I've been thinking a lot about fear and faith. I even heard a sermon in the past month about fear and faith. Sadly, the pastor's point was that if we have faith, everything will work out. So much for all those people in Hebrews 11 who were tortured, flogged and stoned. Pastors really need to move beyond a morality/causality based theology if they have any hope of being relevant. It is not that life will be free of pain, it is that we will be free of fear regardless of what life brings.
For many of us, fear is the driving force that motivates our behavior each day - how we react to our spouse, how we respond to the evening news, showing up to work on time so we get the paycheck, going to the doctor's office, watching the economy for fear of its impact on my quality of life -- you name it. Yet if we truly trust, we should be the most fearless people around. John says there is no fear in love.
So how can we define faith and fear? Here is my attempt...
Faith is the choice to trust when you realize you are not in control.Fear is like the shakes when withdrawing from drugs (or coffee or cigarettes or sugar or worry or whatever your personal issue is). It is the realization you are not in control anymore, but you crave being in control like a junkie craves their next hit, like a foodie craves their next chocolate, like a worrier looking for the next thing to fret over.
Fear is the desire for control when you realize you are not in control.
I sometimes wonder what Adam and Eve were like, and what they might have grown into. Were they just automatons without the knowledge of good and evil? Was that all God wanted for all eternity? Or was it that they were children and not yet mature enough to handle that potent knowledge? Did eating of the fruit give us an addictive illusion of control that blinded us? Were we just not ready for that knowledge yet because we had not yet learned to see trust as reality and control as illusion?
2 comments:
I've been reading Dietrich Bonhoeffer lately. He has an interesting take on the problem of the knowledge of good and evil. according to him (as he states in his book "Ethics") Bonhoeffer denies that we can have any knowledge of good and evil (Ethics, p.231). There is no moral certainty in this world. It is the illusion of the original lie of the enemy. There is no justification in advance for our conduct. Ultimately all actions must be delivered up to God for judgment, and no one can escape reliance upon God's mercy and grace. "Before God self-justification is quite simply sin" (Ethics, p.167). It seems that Adam and Eve chose to seek the knowledge of good and evil ie. "a moral code" rather than simple childlike obedience to God. Morality or ethics leads only to self-justification or as you have said so well here "CONTROL". Jesus redefines this in His answer to the moralists of first century Judah in John 5:19-47. "the Son can do nothing of His own accord but only what He sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does the Son does likewise." Bonhoeffer restates this in his book "the cost of discipleship" pg.88 "Self-denial is never just a series of isolated acts of mortification or asceticism. it is not suicide, for there is an element of self-will even in that. To deny oneself is to be aware Only of Christ and no more of self, to see only him who goes before and no more the road that is too hard for us. Once more, all that self denial can say is: "he leads the way; keep close to Him."
This reminds me of walking with my dog, Chico. When we start out on our daily walk I don't sit him down at the bottom of or front steps and give him the route of the walk nor do I in great detail give him the do's and don'ts of street safety or the warning of the hundreds of dangers we must avoid. He has no "knowledge of good and evil." When it works, when he looks only to me for the signals (most times this is less than 20% of the time because he is an out of control puppy who wants to be in control of the agenda) but when we move together, man and dog as one, it is a beautiful thing. The key is he must keep close to his master. In those moments he is not even looking at the road or what his next step should be but only to the master for the most subtle of cues. These are the times a leash is immaterial, just a prop for the onlookers. It represents the Law but is completely unnecessary to both dog and Master. Psalms 32:9 “Do not be as the horse or as the mule which have no understanding, whose trappings include bit and bridle to hold them in check, otherwise they will not come near to you.” Perhaps this is the TRUST that we must have to lead to true transformation.
Great comments Marco -- keep 'em coming!
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