I don't know how many of you know of Garrison Keillor and his radio show, Lake Wobegon. It's on PBS stations, and is performed before a live audience in St. Paul, Minnesota. Keillor, who is also a great writer, finishes each show -- filled as it is with old-time radio stuff like radio serials and radio ads and singing old songs -- with a long, humorous, and sometimes sentimental monologue about the people in the fictional small town of Lake Wobegon, Minnesota. Those monologues that I have heard are quite endearing and sometimes very insightful - not just about Minnesotans, but, more broadly, us Midwesterners and our weird ways - especially our weird ways of understating everything and shyly admitting to some passion about something or other.
Of course the bottom line in his stories is that it's all about human nature, its joys and sorrows. So in this encyclopedia I found which describes all things from the show, I ran across a subject heading entitled "Fear." It's a radio ad, written by Keillor: "The Fearmonger's Shoppe (serving all your phobia needs) pays particular attention," he tells us, "to the danger of poisonous snakes. Snakes like to come indoors at night to get warm and thanks to their flexible skeletons can squeeze through an opening just big enough for a pipe cleaner. Many people have reached for what they thought was a belt or sat down on what looked like a lovely pillow and gotten bit in the butt," Keillor points out, probably to audience laughter.
Keillor's fake phobia shoppe then gives us some pointers about avoiding snakes: "1. Always step back before you open a closet door. 2. Before using a toilet, check for ripples in the water. They may indicate the presence of a water moccasin. Flush." I like Point #6 -- "Before climbing into bed, look for odd wrinkles or bulges. Whack the bed with a baseball bat carefully from head to foot, leaving no area unwhacked. Follow these rules, and," Keillor concludes, "nine times out of ten, you'll have no problem with poisonous snakes whatsoever." Nine times our of ten. Not good odds!
I like to laugh in the face of fear. Unless it's one of my really, really deep fears. I laugh, but keep the laught to myself usually, in the face of OTHER people's fears. They can't really be serious, I think. They're afraid of THAT? There's no reason. But that's also human nature. Like "one person's trash is another person's treasure," so also is "one person's fear is another person's foible."
Of course maybe you've heard or read me holding forth on a key biblical concept, love vs. fear. Read the 4th chapter of 1st John (the letter, not the gospel). It's all about how fear is the enemy of God's will. Almost every key incident in the Bible has God, or one of God's messengers, say to a person (or people), "Do not be afraid, for God is with you," and, without that fear, they have the courage to do what God wants them to do.
But are we ALWAYS supposed to be without fear? A friend of mine is reading a book by noted security expert Gavin de Becker entitled, "The Gift of Fear." In it, de Becker seeks to explode the myth that violence is usually a random event that will always strike victims unawares. He has studied so many incidents, he can share some simple warning signs, as well as tell the people that hire him to advise them that they should also rely on their intuition. Yet he also wants people to "separate real from imagined dangers."
It is my contention that we often do not even TRY to do the right thing because of imagined dangers. God reveals that Satan's favorite means of manipulating us away from being courageous by "the fear of death" that he seeks to insert into our hearts and souls (Hebrews 2:15), putting us in "slavery" to his whims. Yet that doesn't mean we are called to be daredevils, to confuse the "No Fear" slogan with the devil's catchphrase "do whatever you want to do."
Recently at the Univ. of Virginia a young female student and lacrosse player was killed by her boyfriend, also a UVA student and all-American lacrosse player. He had been (as usual) drinking and had a well-known temper. What wasn't well-known was his arrest record. Yet I am sure that Mr. de Becker would have been able, ahead of time, to pick out the warning signs. After all, when the young man was arrested two years ago on campus, at the police station he threatened to kill every officer there.
So where do we make the distinction between "the gift of fear" and "have no fear"? In my opinion, its realizing that what the Bible talks of and what de Becker and others talk of are not to be confused; it's apples an oranges time. Mr. de Becker seeks to educate our minds; in that respect, I am reminded of what Jesus once said when he sent out his disciples among the populace: "See, I am sending you out llike sheep into the midst of wolves; so be as wise as serpents and innocent as doves." (Matthew 10:16)
God has plans for us that ought not be derailed by a foolish naivete that may shield us from noticing someone else's destructive impulses. So let's be smart as serpents and avoid use THAT kind of fear as a gift to be used wisely. But where Christ's dove-like innocence comes in to play is when we decide, even when there IS danger, to do the right thing anyway, discerning, through instant prayer, that God wants us to minister to others in spite of the danger. Why? Because -- and only because -- we realize, at that moment, that it is part of God's plan.
David Hewitt
