Hello faithful readers! Arthur here, filling in for Alex as she spends the weekend scrounging up questions for a junior high school scholar's bowl. Alex is usually pretty timid about setting me loose on a blog with no direction, and my taste does tend to run a little further on the philosophical than in reality. I have been thinking a lot recently about one area where those ideas merge quite close today.
2 Timothy 1:7 says "God hasn't given us a spirit of fear but of power and of love and of sound mind." Some in the audience might rightly point out that fear has great utility when confronted by a poisonous snake or bear or any number of life threatening scenarios, and a fairly lengthy discussion could be had on what exactly this passage might mean. For our purposes, if I can get you to agree with the premise that constant fear is not a characteristic of the Christian life God means us to lead, I think we can continue.
James 1: 20 say "man's anger do not bring about the righteous life God desires." As before, some will rightly bring up that there is such a thing as righteous anger, but again, if I can get you to agree with the premise that anger is not a characteristic of the Christian life God means for us, we can safely continue.
Premise 3: God wants us to live self-controlled lives. As we saw in 2 Timothy 1:7, God did give us a spirit of "sound mind," your translation might have self control instead. It is the last fruit of the spirit found in the famous list of Galatians 5. I doubt there would be much disagreement on this point.
Everybody tracking with me so far? Alright, here's where I'm going to a little farther than you might be comfortable with, so buckle up. Premise 4: there is a lot of media meant primarily for a Christian audience that is meant to make you scared and angry. Some of it, I'm sure, is just purely incidental; it is hard to report on scary things and not leave a person scared; the same holds true for anger. Some of it, I'm also pretty sure, is meant to get people to act the way someone else wants.
There are people who might have good causes who realize how motivating fear and anger can be, and they use it to drive people to donate money, come to protests, vote a certain way, call their elected leaders, and shut their minds down from ever engaging someone who might have a contrary point of view. This brings me to my conclusion: if listening or watching a piece of media makes you feel scared or angry, make sure you wait until you are completely in control and relaxed before doing anything; and you might seriously want to consider finding a new place to find your information.
Jesus didn't go around trying to scare people into the kingdom of heaven: there were times he almost seemed to be trying to scare people out of it. He said things to the effect of, if you want to follow me, pick up your cross daily (i.e. be ready to die horribly). He saw people were following Him for food and told them they must eat His flesh and drink His blood. He warned that the world would hate the believer, that they would be persecuted.
Those who were left were not motivated by fear or anger; they were motivated by love, and that would be might final conclusion from this little exercise: whatever you do, do it out of love. Instead of following the guy with the most fiery rhetoric, look for the calm man who shows no hatred for the opposing side. This hits me hard; we live in a state with a governor I think is choosing very poor policy decisions, and it is hard for me not to get angry at him. Whatever I do, I need to practice what I'm preaching here.
This was something of a heady subject; I'm sure next week Alex will be back to give you more lighthearted stories of marital bliss. Until then, I hope you will consider what's written here, so that in your own life; Omnia Vincit Amour.
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