A NATION PARALYZED BY FEAR

Fear is not only a personal feeling. It is something that can become pervasive across a community, in a nation’s collective psyche, and sometimes even felt around the world, particularly in our age of mass communication and social media.

After the death of Saul, the survivors of his family and household sought to defend their claims to the kingdom against David, who had been anointed as the next king, and his supporters. It was a time of turmoil and unrest, violence and widespread fear: “All Israel became paralyzed with fear” (2 Samuel 4:1, NLT). Tragically, in some parts of the world today, this kind of pervasive fear is an everyday reality. All of us have experienced times when some threat, mass killing, or other national disaster has dominated the conversations and interactions with people around us, becoming a hum of anxiety underlying everything in a community or society. Those fears often extend beyond the actual threat itself and are amplified by their loud and repeated broadcast over various forms of media. But as it was in ancient Israel, such fear can have a profound and distorting influence on a community or the life of a whole nation. While there are often real reasons for such pervasive fear, there is also truth in President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s oft-quoted line that “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”* This is why “Do not be afraid” is not so much about changing our circumstances but choosing to respond differently. Because of our trust in a God who promises to be with us always, we have a meaningful and hopeful alternative to the fear-filled cultures around us.

* Jean Edward Smith, FDR (New York: Random House, 2008), 278, quoting a speech given on March 4, 1933.