What are you afraid of?
Several months ago, I sat around a table with a group of colleagues engaged in discussing which issues we felt needed to be addressed in our own lives and in the lives of people we knew.
The list was long, at some points serious and at others ludicrous. It spanned everything from dealing with regret over throwing away vinyl albums from our youth to the challenges of men over 60 wearing skinny jeans. Part way through the discussion someone said, “We need to talk about fear. Everyone’s scared of something!”
The room immediately grew quiet. The truth of the statement was piercing. Everyone is scared of something.
President Franklin Roosevelt made the famous assertion that, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” He was only partially right. Fear of fear likely causes as many problems in our lives as anything else yet some fears are legitimate and ought to not be minimalized.
Karl Albrecht Ph.D, cited a recent Gallup Poll revealing the most common fears of teenagers in the U.S. The top 10 ranked fears started with terrorist attacks and ended with nuclear war. Fears of spiders and heights were predictably mentioned but the much more intimate fears of failure or being alone also made the list.
On Jan. 15, 1933 in a Berlin Church, Dietrich Bonhoeffer delivered a classic sermon on fear. In case you are unfamiliar with Bonhoeffer he is best known for his radical Christian leadership in the German resistance movement against Hitler. His sermon featured the well-known New Testament story of the disciples of Jesus in a boat in the middle of a raging storm. They were terrified that they were about to drown. As Bonhoeffer describes it, there was a stranger in the boat with them that day and that stranger’s name was “Fear.” He further suggested that the same Stranger was in Germany in 1933. To quote: “Fear is in the boat, in Germany, in our own lives and in the nave of this church – naked fear of an hour from now, of tomorrow and the day after.”
Could it be the same stranger that walks among us in 2018?
Of course Bonhoeffer then turned the corner to point out that the stranger named Fear was not the only guest in the boat with the disciples. Peacefully asleep in the bow was Jesus of Nazareth, who awakened to not only deal with the storm but with the stranger.
Occasionally people in my profession have suggested that if Jesus is in the boat with you there won’t be any storms. Life will be smooth sailing. The main problem with their suggestion is that it isn’t true.
Storms come into all our lives and the stranger named fear often makes his way into the boat with us. He needs no invitation, he’s an imposter. The key to facing him is the recognition that he’s not the only guest in our boat. The same guest who dealt with the storm and the stranger in the first century continues to deal with storms and strangers today.
Perhaps a slight paraphrase to President Roosevelt’s assertion is in order. Maybe it is healthier to declare that the only thing to fear is facing fear alone.
2018 provides several legitimate bases for fear. To start, two world leaders each with nuclear capability are childishly calling each other derogatory names and threatening to use their vast military power to annihilate each other. It would be humorous if it weren’t for the oft repeated quote: “They will be met with fire and fury and power the likes of which this world has never seen.”
Should there be any surprise that teenagers list terrorism and nuclear war on their list of fears? On a more personal level, cyber bullying is wreaking such havoc with young lives that many legitimately fear that their reputation, social status and future is just one mouse click away from destruction.
The stranger named fear is alive and well. Thank God, he’s not the only guest in the boat. In the middle of the fears there is the quiet assurance that another guest exists who has the habit of dealing with both the stranger and the storm.
Tim Schroeder is pastor at Trinity Baptist Church in Kelowna. This column appears weekly in Okanagan Weekend.