Why Are We Afraid

Why Are We Afraid?

Scriptures: Second Timothy 1:7; Luke 12:22-32; First John 4:18

The title of my message this morning is “Why Are We Afraid?” This past week a man was charged with murder after he allegedly shot and killed a young woman who was in a car that mistakenly pulled into his driveway in rural upstate New York. A group of four young adults were looking for a friend’s house in the area when they drove their car up the wrong driveway. Upon realizing they were in the wrong driveway, they were in the process of turning around when the homeowner came outside with a gun and fired at their vehicle. There had been no communication, no physical interaction or threat made by the young adults when they were fired upon. There was no reason for the homeowner to feel threatened, especially as it appears the vehicle was leaving at the time. The homeowner and the occupants of the car were White so it was not a racially motivated shooting. So why was he so afraid? Why would he choose to fire at a car that had inadvertently turned into his driveway and was leaving? His neighbor said that he had grown frustrated over the last couple of years of people “turning around” in his driveway.

This next incident occurred a lot closer to home. A White 84-year-old homeowner shot and wounded a Black 16-year-old who went to the wrong home to pick up his siblings. It was immediately assumed that race was a factor. The young man had been asked by his parents to pick up his siblings and he went to the wrong address. The young man, thinking he was at the right address, pressed the doorbell and waited. The homeowner stated that he was in bed when he heard his doorbell ring and grabbed a handgun before answering the door. Once he got to the door and opened it, he said that he believed someone was attempting to break into his house and shot twice through an exterior storm door within a few seconds of opening the main door. There is no indication that anything was said between the two before he pulled the trigger. When questioned by police, the homeowner said he was “scared to death” by the young man’s size and his inability to defend himself at his age of 84. So why was he so afraid of the young man ringing his doorbell?

Jesus said in Matthew 24:12, “And because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold.” I talked about this Scripture last week in my message “Imitators of Love.” I told you that when you read the verses preceding this one, you find that what Jesus was saying was prophetic. He was talking about what would happen to some in the Church after His resurrection, which includes us today. He was explaining the signs of the last days and how Christians, His followers, would succumb to the trials and persecutions surrounding them from the “outside” and the apostasies and false prophets from the “inside”. By reason of these trials and persecutions from without, and the apostasies and false prophets from within, Jesus says some of the Church’s love for Christ and His doctrine and, love for one another would grow cold. These are the days in which we are living, where we have Christians advocating Christianity from a pulpit of hate. Political and religious leaders’ hate-filled speech is our new normal. I told you last week that hate is not of God and if His Church is espousing hate, they have lost their identity! But do you know what one of the primary drivers of hate is? It’s fear!

Martha Nussbaum, the Ernest Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago, wrote an interesting book in 2018 titled, “The Monarchy of Fear.” She proposed that the fundamental political emotion is fear, which contributes to other emotions such as anger, disgust, and envy. She wrote that emotions are causally interconnected, with one emotion tending to lead to another. If you fear someone, you may become angry that they have made you fearful. Also, after the Charlottesville travesty a column was written by Beth Lefever in the Commercial Appeal that said the racial anger and hatred behind it should trouble all of us deeply. In the article she wrote, “What causes us to hate in the first place? As we have seen throughout history, fear begets anger begets hatred begets fear in a dangerous and ever-expanding cycle. It goes like this: Almost all anger is preceded by a moment, however brief, of fear. Think about it. We get angry at a driver who pulls out in front of us because, for a moment, it felt dangerous and scared us, or because we fear it will slow us down when we are running late. We get angry at immigrants or minorities because, perhaps, we fear they will become dominant in our culture, leaving us with less power. We almost always, immediately and unconsciously, turn fear into anger, because fear leaves us feeling vulnerable while anger gives us a sense of power. Most of us value power over vulnerability, precisely because power makes us feel safer.”