Please Stop Practicing Fear

COVID-19 is running rampant through our society, and it hasn't even made very many people sick yet.

Colleges are going online. Businesses are shutting corporate offices. The Army is closing bases to visitors. I even got an email from a grocery store regarding what they're doing to keep their customers safe! Solid facts seem hard to come by, as tables and charts show how much worse influenza is than coronavirus currently, yet predictions from the CDC are grim.

How do we respond? No one wants to be taken in by the boy who cried “wolf!”, but neither is it wise to disregard everything entirely.

Let's remember that God has not given us a spirit of fear (2 Timothy 1:7a).

So if our fear is not from God, where did it come from?

Consider this seriously. Whoever planted that fear did so for a reason. He/she/it/they wanted us to react from fear. We're effectively being controlled by this source without even realizing it!

If this fear is not from God, maybe we need to consider the benefits of giving it the proverbial boot. Let's stop practicing being afraid. Let's stop training fear into our children. Let's stop making decisions motivated by fear.

So what should we do, if anything? Consider what God HAS given us: a spirit of power and love and a sound mind (2 Timothy 1:7b).

Let's tackle these in reverse order.

• Wash your hands. Shouldn't it seem strange to us all that this seems like a such a revolutionary concept to everyone? We've known about germs since the 1860's. That's 160 years! Of course, wash your hands, but haven't you been doing that already?
• Reduce or eliminate junk food in your diet. Sugar makes it harder for your body to fight disease. (Include pop in this category, of course, but also sports drinks – if you haven't just exercised – and fruit drinks, too.)
• Eat foods that grew from the ground or had a mother, as Jillian Michaels says. The less processing that happens in between the source and you, the better. Your body needs nutrients and minerals to function well, not to mention defeat disease. (If your diet is deficient in a certain way, consider supplements. For example, fish oil for diets low in sea food, or vitamin D3 during a Minnesota winter.)
• Drink water. Half your weight in ounces is one recommendation. (Are you bored yet?)
• Exercise. Get that body working the way God intended it!

These are “sound mind” principles. They're things that make sense, that the more health conscious among us probably already do anyway.

What about love?

• Love your neighbor by covering that cough.
• Stay home when you're sick.
• Speak/post/send words of encouragement grounded in truth rather than feeding the fear.

And power?

• Pray for your family, your community, those at high risk, those who've contracted coronavirus, the medical providers caring for them, and the family of those who have died from it.
• Consider your plans with discernment, and then live your life.

What power there is in not harboring fear!

Before I close, I would like to urge us all to slow down, stop allowing knee-jerk reactions. Stop spreading the fear. Consider your actions thoughtfully, and make well-informed decisions. This is not the first terror to come to our fair shores – nor will it be the last (think of anthrax, West Nile, ebola, SARS, to name a few from recent history). Are we going to panic every time there's a new version? Aren't we tired of running around screaming, “The sky is falling!”?

Statistics are in: 100% of people die. No one gets off this planet alive. So are we going to spend our time stressing and over-analyzing every sniffle, or are we going to live as the dignified, respectable, courageous citizens of the United States of America that we are?

John 14:27 "Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid." (ESV)

Philippians 4:5-7 "Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand; do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus." (ESV)

Preparing for the Resurrection

No one prepared for the first resurrection.

We look through the Biblical record now, with the perspective of centuries, and see Jesus plainly telling His disciples of, preparing them for, His death and resurrection.

Yet when He came bursting out of the tomb, His followers were still in mourning. Mary Magdalene looked an angel in the face as he told her, “He is alive,” and she still sought His mutilated body.

“How could they have missed it?” we wonder sagely. With the exception of the extravagantly generous woman of Mark 14:3-9, no one saw Calvary - or Easter - coming. Defeat didn't fit their picture of the expected messiah. There was no room for humiliation and death in their version of what the christ would achieve.

We can fill hours with the prophecies they missed, misinterpreted, and overlooked. Starting in Genesis, God prepared His people for a Rescuer who would be bruised (3:15). But they wanted a rescuer who would fill the stomachs of his followers with food, who would drive out their oppressors in the vein of the Maccabees, and who could raise his army from the dead if need be.

Jesus didn't fit their ideal. And if their ideal wasn't fulfilled, they concluded, He must not have been The One.

Which is what makes the High Holy Days of the Church calendar an excellent time to ferret out our own beloved idols. Certainly, if the very people who walked the dusty roads beside Jesus missed His true nature, we who are distracted by books, screens, and thousands of voices bombarding us daily might also have some false ideas of our Savior.

• Maybe you've bought into the idea of a god who dispenses favor for those who check off all the items on his holy to-do list.
• Maybe your version of idolatry is a god who leaves you alone as long as you live a decent life.
• Maybe you think god is out to get you, just waiting for you to give him an opening to zap you.
• Maybe your god made you the way you are and would never dream of asking you to change a single aspect of your life.
• Maybe god made you basically good and wants you to follow your heart.

This isn't a comprehensive list, so if you're sweating over whether or not I'll mention your pet misbelief, don't let my omission quench the Spirit of conviction. I can identify a few, mostly because they've had to be weeded out of my own life. (I've still got plenty. I know, because the Holy Spirit tends to let me know about them from time to time, usually when I'm feeling most comfortable and smug with myself.)

Does it matter? Don't our little beliefs comfort us?

But if they're false ideas about God, we are in fact worshiping a false god. We form God in our image, and wonder why He doesn't perform to our specifications. We can even find Scriptures to support our beloved baals, for heaven's sake! So don't think, because you can give a reference that backs you, that you have an exclusive claim to understanding an aspect of God.

This Lent, and in your celebration of Easter, ask God to show you where you have worshiped an idol rather than the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

He will answer, because He is in the business of revealing Himself.

It's why we have Easter, after all.