Fear Not!

Fear Not

My wife and I had friends from my church over for the Super Bowl this year.  I was excited to see the on-field matchup between the New England Patriots and the Seattle Seahawks.  Other than the outcome of the game (I was pulling for Seattle), the Super Bowl exceeded my expectations.  My wife, though, doesn’t watch the Super Bowl for the game; she watches it for the commercials and the halftime show.  In fact, everyone gathered in our living room that night had high expectations for the commercials that aired during the game.

By and large, those commercials failed to live up to the hype.  Sure, the Budweiser puppy ad was cute, and we all particularly enjoyed the Doritos commercial where a pig flew across the sky, but most of the other commercials just did not measure up.  This was particularly true of one Nationwide ad.

In the not-quite-week since the ad aired during the Super Bowl, it has drawn criticism from almost every direction.  Monday morning, my Facebook wall was covered with posts about the ad, and blogposts I read Tuesday and Wednesday mocked the company’s decision to use the commercial.  And why not?  It is an ad that is morbid and employs (not so subtle) scare tactics to persuade parents to buy insurance.  The ad is misguided at best.

Yet when we are honest with ourselves, the ad is quintessentially American, at least for the 21^st century.  Think about it:  at this point in our culture’s history, we are ruled by fear in pretty much every area of life.

This hit home for me while I was listening to a radio interview this week.  NPR’s Here and Now radio program interviewed Lenore Skenazy on Tuesday, and I happened to catch the show as I was driving home from a hospital visit.  I had never heard of Lenore Skenazy before, and I certainly had never heard of her television show on the Discovery Life Channel, “World’s Worst Mom.”  Apparently, it is sort of a reverse “Supernanny;” instead of dealing with bratty kids, Ms. Skenazy deals with terrified parents.  Why?  Because many parents in our country are completely afraid that any and every conceivable evil will befall their children, even the most wildly ludicrous or the least likely.

During the radio program, the host played segments from Ms. Skenazy’s show and asked her to elaborate.  One family from the show had five children; the oldest was a 13-year-old boy.  The mother in this family was so afraid for her children that they were not allowed to go anywhere without her.  Even her 13-year-old son had restrictions that were wildly inappropriate, including not being allowed to use the men’s room at the mall.  He had to go to the ladies room with his mom.

Ms. Skenazy said during the interview, “I feel like we’re living in a society that is shoving fear down our throats every single second.”  As I thought about it, the more I realized that she is right.  We are afraid for our children, in part because of what companies and media tell us.  Just look at the Nationwide ad or the ongoing debate over vaccines.

And it doesn’t end with our children.  Dr. Atul Gawande, from Harvard Medical School, recently published a book looking at the reality of death and dying in the American medical community.  One of the most intriguing insights from this book is that we value freedom most – but we value safety for our loved ones.  This, Gawande says, is why most nursing homes are built with safeguards in place to limit patients’ mobility and control their diet.  Yet Gawande details nursing facilities that are introducing such innovative concepts such as pets for residents, being located on the same grounds as a private school and interacting with children, and having an apartment building for seniors with a building nurse.  In all of these cases, and many others, Gawande points to data that shows a quantitative and qualitative improvement in the lives of the residents.  Yet such relaxed atmospheres are not what most Americans want for their aged parents; we want safety in triplicate.  Why?  Because we are afraid.

It should come as no surprise that people are cashing in on our penchant for fear.  Companies make lots of money playing on our fear of what might happen (remember the Nationwide ad?).  News channels – like CNN, Fox, and MSNBC – devote hour-long program after hour-long program engaging in fear-mongering, because they know that we’ll tune in.  Politicians of all stripes grab power by stoking our fears of anything and anyone who is different, whether they are immigrants or Muslims or homosexuals or minorities or…the list could go on.  Our society is built, in large part, on a foundation of fear.

All of that worries me – but it doesn’t worry me near as much as when I look from our society into the church.  I have been a pastor for ten years in October.  I have friends who are ministers, and friends who are ex-ministers.  I have friends and acquaintances in the churches I’ve been part of, and I have other friends and acquaintances in churches across the country.  I read blogposts and news articles reporting on the condition of the church.  And do you know what unsettles me the most?  The church is operating under a cloud of fear.

We’re afraid of what is going to happen when people stop attending our church.  We’re afraid of what is going to happen if the wrong people start attending our church.  We’re afraid that things in our church are going to change.  We’re afraid that nothing in our church is going to change.  We’re afraid that the pastor or the deacons are going to have too much power.  We’re afraid that the pastor or the deacons aren’t going to have enough power to do what they need to do.  We’re afraid that the tithes and offerings aren’t going to cover our expenses or meet our budget.  We’re afraid that God might just ask us to do something new and different…but we’re also afraid God is going to pass us right on by.  We, the church of Jesus Christ, are afraid.

I thought about that this week.  And then, one word came unbidden to my mind:  WHY?

You see, when we turn to the pages of Scripture, to the sacred book of the Christian church, we find from beginning to end a story that denies the power of fear in our lives.  When the Israelites were heading into the Promised Land, Deuteronomy 31:6 records Moses’ words:  “Be strong and bold; have no fear or dread of them, because it is the Lord your God who goes with you; he will not fail you or forsake you.”  The prophet Isaiah shares God’s word of promise in Isaiah 41:10:  “Do not fear, for I am with you, do not be afraid, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my victorious right hand.”  Even the psalmists, who were never shy of pouring out their deepest pain, declared a reliance on God in the face of fear:  “When I am afraid, I put my trust in you.” (Ps. 56:3)

The New Testament continues this story of hope and courage when fear tries to worm its way into our lives.  Jesus, in his famous Sermon on the Mount, challenged his listeners to set aside worry and fear, trusting instead in God’s care and love (Mt. 6:25-34).  The writer of 1 John teaches that “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.” (1 Jn. 4:18) And, in a word that today’s church leaders and congregations need to embrace, 2 Timothy 1:7 declares, “God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control.”  God has nothing to fear, and neither do we.

So why does the church operate with so much fear?  In large part, it is simply because we are human beings.  We worry about the future and about the people and things we love.  Yet our humanity is no excuse to try to move past fear, because through Jesus Christ, we are more than human.  We are being transformed, the Scriptures tell us, into people who are more like Christ.  With each passing day, God is giving us more courage, more hope, more peace in the face of the world’s fear.  But he can only do it if we will let him.

The church should be the leader in conquering fear in our world today, and Christians should be the least-afraid people ever.  Why?  Because through Christ, we don’t have to let fear carry the day.  In fact, through Christ, we have hope in the darkest of times.  Shouldn’t that make us brave?  Shouldn’t that make us adventurous for the kingdom of God?  Shouldn’t that empower us to try new things and accept new challenges?  As the church, let's try to be a little more courageous, no matter what life brings our way.  After all, what have we to fear?

In Christ,
Adam