FREEDOM FROM FEAR
by Forrest Church
November 9, 2003
This Sunday and next, I shall wind my Fall sermon series on fear to its close, this morning with a few thoughts on how we can free our lives from fear, next Sunday, by focusing on what Franklin Delano Roosevelt called the only thing we have to fear–fear itself–especially as it plays itself out in public policy. But first, let me sum up briefly what I have had to say thus far.
Freedom from Fear rests on the proposition that fear and freedom are opposites; a life ruled by fear cannot be free; and, courage can liberate our lives from fear’s reign.
According to the founder’s writ, we are born free. To remain free, however, we have to win our freedom back daily–from institutions and individuals, including ourselves, that operate under fear’s direction. The poet philosopher Goethe summed up "wisdom’s final thought" in this ringing challenge: "Freedom alone he earns as well as life, who day by day must conquer them anew." Peace of mind rests on freedom, but to secure that freedom, courage must contest fear’s arguments whenever they are posed–which is almost all the time.
Fear does not only exist within us. It permeates the very institutions that contain our lives. Every one of them, from the family to the corporation, has a built-in hierarchy of fear. Students fear their teachers, workers their bosses, children their parents, patients their doctors. When there is no equality in a marriage, wives fear their husbands (or husbands their wives).
Even with our peers, beginning with our siblings, we live in a world structured by competition and therefore built on a foundation of fear. Whenever we are evaluated, contrasted with others, or asked to perform–and this means almost constantly (for grades, college admissions, dates, jobs, promotions, raises)–we encounter it. Fear thrives on comparison. In each contest we enter, we risk the stigma of losing or being deemed unacceptable. From home to work and back again, fear is institutionalized in almost all the places we inhabit. No wonder we feel it so often.
Fear has its own hierarchy as well. After a lifetime of observation–in the laboratory of my study, brainstorming together with one co-researcher at a time–I have broken fear down into five basic types, associated respectively with the body, intellect, conscience, emotions, and soul.
- Fright is instinctive fear, designed to protect us from physical danger.
- Worry is fear produced by our worst imaginings.
- Guilt is fear caused by a troubled conscience.
- Insecurity is fear prompted by feelings of inadequacy.
- Dread is fear generated by life’s fundamental uncertainty.
I have also come to recognize three distinct kinds of courage, defined, in this case, according to their objective. We require:
- The Courage to Act–because performing is a gutsy thing to do.
- The Courage to Love–because open hearts break easily.
- The Courage to Be–because, all by itself, life can be frightening.
Winston Churchill considered courage the greatest of all virtues, since we can’t exhibit the others without it. Lacking the courage to act (or to control our actions), justice, temperance and prudence would be impossible. Without the courage to love, love could never be sustained. Nor could faith or hope flourish apart from the courage to be.
All three kinds of courage–the courage to act, the courage to love, and the courage to be–require heart. It is therefore no accident that the two words (the French coeur or "heart," and the English "courage") are so closely related. Courage is when fear speaks and the heart answers. After absorbing fear’s best argument, the heart says no. Nothing out of the ordinary is required. There is no secret password, no special formula. Anyone, and at almost any time, can find the courage to answer fear. In fact, the wisdom that makes courage possible is so universal and elemental that I can sum it up in three short imperatives. To free ourselves from fear we must:
- Do what we can.
- Want what we have
- Be who we are.
It is that simple. And also that difficult.
However difficult they may be to accomplish, each of these three imperatives nonetheless lies fully within our power. Doing what we can fixes our mind on that which is possible, no more and no less, thereby filling each moment with conscious, practical endeavor. Wanting what we have mutes the pangs of desire, which visits from the future to cast a shadow across the present. And being who we are helps us reject the fool’s gold of self-delusion.
The most important thing to remember is that freedom from fear can exist only in present tense. To overcome fear’s seduction, we must therefore travel from where we usually are (trapped somewhere between past and future) to where freedom lives (squarely in the present). Only here are we free to want what we have, do what we can, and be who we are.
By the same token, finding the keys to freedom in the present is not a matter of where to look, but how–"How to see heaven in a wildflower," in William Blakes’s words, "And eternity in an hour." There are several ways to accomplish this trick of mind. Over the past few weeks, I’ve alluded to several of them. Opening the Present. Re-setting our Alarms. Acting on 60 Per cent convictions. Letting go for dear life. And, remembering the secret to it all–that it’s not about you!
This morning I shall offer one additional doorway to wanting what we have, doing what we can, and being who we are in order to free our lives from fear. All this requires is a miracle.
Not any miracle mind you. Praying to have what we lack or to do what we can’t or to be who we aren’t simply won’t do. In fact, to pray for such a miracle will lead away from true freedom and reinforce fear’s power.
Goodness knows, the easy divine fix has its attractions. And it is human nature to pray for miracles. Some of us only think to pray when nothing short of a miracle can save us. The first–often the last–such a person does is pray for a net to break his fall or an angel to sweep down and catch her in its arms. The Russian novelist Ivan Turgenev went so far as to claim that every time we pray, we pray for a miracle. "Every prayer reduces itself to this," he said: "Great God, grant that twice two be not four."
Sometimes twice two is not four. We have all known so-called miracles in our lives. A loved one awakens from a coma. The cancer riddling our body goes into sudden complete remission. Such things happen just often enough that it would be foolish not to throw a Hail Mary pass with two seconds left and one’s life on the line. There is no shame in this. When the bombs come hailing down, an atheist has the right to blurt out, "God save me," from his foxhole. Whether or not God takes a hand in arranging the shrapnel, the atheist, miraculously, may emerge unscathed, which is certainly worth the intellectual compromise of a final desperate prayer.
To pray for a miracle on any given Sunday, however, is a different matter entirely. Such prayers may be answered, but the answer won’t be "Yes." It will be "Get real" (until fear whispers that we mustn’t get real, because reality is precisely our problem).
There are dozens of ways to make up for various little human deficits and thereby start balancing our book of life. I recommend beginning by writing a few of them off–accepting those things about your life that will continue to be what they are. Then you can chip away more profitably, with patient persistence, at more tractable troubles. But be forwarned. Fear will counter by reminding you that none of the little things you might do to improve your lot will make much of a difference. Besides, change is difficult. Miracles aren’t. They take care of everything, without our having to lift a finger. Nothing can rescue us from a bind quicker than an escape fantasy. All we have to do is squeeze our eyes tight until dozens of little stars dance inside our head.
How about millions of little stars. "This week the cash jackpot stands at 92 million dollars." There you have it. The Lottery. If you are really lucky, not only will you win–you won’t even have to share it. (Have you noticed that the first thing we tend to do upon dreaming of winning the lottery is to hope that no one else selects the right number?) You could win, you know. Somebody will. Whoever wins will beat no less daunting odds. Yet even this stroke of absolutely brilliant fortune won’t take you off the hook. Perversely, the way the lottery tends to work, even the lucky people who win may turn out to be miserable.
According to those who have followed up on lottery winner’s lives, odds are, if you think your family is dysfunctional now, just wait until you win the lottery. At least when people die sitting on a fortune, they aren’t around to observe how their family behaves. Evidently, winning the lottery big is like going to heaven and finding the place full of creatures from that famous bar scene in Star Wars. Before we know it, we will become one of them: shifty, furtive, paranoid, grasping for gold straws. Even our closest friends will not be above our suspicion. So we exchange them for a new set of friends: accountants, investment advisors, lawyers, and bodyguards. Not only that, but years later, after our new spouse has left us and we file for bankruptcy, the little debts we had accumulated before we got lucky will pale in comparison to those that remain in the wake of our misspent prosperity. In short, winning the lottery big could completely wreck your life.
Since we are not going to win the lottery (a safe bet for almost all of us), such misery is moot. Besides, instead of throwing away our money, we can get a free ticket anytime we like for a miracle that really can save us.
To pray for the right miracle is actually quite easy. If you are healthy, for instance, pray for heath. Anyone who is dying will remind us what a blessing health is and how rarely we think to give thanks for it while we are fortunate enough to possess it. So, right now, take a second. If you are healthy, pray for health.
There are millions of couples who can’t conceive children, so we should always pray for children if we have them, no matter how much trouble they may cause. Every birth is a miracle. There are none greater. So pray to have childen if you are so blessed. Each one of them is a blow it away miracle. If you don’t have children, pray to have to have had parents. They too cause trouble. But without the miracle of having them, you wouldn’t be around to complain.
We might then pray for any among the miracles of sight, hearing, smell, touch, and taste that we are blessed with; millions of people aren’t, you know. As for our problems, we might remember to pray for the sympathy of those who are concerned about our plight, whatever it may be. To pray for the love of everyone who loves us–what could be finer or more welcome? Or for the work that is yours to accomplish. Or for your bank of happy memories. Yes, they may be tucked away, but pray for them and one by one they will appear.
We don’t need to wait for a miracle to experience the miraculous. Life itself is a miracle. I’ve said this before, but it always bears repeating. Your very being is predicated against almost impossible odds, odds infinitely more daunting than winning the lottery. Go back to the beginning of human history: all your ancestors lived to puberty, chose the only mate they could have chosen for you to exist, made love at the only possible moment and united the only possible sperm and egg to keep your tenuous prospects alive. Then go back another billion years, all the way to the ur-paramecium. And billions of years before that, hedging the earth’s bet on the combustion of gasses and the pinball of stars. A single, unbroken thread connects us to the very moment of creation. The universe was pregnant with you when it was born.
Do we ponder such things? Or do we instead ask ourselves, "What did I do to deserve this?" and then, losing hope the minute life tempers our optimism, pray not to awaken to the miracle that is ours–that is us–but instead pray to be saved by a miracle that will rescue us from what is by replacing it with something that is not.
Dreams don’t need to be impossible. To climb one mountain in a lifetime is a wonderful thing. The joys of imperfection beat the burdens of perfectionism any day of the week. And, whenever it pops up on the calendar, today has more promise than yesterday ever had or tomorrow ever will. This very day–the day we are given–we can want what we have, do what we can, and be who we are. Pray for these things and they will each come true. And fear will lose its purchase on your soul. Not forever. But for a brief and precious moment, one you can repeat as often as you wish. All you have to do is this: open up the present and give thanks for what you have and who you are and that you are. Don’t delay, for there’s a time limit to this offer and who knows when it will expire. In the meantime, the miracle is yours. Your very best wishes cannot help but come true.
Amen. I love you. And may God bless us all.