Face Off With Fear

 

Facing a Climate of Fear

A rather long and rambling personal essay in which I do just that: face a climate of fear. 

FEARS ARE NOT EASY for me. I’m a natural flight person; press my fear button and I’ll auto-pilot into a wither or a run. I’ve been working for years to grasp the wheel and drive head on into change. So far it’s been a freeing journey. I want to keep on facing fears and encouraging others to face theirs. It feels essential.

That’s because fear is sweeping our country. It’s like a pandemic  contaminating us with a spiritual disease; like a shadow intimidating our globe with darkness. To survive whole, we must learn to face our fears. It doesn’t matter if they are real or groundless, it’s time to encourage one another to take courage and overcome.

We’ve done it before. We can do it again. Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s voice to the American people in his first inaugural address still echoes in our collective ear. During the hardships of economic depression he encouraged the nation to honest courage and positive thinking.

This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today. This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, 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.

One current fear is that Roosevelt might have been wrong; our nation might not endure; that economic globalization is rapidly dissolving our historically short political and ideological identity. It’s a truism to say that nations do rise, fall, and change. It’s naive to expect that our nation, or any nation, will remain the same for ever. The United States Roosevelt knew is gone; and I grieve for it, for I loved the America I grew up in,  but is that reason to fear?

My grandparents were my children’s age when they listened to Roosevelt’s voice over the radio. They were the first in our family’s history to get indoor toilets, turn on light bulbs, drive automobiles, and speak on telephones. Back then, change came slowly, with time to get used to the switch from horse and wagon to automobiles. My generation started out with party line telephones and pleasant human telephone operators connecting all our calls; now we’re likely to hear robots and recorded messages. That’s not all that’s changed; I was the first member of my family to fly in an airplane. We drove to the almost empty terminal at Chicago’s O’Hare Field on almost empty two lane roads. I remember one door to a simple building in the middle of a weedy field surrounded by a chain link fence. One one escalator went up and another down. Now, almost sixty years later, O’Hare’s over 500 flights a day serve over 15 million passengers. More change is coming fast. My children are talking about driverless electric cars; my grandchildren keep in touch with me by texting. Such major changes influence the zeitgeist. Our human hearts and souls are influenced by new realities outside our own skins‚ realities we can’t control.

As we gobble up the newest devices  and stay in touch with our networks via social media, symptoms of a “nameless, unreasoning, unjustified” fear of the unknown and uncontrollable seems to be growing. For example, both major political parties fear what will happen if the other party gains control. Some conservative religious groups, once traditional sources of faith, courage, and charity, are now feared by parts of an academic establishment and labeled bigoted and intolerant. Left wing human rights groups, once fierce fighters for the oppressed, now spend billions that might feed the hungry and house the homeless to gain or maintain their own power base. They feed fear. In many industries, powerful labor unions sincerely begun to help disadvantaged workers, now use intimidation to maintain a status quo that drains resourcefulness, resilience, creativity and pocketbooks by protecting laziness, wasteful inefficient specializations, and ineptitude. (It could even be unwise for me to give examples. I fear ? the consequences, if not for myself, then for others.)

On a Google search for the F.D. R. quote above, I landed on a Bruce Schneier blog about fear. Schneier writes,

Unfortunately, in the 21st century, we have quite failed Roosevelt. We have become a terrified nation and live in a culture of fear. We act afraid and we let baseless fear drive our choices. Mutual trust is the basis of civilization, and our nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror is unraveling the fabric of our society.

You can see the telltale traces of our fear everywhere. Everything we buy comes with voluminous safety instructions exhaustively detailing how it all might conspire to hurt us. The panoply of products and services with which we surround ourselves collectively laugh at our foolish anxiety. Every product we own is plastered with scary warning labels exhorting us to not act like an imbecile or we might suffer.

All of our cars have utterly useless alarms on them. They go off accidentally and annoy entire neighborhoods, but they don’t deter professional car thieves.

Our roads are lined with warning signs telling us to be careful even though such signs not only don’t work, but are dangerously distracting.

Even though violent crime is way down our mass media over-hypes every crime into an epidemic.

Although Schneier illustrates his points with generalizations, every illustration can be easily documented with substantiating facts. What’s scarier to me, pun or not, is that evoking fears to enjoy the adrenalin is a facet of today’s entertainment industry.

This fear-filled tidal wave started with smaller swells and surges. My first awareness of it began about twenty years ago. One evening after supper I was channel-surfing. It wasn’t yet dark—that feels symbolic today. At a prime time slot in Central Illinois every channel—and I hit them all—was broadcasting fear. There was fear on the news, fear in the movies, fear in the cartoons, and fear in the weather. I clicked through the stations twice, switched the television off and didn’t turn it on again for a long time. I knew that fear was not only my enemy, but also the enemy of my nation.

During the Bombing of Britain, Winston Churchill spoke out to Britons and to the world, saying,

Never give in—never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force, never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.

We must not give in to fear. Fear is not only a personal enemy, it is a global threat. It’s time to engage in battle against it. It’s big and it fights back. We need to encourage one another to courage. Even as I write this, a worm rises up within my soul hissing that Churchill and civilized grown-ups in the in the 1940’s were naïve—things have changed—times are more fearful today. Are they? If so, so what. Fear isn’t in the times, it is inside of us. Moses was afraid, so was Gideon and Father Abraham. It didn’t stop them from acting with courage.

Some strange verses from Isaiah 33-14, 15 come to mind. While I’m not advocating denial or sticking our heads in the sand, there might be a principle here to help us survive the onslaught of violent impressions assaulting our souls and help us avoid fear and cultivate courage as we dwell in the midst of difficult times.

The sinners in Zion are afraid;
Fearfulness has seized the hypocrites:
“Who among us shall dwell with the devouring fire?
Who among us shall dwell with everlasting burnings?”
He who walks righteously and speaks uprightly,
He who despises the gain of oppressions,
Who gestures with his hands, refusing bribes,
Who stops his ears from hearing of bloodshed,
And shuts his eyes from seeing evil.

I shan’t be taking God’s advice to us through Isaiah in the following paragraphs because I want to highlight why we might consider limiting our exposure to violence and trauma.

In the 1940’s, while America was coming out of the depression and bombs were beginning to fall upon Great Britain, most of our parents and grandparents were insulated. Global horrors were far from their worlds. Their traumas were limited to personal and local hardships and catastrophes. They hadn’t seen real-life photographic reports of holocausts, riots, massacres and wars. They hadn’t seen pictures of the victims in Hitler’s concentration camps. They hadn’t read stories from the Gulag or heard of the earth moving over those buried alive in the mass graves of Russian pogroms. They hadn’t watched and heard the guns of Sarajevo on their TV’s. The violent riots between Hindus and Muslims in India in the late 1940’s, the tribal wars in West Africa, the attack on the World Trade Center, an Arab Spring and the Boston Marathon bombing of innocents hadn’t been delivered into living rooms across the nation in widescreen color and splashed upon on the glossy pages of our favorite magazines. Back then, most North Americans, were untouched by distant disasters

Never before in history have tsunamis in Thailand or Japan, hurricanes in Louisiana, earthquakes in Haiti, tornadoes ripping through Mid-western towns and the tear stained faces of children who’ve lost their homes in the devastating fires in Colorado and California been broadcast into every home.

Why? Violence and fear are played up by the media. The Berghof foundation reports, “cutting-edge data show that most forms of organised violence around the world have been declining, not increasing” [A More Violent Word? Global Trends in Organised Violence, by Tara Cooper, Sebastian Merz and Mila Shah, berghof-foundation.org] Furthermore, statistics from the World Bank in 2011 support the decline in global violence. Perhaps the statistics have changed since ISIS began to kill Christians and minority groups in the Middle East and detonate themselves as living bombs in a Paris. Even so, what is going in a world where fear rises as violence decreases? Might it be media influence?

Although violence may be statistically down, because of modern communication and the media trend to turn horror into big news, the generations alive today know more about it than our ancestors ever did.  In a document called The Challenge, researcher’s point out that

The effects [of political and criminal violence] can be devastating. Violence kills and displaces people, destroys human and physical capital, stunts growth, and all too often spills across borders. More than 1.5 billion people live in countries affected by fragility, violence, or conflict.

This is what we see on TV and read about in magazines. This makes news. We know about it. We feel it. And we sense, deep in our guts that “It might just happen here.”

Most fear is not reasonable, but it is understandable. It’s an emotional jolt when pictures of the aftermath of a destructive tornado burst upon us via television or photos of a bombing thousands of miles away are instantly messaged  into our phone and computers. Most people respond with sorrow over natural disasters, compassion toward victims, anger toward the bullies. And it seems to me that we can thank God for our responses.

Traditionally, our Judaeo-Christian Western Culture is a culture of life, not death. Most of us were brought up to value life, our own lives and the lives of others. Most people I know aspire (or give lip-service) to the  characteristics St. Paul attributes to the Holy Spirit: love, joy,  peace, patience, goodness, kindness, gentleness and self-control— and most of us would add courage to our list of valued character traits

In the public arena, that seems to be changing. Not long ago on a public radio talk show I listened in shock as an author moved into a mean attack mode merely to rebut a newspaper writer’s thoughtful comments on her book. In a recent election, a local candidate invaded our home via telephone with a verbal attack on his opponent. Both negated the courtesy of love and respect; both wanted to get into my mind and control my thinking by their intimidation. I think they were afraid.  Why else would they use threat and accusation. It takes courage and confidence to be reasonable.

Interestingly, both fear and courage can be contagious. Unchecked fears set off crazy coping mechanisms. Fearful people don’t always think clearly. They run away, look for scapegoats, blame and accuse. They may try to control end results. They may submit to leaders who promise security. Decent folk can get swept up into a group mentality and agree to lawless acts of violence. The timid kowtow to intimidation.

But in climates of courage, men and women inspire one another to valiant deeds. As Mark Twain said, “Courage is not the absence of fear, but the mastery of fear.” During the American Revolution fathers and sons, brothers, uncles, cousins, their grandfathers, friends and neighbors fought side by side and encouraged one another to hold the line against the British. Wounded men went home to recover only to return to the battlefield—sometimes traveling distances to rejoin those committed to freedom.

 

Cultivating a Climate of Courage

If fearful events come my way, I want to be a good scout, ready to respond. Just in case America’s oil supplies dwindle, just in case the dollar fails, just in case storm warnings sound across our township, or I get a life-threatening disease, or the electronic communications systems fail.  If the walls fall down around me and if others panic and start to go a bit wild, I want to hold steady, be courageous and inspire others to hope and wise action.

Do you remember Rudyard Kipling’s poem, If ?

If you can keep your head when all about you
—Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
—But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
—Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
—And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise . . .

The poem concludes:

IF [you can do these things. . . then, ]
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
—And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

And today, with no disaster staring me in the face, I want to face ahead with courage and encourage others to stand with me and oppose this climate of fear.

Mahatma Gandhi said,

When I despair, I remember that all through history the ways of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants, and murderers, and for a time they can seem invincible, but in the end they always fall. Think of it—always.

Gandhi stood alongside of St. Paul and Jesus Christ as a fearless man. He taught the citizens of India to lay down their weapons. Inspired by Gandhi, Martin Luther King taught American blacks to resist injustice with non-violence. They choose courageous strategies in the face of cowardly men and women who choose anger, violence and force.They knew what they were doing.

Oh, God help us to recognize fear-tactics and reject them. God give us courage, courage to be reasonable.

My first step in building courage is to want it. My second step is to recognize and acknowledge fear for what it is. Basically, fear is an emotion caused by a chain reaction of neuro-biological chemicals. Most often our feelings guide us well, but they are not always reliable. When emotions run amok, they can temporarily capsize sanity, distort reality, and plug up our ears so we can’t hear God. As Roosevelt noted, fear can paralyze us and stop all practical action.

When the siren rings for a tornado, it’s wise to go to the basement. It does’t matter if we’re filled with fear, resignation about an interruption or simple trust. But sitting in the basement in fear, waiting for the all clear siren to blast off long after the storm has passed and the sun had begun to dry up all the rain, is an unreasonable, unrealistic fear. It begs the question, What am I really afraid of?

That’s the third step in building courage. Look the enemy in the face, find it, name it, describe it, define it. Finding the real reason for fearing a tornado when the sun is shining might take a bit of digging. Maybe even the help of a counselor or friend. Facing other fears can be more direct.  At one time I had an unreasonable fear of rattlesnakes. One fall a mouse found our garage and started building a nest in a fan under the warm hood of my Toyota. In search of supper, a Mississauga rattler crawled up after the mouse, enjoyed a good meal, and made itself a quiet home. I was driving along on the way to the chiropractor when it started rattling. I was terrified. It rattled again on the way home. And the next day on the way to friend’s house. I was forced to face my fear. At first I was sure it was in the car with me. I  swallowed my fear, grit my teeth and looked for it. I searched many times. I did not look under the hood. I did look under the body of the car. I saw nothing. By the time I’d finished searching and it decided to slither away in the sunshine, I’d faced my fear and was no longer afraid of it.

Looking my enemy in the face, frees me to actively choose to resist fear and fight the passive fatalism of a victim attitude. That’s what C. S. Lewis was getting at when he described fear’s power to keep people away from God and reasonable activity. He must have had his own battles, for in the sixth of The Screwtape Letters Lewis writes,

My Dear Wormwood,

. . .We want him [the person] to be in the maximum uncertainty, so that his mind will be filled with contradictory pictures of the future, every one of which arouses hope or fear. There is nothing like suspense and anxiety for barricading a human’s mind against the Enemy [that is, God]. He [God] wants men to be concerned with what they do. Our business is to keep them thinking about what will happen to them.

. . . It is your business to see that the patient never thinks of the present fear as his appointed cross, but only of the things he is afraid of. Let him regard [his fears] as his crosses: let him forget that, since they are incompatible, they cannot all happen to him, and let him try to practice fortitude and patience to them all in advance. For real resignation, at the same moment, to a dozen different and hypothetical fates, is almost impossible, and the Enemy does not greatly assist those who ware trying to attain it: resignation to present and actual suffering, even where that suffering consists of fear, is easier and usually helped by this direct action.

An important spiritual law is here involved. I have explained that you can weaken his prayers by diverting his attention from the Enemy Himself to his own states of mind about the Enemy. On the other hand fear becomes easier to master when the patient’s mind is diverted from the thing feared to the fear itself, considered as a present and undesirable state of his own mind; and when he regards the fear as his appointed cross he will inevitably think of it as a state of mind. One can therefore formulate the general rule; in all activities of mind which favour our cause, encourage the patient to be unself-conscious and to concentrate on the object, but in all activities favorable to the Enemy [God] bend his mind back on itself. Let an insult or a woman’s body so fix his attention outward that he does not reflect ‘I am now entering into the state called Anger—or the state called Lust.’

From C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters, Chapter 6, p 200, 201.
The Complete C.S. Lewis, Signature Classics, HarperSanFrancisco,
©2002 by C.S. Lewis Pte. Ltd., paperback edition, 2007.

Recognizing buried fears can be a process.  Here’s a personal illustration. Last spring, while watching a live public event on live TV, I started to cry. With one eye riveted on the pageantry, I scanned the crowd on screen in fear. An old emotional trigger had been pulled. It was huge and generic. Weird and inexplicable thoughts came to my mind—I anticipated  an assassin’s bullet to blast toward the honored public person on the screen, or a bomb to explode in the vicinity, or may a driver would loose control of his vehicle, or an onlooker in the crowd would suddenly go berserk. Glued to the event, I asked my husband to get me a tissue. I wiped the tears away, blew my nose and continued watching.

Minutes passed. As the pageantry continued, I was caught up in a vague personal sorrow. I recognized fear.  And I knew that my fear was unreasonable. That surprised me. Processing, I began to pray out loud, “Father in heaven, what in the world am I afraid of?”

Immediately, I knew. I wasn’t afraid for the people at the event on the TV broadcast, I was a tiny child holding my father’s hand and standing along a curbside watching a parade. I was afraid because my mother and my baby sister were not with us. They were standing in a quiet spot in front of a store with a pane glass window well behind the crowd. My mother was afraid to push my baby sister’s buggy through the crowd to the curb. My dad had urged her. She had refused. She didn’t want me to go. Adamantly. But my dad had insisted.  Actually, I was quite safe that day. My daddy held my hand. Actually, I was quite safe sitting in blue recliner in rural Michigan watching a distant pageant on TV.

My fear was irrational. I’d felt my mother’s fear, picked it up from her that afternoon over seventy years ago, and buried it. It had been triggered by the TV pageantry. At last I understood why I was always vaguely uncomfortable at parades— even while thrilling to the music— even while encouraging my children’s excitement and enjoying a parade my feelings were ambivalent. Given a choice, I would have stayed at home.

Further understanding or analysis was irrelevant. The fear was invasive. I had no desire to relive it by projecting unrealistic fears on a far away event. I told it to leave.  Well, actually, more accurately, feeling rather powerless, I called on out with unexpected intensity to God — “I don’t want it. I reject it. I refuse it. Take it away. Go!” And it left. I felt peaceful, calm and happy.

I don’t know why I should have been surprised at that. But I was. I kept on watching the pageantry on the screen, enjoying it now with dry eyes and no trace of fear.

If I’d continued to scan the crowds for potential assassins or anticipate destructive possibilities, I would have fed the fear. The act of recognizing fear sapped it of power.  It isn’t always that simple. Sometimes it takes time and effort to build new neurological pathways to replace the old ruts and groves worn into our nervous system by fear. But, it’s worth the effort.

Sometimes there are real grounds for a healthy fear, like the pain of a terminal illness, the TV announcement of an armed invasion or tornado heading our way, or a drugged addict waving a gun in my face?  Would the way to conquer paralyzing emotion and mobilize for action be the same? Truthfully, I don’t know. But it makes sense to be ready. It makes sense

• to take Isaiah’s advice and stop our ears from hearing of bloodshed and shut our eyes from seeing evil and thus avoid feeding our fears;

• to practice recognizing our fears and to face them, each and every one as they arise

• to be intentional about freeing our minds from automatic flight or fight patterns and start to acting with proactive courage in the face of  fear—even if the only available option might be a quick fox hole prayer, Oh—God! Help!

By the way—by publishing this website I’m facing many fears:  fears of criticism, controversy and exposure, fears my friends and family will misunderstand—and not like it, fears of disappointment, reprisal, even fears of success.