Fear generates many other emotions. It is often the root cause of anger, hate, jealousy, argumentativeness.
Sometimes fear saves our lives. It gives that shot of adrenaline so that we can outrun danger.
Sometimes it is that deep unease that things are changing, that new people are moving in, that we may be losing jobs to other people, or that we’re hearing different languages.
This fear drives us to sow hate and discord and even pull out guns to shoot people.
The sad and unnecessary part is that so many of these people are self-proclaimed Christians. And they have failed to digest the most basic command we find in both the Hebrew Scriptures and the Christian Scriptures–Fear Not!
Jesus told his little band of followers that many bad things were going to happen to them, but “Fear Not, for I am with you.”
We need the giant economy size box of Fear Not today. And calm everybody down.
Faith Venture 
September 1, 2020 at 8:57 am |
Fear is the strongest persuader. Your paragraph about “deep unease that things are changing” was somewhat true back in the Obama years. Look around. The fear people have now is that other US citizens are trying to burn down their house and/or business and kill them in the name of anti fascism. You need to get off your moral high horse and really see what is going on.
September 1, 2020 at 9:39 am |
It is a spiritual quest, not a pointing of fingers. We all must look inside and see what’s there and then grow. It is true that leaders and preachers for millennia have used fear as a motivator. That is another topic for a different place.