Facing and Embracing Fear
Have you ever been motivated by fear? Has that fear ever motivated you to do something potentially hazardous or ruinous? There is a great film based on a novel called The Human Stain that I am quite possibly about to ruin for you, even as I commend it to you. In it, the main character, played by Anthony Hopkins, finds himself trapped in a prison of his own making. He is an English professor and the chair of the English Department at a reasonably prestigious school. He spent his career cultivating that department, particularly fighting to make space for African-American people to serve as faculty members in the department and at the school. One day a minor gaffe causes a major blow-up. As he takes the role at the top of the class, he calls two names, to which he gets no response. He quips, "do they exist or are they spooks." Days later, he is called into a review board and examined by his peers, nearly all African-Americans or people of colour. He is terminated on the grounds of racism.
It turns out that those two students he pondered as spooks were African-American, and they had taken his quip as being racist and racially motivated. Coleman Silk argues vehemently in the Hearing that he is not racist. He cannot be! But, despite his pleas, he is sacked from his position because of what has been perceived as a racist slur. His life is ruined. His wife succumbs under strain. His friends forsake him. Coleman's argument that he simply cannot be racist is not the desperate cry of a foolish man but the restrained confession of a fearful one. The big twist, you see, is that Coleman Silk is himself African-American. He had built his entire life on the lie that he is white, starting with his entrance into the military when a doctor presumed him white in his medical exam, and Silk failed to correct him. Silk's entire life was built on a lie motivated by fear, and now, to tell the truth, would cost him his false self—his own wife does not know he is black. But maintaining the lie will cost him everything else.
Perhaps you cannot relate to the context of Coleman Silk's situation, but I am sure you have been afraid—some of you chronically. And I am sure fear has caused you to do something regrettable. As you consider the effects of fear, also consider this question…
Can we really do remarkable things if our lives are marked by fear?
That question is worth our time to answer. Can I show you in Abraham's story how that same question is raised and answered? Suppose we are familiar with the story of Abraham, known even by historians as critical to Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. In that case, we are likely still unfamiliar with his crippling fear and what that fear cost him. The writer of Genesis, likely Moses, tells us in Genesis chapter twelve that YHWH, the same God who came and spoke to Noah, now speaks to a man named Abram. In this encounter, God makes the first of at least eight promises to Abram, each promise thematically and historically unified. God will bless Abram. God will give Abram a lasting reputation. God will give Abram many descendants. God will give Abram and his descendants an expanse of land. God will make Abram exceedingly fruitful. God will make kings come through his family line. God will bless every nation on earth through him and his descendants.
Yet, God did not tell Abram when all those things would happen or where He was taking him. He told him to go, nothing more. Why? Perhaps God thought the best way for Abram's faith to grow was in the dark. Maybe God knew that Abrams' struggle with fear would hamper him if he knew too much too soon.
Often, the more we know, the less we trust.
It is never easy to surrender the known to embrace the unknown. The unknown is a natural playground for fear. But we must commend Abram, though he did not have the complete picture he went. What great faith! But Abram's faith, like ours, so often is, was mingled with fear. Often, even the faithful promise of God is not enough to suppress one's fear.
Two very troubling instances, twenty-five years apart, stand out in Abram's life as moments when, despite God's promise and God's proven faithfulness to him, fear still has nearly complete control over how he governs himself. The first instance is—at least textually—not long after the first promise. The writer of Genesis tells us that Abram gathered his family, and he began his journey toward Canaan in stages. Abram had not been in his new country long before something unexpected happened—a famine gripped the land. Assessing the famine to be severe and concerned for his household's welfare, Abram determines that the best course of action for him is to head down to Egypt.
Sometime during their long trek across the Sinai Desert, Abram begins to worry that the Pharaoh will be interested in his wife, Sari. Overcome with fear, Abram chose a strategy that, while risking Sarai's life and future, might save his own. Abram employs a partial truth, which is a whole lie. Knowing that Sarai was his half-sister, Abram told her to pretend to be his sister alone and not act as his wife, so his life would be spared. Abram was afraid. His request is selfish and self-interested. Could you do this for me, he quips. If you do this for me, (1) I will be treated well and (2) Pharoah will spare my life. In his reasoning, if she is abducted, a brother will not be harmed, but a husband will be killed so that marriage would not impede a beautiful woman from becoming the king's concubine. He also knew that if the Egyptians believed this story, he would be favoured with many gifts.
Did Abram not realise he would lose Sarai to Pharaoh's harem? It seems unlikely that Abram thought through to the end result of his scheme. We seldom consider the end result when we make decisions based on selfish self-interest. I found myself shouting as I read this, "You need to protect your wife, not use her to save your own life!" Can you place yourself on either side of this conversation for a moment? How, as a married couple, do you even agree on something so… wrong?
Abram's fear, of course, comes to fruition. Pharaoh's officials notice his wife, praise her beauty to Pharaoh, and then Sari is taken into Pharaoh's harem, subject to sexual exploitation without a fight from her husband. Instead, her husband is rewarded with wealth as he allows another man to purchase his wife. For those of you who grew up in church singing Father Abraham, seeing the picture painted as it truly was, is probably quite jarring. At that moment, Abram took himself out of God's hands and tried to run his own life at the expense of his wife. It is fascinating, even troubling, isn't it, that even those of us who show trust in God in one moment can still find ourselves gripped with fear, and acting out of that fear in another, even when we know God is faithful and His promises are sure.
Twenty-five years later, we find Abram again gripped by fear and choosing to allow that fear to dictate his choices. By the time Abraham arrived in Gerar, he seemed to have forgotten the lesson he had learned in Egypt. Again, Abraham fell into the desperate trap of pawning Sarah for fear of his safety by announcing that Sarah was his sister. When King Abimelech got the news, he sent for Sarah to become a member of his harem. Fortunately for Sarah, the Lord intervened before the foreign king approached her intimately. God gave the king a dream in which he was told you are as good as dead because of the woman you have taken; she is married.
When Abimelech awoke from the dream, he wasted no time sorting things out. Early the following day, he informed his officials of everything that had happened, including the revelation God gave him in his dream. We are not told how Abimelech recognised God as the one who spoke to him, but he did.
Abimelech blasted Abraham with many questions to determine the cause of Abraham's deception, concluding his interrogation with this question: "what was your reason for doing this?" Abraham's defence before this pagan but moral king's questions is elaborate:
He believed there would be no justice for him in Gerar.
He thought he would be killed if they knew Sarah was his wife.
Sarah was indeed a half-sister.
He had asked her to maintain the brother-sister lie out of "love" for him.
The lie was customary on their journeys together.
He almost implicates God as the one who made this fear-motivated lie necessary by forcing him to be a sojourner.
Once again, Abraham put himself above his wife and, this time, a reasonable king. His actions jeopardised Abimelech's entire kingdom. When Abraham decided he could not trust God with his life in that situation, when he thought he could do a better job of taking care of himself, his actions were more inglorious than those of a pagan king.
There are two things about fear that are apropos of our time. First, fear Is Physical. Fear is experienced in your mind, but it triggers a strong physical reaction in your body. Second, fear can make you foggy. As some parts of your brain are revving up, others are shutting down. Foggy and frozen, Abraham initiates two devastating incidents, twenty-five years apart. These events are nearly ruinous to his marriage, family, and God's glorious plan to rescue the world. Yet, God is undaunted. It seems He knew that His chosen person would possess crippling fear, and He still chose Him to do something remarkable!
And knowing this is important. You see, we believe fear fully counts us out for anything remarkable. We certainly see it in ourselves as we add up the times that we have been afraid and failed to act. Yet, we see in Scripture that God is not afraid of our fear. God's faithfulness is stronger than our fear. And if we respond to His faithfulness with just a little bit of faith, He will walk us forward through fear right into something remarkable.
Fear does not count you out from doing something remarkable!
For Abraham, God walked him through the fear into being "the father of many nations." Now it is in your hands to consider where this applies to your life and how. What remarkable things is God trying to unleash in you? The only to it is through…
If you would like to hear more of Abraham’s story, and how to overcome fear, watch the message The Magnificent 7: The Liar