|
I'm told that the messages "Fear not," "Do not be afraid," "Be not afraid," appear 365 times
in the Bible -- a reminder for every day of the year. When the resurrected Jesus appeared to his disciples, his customary
greeting was "Do not be afraid." It is what the angels said when they visited in the stories of the Hebrew and
Christian scriptures: Gabriel to Mary; the angel appearing to Hagar and to Elijah. It is the message of the prophets like
Isaiah and Jeremiah. It is what God says to Abraham and Moses and Jacob. "Do not be afraid."
There are few commands as central and repeated in the Biblical tradition as "Fear not." In fact, every enduring
religious tradition offers to its followers an invitation to faith rather than fear. Religious language is characteristically
the language of faith and hope, not fear. A foundation of the Christian testament is that "God is love" and "perfect
love casts out fear."
I've wondered how different this decade might have turned out had our leaders been grounded in a fearless faith which
could stand up in love and hope rather than succumbing to the temptation of fear that raises an anxious desperation which
sets the stage to the compromise of freedom and the promotion of violence. How different might our response to the attack
of September 11 have been if we had been led with words of faith and hope rather than words of fear and violence.
Fear exaggerated the threat of a small cult of organized crime into a worldwide army that must be met by a war. Terror
is a tactic. It is the resort of the powerless and small when they don't have the power to come out into the open to challenge
an enemy. Terror's only weapon is fear. If we become fearful, the terrorists succeed. Terrorists want to increase violence.
If we become violent, the terrorists succeed.
We know how to deal with groups of organized crime who use terror as a tactic because they don't have any other strengths.
We've dealt successfully with the Ku Klux Klan and the Mafia. What is called for is police action, not war. Skilled intelligence
officers can convert disillusioned members by appealing to a higher good or offering them something better, a way out of the
darkness. They infiltrate the group and uncover it to the light of day. It is the light that casts out darkness. Ultimately
the KKK eventually lost most of its energy when acceptance of people of other races replaced fear of them, when love overcame
fear.
That's not the strategy our leaders used when faced with an isolated terrorist event from a small, little-known organized
crime cult. Our leaders dignified their attack as though they were an army, declaring war on them as though they had the
standing of a recognized nation. They credited Al Qadea with a presence and power in Iraq that it didn't have. Our leaders
made us more fearful, as if these fugitives could attack everyone-everywhere-anytime.
Our leaders made us more and more afraid. They used that manufactured fear to justify an unjustified war, to compromise
our traditions of freedom from unwarranted search, to create a culture that invited torture, and to violate our treasured
tradition of habeas corpus.
There was a more faithful way available. What if we had responded with hope instead of fear? What if we had used the
world's sympathy after September 11 to create a generous and hopeful global response to the ills and conflicts that create
the hopelessness which breeds terrorists: What if we had become the leader of a world-wide effort to overcome poverty, disease,
and human degradation? What if we had used our influence to broker a just settlement to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
which inflames extremist passions? What if we had joined in common effort with the moderate expressions of Islam, Christianity
and Judaism to challenge the legitimacy of the radical and violent forms of those good faiths?
How different might our present be had our leaders acted out of faith and hope rather than fear and violence. As it is,
our violence has simply escalated the violence. There is more hatred and mistrust directed toward our nation and people than
ever in our history. The number and depth of our enemies has grown. Our own army and economy has been drained. That's the
product of decisions motivated by fear.
"Fear not. Do not be afraid. Be not afraid." There are voices of hope and faith out there. Maybe it's time
we listened to them.
P.S. My apologies for misspelling Mr. Tittle's name in my previous column. He is the clearest spokesperson for literalism
that I have read.
|
