“Fear’s a dangerous thing, it can turn your heart black, you can trust.
It’ll take your God-filled soul and fill it with devils and dust.” – Bruce Springsteen
I can still vividly remember sitting at the front of church Sunday after Sunday silently weeping, relentlessly tormented as I listened to sermon after sermon. It felt like I was in a vise that was slowly closing, crushing all hope from this six-year-old kid. Or this 10-year-old kid. The worst of all fears, hell damnation, covered me like a suffocating blanket. There was nothing I could do.
I acutely felt this hopelessness because I inherently understood probability. I knew that if I had unforgiven sins the second before Jesus came, I would go to hell. It was as simple as that and here was my despair: since we didn’t know when Jesus was coming (as a thief in the night), and since sin was unavoidable, often outside our control and even awareness (e.g., sins of omission), there was a substantial probability that I would have sin in my life whenever Jesus came back. I was screwed, hence the tormenting fear, and it wasn’t until college that I learned about grace, bringing hope once again to my future.
As bad as that was, however, it was just the tip of the iceberg. There was an unpardonable sin, a sin with no possible forgiveness, for those who blasphemed the Holy Spirit. And we, because we didn’t fully understand it, as every preacher defined it differently, it brought a new dimension of uncertainty to my future.
Although those may have been my biggest fears, whole additional genres of fear remained in play. We played a “who’s that Antichrist” game with a revolving door of candidates, each biblically supported and to be feared. For those who missed the rapture, there was still a tiny sliver of hope, but it meant going through the tribulation for which only 144,000 would be saved. The Mark of the Beast was another formidable fear, with bearers of that mark forever condemned. And because we didn’t know when or how that mark would be applied (a computer in Brussels, bar codes, social security plus zip codes), the missing-the-rapture needle never went above Defcon 3.
Now it might seem that I’m being awfully hard on my past, but I’m just calling balls and strikes. All those fears felt real and they were backed up by simple math which could be intuitively understood or easily calculated. Say the likelihood of going to hell was 20% for each independent event (unconfessed sin at time of rapture, unwittingly taking on the mark of the beast, and committing the unpardonable sin), values that seemed pretty reasonable as a kid. Then the overall probability can be computed as (1 – product of each probability of not going to hell) = (1 – (0.80*.80.*80)) = 0.488. So it’s no wonder I felt such acute helplessness and despair as I was just one coin flip away (48.8%) from the eternal lake of fire.
Fear: Yesterday, Today, and Forever
My encounters with fear were just par for the course given how evangelicals have traditionally engaged culture. Like a river running through it, fear is an evangelical constant ever since the Puritans first landed in America. The threat of an erroneous theology in 17th century American led the Puritans to hang four Quaker “Boston martyrs.” Then the threat of moral decline led to another Puritan hanging over accusations of witchcraft which proved false. The 18th century ushered in a new set of fears targeting immigrants and anyone Catholic. These prejudicial fears become entrenched within American society inspiring 19th century Protestants to help form the nativist Know-Nothing Party. A whole new set of fears rose to prominence in the 20th century led by modernism, secular humanism, and cultural change. The backlash to those fears drove evangelicals back into politics over the fear of losing “Christian America.”
Scripture tells a much different story of “Don’t be afraid. I am with you. Don’t tremble with fear. I am your God. I will make you strong.” So why does fear occupy such a prominent place in evangelical language and belief? There are a number of plausible answers but let’s start with two important ones because of their ability to reinforce the fear messages in our lives.
Our Neurology Amplifies Our Fears
Brain imaging studies show there’s a region of our brain which is used to detect threats and is reactive to fear. The same part of the brain shows a heighten resistance to change when confronted with evidence countering one’s beliefs. This fear enhanced threat detection creates a tight social connectedness which focuses on family and country. The size of this region and its importance to life functions varies from person to person. It’s also a key area where moral information is processed and moral/political judgements developed.
Our brain is plastic until later in life and repeated usage of one region changes its capability. We know, for example, that a London cab driver’s brain adjusts over time to better store a mental map of the city. In a similar manner we know that the fear-based part of our brain adjusts in response to repeated messages of fear.
Our Cognitive Biases Amplify Our Fears
We all routinely deviate from a practice of rationality because the need for simplicity and coherence in our stories supersede truth. Through probability neglect we mischaracterize dire risks by creating imaginary scenarios from thoughts of danger and fear. The affect heuristic occurs when people make judgements by consulting their emotions rather than the facts, substituting the easier question “what do I feel about it” for the harder question “what do I think about it:” The availability heuristic leads to bias in our perceptions according to the vividness, prevalence, and emotional intensity of the messages we encounter.
Media coverage plays a significant role in amplifying cognitive biases as our assessments of risk are directly influenced by our exposure to repeated messages that engage our emotions.
The Manipulation of Fear Amplifies That Fear
In the late 1970s, Jerry Falwell Sr. and other conservative evangelicals formed a political coalition to fight against moral decay. Forty years later the same moral issues remain with the goal of “Christian America” still unmet. Yet they have been phenomenally successful in enlisting white evangelicals as a force in today’s cultural war.
Cal Thomas, once a leader of Falwell’s coalition, describes how this enlistment relies upon fear. “First, they identify an enemy: homosexuals, abortionists, Democrats, or ‘liberals’ in general. Second, the enemies are accused of being out to ‘get us’ or to impose their morality on the rest of the country. Third, the letter assures the reader that something will be done…Fourth, to get this job done, please send money.”
That playbook of fear amplifies concerns into threats so they can whip up a state of alarm. Those threats are then woven into partisan stories that are repeated again and again: e.g., Democrats are evil socialists trying to take your guns, bibles and liberty away, Muslims are terrorists, and immigrants are “animals” bringing drugs and crime to ruin our land. And if you repeat any story often enough people will eventually accept it as true.
As David French recently wrote: “the religious right has already been conditioned by decades of conservative media telling them that the godless left wants to destroy their way of life. They’ve been told for 20 years that the left hates them and wants them dead. They’ve been told the Democratic Party wants to kill the church.”
Perfect Fear Drives Out Love
Those fear-induced beliefs create an alternative world of facts while inflaming a fallen nature called to die. The fruits of the Spirit then yield to the works of the flesh from which arise a political quest for power. In the heat of the battle, we become different people through unleashing those desires “that war within us.” And it doesn’t take long until “in time we hate that which we often fear” (Shakespeare) and where the oppressed can become the oppressor.
We see this in surveys where white evangelicals are resistant to extend civil rights to the other side. Since there’s a concern that the left will oppress their Christian faith, they turn the Golden Rule upside down: do unto others before they get the chance to do that unto you.
White evangelicals are also more likely than any other religious demographic to see immigrants threatening traditional American values. Over half of white evangelicals believe Muslims want to limit their freedom and nearly half believe Muslims threaten their safety (again, greater than any other demographic). Yet white evangelicals see themselves as persecuted victims exceeding even that of their Muslim “enemy.” (Notwithstanding the fact that Muslims experience dehumanization greater than any other group in America).
Yet white Christians have no peer when it comes to disregarding African Americans fears (the most Christianized ethnoreligious group in America and hence, in the vernacular of my religious past, their “brothers and sisters”). Whereas 82% of black Christians believe police-involved killings are part of a larger pattern, 72% of white evangelicals believe the opposite. Most (70%) white evangelicals see the Confederate flag as a symbol of Southern pride, whereas 76% of black protestants set it as a symbol of racism.
Perfect Fear Drives Out Unity
Francis Schaeffer once said: “Love–and the unity it attests to–is the Mark Christ gave Christians to wear before the world. Only with this mark may the world know that Christians are indeed Christians and that Jesus was sent by the Father.”
But when you:
-Unite yourself with theological/political communities that promote constant messages of fear;
-Embrace a populism which turns a fear-based world into “we the good” and “they the enemy;”
-Get sucked into a tribalism that binds and blinds us away from the other side;
-Live 24/7 in media echo chambers which deeply embed false narratives and alternative facts;
And then when our neurology along with the practice of cognitive biases, amplify those fears even more, it’s no wonder we become trapped in a fear-based feedback loop as we spiral downward into rabbit holes of tribal division.
The Choice Before Us
As I write today, America is divided with levels of enmity I’ve never seen before. There’s a palpable feeling of disgust for the opposite side, who are no long seen as the imago dei. There’s also a sense of hopelessness which is crushing to our spirit as our nation continues to divide.
There’s a calling on God’s people to be ministers of reconciliation so you would think that if anyone could unite it should be them. But scientific studies show that in today’s hyper partisan American, God’s people are among the most divisive of them all. There’s got to be a change but any change cannot happen until we break free from this fear induced, echo chamber reinforced, and demonizing spirit of partisan bondage.
“But when he saw the wind, he [Peter] was afraid and, beginning to sink, cried out, “Lord, save me!” The fear Peter experienced when he took his eyes off Jesus is a natural response to the storms that encircle our lives. He chose correctly the first time, but chose poorly the second time, when confronted by the soldiers arresting Jesus.
Peter’s two choices are set before us in how we reconcile the endless cultural war with Christ’s mission. Will we respond to our fears by turning back to the One who changes us from the inside out? Or will we keep swinging the sword while cutting asunder our witness of love and unity – the two attributes of a Christian which Christ called the proof of His reconciliation mission to this world.