Bringing Glory to God?
In the 2020 C-19 episode, we have seen a controlled release of fear in our western societies that has no precedent of which I am aware. Fear is seen as a useful control mechanism to compel preferred responses from the general populace. It is official! The UK government’s SAGE and its sub-group SPI-B stated that “The perceived level of personal threat needs to be increased among those who are complacent, using hard-hitting emotional messaging”. (SAGE meeting 23 March).
Emotional messaging? I became acutely aware of the use of emotion as part of the MSM treatment of the C-19 episode in March when I was watching Sky News at 10.00PM. A report on C-19 was ‘enhanced’ with mournful mood music playing quietly in the background. Now I know when someone is trying to game my emotions and my immediate response was to flick to BBC1. Absolutely no change! There too was a report on C-19 – with mournful music again playing in the background.
So-called “news” is today increasingly about manipulating emotion. We may well ask, what is “news”? What is propaganda? What is “entertainment”? And have these three now converged? What other “news” stories will we see played out in terms of social engineering and emotional “harp-playing”? What other “stories” (and perhaps we should emphasize that word!) are promulgated today with the objective of engaging and modeling our emotions, along with our minds? Or even in preference to our minds? Yet the media complain about fake news!
In 1940-41 some 41,000 Britons were killed during the Blitz. Presumably an equal or greater number were injured. Yet our nation continued with the sign “business as usual” often displayed in bombed-out shops and factories. The catch-phrase then was “keep calm and carry on”. And overall, people did. What a contrast with 2020! In 1940 many government posters telling people about the danger of invasion ended with the words YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED! Somehow in the 1940s there was an expectation that adults would take some sense of personal responsibility and be accountable for their actions – or even for their inactions. They had been warned. But not today!
I could not help a wry smile at one letter in a national newspaper about the government’s catch phrase “protect the NHS”. The writer said “I thought they were supposed to be protecting us”! How times have changed. In 1933 Franklin D Roosevelt in his presidential inauguration address said “first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is … fear itself. Nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.” We cannot but contrast that huge truism, for any generation, with today’s peculiar and dare I say, post-Christian, response to the C-19 episode. Seemingly – you have everything to fear – especially of not being afraid enough!
The fear of God?
There is only one kind of fear commended in Scripture – the fear of God Himself. We are not to worship God “all-matey”, which is the attitude of at least some church goers. No, we are to worship God Almighty. Jesus told us Whom to fear in Matthew 10:28 – well worth remembering. We are told to have a healthy fear (it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God (Heb 10:31)). Fear has a constructive role in enabling people to realize both the degeneracy of their souls and their need for divine forgiveness. The first occurrence of this fear is in Genesis 3 where Adam and Eve recoil from the presence of the Holy God whose commandment they had simply rejected. Fear is the natural and logical consequence of sin (Genesis 3:10; 4:13; Proverbs 28:1). The Bible is peppered with people plagued with deep seated anxiety (Cain, Saul, Ahaz, Pilate). Reject God and fear will follow in short order.
Anxious fear seizes the wicked (Job 15:24) surprises the hypocrite (Isaiah 33:14) and consumes evildoers (Psalm 73:19) whose faithless lives are characterized by fear (Revelation 21:8). This is surely one reason why today our local churches are largely ignored Sunday by Sunday – people respond as did Adam and Eve in Genesis 3:8. “Fear has a tendency either to immobilize men or seriously affect their activity. This is especially true of the spiritually uncommitted” (Baker Encyclopedia , page 782). One wonders whether in 2020 an inactive, post Christian western world is also an inactive western world reaping the consequences of its scorn of The Cross, so evident for the past fifty years. As David Pawson once said, positive and favourable Christian influence in a family lasts, once that family has rejected Christ, for two generations, but not three. The same rule applies to our culture. Three generations ago our nation might fairly have been described as broadly Christian – but not today. Where Jesus is rejected, so fear creeps in.
Freedom from fear
Jesus, through His atoning death, resurrection and heavenly intercession for believers, is the unique liberator from fear. Apostle Paul encouraged the Romans telling them that in their conversion to Christ, they received the Holy Spirit not as a spirit of fear and bondage, but as the spirit of adoption, whereby they can address God as “abba” (“daddy” – Romans 8:15). Recipients of God’s salvation love have received a dynamic force to cast out their anxieties (1 John 4:18). A sense of God’s intimate love inspires Paul to ask “If God is for us, who can be against us?” (Rom 8:31).
Even Godly people are tempted to fear (and who is the tempter?). We may be temporarily overwhelmed (Psalm 55:5). God repeatedly tells us not to succumb (Isaiah 8:12; John 14:1, 27). He urges us to heap our anxieties upon the God of our redemption, Whose care for His sheep is infinite (1 Peter 5:7). Faith is the indispensible antecedent of fearlessness (Isaiah 26:3). The Psalmist repeatedly stresses the role of faith in conquering fear (Psalm 27:1; 46:2; 112:7).
Let’s be encouraged, indeed, to cast our fears upon Him. The world may live in abject fear, but we do not need to. The world believes death to be the ultimate obscenity. That is why the world has a morbid fear of death and an unwillingness even to talk about it. Its called running away! The world knows, in its bones, that death is the agreed and just ‘wage’ for sin; physical death and then the reality of spiritual death.
By contrast the Christian understands death to represent our transfer into the immediate presence of our Lord. On that basis our attitude is, or should be, that we have work to do in the here and now and expect to remain whilst that work continues and whilst God has a specific task for us to fulfill. But beyond that, LIFE beckons, and we rejoice. Truly, in the words of “FDR”, we have nothing to fear but fear itself. In the words of the Lord Jesus, do not worry! “Seek first His Kingdom and His righteousness – and all these things will be given to you as well” (Matthew 6:33).
One final thought for Christians: have we absorbed the government’s diktat with enthusiasm, annoyance or resignation? Do we believe and promote the line that for us and for our own, we must avoid “spreading” a deadly disease? If so, is our response energized by altruism or abject fear? For many of our brothers and sisters around the world, to witness to Jesus is to court death. In Indonesia, Iraq, Syria, Iran, India and other places, to attend church on a Sunday morning can cost believers their lives, or the lives of their loved ones. Would we earnestly “advise” them to stay at home for their own safety? Would that be our preferred solution for their plight? When we consider Covid, have we ever considered the age old TRUTH that our lives are in our Saviour’s hands? And that if He chooses to call us home, then that is His choice. And if he chooses to ‘leave us at our post’ then that is His sovereign choice, too?
Whatever our circumstances, praise Him!
Peter Sammons is commissioning editor at Christian Publications International. He is author of the books “Rebel Church” (2013), “The Prince of Peace” (2015) and “Three Days and Three Nights – That Changed the World (co-authored with David Serle) in 2019.
Recent Comments