Four Weeks of Love: Have No Fear

Scripture: Exodus 17.1-7; Romans 5.3-5; 1 John 4.13-19


I asked for volunteers and I got four big, strong, daring young men. They stood before the table, with covered items in front of them. They were about to play our little Lock-In version of Fear Factor. After the asparagus, there were only two big, strong, daring young men left standing. After the raw liver there were none. Fortunately, two daring young women burst up out of their seats and proceded to consume the raw asparagus and liver like they were eating krispy kreme doughnuts. They downed the glassfuls of raw eggs like shots of whiskey. But when they got to the live goldfish, I thought there would be problems. The last item was, indeed, a pitcher of five goldfish swimming around. They were challenged to swallow one each. To be honest, I thought the fish were safe. I thought the girls would throw in , or throw up the towel. I was wrong. I didn’t count on how competitive these two young ladies could be. I took the three remaining goldfish home to our aquarium, where they were promptly eaten by our big “oscar”. So to sum up the tale of the five goldfish – Number eaten by other fish: three; Number eaten by human beings: two.

This silly exercise, besides being slightly grotesque, was an object lesson in facing fear. Fear is indeed a problem in life. It can be our biggest problem in life since known challenges are never as formidable in appearance as the problems of unknown magnitude that fear produces in our minds. I knew a woman who was paralyzed by fear every morning her son got on the school bus. She was made miserable by fear imagining all that could go wrong between the time her son got on and off the bus. That is both an understandable and irrational fear; understandable, because we can identify with that; irrational, because we are not meant to live that way!

In 1 John chapter 4 we are told that the people of God are meant to live in the reality, not of fear but, of love. “God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.” (verse 16b) and then in verse 18, “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. . .”

I have often wondered what this verse means. How does love cast out fear? My son Michael has his share of fears and he is honest about them with me. He doesn’t like spiders or bats, and I have reason to believe he is afraid that some day a girl might kiss him on the lips. But like most kids, he has an ingenius way of confronting his fears and the monsters under his bed – he befriends them. He is friends with Bat Man, Spider Man, and the Incredible Hulk, the giant green and purple monstrosity that goes into a rage. One day last summer I was sitting on the back porch and Michael was carrying the phone around with him. He assured me he was “just playing”. Occasionally I would hear his imaginary conversations on the phone. I heard snatches of “hello, hello. . .I heard a few words about the Hulk. And then the phone in his hands rang. Michael brought me the phone. I answered. It was the 911 Emergency Dispatcher returning the call made from this number. I assured the dispatcher everything was fine here. I asked Michael what he said to them when he, presumably, accidentally dialed 911.

“I told them that the Hulk was attacking me in my backyard.”

“Michael!” I said. “You can’t call someone and tell them that.”

Then he smiled and said, “I told them I was just kiddin’. The Hulk doesn’t really live in our world.”

The secret of conquering our fears is to know not only what is real and what is false, but to know we are not alone. We are loved. We are loved by others and we are loved by God.

It helps to know that you are not alone. Fear tends to separate us from others (or at least give us that impression) and fear magnifies our sense of loneliness. Fear has had a heyday in these modern times of rugged individualism and existential angst. Robert Putnam notes that volunteerism and joining community groups are at their lowest levels in the past fifty years. The negative result of our not joining is our not belonging. We feel more isolated and are more prone to distrust others and distrust our future. There is a confidence that comes with serving alongside others at Kiwanis or Little League or even Bowling League. That great theologian, Yogi Berra, put it this way, “If you don’t go to somebody’s funeral, they won’t come to yours.”

Now, it should be said that being with others, in and of itself, is no failsafe talisman against fear. The Israelites in the wilderness of Sin are an example. They had each other, they had Moses, and they had a string of success stories in their immediate past to give them confidence for the present and future, and still they complained. They complained because they feared. And here is the quintessential statement of our fears, in Exodus 17.7, “Moses called the place Massah and Meribah, because the Israelites quarreled and tested the Lord, saying, ‘Is the Lord among us or not?’”

The only thing that will conquer our fears for good is a found assurance that we belong to and are destined for God and His kingdom. Look again to 1John 4, verse 17, “Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness on the day of judgment, because as he is, so are we in this world.” As he is, so are we in this world.
He has conquered, we have conquered in him. He is risen from the dead; so we too shall rise. We are forgiven because He has paid the price of forgiveness.

Philip Yancey writes in Christianity Today (March 2005) that looking back over the major events of the last thirty years, he realized the prognosticators got them all wrong. What they reported at the time as being so important, in retrospect, was not that important. The most important things of the time really were only blips on the media radar. Remember when we were all afraid that the Soviet Union was going to take over the world? Remember when it was widely reported that the Japanese were so much smarter economically than we are, and they were going to take over the world. Scientists warned us not that long ago that we were in danger of a coming Ice Age. Now, we fear global warming. Remember the threat of the SARS virus? These threats were very real at the time, maybe, but even a few years removed we see, with confidence, that they didn’t do us in. Yancey reports the story of a German prison camp in World War II. Unbeknownst to the guards, the Americans built a makeshift radio. One day news came that the German high command had surrendered, ending the war – a fact that, because of a communications breakdown, the German guards did not yet know. As word spread among the American prisoners, a loud celebration broke out. For three days, the prisoners were hardly recognizable. They sang and waved at the guards, laughed at the German shepherd dogs, and shared jokes over meals. On the fourth day, they awoke to find that all the Germans had fled, leaving the gates unlocked. The time of waiting had come to an end. Yancey asks this question: “As we Christians face contemporary crises, why do we respond with such fear and anxiety? Why don’t we, like the Allied prisoners, act on the Good News we say we believe? What is faith, after all, but believing in advance what will only make sense in reverse?

Ask yourself, “Why do I exist? What is my purpose? Or as Kirbyjohn Caldwell puts it, “Of all the funerals you have been to, why is it that none has been yours?
You are alive today. Why? Is it to live in fear, or live boldly in the confidence that you are loved by others and you are loved by God?