Deuteronomy 6:1-9, Mark 12:28-34
The command to love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength, and our neighbour as ourselves is called the Great Commandment and is fundamental to Christian living. It is also the theme of our Sunday evening studies. How do we love God with all our heart? By godliness in all of life. Last week I talked about how we see ourselves and how God sees us and why it is important to sort the truth from the lies about ourselves. Today we have another area where we have to sort truth from lies.
If you were to go under water – deep under the water – to, say check out the Titanic 12,415 ft under the ocean, how would you do it? What would you need? You would need a submarine. Why? To take with you a supply of oxygen and to enable you to withstand the great pressure. The earliest submarines were spherical and submarine makers always avoid anything like square corners because round is the shape that best withstands the high pressure of water at great depths.
What’s this about? Pressure. We all live in a pressured environment. Last wek I mentioned the ongoing battle of beliefs in which we have to find the truth and combat the lies. The pressure is on us to accept lies rather than truth. We need to be equipped and practiced in this.
This week I read on Yahoo an article teaching people how to lie undetected. Many politicians, military spokespeople and business PR people are experts at it. Journalists are increasingly giving one side only of the stories they tell, or subtly promoting one side and putting down the other. Just one of my pet peaves! This kind of manipulation adds to the pressure we are under and makes it more necesary that we continually assess and be more than a little cynical about what we read and hear.
One of the ways we are manipulated – and it is not new – is by fear. Fear is the second of the three things I alluded to last week. We are told to fear one thing in order to turn us in favour of the purported good. Polititians do it by telling us that if we vote in their opponent we will get bad things that they describe or imply.
Fear is not a good motivator
In the past evangelists used to preach ‘hellfire and damnation’. They reasoned, rightly, that people need to be aware of their sin and its conequences so as to have a reason to turn to God. Did it work? Yes and no. One problem with this method is that fear is more debilitating than motivating. What do you do out of fear? Use locks and keys, lock the locks and keep your keys safe. Take precautions, like not roaming the streets and alleys in the early hours of the morning. Speak nicely to someone you know has a flaming temper.
This is low-level fear and our actions lower our risks. Have you noticed how the higher the level of fear the less we are able to do? I can’t say how any of us would react if someone were to shove a gun in our face and start telling us what to do. But that is a real situation. What I’m getting to is the fear of that level of danger when it’s not actually happening and not even likely. A lot of people live with this kind of fear. I wonder if it was what Paul was referring to in 2 Corinthians 7.
“When we arrived in Macedonia province, we couldn’t settle down. The fights in the church and the fears in our hearts kept us on pins and needles. We couldn’t relax because we didn’t know how it would turn out. Then the God who lifts up the downcast lifted our heads and our hearts with the arrival of Titus. We were glad just to see him, but the true reassurance came in what he told us about you: how much you cared, how much you grieved, how concerned you were for me. I went from worry to tranquility in no time! “
Paul is worried. Worried for the people in the church and he’s hundreds of miles away from them. This is more than pastoral concern for the flock, this is one troubled pastor. We might be surprised that a Christian we generally look up to would be downcast like this. Wouldn’t Paul, of all people have it all together? It can happen to anyone. Life’s trundling along when suddenly you’re everwhelmed by fear. There are numerous possible causes. I suspect in Paul’s case it could well have been that he was over tired. That’s what it was for me when fears started to hit me hard. I was shocked. This shouldn’t be happening to one who knows Jesus. I know better than to say that now. I didn’t really know what to do, but what I did was the right thing.
What got Paul back? Titus turned up with news – first hand account – that things were nothing like what Paul had feared. Worry to tranquility just like that! It’s like being frightened by shadows in a dark room and then turning on the light. What did I do? Each time I felt fear I asked my self, ‘What is true, here?’ I knew that the fear wasn’t the truth. It wasn’t even real. The truth I reached to was that God is bigger and more powerful than all the fears I can dream up, even if they were real, and furthermore, God is in control.
God is in control.
Sure, I could have blamed God as many do. I could have moved away from God, talked with him less, as I was tempted to do. But I knew that this was not God’s doing and I knew that God had the answers I needed. So I moved closer, held on to what is true, reached for the truth whenever fears came and progressively got on top of it.
I’m talking about this because there is so much of this about these days. I meet it all the time. Fearful people, depressed people, demotivated people. People who identify with the psalmist who wrote:
My insides are turned inside out; specters of death have me down.
I shake with fear, I shudder from head to foot.
“Who will give me wings,” I ask—“wings like a dove?”
Get me out of here on dove wings; I want some peace and quiet.
I want a walk in the country, I want a cabin in the woods.
I’m desperate for a change from rage and stormy weather.
Psalm 55:4-8 (MSG)
It’s a struggle because the media play on our fears. Negative people around us dump their fears on us too. Fear and related depression is all too common among Christians these days. I believe it is because we are inclined to think that Jesus will keep us secure and happy and we fail to understand our part in holding on to truth. We forget that we have to evaluate every idea for truthworthiness and sift them, holding on to that which is true and rejecting error.
The prevalence of depression that is all too common among Christians today suggests people are being overtaken by false beliefs. Yes, there is a lot of bad stuff in the world. There’s a lot of good, too. And the situation would be a lot worse if God didn’t limit the bad and promote the good.
Remember, the truth is that God is bigger than all the things we fear and God is in control. It is with the whole of his truth that God frees us from our anxious fears. Psalm 34:4 for example: “God met me more than halfway, he freed me from my anxious fears.” And also, Psalm 56:11: ‘Fearless now, I trust in God; what can mere mortals do to me?’
Love God with all your heart – hold on to truth and reject error.