A newsletter article that I've received a lot of positive feedback on....
Dear Beloved People of God,
“Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.”
This is a repeated phrase in Frank Herbert’s 1965 Science-fiction classic Dune. It’s certainly not scripture, but it can be seen to speak to a deep truth about how we are to live our lives. Fear indeed is the mind-killer. When we are confronted with harm or perceived threat of such to ourselves or our loved ones, we become capable of acts that we would never countenance otherwise. Fear is a little death. It often leads to an eclipse of our moral and intellectual selves that is the image of God we are made in. We react as animals, using variations of a fight-or-flight reflex. This can become a total obliteration of everything we value in ourselves as human – reason, compassion, empathy and community.
Fear really comes from our need to control. We need to believe that our world is orderly, that we and the people we trust control our environment. We often put blind faith in these people and institutions in order to control the level of fear in our lives. This is human nature and understandable, but it leads to tragedy, because ultimately none of us or our institutions are truly in control. At some point, human beings and the organizations we create “Miss the mark” as the Apostle Paul would put it, and suffering results. Fear enhances the suffering.
What brought down Washington Mutual? Yes, a lot of it had to do with sub-prime lending, but for months people had known about that and it was thought WaMu would survive. WaMu had an old-fashioned run on the bank, where people withdrew their savings and checking in un-sustainable amounts, even though the deposits were FDIC insured. Fear brought down WaMu. In every fiscal failure we have seen over the last few weeks, unchecked fear has been a major if not the principal factor in the demise.
As Christians, we are told to not fear what harms the body (Luke 12:4). The only fear we are to have is that of God, which is not a cringing fear, but the simple acknowledgement that we are not in control and that God is greater than us, humanity, and the institutions we create. We are told that we are of ultimate value and will be taken care of (Matt 6:31).
These are one of those times that try our souls, and we get to see what we are really made of. When so many are suffering around us, do we “circle the wagons” and hold on tighter to what is not ultimately ours, or do we react with compassion and generosity for those who may be suffering even more than us? Do we choose despair or hope? Do we choose a “little death” of a life lived in fear, or do we affirm with Julian of Norwich that, “All shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well?” It may not be well tomorrow, or next week, or within this decade, but ultimately, if we affirm that God is in control, all things shall be turned to good and our current travails will seem different in the scheme of eternity.
“All shall be well.” In a time of uncertainty, this is the message that we as Christians must uphold. It is the gift we can give to our society. It is the dictum by which we can make wise decisions for ourselves taking into account not only the turns of the markets, but the love of God for his creation.
David+
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