We run our website the way we wished the whole internet worked: we provide high quality original content with no ads. We are funded solely by your direct support. Please consider supporting this project.
Do Not Fear
We interrupt this election season to bring you the following reminder:
[F]ear is a diabolic force. Its ultimate creator is Satan, and he uses it to keep us in bondage (Heb. 2:15). Throughout history, leaders have used fear to rally the masses around their causes, sometimes getting them to do things they otherwise would never dream of. Most of the worst atrocities committed in history–by so called Christians and others–were motivated by fear. People felt threatened, demonized the ones who threatened them, and thus felt justified in doing whatever they thought necessary to protect themselves. It is impossible to live in love and live in fear at the same time, which is why Scripture says that love casts out fear (1 John 4:18).
Now, as kingdom people we are called to live in love, which means we are called and empowered to live free of fear. Because our source of worth, significance, and security is found exclusively in God’s love and God’s reign, not our own immediate well-being, and because we believe in the resurrection, we are empowered to love even those who threaten our well-being–for this does not threaten our essential worth, significance, and security. We are, therefore, not to fear them (see 1 Peter 3:14-18). If we do fear them, it is only because some element of our essential worth, significance, and security is rooted in what they threaten. In other words, fear is an indication that we are living in idolatry, not love.
All this is to say that kingdom people whose lives are exclusively rooted in Jesus Christ will not succumb to motivation by fear. Our motivation for all we do is to be love, not fear (1 For. 16:14; 2 For. 5:14).
–The Myth of a Christian Nation, pp. 179-180
Photo credit: Greg Rakozy via Unsplash
Category: General
Tags: Fear, Love, Politics, Religious Idolatry
Related Reading
The Problem with Mixing Church & Government
Image by fusion-of-horizons via Flickr Some people insist that the only reason that neither Jesus nor anyone else in the first several centuries of the church tried to dominate the political system of their day was because they were a small minority of people living in a nondemocratic and hostile environment. By contrast, the argument goes,…
Repent! … From the Sin of Religion
People often think that being Christian is about “being religious,” but loving others in the way that Christ instructs us is about as far removed from religion as anything could be. Religion, as I use the term, is a system of beliefs and behaviors one embraces as a means of getting life—whether this be feeling…
Terror in the Night
I’ll never forget the night it first happened to me. I was thirteen, sharing a bedroom with my older brother. I woke up in the middle of the night and felt as if something was pinning me to the bed, choking me, and electrocuting me, all at the same time. The wind was blowing through…
Our Sacred Scared
Tom Lin via Compfight Glennon Doyle Melton is the voice behind Momastery. She is a brave, funny and challenging writer who has decided to tell the truth after years of drug and alcohol abuse and bulemia. Recently, Glennon has invited a series of men and women (including Rachel Held Evans, Jamie the Very Worst Missionary,…
Friday Lights: Glimpse of the Kingdom
We interrupt the constant stream of violence and brokenness to bring you this glimpse of the Kingdom of God. Image via broken pencils are pointless
God’s Church is Not “Pretty”
This week we’ve been looking at various aspects of what it means to be the church. Today, I want to address the paradox of how the church can be both beautiful and ugly at the same time. Jesus came into our fractured world to manifest the beauty of God’s reign and revolt against the evil…