when God walks away from a persistently angry person or organization. As in Paul's letter to the Romans, God abandons us to "shameful lusts," and there is no greater lust than the lust to be right, and no greater shame than the willful condemnation of one another.