the blog
What do you fear?
by bruce
December 11, 2009 | Faith, Life, Uncategorized | one response
As some of you know, here at The House our dogs are pretty constant companions with us. Today while walking Jake into the office, I passed a man on the sidewalk who was clearly afraid of him. For those who know Jake, the only thing there is to be afraid of is getting knocked over and hitting your head while he loves all over you. But as we passed this man, Jake stuck out his nose in greeting. The guy practically jumped off the sidewalk. As an animal lover, I don’t understand fear of dogs, so I wondered what might have happened to this guy to make him afraid.
Enter the stream of my consciousness–I began to wonder about my own fears, and to ask myself which of those fears might just be unfounded paranoia. And all of this led me to consider the fears of others. A while back I wrote a post regarding my conviction about being self-righteous. Since that time God has really raised my awareness of this issue by surrounding me with ungracious and tactless Christians (it’s been a real joy). So as I considered fears, I began to think about the fears that come from each of us that cause us to be ungracious. In the church, what are the fears that cause us to attack our brothers and sisters in Christ? When some else’s doctrine disagrees with ours, is it fear that causes the alarm bells to go off in our heads? And why are we afraid in the first place, when Christ told us not to fear?
If you’ll admit to it, what are you afraid of? Spiders? Poverty? Running out of gas?
As a pastor, I want people to join our community (complete with our mission). God has built something cool and effective in the "right" ways. My fear is that someone will "join" us, and then attempt to destroy what God has created by pushing their own agenda instead of jumping onboard God's plan. It has been attempted once, and we successfully won that battle. But, as we grow the potential for disruption increases.