Do Not Be Afraid
This is important.
What is God’s most common and consistent command and word of guidance for human beings? Is it to love God or love people? No. God says those two are the most important, but the message God tries to get through to us most frequently is, “Do not be afraid.”
In fact, almost every time God speaks in the Bible, some version of “Do not be afraid” is included in the message – and sometimes it is the message. As far as I can tell, “Do not be afraid” is God’s most common command to human beings. Jesus fleshes this out further by telling us not to worry or be anxious – which is simply meditating on fear. God seems to think that fear is on the short list of things that diminishes our humanity and keeps us from becoming all that God made us to be. God seems to think fear brings out the worst in us and suppresses the best in us.
Perhaps God is right?
I recently started thinking about this when my kids taught me something about sharks. All my life I have known people who were very afraid of sharks. None of these people live close to the ocean or have had a bad encounter with a shark, but sharks are one of their top fears. Even so, it could make sense – sharks are dangerous to people right?
Here is what my kids taught me from a book they were reading. Sharks kill less than ten people every year, but people kill around 100 million sharks every year. And we’re afraid of them? I’m sure we kill some of them for food, some probably on accident, and maybe some because they scare us. Either way, the reason probably doesn’t matter a whole lot to millions of sharks. We are the super predator. We are the thing to fear – partly because we are dangerous when we are afraid.
It doesn’t stop with sharks though.
Perhaps the most important lesson we should have learned from the twentieth century is our human susceptibility to Mass Formation. Mass Formation is our human vulnerability to governments and prominent leaders getting large groups of people to do things they otherwise wouldn’t do – like take part in the murder of a quarter to a third of a billion people. Yes, it’s that serious. We’re all capable of it and accepting that reality and learning how our psychology gets caught up in it is the most important lesson we could have learned from this tragic century. But we didn’t learn, and we think it couldn’t happen to us, so the beat will go on.
The orchestrators of Mass Formation have a number of different tools in their belt to get people like you and me to do what they want, but the absolute most important one is FEAR. They often use an event or situation (real or manufactured) as the catalyst and focal point of the fear, but the fear is the point. Fear is what gives the controllers control. The fearful narrative is repeated over and over again. Fear and anxiety are constantly pumped into the population in every way possible; whether it be the town crier, the radio, or social media; fear is amplified and any contrary messages diminished.
Why all the fear? It is because we are primarily emotional organisms. I know that is insulting to some people who have ego invested in believing they are intellectually different and above that, but none of us are. We Homo sapiens can think and we can do it quite well, but rarely when we are afraid. And that is the point. Fear makes less of us. It diminishes both our intellect and our moral judgment. It diminishes our humanity. It also makes us easier to manipulate and control by those who would use us.
When you notice yourself becoming afraid, be careful and try to put it in its proper place. If there is something that is creating ongoing fear or anxiety in your life, be especially careful, and lunge for the off switch.
“Those whom you would control, you must first make afraid.” – Nathan Dean
“Do not be afraid.” – Said constantly by the God Who Made You
“Knowing is half the battle.” – G.I. Joe
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