There’s a disease on the move that’s even deadlier than Ebola.
It is invisible and highly contagious. It spreads with lightning speed and paralyzes its victims. It turns people, communities and nations against each other.
The disease is fear.
Anxiety and dread seem to permeate our nation — and many of our churches — at the moment. Threats abound: Ebola, ISIS, mindless violence, multiplying enemies. There’s a general sense that the world is spinning out of control and no one knows what to do about it — certainly not the institutions and experts we once looked to for guidance.
“The
Ebola crisis has aroused its own flavor of fear,” observes David Brooks of The
New York Times. “It’s not the heart-pounding
fear you might feel if you were running away from a bear or some distinct
threat. It’s a sour, existential fear. It’s a fear you feel when the whole
environment seems hostile, when the things that are supposed to keep you safe,
like national borders and national authorities, seem porous and ineffective,
when some menace is hard to understand.”
Some
threats are real; others are the product of hysteria and saturation coverage of
death and destruction. But we aren’t sure which is which. So we hunker down
behind locked doors and dire predictions of worst-case scenarios.
“There
is no doubt that we will stop this [Ebola] outbreak, end the deaths, and, if
done right, build the tools to prevent another large outbreak like this,”
writes epidemiologist Larry Brilliant in The Wall Street Journal. “But
it won’t be easy. Fear, panic and politics have gripped Americans, with the potential
to do untold damage to our nation and the global economy. Our real enemy is a
hybrid of the virus of Ebola and the virus of fear. As the famous World War II
British poster reads, we need to keep calm and carry on.”
Easier
said than done. Instant media spread facts and knowledge as well as rumors,
misinformation and doubt. Many Americans now apparently fear anyone coming from
Africa, even if they arrive from countries nowhere near the West African region
affected by the Ebola outbreak. Some African immigrants who came to America
years or decades ago report being ostracized or treated with suspicion since
the Ebola scare began.
Eighteen Oklahoma high school students
reportedly stayed away from class recently when their parents heard rumors on
social media about three students who had just returned from a mission trip to
Ethiopia, thousands of miles from the Ebola zone. “Our students were not
exposed to Ebola,” Inola School Superintendent Kent Holbrook assured a local TV
news reporter. “There was no person that was sick on the trip. There was no
person sick [in] Ethiopia while they were there. There was no person [sick] on
the plane.”
T.J. Helling, a local youth pastor who
helped organize the mission trip, told the TV reporter the three students “did more
in the last 10 days [during the mission trip] than most people do in their
lifetime for other people. We need to remember that we’re here to encourage
them and support them, not beat them down.”
I called First Baptist Church of Inola,
where the three students attend, and talked to an adult member there. She said
the fear in the community “shows that the world is lost. But our reaction to
the fear shows Christ in us. I’m telling our students, ‘It’s easy to show love
and grace to a kid in Ethiopia on a mission trip, but you need to show the same
grace to the kids you see every day at school who are fearful of death. God may
be building character in you.’
“The church can’t react in fear,” she added
—
at home or abroad.
Amen,
sister. First Baptist of Inola is an example for us all in these uncertain
days.
Fear
is real. Don’t deny it or mock others who feel it, even when their fear seems
irrational. That would make us hypocrites, because we all struggle with it. A
friend of mine who did Southern Baptist mission work for many years in the
Middle East currently mobilizes churches in the United States. He regularly
interacts with Christians and church groups who fear all Muslims, fear
everything happening in the Middle East, fear even the thought of going there —
or befriending someone coming here from the Muslim world.
“I
acknowledge the fear. It’s real; I get that,” said my friend. “But we’ve got to
look at it through God’s eyes. If God can turn a terrorist named Saul into [the
Apostle] Paul, He can turn some of the hearts of the people in ISIS. Jesus is
the only solution.”
Jesus
calls us to look at the world through His eyes — and to look at Him, not the
dangers and troubles that terrify us. Matthew 14 describes the night He came to
the disciples walking on water:
“When the disciples saw Him walking on the sea, they were terrified,
and said, ‘It is a ghost!’ And they cried out in fear. But
immediately Jesus spoke to them, saying, ‘Take courage,
it is I; do not be afraid.’ Peter said to Him, ‘Lord,
if it is You, command me to come to You on the water.’ And
He said, ‘Come!’ And Peter got
out of the boat, and walked on the water and came toward Jesus. But seeing the wind, he became frightened, and beginning to sink, he
cried out, ‘Lord, save me!’ Immediately Jesus stretched
out His hand and took hold of him, and said to him, ‘You
of little faith, why did you doubt?’” (Matt. 14:26-31 NASB)
If
bold, impetuous Peter, who walked with Christ Himself, experienced fear when He
looked at the world, don’t be surprised if you do. Acknowledge it. Confess it
to the Lord. Then look into His eyes, not at the fearful circumstances of our
times. Step out of your safe, cramped boat. Befriend a lonely immigrant. Cross
a border — and challenge some friends to go with you.
Jesus
is already there, even in the darkest places, waiting for you to follow.
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