From The West Wing, Season Five “No Exit:”
First Lady Abbey Bartlet (a prominent physician) addresses White
House Chief of Staff Leo McGarry:
Do you know what this lifestyle does to the body? The minute
your
system senses stress it releases a hormone that constricts
the blood vessels, contracts the heart muscles, stimulates the
adrenal gland. You stay in this state for not a hundredth of the
time that you and I have existed like this and the vessels begin
to shred. The heart permanently constricts. The intestines, the
immune system, shut down. Relieving those conditions is the one
responsible course of action I can take. I am sorry it is not a
course of action that’s available to you, but if you think
you’re going to talk me out of it with some Valley of the Dolls
cautionary tale, you have picked the wrong girl.
Curry
Goat
I’ve never understood Christians who are afraid to fly. I hate
to fly, which many presume is because of fear. No, I hate to fly
because planes are crammed full of idiots. Idiots who bring
infants and small children aboard without thinking, even for a
moment, about ways to keep them entertained or how to deal with
the extreme pressure aboard an aircraft that causes pain to the
little ones. I hate people reclining their seats into my knees.
One idiot brought, I kid you not, a tin of Curried Goat aboard
the flight, a dish so aromatic that it made everyone in coach
blanche, making my eyes water and stomach turn. I am not, in any
way, frightened of the plane crashing. Fear, however, is part of
our humanity. It exists for a reason: to keep us from jumping
off cliffs, from doing things that harm us. Fear, in its purity,
it part of God’s perfection. This incredible machine—the human
body—run by the universe’s most advanced supercomputer—the human
mind—and powered by a fiercely indefatigable source—the human
spirit—is an amazing and ingenious creation, one which we
routinely take for granted. Without fear, we wouldn’t be
responsible. Without fear, most of us would be dead. Without
fear, there really is no logic. Fear is our only real motive for
thinking rationally or employing logic. Fearing God is, in fact,
the beginning of wisdom [Proverbs 9:10].
From “Healing
Streams”
But this quickly becomes “bad fear” if we
are paralyzed or panicked and cannot act decisively or if there
is no real response we can make because we are being alarmed by
imagined or future dangers, not immediate, life-threatening
ones. This kind of fear response keeps most people living
stressed-up and breaks down health. When we are in fear in any
of its forms we are not trusting God. The critical issue is
heart trust in God.
You will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on You,
because he trusts in You. Trust in the Lord forever, for in Yah,
the Lord, is everlasting strength. Isaiah 26:3-4
The enemy seeks to build fear into every believer to quench
faith, stymie love and turn us away from the challenges of the
high calling. Unbelief in God’s perfect love is the root to all
fears.
Fear works in the same way faith does but in the opposite
direction: faith looks past the problem of the visible reality
to see its solution in the invisible reality of God and
therefore becomes the substance in us that God uses to fulfill
His purposes. Fear looks at the visible problem, ignores the
invisible Savior, and becomes the substance the enemy uses to
fulfill his purposes for us. Job lamented that what he feared
came upon him (Job 3:24-26). Fear is false protection—it
actually brings trouble our way.
Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of
things not seen. Hebrews 11:1 The
thing I greatly feared has come upon me, and what I dreaded has
happened. Job 3:25
Fearful Christians seem ironic to me considering how organized
religion—including if not especially organized
Christianity—routinely employs fear to promote and sustain
itself. Many of us came to Jesus out of simple fear of hell. A
Christian whose acceptance of Christ is motivated by fear is
likely not a Christian at all. He is more likely hedging his
bets, as French philosopher, mathematician, and physicist Blaise
Pascal suggests. Pascal’s Wager posits that, although the
existence of God can not be proven absolutely, a rational person
should presume God exists and act accordingly. Pascal reasoned
that having religion (if not quite genuine faith) was a more
rational choice than non-belief because one living life
accordingly has everything to gain, and nothing to lose. Or, as
I used to tell my friends, better to get some insurance on your
soul. But such fear-motivated conversions are rare genuine or
lasting. Through fear we create converts, not believers. He is
certainly not deeply rooted in Christ. He is a narcissist, his
Christianity is all about him. Nietzsche put it this way,
“salvation of the soul—in plain words, the world revolves around
me.”
Chaz Bufe makes interesting points about this in
20 Reasons to Abandon Christianity:
Throughout almost its entire time on
Earth, the motor driving Christianity has been—in addition to
the fear of death—fear of the devil and fear of hell. One can
only imagine how potent these threats seemed prior to the rise
of science and rational thinking, which have largely robbed
these bogeys of their power to inspire terror. But even today,
the existence of the devil and hell are cardinal doctrinal
tenets of almost all Christian creeds, and many fundamentalist
preachers still openly resort to terrorizing their followers
with lurid, sadistic portraits of the suffering of nonbelievers
after death. This is not an attempt to convince through logic
and reason; it is not an attempt to appeal to the better nature
of individuals; rather, it is an attempt to whip the flock into
line through threats, through appeals to a base part of human
nature—fear and cowardice.
The Christian appeal to fear, to cowardice, is an admission that
the evidence supporting Christian beliefs is far from
compelling. If the evidence were such that Christianity’s truth
was immediately apparent to anyone who considered it,
Christians—including those who wrote the Gospels—would feel no
need to resort to the cheap tactic of using fear-inducing
threats to inspire “belief.”
In addition to the fears of the devil and hell, Christianity
plays on another of humankind’s most basic fears: death, the
dissolution of the individual ego. Perhaps Christianity’s
strongest appeal is its promise of eternal life. While there is
absolutely no evidence to support this claim, most people are
…terrified of death …[and] cling to this treacly promise...
From House M.D., Season One “Damned If Your Do:”
Dr, Chase, a young diagnostic Fellow, comforts a dying nun:
Chase: He hasn’t left you. The only
thing in the way of your knowing if he’s left you is your fear.
You have a choice: faith or fear. That’s the test.
Augustine: Do you think faith doesn’t mean I won’t die?
Chase: It will affect how you experience your death, and therefore your life. It’s up to you.
Why Love Matters
Having fear is not a sin. Fear is hard-wired into our bodies.
But giving your body authority over you—over your mind, over
your soul—is not what God wanted for us. Our bodies exist to
serve us, not the other way around. To give in to every whim,
every desire, every physical need, demotes us to the realm of
apes and monkeys. God gave us the gift of awareness, a divine
sentience that elevates us from other mammals. It is this
awareness that the bible refers to when it says we were made in
the likeness of God [Gen 1:27]. That we are like Him in that His
divinity exists within us and that we are the evidence of His
glory. In that view, it is our responsibility to be persons of
divine purpose, of spirituality and intellect, and not just
animals eating and belching and screwing. That’s what horses do
all day. They eat, they take a dump, they screw. We are called
to lives of meaning and purpose. Our awareness exists for a
reason. We are not horses. Our bodies work for us. We must bring
our flesh into subjugation to that divine awareness, what we
call our spirit. We must be disciplined and purposeful.
People who ignore the spiritual dimension of their lives are
lost in a world of meaningless chaos. Stick your tongue out at
me all you want, but a true connection with God is an amazing
experience. I am deeply saddened by all of the “God Is A Banana”
navel-starrers out there denying Christ but who have never done
any serious investigation of what Christianity really is.
Conversely, Christians who spend most of their time scared of
their own skin have likely lost or damaged that connection to
God, or never had it in the first place. The nearer we draw to
God, the less fearful we become. If God is for us, who can stand
against us?
I try not to question a believer’s Christianity, but I do
question the quality of their relationship, of their walk, with
Jesus Christ when they are motivated out of paranoia and fear.
Fear is the very antithesis of love, but even a little love can
banish an aircraft carrier full of fear. I wished more of us
believed that. I wished more of our pastors preached love as it
really is: the most powerful force in all of existence. The very
building blocks of God Himself.
Christopher J. Priest
13 November 2011
editor@praisenet.org
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