The Disease Called Fear

It was Franklin Delano Roosevelt who said, in his first inaugural address, that “the only thing we have to fear …is fear itself.”

The year was 1932. The country was in bad shape economically, and by 1933, the depth of the depression had hit head on. People were deathly afraid, and Roosevelt not only knew it, but he knew times would get worse before they got better. The things they worried about most, he said, were “only material things.” Said he, in that inaugural speech: “In such a spirit on my part and on yours we face our common difficulties. They concern, thank God, only material things. Values have shrunken to fantastic levels; taxes have risen; our ability to pay has fallen; government of all kinds is faced by serious curtailment of income; the means of exchange are frozen in the currents of trade; the withered leaves of industrial enterprise lie on every side; farmers find no markets for their produce; the savings of many years in thousands of families are gone.”

He said that “happiness (didn’t lie) in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, the thrill of creative effort.”

Those were powerful words, a balm to the anguished citizens of the United States who were facing a horrible reality. A new normal. It was scary because all that Americans had come to know and love as “American” was being challenged and changed before their eyes…and they could not see where the changes would lead. Would they have their homes? Would they have a job? What would they eat? How would they eat? When was the nightmare going to end? FDR’s words were powerfully comforting, words I’m sure some people came back to again and again.

There is a lot of fear swirling around now. Hurricane Sandy has thrown people into pits of despair. The economy has had people carrying fear around like a heavy suitcase. Some people are afraid for the country if President Barack Obama wins, and others are terrified for the country if Gov. Romney wins. There is no peace in the land right now.

Why? Because the disease of fear is stalking. It is stalking our country, it is stalking individuals, and it is stalking with a sense of arrogance. Fear relies on control, and it manipulates people to much that they acquiesce and give in to being controlled. Joan Chittister‘s book, Scarred by Struggle, Transformed by Hope talks in depth about fear. She says that “fear paralyzes a person,” and keeps people from doing things they know they should do. It makes them afraid to even try, and in so doing, lose their peace of mind. Chittister says we as humans must ask ourselves, “What am I willing to lose in order to have peace of mind and integrity of soul?” She says that it’s “not the grappling with a thing that defeats us; it is the unknown answers to hidden questions that wear us down.”

Fear, she says, “cripples us more than any disease ever could. It takes eminent good sense and turns it to gelatin.” Finally, she says “oppressors do not get to be oppressors in a single sweep. They manage it, because little by little, we make them that. We overlook too much in the beginning and wonder why we lose control in the end.”

I wonder what the world would be like if people were not so susceptible to fear. I remember a friend of mine in seminary, who said that his father hated racism but was afraid to speak out about it because he was afraid his church would fire him. I think how people have been intimidated into not speaking up when they’ve known they should, because they were afraid of the consequences. I am sure that, in light of Hurricane Sandy, there are some people who know that there are some predatory companies out, ready to suck the life blood out of vulnerable people, but will not say anything because they are afraid. I think much of the police brutality we hear about comes about because white officers are afraid of African-American males, not because the police officers are bad people. Young women who get caught up in life on the streets stay there far longer than they want because they are afraid of the pimps who initially lured them into “the life” with material things and the young girls translated “gift-giving” with love. Some people honestly think that the Palestinians are getting a raw deal in Israel, but they are afraid to say anything for fear of being called anti-Semitic.We have all heard stories about neighbors who suspected that a wife or children were being abused, but didn’t say anything because they were afraid. We have probably all seen something that we knew was wrong but have been afraid to say something because we don’t know what our “courage” will mean for our lives Fear is like a mean overseer, stalking lives and countries and situations with a huge whip.

We are afraid of bettering ourselves, stepping out of comfort zones into an “unknown” and so we stay in situations that stunt our growth. We are afraid to move and afraid to stand still. It is no wonder that Thoreau said that many of us live “lives of quiet desperation.”

Chittister says that “moral maturity requires us to choose truth over self-preservation, whatever the cost.” If we do not do that, as individuals or as communities, oppression and injustice gets to run its course, unopposed.

That’s what fear expects us to do: cower so that injustice can have its way. Sadly, fear is way too often the driver of the car, and it spreads its toxicity everywhere. Fear moves faith and hope out of the way. Fear will account for a lot of people making bad decisions in difficult times; it will add misery to people who are miserable enough.

At the end of the day, we have to decide whether we want to fuel fear and watch it metastasize throughout our spirits, robbing us of opportunities to be free, or if we finally want to face our Goliaths…whatever the cost.

Too often we leave Goliath standing upright, laughing at us.

But as long as Goliath stands, we cannot be free. And …we were made to be free.

A candid observation…

One of the biggest frustrations I have about being a Christian and using the Bible as my text of reference is that there is no ONE interpretation of the words written in our sacred book.

Peter Gomes, the late chaplain of Harvard University, writes in The Good Book: Reading the Bible with Head and Heart, writes: One of the greatest ironies available to people who take the Bible seriously is that they may be tempted to take it, and themselves, so seriously that God and the truths of God to which the Bible points may be obscured, perverted, or lost entirely.” (p. 35)

He continues by saying that there is a temptation to see, in the Bible, no further understanding of what we see which leads to an “idolatry of scripture.

I thought about that as I read an article this morning on the CNN Belief blog about the religion of President Barack Obama. It seems that there are a fair number of people “out there” who do not think he is a real Christian. They are troubled by what he has said and done and by what he has not said and done. Author John Blake says in the article that many say that the president is the “wrong kind” of Christian.

Talk like that drives me nuts, because I don’t understand what the “right kind” of Christian is. Is the “right” kind of Christian the one who believes that the poor should pull themselves up by their bootstraps even if they have no boots?

Blake says that the president is a “religious pioneer,” who is “challenging the Religious Right‘s “domination of the national stage.” (http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2012/10/21/to-some-obama-is-the-wrong-kind-of-christian/?hpt=hp_c1) The president is called a “progressive,” but according to clerics quoted in Blake’s piece, many believe that one cannot be Progressive and be a Christian.

The president apparently interprets the scriptures to mean that believers in Jesus are proponents of the social gospel, which compels the “haves” to assist “the least of these.” But many from the Religious Right think that such a stand is not supported by the Bible and say that interpreting the Gospel to mean that government should help the poor smacks of socialism.

It is mind-boggling to me that all of us who read the Bible can and do walk away with such different and diverse interpretations of the words written, but that’s because I believe that since there’s one God, there is one way of doing things. Since God is love and God has no favorites, then this God would want those who have to help the least of these. That’s social gospel talking, through and through …but it is my interpretation. The Bible is not a mathematical formula; there is no quaint equation that mandates that everyone believe and interpret the same way.

That, for me, is a problem. How can there be one God and so many different ways of interpreting what God requires? And, even bigger than that, why doesn’t God step in and do something so that all the different interpretations will fall to the wayside?

For me, the way the Religious Right has tended to interpret the Bible is not acceptable. The Religious Right’s interpretation of scripture has left too many people out, left too many people marginalized. That cannot be my conception of God; I could not worship a God who condoned racism, sexism, homophobia, militarism …God has to be better than that, has to demand better than that.

The CNN article says that the president’s article focuses more on community betterment than individual attainment. That, to me, sounds about right, but the people quoted in the article disagree. The attention paid to community and, more specifically, the “beloved community” talked about by Martin Luther King, has a socialist slant.

At the end of the day, though the president has a concern for the masses, and the communities of God’s people, he is still criticized by even those who believe more in the social gospel than in the fundamentalist way of the Religious Right. Many have criticized him for not doing enough for African-Americans, though he would argue that the Affordable Care Act really does address the needs of that community and other marginalized communities by providing them a way to get health care.

Some who have criticized the president for being the “wrong” kind of Christian say that they haven’t heard him say important things, like, for instance, that he was “born again.” They are suspicious of his Christianity because it is informed and influenced by all of the different religions to which he has been exposed.

But I shake my head. The “right” kind of Christian does and says what? The evangelicals I’ve read have not been very kind, not very merciful and certainly not very inclusive. The God I find in the Bible is all of that, and more.

At the heart of the discontent about the president’s religion, again, is the Bible, that marvelous yet troubling text which leaves so much open to individual interpretation. Gomes says in his book that people say “the Bible says what it means and means what it says.” He quotes Matthew 8:12, where it says the wicked will be cast into outer darkness where “men shall weep and gnash their teeth.” Writes Gomes: “A toothless reprobate asked his hellfire-preaching pastor what would happen to those who had no teeth to gnash: ‘Teeth will be provided,'” was the answer.

The problem is that all of us put our own human, individual interpretations on words that I wish left no room for variable takes. Those who criticize the president for his take on the Bible have their take too. So, who decides who is “right” and who is “wrong?”

There is no answer…there never has been …and there will never be. But I think it’s wrong for any of us to make a judgment call on who is right and who is wrong. At the end of the day, none of us really know. We can all think we are “right,” but at the end of the day, I have to believe that the God of the Bible is a God of love, mercy, forgiveness, inclusion and kindness, in addition to being an exacting God who demands that we do as S/He has asked us to do.

Just saying ….

A candid observation

The Manipulation of America’s Voters

All right, answer me something: is a woman’s voice, soft and slightly hushed, speaking under music, been shown to sway people?

I don’t watch television much; I vowed not to watch it much as this political campaign swept into high gear. The ads are manipulative and so often, not true. I remember when in the 1988 campaign between George H.W. Bush and Michael Dukakis, an ad was run about a man named Willie Horton. The issue was the death penalty. Bush was for it, Dukakis was apparently against it and advocated convicted felons getting weekend passes. Willie Horton lived in Dukakis’ state of Massachusetts and got such passes. He reportedly murdered a young teen on one of his weekend visits. He was put back into prison but got out and reportedly raped and murdered a woman. That was it. There was Horton’s image on the screen in front of the world: a dark-skinned black man with disheveled hair. He represented what so many people thought about black people, and the ad did what it was supposed to do. Bush won.

I remember being furious about it because it fed into people’s fears and it fed the widespread belief in the inherent “criminality” of black men. The criminalization of black men really originated after Reconstruction, when angry Southern whites decided that black people would not be free, Emancipation or not. Slavery had provided the necessary labor to plant and harvest the South’s crops and thus contribute mightily to the agrarian aristocracy. Under Reconstruction, blacks could own property; they could vote and participate in the political process. Their children could go to public school. Whites were never impressed with Emancipation because many of them genuinely believed that blacks were inferior to whites and that they were supposed to work for white people. And so, by the late 1800s, the South began to fight back. They put in place vagrancy laws that made it possible for law enforcement to arrest anyone for the slightest thing: selling products they had grown after dark, walking without having money (many walked during the day to find work), not having a job …the laws were ridiculous and wrong. What began to happen systematically is that black men were disproportionately arrested for such “crimes” and were convicted, usually without a trial. Law enforcement officers and justices of the peace would “sell” the new convict to a farmer or a business, which would then require the new convict to work until his debt was paid. When such an unfortunate man was sold, he was at the mercy of his new “owner,” and was worked mercilessly, and often, his new owner would accuse him of another “crime” at or toward the end of his sentence, and his sentence would be extended. The result of this practice, called “convict leasing,” was that prisons began to fill up primarily with black men, and thus the “criminalization” of black men began. Their inability to stay out of “trouble” with the law proved they were not worthy of freedom. Blacks were predisposed to crime, the belief would be …and continues to this day. So in 1988, those who ran the campaign knew exactly what they were doing. Horton would be a reminder, most especially to white Republicans, that the country needed a man “strong on crime” to keep our streets free from the awful black man.

Well, things have not changed so much. There have not been, among the ads I have seen, any such that compare to the Willie Horton ad, but they are plenty slanted toward the same base that Bush’s 1988 ads were. Mitt Romney’s now infamous “47 percent” speech is not surprising. I wonder who he was really thinking about when he named “47 percent” of Americans who were content to be “victims,” and mooch America’s treasury? I wonder his his campaign thought of who was in that 47 percent? President Obama uses Romney’s words to his advantage …as any politician would.

But there are ads where an attack on either candidate is as vicious as a wolf eating its prey, and what I have noticed is that many times, there is a soft-spoken woman making the point of the attack, her words carried by music, a lot of it piano. What is the deal?

I wish there were no ads at all. I despise the fact that both candidates are raising literally millions of dollars to get their messages out while so many people in America are in dire straits. I thought about that today as I thought about a friend who is really going through it right now. He is unemployed and “out there,” and it is a constant job to keep him above ground. I wonder how that soft woman’s voice and piano music sounds to him?

I know there is probably someone in marketing who can explain the effect of this soft voice/soft music is. What part of the brain does it reach?

And is there a place on the brain where the suffering of people takes hold? It doesn’t seem like it. Americans are manipulated as they listen to their views or their circumstances articulated in such a masterful way. What is sad is that after the election, there won’t be anyone out stomping the land, trying to raise money for America’s struggling citizens.

And that makes me very sad.

A candid observation …

Is Romney Kidding?

I read an article – and listened to a video tape – that captured GOP Presidential candidate Mitt Romney saying some pretty disparaging things about much of this nation.

The article, written by David Corn, said that Romney has disdain for 47 percent of this nation’s population who, he says, believe in big government, have victim mentalities, and have no interest in making a good life for themselves. (http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/09/secret-video-romney-private-fundraiser). Romney was speaking to a group of wealthy potential donors. What he needed from them, he said, was “millions of dollars.”

Said Romney: “There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that’s an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what…These are people who pay no income tax.”

He then went on to say that he wasn’t going to worry about that 47 percent, because they voted for President Obama in 2008 and will vote for him again. He also acknowledged that he is having trouble getting Hispanic voters.

But …back to the 47 percent …I had to ask myself as I listened to the video (yes, Romney himself is speaking) if he was kidding. Does he really have that low an opinion of nearly half of this country’s population? And is he arrogant enough to believe that he can win the election as he touts such views?

When one donor complained to Romney that he wasn’t attacking the president with enough “intellectual firepower,” the GOP candidate said that the campaign trail was not the place for “high-minded and detail-oriented arguments.”

I was squashed at the arrogance of all that he said. In a related articled which appeared in The Washington Post, author Greg Sargent said that the 47 percent of Americans whom Romney criticized as being government moochers do not, as Romney correctly said, pay income taxes, but they do pay state and local taxes. They would be appalled, if not disgusted, Sargent argues, at being lumped into a giant pool of lazy, opportunistic victims. (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/romney-ill-never-convince-obama-voters-to-take-responsibility-for-their-lives/2012/09/17/0c1f0bcc-0104-11e2-b260-32f4a8db9b7e_blog.html).

All of the reports recently which have addressed the issue of how tax cuts for the wealthy impacts an economy say that such cuts do not help the economy and do not spur the creation of jobs. Yet, Romney continues to push that argument, and in the process, insults a huge number of Americans who might be called the “working poor.”

Romney says he was not born with a silver spoon in his mouth, and in this leaked video, criticizes the other side for implying as much, but he certainly has not spent time amongst the working poor. He has not been in their (our) shoes, and experienced their struggles. Many to most people are not financially literate, and so are at the behest of a capitalistic society which takes advantage of their financial ignorance, but the fact that many people are not good with money does not justify such a snooty and arrogant description of them.

One wonders what this nation will be like, which direction it will go, if Romney wins in November. President Obama’s policies may not be favorable to everyone, and the president still has not mentioned the worth of poor people in this nation. His focus is on the middle class, which seems not to exist so much anymore; his policies are designed to lift and support them. The poor have not been mentioned much, if at all.

But at least the president seems to know that there is such a thing as the “working poor,” who might be included in that 47 percent of people whom Romney has decided he is going to ignore.

Seriously, Mr. Romney? How arrogant.

A candid observation …

Sometimes, Prayer is Not Enough

I am a pastor. I believe in God with all my heart. But sometimes, prayer is not enough.

It COULD be enough, I think, if people were fervent prayers as a matter of course. But we are not. We as a people are more “situational” prayers, or we pray in times of crisis. That kind of prayer is helpful, but not effective when a task of mammoth proportions, perhaps Biblical proportions, lurks before us.

This latest tragedy – the shooting and killing of innocent people who were at a movie – lifts up at least two issues that politicians will more likely fight over than treat as life-changing issues, which, ignored, are contributing angst and danger to our country.

Those two issues are gun control and mental health. With both issues, there is a Goliath which require prayers first, certainly, and then, action, and to most people, those two issues are too big, will take too much energy, to fight. Goliath is just too big.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg hit at Goliath yesterday when he said that politicians, first and foremost at this point, President Obama and the presumptive Republican presidential candidate, Mitt Romney, ought to speak out for gun control. Nearly everyone is enraged that the suspect in the Colorado theater incident, James Holmes, was able to buy so many guns and nearly 6000 rounds of ammunition legally.

I am reminded that not everything that legal is right. Everything the Nazis did to the Jews, including murdering them, was legal…but it was not right.

Certainly, our politicians cannot keep quiet on the fact that the obsession by some to protect Second Amendment rights at the expense of the lives of innocent American citizens. Opponents of gun control say that guns are not bad; people are. I counter that and say that of course, guns are not bad, but not everyone who buys guns, or does bad things with guns, are not bad. Many, many times, they are sick.

But to come out for gun control in this presidential election year would be like facing Goliath. The National Rifle Association (NRA) is one of the most powerful lobby groups in this country. If the NRA is not already pouring money into either camp, to speak out for tougher gun control would be like committing political suicide.

But sometimes, politicians ought to show America that they are more interested in pushing for the rights and protection of the American people than in being elected. Sometimes, we ought to see that they are willing to put politics down, pick up a stone, and confront a cowering, arrogant Goliath.

The second Goliath which this incident brings to the surface is mental illness. Nobody wants to talk about it or deal with it. I am convinced that the shooter in yesterday’s incident is not bad, but he is certainly sick – and I am sure he has been sick for a long time.

To lift up the fact that funds need to be spent on researching and treating mental illness will bring out cries of “no more spending!” I guess spending on mental health would be spending on yet another “entitlement,” and that is not something the President wants to get his opponents using against him. I don’t think Mitt Romney would dare bring the subject up.

And yet, in the masses of American people that both candidates are appealing to for votes, there are scores of people who are mentally ill. Much mental illness begins in childhood; in urban schools, I am convinced that many children labeled as “bad” are in fact mentally ill, and mentally ill children, whether they are from the ghetto or the suburbs, grow up to be mentally ill adults. There needs to be regular screening – and treatment – for mental illness. AND, we as a nation ought to stop being so ashamed of it. Mental illness is as prevalent as is diabetes or hypertension. Why are we so afraid of it?

What we have in the Aurora, Colorado incident, I think, a mentally ill or emotionally troubled young man who was free to buy all the guns and ammunition he wanted, legally. He knew what he was going to do, but that does not preclude that his connection to reality is off-balance.

What does all this say about evil? Well of course there is evil in the world, and prayers ought to name the evil or evils in earnest. But after the praying, those who prayed are really mandated to get off their knees and confront the Goliath, away from the comfort and security of a sanctuary or a private prayer space. We are called to pick up our stones, and walk toward the Goliath that laughs at the very thought of being confronted.

Sometimes, prayer is not enough, like now. Sometimes, prayer needs to be followed by a team of people moved to action by their prayers, including and led by politicians who are seeking election or re-election. Who will be the David in this situation, a little boy in the Bible who declared that God had protected him when a lion or bear came to carry off sheep he was tending. Little David said, “I went after it… Your servant went after it, struck it and rescued the sheep from its mouth. When it turned on me, I seized it by its hair, struck it and killed it. Your servant has killed both the lion and the bear; this uncircumcised Philistine will be like one of them, because he has defied the armies of the living God. The Lord who rescued me from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear will rescue me from the hand of this Philistine. (1 Sam. 21: 34-37)

If we pray, we have to confess our faith in God. We pray not only for comfort, but for the strength to confront the Goliaths all around us.

At least 12 people in Colorado who were alive on Thursday and who are now gone, need that from us.

A candid observation …