Love and Fear and the Sacred Adventure

"There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear."

I am growing more and more convinced that there is no greater enemy to the sacred adventure than fear.   For some months now I've been doing an experiment in which I've been trying to be more aware of the influence of fear in my life.  Each time I notice that my shoulders are soar or my neck is stiff, I try to look 'beneath the surface' to identify why I'm tense.  With astonishing frequency, the culprit is fear. The stiffness in my neck points to my fear that I've disappointed someone; the tight shoulders speak to the fear that I'm not accomplishing all that I think I should; the headache exposes the fear that a well-laid plan is not working out; the ache in the stomach speaks of a coming challenge of which I'm afraid.   "The issue is in the tissue," someone has said; the various aches and pains are symptoms of fear's pervasive influence.

One of the many challenges related to fear, of course, is that when we're frightened we tend not to think as clearly.  Someone I know suffered from test anxiety.  Every time she sat down to take a test she became frightened of failure.  Because she was afraid, she couldn't think clearly enough to perform well on the test.  An ironic loop if ever there was one.  When we feel threatened (whether we really are threatened or not), fear narrows our thinking, limits creativity and clouds our decision-making processes.

When religion becomes sick, it becomes another vehicle for fear. I am sometimes astonished at how deeply rooted this is.   Legalism is but one powerful expression of religious fear, where the letter of the law dominates all that we do and say.  Even powerful practices like prayer, reading scripture and corporate worship can be driven by the powerful fear that we are disappointing God or a significant other if we don't do them.  Dogmatism is another expression of fear-based religion.  "I'm right and you're wrong and that is the end of the conversation."   Here, community is destroyed in the name of being 'right.'

I believe that fear-based religion is to Christian faith what pyrite is to real gold.  "Perfect love casts out all fear," St. John wrote to the church of the first century. The ground and foundation of the Christian community is not fear, but love.  I wonder what would happen if we regarded all of the powerful practices of the Christian journey-- practices such as prayer, receiving communion, fasting, worship, and service--as a grounding of our lives in love, if each day, we would make an effort to close out distractions for at least a few minutes  and do nothing but be fully present to the love of God.  It would be difficult, to be sure.  There are so many things, often fear-based, that demand our attention.  I suspect, however, that if we could regularly  make space to be fully present to the love of God, we would find that there is no room in love for fear and that the freedom, creativity and courage that are requisite to the sacred adventure are to be found there.

 I'm mulling over this little tidbit today:

I hear that Rabbi Akiva is said to have uttered something like the following.

"In the time to come, God will not ask me, Why were you not more like Moses or Elijah or Jeremiah?'  In the time to come, God will ask me, 'Why were you not more Akiva?'"

One of the most liberating questions anyone ever put to me was the following:  "Why don't you stop trying to be a pastor whose name happens to be Steve?  Why don't you put your energies into being Steve, who happens to be a pastor?"  (Thank you, Brant)

It's Ironic

It is supremely ironic that many of us become anxious about the faith of our loved ones.  I've detected this in myself many times, and I've observed it in others.  Moms and dads worry about whether or not their children will entrust their lives to Christ, wives become anxious for their husbands (and husbands for their wives), and pastors worry about the faith of their congregation's members.   When this is so, we tend to speak in loud tones, to lecture, plead, and even, on occasion, manipulate our loved ones to become believers, or to become better believers.   But here is the irony.  Faith is, as the New Testament reminds us repeatedly, a non-anxious way of being.  To have faith in God is to trust God to meet our daily needs (see Mt 6) and to entrust our worries to God through prayer, so that the "peace that passes understanding" will guard our hearts and minds.   Faith and trust are inseparable; faith and anxiety are oil and water.  To become anxious about the faith (or lack thereof) of another person is a faithless act.  It takes the responsibility for a loved one's faith upon one's self, as though God is not!   The alternative to being anxious about the faith of those I love is simple, but challenging.  Each of us is called to bear witness to our faith to others, including our loved ones, and then to trust God with the outcomes.  To bear witness is to speak of that which I have seen, heard, experienced to be true.  It is a far different thing to bear witness to my faith than it is to anxiously seek to impress it upon another.  In the former case, I am planting seeds and trusting God.  In the latter case, I'm lecturing and manipulating and acting as though I am God.

Productivity and Fecundity

Aided by some very nice reading (thank you Henri Nouwen), I'm thinking today about the difference between productivity and fecundity.  If you're not familiar with the word (I was not), fecundity has to do with being fruitful, bountiful, prolific.  While productivity, in the way that it is commonly used, could be thought of as a quantitative and technical category (one's productivity is equal to how much one has produced, and how efficiently one has produced it), fecundity is a qualitative and organic category.   A human who is productive accomplishes much; a person who is fecund is open and receptive to life in ways that allow her to be life-giving.

It seems to me that the distinction between productivity and fecundity is an important one for people on a sacred adventure.  I don't mean in any way to belittle the importance of productivity.  When the curtains of the day are drawing to a close and I reflect on the day just lived, it's rewarding to look back and note what I've accomplished. Businesses need to be productive, as do governments and churches.  I'd rather work with a person who is productive than one who is not.   It seems to me, however, that the importance of productivity is often blow terribly out of proportion.  In the worst sort of 'works righteousness,' where productivity is the most important thing, we judge people on the basis of how much they accomplish.  An unfettered quest for productivity can, as we have so often seen, easily overlook the human dimension of ours and others' lives.  How many people are forgotten, overlooked or used in the inexorable push to be more productive?  

Fecundity, on the other hand, is a profoundly organic category.  Remember, a fecund person is open to life in ways that make him life-giving. A fecund person will accomplish much, but not necessarily in ways the world would describe as productive.  One of my personal favorite examples is that of the late Henri Nouwen.  In the later chapters of his life, Father Nouwen left the university, where he enjoyed an important teaching post, to live and work in a home for mentally handicapped adults.  By the standards of productivity, his career move was foolish.  He left behind honors and prestige to embrace this simple way of living in community with the 'poor in spirit.'  But Father Nouwen wrote deeply and thoughtfully about the impact of that career move on himself and others.  His emerging clarity about life in the Spirit, about which he wrote so beautifully, has inspired thousands of readers.  He set an example and offered an invitation to be more fully human in a highly technological world.  A fecund life.

We heard a beautiful sermon this last Sunday (thank you, Paul!) in which we were reminded of those who are like trees, planted by streams of water, which yield their fruit in season (Psalm 1).   Jesus taught his disciples that those who abide in him as a branch abides in the vine will bear much fruit.  Here are two Biblical invitations (among dozens) to a fecund life.