Religion and Fear

Larry Norman died last week. I read about it on many blogs. I am old enough to remember his music and so I kept wondering why I had not liked his music. You need to realize that I love music. All kinds. I listen to everything and actually enjoy it all. I can have my windows rattling with Bach or Mozart just as they could be rattling with the latest Rap from Eminem. And when the whole Christian Rock was born I had all the new records. Sandy, Amy, Keith, Love Song……Lend an ear….to a love song….oooh a love song….(Sing along now) So why did I not listen to Larry Norman?

It wasn’t until I read Brant’s post last week that I remembered why. It was those movies – A Thief in the Night, Left Behind. Larry’s most famous song was the soundtrack to those movies. No wonder why I was not fond of him. He was my introduction to FEAR IN RELIGION.

My introduction to fear in the church came at a very young age. Now that I think back on it I am outraged. What person lets a little kid watch such a movie? Now, I had “asked Jesus in my heart,” when I was 5. It was real to me and I really think that something supernatural was placed in me that night. With the rules of the game, I was safe – I was saved and going to heaven – I would be raptured when it happened. But I didn’t feel safe. I was always panicked anytime I could not find my parents. I forever worried about driving along in a car and the driver being ‘taken’ and the rest of us left to die in a fiery crash. If my parents were even 5 minutes late getting home I had a stomach ache. (Oh, for cell phones)

It is funny. We believed in eternal salvation but you were never sure that if you were to have been found at a dance or a movie theatre or even just thinking a bad thought - and the rapture occurred – would you really be taken? Because of this doctrine I lived my life in fear. Fear of not being good enough and fear of being left to being marked by the Beast and forever out of the grace of God.

I was 25 before I met a kind pastor that blew away this theology in 2 hours one night. I had never even met a Christian before that did not believe in the rapture. We had heard about such heretics in my Bible School but no one had ever told me that true Christian men and women did not all believe the same things. My world was rocked and I cried for the next week. How in the world had I been taught these things without saying that there at least were other ways to view what the Bible was saying? Why was I not taught that this was a new belief of only a few hundred years old? Why was I not taught that it was actually the Scofield Bible’s notes that made this doctrine preached in the United States so widely? For something so fundamentally believed and accepted in my little life, why was I not given all the facts and then allowed to make my own decision?

But that is not the reason for this post. The reason I wanted to talk about this today is because I got very used to fear in my faith. Those in authority used fear to control their congregations. In a podcast from Wayne and Brad last week (Freedom from Fear) they cited an article that said that fear can be the most controlling force in a person’s life.

That got me thinking. I could look back into my childhood and see where fear was used by the church (and I hated it) but I wanted to look forward….after I changed my theology….to see if fear had still been used to control me. How did the whole Charismatic theology manifest fear in my life, and was I still under fear today?

Here are some ways I thought of:

There was a huge fear of the demonic. Fear that you would do or say something that would open you up to demonic forces in your life. Fear against what the ruling forces of the region could do to you.

Fear of somehow losing your destiny – through either making bad choices in a church or mate or life in general or being in the wrong church or camp.

Fear of being out from under authority. Fear that you were not obeying your husband or father and then later on, fear that you were not submitting to the Apostle or Prophet of the church.

Fear of not tithing and/or not giving enough to ‘cover’ your own finances to where God would bless you.

Fear of not raising your kids just right so that they would make the very same choices that you would make for them.

Fear that the world would corrupt us or our kids by contact with it.

Fear that allowing a non Christian to teach our kids would result in God not being in their lives.

Fear that anything we or our kids did, might be a stumbling block to someone.

Fear that if we did not come across as spiritual – that we would be demoted or sidelined or shunned.

Fear of admitting your were broken and not healed yet.

Fear of missing ‘your opportunity’ for healing or deliverance or blessing from whatever service was being held that night or that weekend. (actually this was used to try to get people to EVERY meeting that the church had – even a business or planning meeting…..you could never tell when God would show up and you weren’t there) Fear of not being where God’s Spirit was being poured out.

Fear that someone might actually find out that you were just pretending in worship. Fear of not looking “worshipful.” Fear that there is something really wrong with you.

Fear of not being able to say that you disagreed. Fear that you were somehow evil because you had an opinion that differed.

I’m sure there is more….I am just sickened. I am over 50 and I have lived every moment of my life in Jesus, in fear. From the time I made my first steps toward this life of Faith I have carried a companion with me named Fear.

So today I resolve to dismiss my companion of Fear and replace him. I want a new traveling companion. I hate what Fear has done to my life.

Therefore, I will replace him with……Grace or Wisdom or maybe Laughter. What do you think? Who do you walk with?