1Jn 4:18 There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love.
The bible often gets reduced to a kind of Hallmark card world view. The ideas this approach produces are usually pretty and pastel...like Hallmark cards. I'm looking out my window right now. It's raining. There are many colors including blacks, grays and browns and because I live in Santa Cruz there is a lot of green. There's not one pastel. Pastels are favored by impressionists. That is, those who paint "impressions" of how things look rather than trying to truthfully render the thing itself. (In example, Van Gogh was an impressionist. J. J. Audubon was not.)
The verse above often falls prey to this sort of theological impressionism. "Perfect love casts out fear" is an often quoted phrase. The excerpt though, although both true and good, is a good bit deeper than the artificially extracted phrase would suggest.
The word "perfect" in that verse is interesting. It means "perfect" in the sense of completion in a way such that it cannot be made more complete. The word fear is interesting too. It means fear...pure and simple. And that's what makes it interesting.
I think most people reading this and me as I write it don't have an immediate apprehension of the fear that we all live with. This fear was birthed in our earliest memories. It came from things that we expected and trusted in our world that disappointed or even hurt us. It might have been our parents in part, it might have been siblings. It might have shaped by finance or health issues beyond our parent's ability to control. It might even have been partly about that nasty, mostly tame squirrel that when offered a nut in kindness, bites your thumb and takes the nut too. (I'll write about bitterness some other time...unless you count that last sentence.)
If you're experiencing a tough situation right now, you might have a more focused flavor of fear. Sometimes this sort of thing manifests as a persistent worry. Whether it's the potential loss of a person or a circumstance, the possibility of pain or other issue, the fear takes a form. I think it was always there though. Really, it was just looking for the opportunity to clothe itself in a specific circumstance. That is, a circumstance that looks a bit like and subliminally reminds us of a parental rejection, failed hope or maybe even a scheming squirrel.
The reflexes of caution, restraint and withdrawal we cultivate as responses to shock and adversity are born in this type of deep seated fear. The promise John gives us of life in Christ is that this sort of fear will be displaced by love as Christ carries us over time closer and closer to him.
Given all this, you'd think fear is something we'd want to get away from, to put behind us. However, fear has a couple features that we've learned to embrace enthusiastically. One of these is that its all ours. The other is that we've learned to imagine that we control it.
The fact that this fear's all ours means that we don't have depend on others or even God to enable or complete anything. We can imagine ourselves to be an island unto ourselves. It's like asserting a right. "No one can tell me what to think." "No one can tell me I'm wrong." That sort of idea is the home address of this sort of fear.
We imagine that we control our fear and that this in turn allows us to control the people and situations around us. This comes from responses we've learned to make in reaction to our fears. When someone threatens our self image, our situation or threatens to withhold themselves or withdraw from us, the responses we've learned in response to our fears get exercised. "You don't understand me," or "You don't care" or any host of responses that invalidate the offending proposition are immediately and reflexively at hand for response. All because of the help of our good friend Fear.
It's true that others may make statements to us that are extraordinarily hurtful, pointed or even mean. However, why should we not search even those comments for possible insight into ourselves? There are other personal hurts as well, not necessarily from personal attack. But really, what help is provided by any reflex response to this sort of pain?
When John says that the perfect love ushered in by Christ destroys our fear, I think we become afraid to accept the banishment of our long time friend. After all, we imagine that we control him and he is uniquely ours.
This is of course, a lie. Fear limits us to the sum of our learned, reflexive responses. When we're defined by our learned responses to our innermost fears, growth becomes impossible. When growth is impossible, death is only the ratification of the cessation of existence.
Further, fear will only be controlled in contexts already learned. New stuff coming our way means new fears must be encountered and mastered...mastered that is until the next one comes along. And eventually, something will show up that is simply too overpowering to be integrated. This is where break downs are born.
In the end, we have to let love banish our false friend. We were made for love. Not for the false, broken imitation that is the soul of our deepest fears.
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