Pete describes it<\/a>, you might genuinely think God wants us to violently defend our nation-state against foreign enemies. I mean, it is right there in the Bible. Alternatively, if you read it as a Red-Letter Christian, who feels Jesus\u2019 ethical stance trumps the implicit ethics of the Old Testament, you might think the Bible says we should \u201clove our enemies\u201d (presumably by not violently defending our nation-state against them).<\/p>\nOf course, the problem is that both are in our Bibles. So the Bible\u2019s stance on violence really just depends on how you read it.<\/p>\n
But that\u2019s not true with fear.<\/p>\n
Old Testament: Don\u2019t be afraid.
New Testament: Don\u2019t be afraid.<\/strong><\/p>\nBut we are so incredibly afraid.<\/p>\n
So it seems appropriate to focus on that for a minute.<\/p>\n
When it comes to fear, America has become the Woody-Allen-Character of cultures. Our anxiety oozes out of us at every Starbucks-owned corner. We\u2019re afraid of Democrats winning another election, that the gays will overrun our society, that someone will take our kid, that someone will break into our car, that someone with a gun will shoot up whatever public space we find ourselves in, that our kid will get hurt, that we don\u2019t have enough money, that Trump might win, and on and on, ad nauseam<\/em>.<\/p>\nBut that\u2019s not the worst part. The worst part is how infrequently we admit our fear. And why would we admit it? To be afraid, as the Bible seems to be univocal about, is to mistrust God. And we can\u2019t have a bunch of Christians confessing that they don\u2019t trust God, now can we? No, we can\u2019t. We\u2019re even afraid to confess our fear.<\/p>\n
So, we hide it behind other, more acceptable emotions and tasks, most of them summed up as:<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m just being safe.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\u201cI\u2019m just being smart.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\u201cBetter safe than sorry.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\nSo yes, \u201cBe not afraid.\u201d
But also, \u201cBe not afraid to confess our fear.\u201d<\/p>\n
Because each time we convince ourselves that our fear is just \u201cbeing smart,\u201d we bury the root deeper and deeper into our hearts. We lose sight of the fear that motivates us and start buying the cover: that being afraid really is just being safe. And of course, it\u2019s always better safe than sorry.<\/p>\n
And the more we convince ourselves, the more we convince others. And our narrative reverberates to those around us. Yes, yes, we all begin to say. It\u2019s not fear. It\u2019s safety. And being safe is being smart. Right? Yes, yes, we all begin to say.<\/p>\n
And eventually, \u201cjust being safe\u201d can justify just about anything we need it to justify. \u201cJust being safe\u201d is what makes being consumed by fear seem like the most reasonable thing in the world.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\nSo, yes, let\u2019s all work toward \u201cBe not afraid.\u201d But in the meantime, may we all be very wary of making our fear reasonable.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"by Jared Byas Granted: The Bible\u2019s stance on violence is ambiguous at best. That\u2019s why if you read it as a Biblicist, as Pete describes it, you might genuinely think God wants us to violently defend our nation-state against foreign enemies. I mean, it is right there in the Bible. Alternatively, if you read it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10434,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[]},"categories":[44],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10433"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10433"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10433\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10434"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Fear](\"https:\/\/thebiblefornormalpeople.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/Fear-Not-Poster1.jpg\")
<\/a>by Jared Byas<\/a><\/p>\n