Humans have been defined as “Beings that call themselves rational while being governed entirely by appetites, anxieties, and the opinions of strangers.” While there is truth in that definition, it is not true that humans are entirely governed by these things. We are more complex than that, though, it is true that appetites, anxieties, and the opinions of strangers often govern our behavior. The life-long work of the Christian is to transfer governing power to the new administration: to Jesus.
That is easier done in theory than in practice because humans (to misappropriate Churchill’s famous description of Russia) are a “riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma”—an enigma even to themselves. Too often, our actions and decisions are not governed by Christ but by fears wrapped in anger and posturing as justice. Fear has resided near the center of the human being ever since Adam’s rebellion in the garden. It is significant that his first words after his treachery was exposed were: “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid…”)
Fear lies within us, but fear of what? It is a difficult question to answer because fear itself is layered, and the fear we are aware of usually occupies the outermost layer. Underneath it are older, deeper fears.
In my fifties, I became claustrophobic. I had no trace of claustrophobia (as far as I know) until then. Where did this fear come from? What precipitated it? I do not know, except to say that it came from within me. I had to live more than fifty years before reaching that layer, and I know there are other layers beneath it.
The word “fear” or one of its cognates (“afraid,” “dread,” “terror,” “anxious,” etc.) appear over 700 times in the Bible, which pales compared to the number of times it appears in our lives. Nevertheless, the Bible takes seriously the fear that haunts all our lives. Among the many fears it acknowledges are the fear of peers, of adversaries, natural phenomena (storms, earthquakes), the future, the lack of necessities, and others as well.
I sometimes think that a significant part of the role we play in God’s salvation is to overcome fear whenever and however it manifests in our lives. The child who believes in Jesus needs to conquer the fear of closet monsters. The young adult needs to surmount the fear of looking stupid. As life progresses, we uncover new fears – the fear of rejection, of failure, of loss, of being alone, of accomplishing nothing. Fear is layered like an onion and its layers seem endless—overcoming it will take a lifetime.
Precisely. It will take a lifetime, and perhaps a little longer than that. In the end, we will face the fear that lies beneath the others and masquerades itself in a thousand ways: the fear of death. We are born with this fear, or born into it, as a baby born into a petrochemical industry zone inherits its PAHs, benzene, and cadmium, and experiences the consequences. We needn’t be taught the fear of death; it’s just there.
And we are just there too, born into the fear of death, which has seeped into the soil (and soul) of human life, and pervades the cultural air we breathe. But we are not alone in this place. Through Christ, God has come to join us “who, in the midst of life are in death.”[1] And he, who in the midst of death was life, has changed the calculus.
The author of Hebrews wrote, “Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death – that is, the devil – and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.”
God’s love in Christ can free us from our fear of death—and of everything else. “Love,” the Apostle John claims, is what “casts out fear.” Certainly, this is God’s love for us expressed through Christ’s devil-defeating, fear-releasing, slavery-ending death. But it is also, I think, our love, sourced in God and expressed through worship and service.
I am still peeling the onion of my fears. I’ve been at it for a lifetime, and I expect it will take a little longer than that. Currently, I am trying to peel away the layer called claustrophobia. (I had a small victory: I got into an MRI machine, which is something I swore I would never do!) However, I know that under the claustrophobia lies another layer of fear. I will not conquer fear through courage—that is not how courage works. I will not conquer it through reason; claustrophobia taught me that. But I will be conquer it through love, God’s love and mine, which reverberates to his. It is the love that casts out fear.
[1] Thomas Cranmer, Book of Common Prayer, 1549
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