Afraid. And proud of it

I have a few guilty pleasures.  One example: I hide and hoard milk chocolate when I get it.  The guilty part is that it is MILK chocolate.  In the circles I run with, dark chocolate is the preference of the highbrow, cultivated palate.  I would rather eat nothing than dark chocolate.  It holds zero temptation for me.  But the lowbrow milk chocolate - that’s a horse of a different color.  I have two 100 gram bars of it hidden in my desk this very moment (and will now need to hide it somewhere else in case my children read this).

But I have been thinking about a guilty displeasure recently.  Fear.  You can call it fear or call it anxiety but it is what we feel whenever we find ourselves up against something bigger than ourselves.  Which, if you think about it, is quite a lot of the time.  It’s not pleasurable as a feeling itself. On top of that you aren’t supposed to be afraid.  Or that’s what I hear.

Faith is about trusting in God.  And if I trust in God, well then, I have nothing to feel anxious about.  God is bigger than anything.  In spite of this solid theological assertion I find myself feeling afraid from time to time. Viola, the guilty displeasure.  Clearly I haven’t enough faith because if I did, I wouldn’t feel afraid.  Not only am I anxious I am an anxious infidel. Fail.

I think this way of thinking utterly wrong-headed. Here’s the problem.  Someone, perhaps me, has assumed that having “negative” emotions as somehow morally or spiritually wrong.  I feel sad.  I shouldn’t because God loves me.  I feel afraid.  I shouldn’t because God is bigger than my problem.  My feelings then are evidence of my faithlessness.  That’s the wrong-headed bit.

Here’s a tip for life: Never use “should” or its negation in a sentence containing an emotive state.  Examples: I should feel happy.  I shouldn’t feel angry.  Nonsensical.  And unhelpful because the should statement doesn’t change the feeling - it just seasons it with shame.

Fear, or sadness or anger for that matter, is a fact of life.  There are things that are scary, that seem to be or actually are bigger than me.  There are things that could actually bring me hurt or harm.  Not feeling fear would be a sign that I do not have a firm grasp on the reality of the situation.

I feel all sorts of things that are negative and that does NOT mean I have a defect of faith.  Emotions exist for a reason.  They are part of God’s design in us.  Gifts, actually.  They tell us something.  In the case of fear, that something is looming large and, in some way, threatening.  I then need to ask, “What is that something?”

I am not here advocating a state of cowardly living.  The fear tells me something threatens.  Once I know what the something is I have to decide what to do about that threat. And I do need to face it in some way. Here’s where the faith comes in - trusting to God what I have to do to face that fear.  Trusting in God when I need to step out and take action in faith.  Or trusting by doing nothing, having faith that God will deliver me.    

In that exercise of faith I must be truthful and realistic. I have experienced God’s intervention or empowerment a hundred times in the past I know he will come through.  He does not fail.  But I still tremble a little.  To take away that fear, or a sadness is to make me less human.

I think of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego.  Threatened with the fate of the fiery furnace they stuck to their guns and refused to bow down to Nebuchadnezzar. (Daniel 3)  Courageous men they were.  Faithful men.  That does not mean they were not afraid.  They say to Nebuchadnezzar:

“O Nebuchadnezzar, we have no need to answer you in this matter. If this be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of your hand, O king. BUT IF NOT, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up.” Daniel 3:16-18, ESV, emphasis mine.

I want you to pay attention to the BUT IF NOT.  There was a question. And there is always a question in matters of real faith and trust.  And where there is a question, an unknown, there is fear or anxiety.  They were undaunted in their resolve not because of an eradication of fear, but in refusing to let fear be the last word.

So I cling to my guilty pleasures and displeasures.  Afraid and proud of it.