Last night I watched Mel Gibson’s new movie Apocalypto with a friend.
I thought the movie was a little weird, but there was one sequence that really intrigued me.
A band of hunters comes face to face with a tribe of people who are fleeing their homelands. The leader of the hunters and the hero of the story becomes really concerned and can’t shake the effect of the encounter. Finally his father, the wise elder, asks him what he saw on the fleeing tribe. His son thinks of the dirt and blood, but his father tells him it was “fear.”
The father says they were infected with fear. That it was hanging all over them. He then says, “Fear is a sickness.”
That phrase stuck. From my experience, fear is a sickness. It takes over. It makes us act and think irrationally.
The picture of Jesus’ disciples sitting in a hidden room fearing the Romans and the religious authorities after Jesus’ death came to mind. When Jesus entered that room fear was hanging over this once over-confident tribe.
So his first words were, “Fear not!”
This is our struggle as Christians… to truly believe that we need not fear, Christ is with us.
I think this is why the 4th verse of Psalm 23 is so powerful. It expresses the reality that we are prone to fear, but that we need not fear:
Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.
Fear is a sickness…I know I have lived with this sickness most of my life–let’s be honest–all of my life. Tonight is the first time I’ve sat and thought about it in those terms, though I KNOW I have felt the effects as such in both body and soul.
I think I have lived with fear as some might live with alcoholism or HIV or any other “disease”.
The lazy and/or pessimistic say, “I have a disease. There is nothing I can do about it, that’s just my life and I deal with it.”
Then, there are those who are optimistic and truly make an effort to “beat” the disease…some succeed, some do not.
I suppose there is the third category, my default…those who are either unaware or in denial of the disease though the evidences manifest themselves in loss of optimal life.
Fear has been my disease, my sickness. Fear of people, relationships, risk, pain. Fear of making the hard choice or standing my ground though I am convinced it is the right thing. Fear of disappointing others or somehow “failing”. Fear of rejection.
Fear has robbed me of joy, honest realtionship, reputation, personal advancement, personal satisfaction. It has robbed those around me of having needs met in ways that only I can meet. Fear has damaged those I love by my inability and/or unwillingness to defend and build them up. It has robbed me of “best friends” that I could have had, but passed by.
Fear is a sickness that eats the flesh of it’s host. It withers the soul and poisons goodness. It creates sick-souled people who are defensive, bitter, insecure, hateful, judgemental and very lonely.
This is not the life I want to live.
God, grant me the power to overcome this sickness. Restore me to health. Renew my joy and fill me with love and grace.