WHAT WE REALLY HAVE TO FEAR

In his first inaugural address in the midst of the Depression Franklin Roosevelt asserted that “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself”. That was, in its own way, quite true back then. When we live in fear, we are stymied. We cannot move ahead. Fear of the next bad thing, fear of the unknown begins to control our lives. And when we allow outside forces, fears, to be in charge, it is like living in hell. It is living in hell.

Of course, there have always been fear-mongers over the years, those who would have us believe that we are never safe anywhere, not even in our own homes hiding underneath our own beds. They have their own agendas for propagating fear, always for self-serving motives. They tell us they are concerned for our safety, our well-being, but they are only concerned about themselves and, of course, their power. For if someone can make us live in fear, that person has control over us.

That is certainly true today. Home-delivered pizza sales are up seemingly because people are now afraid to go out to eat even if most of us go out to eat more than we should because we eat too much when we do so. But, then, pizza is not exactly the most nutritious meal even if it is eaten at home. Compounding this fear are years of reading about Columbine, Oklahoma City, Sandy Hook, Orlando – the list goes on.

The truth is, however, that there is only one person we have to fear, really fear. That is the person who looks back at us in the bathroom mirror, the only person who controls our very life. Yes, we can listen to those who want us to be afraid of the dark, of the darkened theaters and dance halls, of the enclosed classrooms and of those who disguise themselves in dark clothing. If we want to give into that fear, they win and we lose.

We are in control of our fears. Yet the real fear that we should have as a Christian is not what others can or might do to us. It is what we can and might do to others, not with guns, not with violence, not in the dark or hiding behind false motives. Rather what we must fear is that we will hurt the ones we love in doing and saying unloving actions and words. That is what we truly have to fear.

Those who have committed and those who commit atrocious crimes against humanity were and are mentally unstable. Our failure as a society is to help such people get help instead of turning our backs on them and turning them out into the streets where their illness only gets worse, their fears only compound and they set off to somehow try to get even for what they perceive as a total lack of love by those who should love them the most. By then it’s too late to redeem their lives.

Is that putting too much blame on each of us individually? Probably. Yet the point is that when we fail to love others with all our heart and mind and strength and will, we only compound the fears of those we hurt. That is what we should fear.