"I'm afraid I can't help you," the nice young sales clerk said. Funny, she didn't seem afraid. I guess it was just an expression.
Interesting, then, how many situations arise where something altogether different may be what's voiced but where some version of "I'm afraid" actually is what's going on underneath the surface.
"I hate you," for instance, may mean "I've been hurt by you and now I'm afraid "¦ that you'll do it again."
Or "I just can't stand people like that!," if we're honest, could signify "At some level I recognize a part of myself in them "¦ and I fear that part of me."
Or again, "Let them look out for themselves!" may be a fear that there's not enough to go around. Fear takes many forms.
We hear "love and hate" expressed as opposites, but perhaps it's more the case that it's fear, and not hate, that stands opposed to love.
We could even consider that hate as well as anger, prejudice, racism, envy, insecurity, cynicism, resignation, struggle, controlling, blaming, resisting, manipulating, forcing, etc. are all simply forms and consequences of fear. Perhaps, even, there is only love and fear _ love and what resists love; love and what is not yet love.
This is a fairly radical idea in not only today's world politic but also in our own relationships. And yet, this seems exactly the direction in which the world's great wisdom and religious traditions would point us.
Buddhism, for instance, gives love as one of "the four immeasurables" while in the New Testament we read, "There is no fear in love; but mature, complete love casts out fear."
One of the ways that Paul the Apostle talked about God and God's activity in the world was in terms of "God reconciling the world to himself through Christ" and even giving to human beings this "ministry of reconciliation."
The Greek word Paul uses for reconciliation has the fundamental sense of "to make other than it is, to change, or to exchange."
For me, one of the ways I see reconciliation powerfully work is in the transformation of fear _ in all its many forms _ into love _ in all its many forms.
Differing individuals, churches, religions and philosophies will all have their own unique beliefs and insights into what constitutes God, truth or the nature of reality; but perhaps the conversation around transforming fear into love is one that is common to and in the interests of all, and around which we all can unite.
"What would it look like," we could ask, "to have a world that works for everyone; a world where no one has to be afraid; and where everyone acts with the best interests of the whole in mind?"
That would be a world given by love, not fear. It would also be a world radically different than the one in which we live _ at least on one level.
For perhaps it is the case that it is mostly our own fear that is behind our seeing the world as a fearful place; our own self-judgment that fuels our harshness and judgments toward others; and our own poverty when it comes to love that leaves us bringing forth so little love beyond the narrowest circles of our lives.
Looking at it that way would at least have us being responsible about what we ourselves are contributing to the circumstances and situations in our lives.
And once we take responsibility (which is an entirely different thing from guilt, blame or shame) that our lives and our world are largely as we have created them, then we can also be responsible the fact that it is largely within our power to create different lives and a different world _ these given not by fear, but by love.
For love, as Paul says elsewhere, "bears all, believes all, hopes all, endures all, and never ends."
If there are limits to where we are willing to extend and to bring love, they lie within us, not with love itself.
And limits to love are always about fear.
In reality, there are no limits around love, no barriers which cannot become bridges, and no circumstances or fear that are beyond reconciliation. Some situations certainly may take more work than others but they are just as transformable.
Each of us has opportunities every day to choose fear or love.
Which you choose will give you the life you end up having, along with helping to shape the world we all share.
May the vast, glorious and generous God of love lead you from fear _ in all its many forms _ into love _ in all its many forms.
The Rev. Mark Monfort is the pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in Oneonta.
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