Friday 10 April 2009

It is Good Friday - a good day to hear about fear. Next week we will begin looking at how King suggested that we master fear.

After writing about the creative side of fear, King writes:
But we must remember that abnormal fears are emotionally ruinous and psychologically destructive. To illustrate the difference between normal and abnormal fear, Sigmund Freud spoke of a person who was quite properly afraid of snakes in the heart of an African jungle and of another person who neurotically feared that snakes were under the carpet in his city apartment. Psychologists say that normal children are born with only two fears - the fear of falling and the fear of loud noises - and that all others are environmentally acquired. Most of these acquired fears are snakes under the carpet.

Last evening I was watching a part of a program that showed a new commercial being put out by a group that is against the slow movement toward accepting and making legal gay marriages. The commercial moved from person to person as they read a continuous script that literally attempted to sow fear in the listeners. It was filled with unproven assumptions. But isn't that what really is the power behind some of our "snakes under the carpet" fears? In the face of such storytelling what are we to do. I have to admit that I can swallow stuff like that too quickly myself. It really depends what the material is trying to say and how close it comes to my present state of mind. We must at least take the time to test whether that which we fear is really worth wasting our life energy. And then, what can we do in the face of our fears. Facing fears seems to be something we do with others. Not that others have to hold our hands to walk through our fears (although that is needed at times). Rather, I was simply thinking about the way others can "talk us down" or help to uncover truth and help us to see that life will not be destroyed by what we are fearing. Isn't this how we overcome our prejudices!?

Connection: The crowd in Jerusalem was whipped up with fear when they shouted they would rather have Barabbas free than Jesus. Some of that set up took time to develop - the rest was like a waterfall. Being swept up in the fear and anxiety of the moment doesn't take much energy.

You tell us, O God, to not be afraid. Again and again, you have urged your people to "fear not" and to turn to you for our salvation and life. It is not easy to walk away from fear, even when the Creator of all things is our encouragement. Therefore, again and again we need the presence of the Holy Spirit to be our help in times of great fear that often take control of us and begin to rule our lives. Amen.