AMERICA'S ONGOING FEAR STORY

It’s been 8 years now since I finished writing and eventually publishing my book, “Love’s Resurrection: its power to roll away fear’s heaviest stone.”  I started writing it in 2016 after the American Presidential election struck fear into the hearts of so many of us.  I had no illusions it would be widely sold or read.   I’m guessing it has over the years sold in the hundreds and been read in possibly the tens by now.   It’s been a fairly small money-loser but part of my life’s mission of “More Love and Less Fear” among those I’m somehow able to influence within my lifetime. 

The book itself was certainly no great work of art, but it tells my own story from two competing narratives.   One of these two was my fear story; the other being my love story.    I called the transitions between these two distinct stories my 3 Great Awakenings.   I more than hinted at a parallel with what historians often reference as America’s 3 Great Awakenings.   My prevailing theme throughout the book was that fear stories at every level, micro to macro, lead to eventual love stories.  Love is our factory default. Fear is our worldly malware.

If you’re one of the 10 plus who actually read the book, you’ll know that as part of my 3^rd Great Awakening I came to believe that fear drives us to take control over whatever and whomever it is we fear the most.  In fact, I include an entire chapter titled, “Sin,” in which I describe sin as nothing more…..or less……than “fearful control,” which is what separates us from the God who has neither fear nor a drive to control.    Instead, this God of my last Awakening has only love.   Unlike fear, love doesn’t drive us to take control "over" another.  Instead, it draws us to give influence "with" another.   Hence, my next chapter in the book was titled, “Salvation.”   The biblical Gospel, in my best pastoral understanding of it, was God’s love story in debate with our world’s fear story for the sake of righteous influence.   Fear begins the debate in Genesis arguing that control is the greatest power in the universe.  Starts with a tree whose fruit offers the promise of such control. Love ends the debate in Revelation arguing that influence is the greatest power because it empowers the weak majority in greater number while control empowers only the strong minority already owning that power. The book ends with a final score of Christians 1, Roman Empire 0.    But it took the entire Bible to cover the centuries of debate itself, which was prolonged by fear’s claim that God was on its own side, projecting onto God its own sinful desire for control.   Along came Jesus as God’s ultimate statement of loving influence being more powerful than fearful control.  Final score: Salvation 1, Sin 0.           

I wrote all of that before, and here in brief, to say that we, too, are engaged in this same debate today between fear and love, control and influence, sin and salvation.  Nowhere is this story today more evident than in my own country, the United States of America.  It’s a story we hope will end soon.  

Chances are it will not. 

Chances are our fear story is going to prolong itself well in the future before our love story will make its own influence felt.   Ours will not be a Friday to Sunday resurrection story.   Nor will it like be a Genesis to Revelation story.   If I had to guess, it may be more like the biblical story of young Jeremiah and the Babylonian Captivity in his homeland of Judah.  

One of Jeremiah’s greatest complaints was that those whose voices were most prominent in his country refused to believe Judah’s problems were of any lengthy duration to come.  To them it wasn’t all that bad.   They were, to Jeremiah's point, badly under-reacting.   Offering false reassurance, as if evil wasn't really all THAT evil afterall.   And so Jeremiah himself stood out as a voice of doom, a “weeping prophet” who never had anything good to say about his own fellow citizens or about God’s ability to offer up a quick fix.  

Perhaps the best known and most oft-quoted verse from the prophetic book of Jeremiah in our Hebrew Bible is from chapter 29, verse 11.   Reads like this in the NIV:   ^“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”   It’s a wonderful verse, but it didn’t come from young Jeremiah. Assuming Jeremiah to be the author, it was dated some 70 years after young Jeremiah had this to say in that great debate of his own time and place:  “They dress the wound of my people as though it were not serious. ‘Peace, peace,’ they say, when there is no peace”  Jeremiah 6:14 (NIV). It's as if Jeremiah was saying all is well that ends well, but the ending is going to take another 70 years. Prepare accordingly!

I can’t help noticing how today in America those voices most prominent in our country are refusing to believe our problem will NOT be short lived.   Send us some more money and we’ll fix the problem now or next year or 2028 at the latest. All we need is more campaign ads.

Yeah, right.

I'm not expecting it to take 70 years for America’s fear story to play itself out and our love story to be born again.   Our next Great Awakening could come sooner; hopefully much sooner!   Maybe as few as 7 instead of 70 if we’re lucky.   But, much as I believe loving influence will always win the debate eventually, and much as I’d like to think some Project 2029 could actually happen, fearful control is a formidable enemy.  Evil is never a simple argument to refute or an easy foe to overcome.  Evil has an infinite number of lies it can tell rather quickly, where truth is far more limited in number and is designed to evolve over time.  

In the end, love wins.   And America will then be once again the United States.  Then we can preach Jeremiah 29:11. But, meanwhile, let’s not forget those immortal words of that same prophet of ancient Judah:   “They dress the wound of my people as though it were not serious. ‘Peace, peace,’ they say, when there is no peace”  Jeremiah 6:14 (NIV).