And this is my prayer, that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight to help you to determine what is best, so that on the day of Christ you may be pure and blameless, having produced the harvest of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ for the glory and praise of God.
I want you to know, beloved,* that what has happened to me has actually helped to spread the gospel, so that it has become known throughout the whole imperial guard* and to everyone else that my imprisonment is for Christ; and most of the brothers and sisters,* having been made confident in the Lord by my imprisonment, dare to speak the word* with greater boldness and without fear.
Some proclaim Christ from envy and rivalry, but others from goodwill. These proclaim Christ out of love, knowing that I have been put here for the defense of the gospel; the others proclaim Christ out of selfish ambition, not sincerely but intending to increase my suffering in my imprisonment. What does it matter? Just this, that Christ is proclaimed in every way, whether out of false motives or true; and in that I rejoice.
Yes, and I will continue to rejoice, for I know that through your prayers and the help of the Spirit of Jesus Christ this will result in my deliverance. – Philippians 1:9-19
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I have a sin of fear, that when I have spun
My last thread, I shall perish on the shore;
But swear by thyself, that at my death thy Son
Shall shine as he shines now, and heretofore;
And, having done that, thou hast done;
I fear no more. – John Donne, “A Hymn To God The Father,” Stanza Three
Rush Video
If there a single theme in my writings – even more than the constant music – it is that we Christians need to remember that ours is a Spirit not of fear, but of courage. St. Paul’s great hymn to the power of the Spirit to move the Church forward, Romans Chapter 8, ends with a grand reminder that nothing in this life can separate us from the love we have from God in Jesus Christ. Other reminders are sprinkled throughout that part of Romans: If God is with us, who can be against us? St. Paul reminds his readers they may be beaten but not broken; they may be abused but not crushed. If the 21st Century Christian Churches need to hear any message today, it isn’t so much the Gospel as much as it is this power to stand and face fear with the courage that flows from God, denying it any power over our lives.
Except, alas, we do. Particularly we Americans who call ourselves Christians are among the biggest cowards on the planet. Americans in general are three hundred million children huddled in corners, surrounded by darkness, every creak of a board, every drip of a faucet, every scratch of a branch against a window something horrible that is coming to get us, to kill us, or worst of all – to make us, somehow, not-American. Far too many people who call themselves Christians feel this fear; yet they also feed it, giving it shapes and names, from gays to African-American youth (particularly young black men) to popular culture to Muslims. We Christians encourage our fellow Americans to arm themselves against all these dangers, to shoot, to kill, to defend a way of life – we are assured – is not only God-given, but God-blessed, God-ordained, and unique among all the civilizations that ever have been or ever will be. That Spirit that is supposed to stand tall in the face of powers and principalities and thrones and dominions cringes at the thought that somewhere, someone is saying, “There is no God and all you Christians are a bunch of fools.”
Our social media is blighted by displays of our fear. Fear of our President, whose difference must mean he is not only not one of us, but actively against us. Men fear women, displaying itself as rage at the thought women might actually express themselves. We fear news reports of yet another mass shooting, yet another unarmed civilian gunned down by police, yet another display of anger by those targeted by police, yet another expression of hatred toward America by those who fear our power. Fear not only sells; it’s the best motivator there is to do everything from express outrage to commit wanton violence. If Facebook and Twitter and all the rest are any indication, ours is a society so soaked in fear, we don’t even realize we might well be drowning in it.
And what about me and all my declarations for bravery and constancy in the face of constant fear-mongering? I doubt you’ll find a bigger coward. I don’t say that with pride. It is what it is.
Courage, they say, isn’t absence of fear. Courage, rather, is being afraid and doing what needs to be done anyway. With that understanding in mind, let’s just say I make sure I do anything but what is necessary. My photo is next to “passive-aggressive” in the dictionary. I am the poster child for procrastination. Since my breakdown and subsequent depression, I am terrified of crowds, of too many people making demands upon me and my time. Thus it is I spend most days, locked away in my house where it is safe, and the only thing I have to fear is tripping over the cat when I walk down the basement steps to do laundry.
After toppling that horrendous statue I’d built to idolize myself, it hasn’t been long down the road that I stand and face an enormous wall of darkness. It stretches out in both directions as far as I can see. To call this darkness, however, is a bit like calling our recent winter chilly. This isn’t darkness with vague shapes, perhaps enough light for my eyes to adjust and continue on my way. This is more than an absence of light. It is, in truth, absence itself. On the one hand, I know I have to continue forward. On the other hand, I know, instinctively, that direction is meaningless in this mass of nothingness that stands before me. There may be far worse things than wandering off the path in there. Despite what I once told my younger daughter, I just know there are horrors in that darkness that cannot exist any place else.
So I’m faced with a conundrum. I know I have to push forward, if I’m going to get to Jerusalem, then Good Friday, then – I hope against hope – Easter. I also know the way forward is blocked by this darkness that is more than just the absence of light, but the absence of everything except all that I and everyone else has ever feared and known to be ready to drag us down, not so much to die, but to suffer. Death would be a welcome respite from whatever waits behind that non-physical wall in front of me. I recite all the verses I remember from childhood. The Twenty-third Psalm, “Yea though I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, Thou Art With Me.” “It’s better to light one candle than to curse the darkness.” “The Light came and the darkness did not overcome it.” These and so many more are supposed to console in the face of the existential threat not so much of death, but the far more horrible threat – fear. Fear that our true selves will be exposed to others; fear that our lives, for all our accomplishments, will be meaningless, ending with the kind of darkness that stands before me now; fear that those we’ve wronged will come to seek some sort of recompense, a payment we cannot afford. Fear itself. More terrible than a thousand devils, or any image of the tortures of hell or humanity, it is fear that, in and for itself, stops my feet, even though I know I must move forward. I know, swimming around in that nearly-physical darkness in front of me are all the fears I’ve already named, and those I dare not ever speak out loud.
This journey, though – this journey I’m taking is precisely so I no longer need fear what’s in front of me, what’s behind me, or what’s around me. I go to Jerusalem, to all that will entail, because it is there I hope to find the one thing in all creation that can destroy not only the darkness outside, but the far worse darkness within. Because, at the end of all this, it is this darkness I fear the most. A darkness that I fear cannot and will not ever be lit to chase away whatever might be there. The thing of it is, I know full well what dwells in that darkness, unseen by others. So, what I’m seeing in front of me isn’t so much the expression of something outside myself. On the contrary, it terrifies me because it is the manifestation of a darkness within that is so terrible, I’d rather not admit it even exists.
I have no choice, though. To rid myself of this fear that stops me cold, I have to move through it. I have no light of my own to guide me. There is certainly nothing inside me that will chase away this darkness, because this darkness is me.
I do what I must do. Coward that I am, I close my eyes, and raise my right foot, not even sure there is anything beyond this wall of darkness on which to land; for all I know I may just begin to fall, fall without end, fall without hope of rescue, fall until time itself means nothing and a madness greater than that which overtook me last year blanks out everything but the darkness through which I might well plunge, alone, unseen, for all eternity.
I take a step forward.
Geoffrey Kruse-Safford is a seminary-trained United Methodist layman in Rockford, Ill. He blogs at No I Has Heard.