Fear or Love?

Behind the myriad of games we play as humans stands a foundational decision about how these games are pursued – will I be animated by fear or by love?

I think that most people at most times (including myself) act from a place of fear. Regardless of whether we're afraid that we'll be abandoned, that we won't get the resources that we'll need, or that we'll be irrevocably damaged, we approach experiences from the standpoint of fear which worries about our own survival.

Even the language of "games" here is telling because you can't really play when you're motivated by fear. At best, such "play" amounts to rehearsed motions performed under duress or extreme self-deception. Play must spring from a fullness or overflowing of spirit which has cast out fear as a guiding concern, because play involves a certain losing of one's self into a larger unfolding event. This involves a kind of danger which a fearful mind avoids at all costs.

This fearful orientation towards life might be a form of "amygdala living," an over-reliance on the sub-system operating near the base of our brain which activates what is commonly called the "fight or flight" mentality. The fight or flight instinct shuts down our capacity for creative thinking or playful action which can produce an unexpected response to a situation. Instead, fear implements an overriding concern for one's self which shuts off entire worlds of possibility, and can, ironically, actually lead to more brittle thinking and disastrous miscalculations.

We see this shift from fear to love modeled for us in the transition from legal regime of the Old Testament to the New Testament's ethic of love – "For I desire mercy, not a sacrifice," says Yahweh by the mouth of His prophet Hosea. The prophet Micah exhorts the people of Israel, saying "He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does God require of you? To act justly, to love mercy, and walk humbly with your God." (Micah 6:8). The outward sacrifices of compliance are of no avail when it comes to walking with God in a loving and intimate relationship; instead, we

The declarations of the prophet Jeremiah foreshadow for us this shift which will come to full flowering in the teachings of Jesus: "For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people." (Jer. 31:33). Ezekiel also testifies to this coming transformation in God's relationship with His people, saying, "And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh." (Ez. 36:26).

St. Paul takes all this up in a beautiful way, synthesizing a new perspective on God and our relation to Him: "Love is the fulfillment of the law." (Rom. 13:10) If we love, we keep the law, but we keep it in a different way than we would have if we were meticulously trying to follow a set of prescriptions and policies for acting. How we follow the law matters the most– is the law written on our heart, flowing from love, or does the law remain an external object to which we conform ourselves from fear of punishment or rejection?

"Perfect love casts out fear," (1 John 4:18) says St. John the Theologian. If we have received perfect love from God, how can we remain fearful? Has not fear been cast out? John continues on by saying that fear expects punishment, and thus the one who fears has not been made perfect in love. This then is the Apostle's vision of someone wholly devoted to God, someone who belongs utterly to the Father – a child who no longer fears anything.

This absence of fear is precisely what makes room for love. The two are mutually exclusive, for where we are fearful we cannot be acting from love. However, when we act from love, we give to others the power to no longer be fearful, for they have received the type of love which casts out fear. St. John wants us to see that God's love sets us free from the fear of punishment, and that it was this fear which blocked Love's work in our lives.

Once we understand that in becoming human God loved us with a perfect love, we can fully pass through Christ's death and resurrection into the Spirit community which makes possible this integrative work whereby the external law becomes the inner law of Love. We can't break out of the enslaving power of fear until we're able to grasp the mystical insight of the Gospel event which reveals God's perfect love to us. For we can only be transformed to love by receiving love from another.

We have to ask ourselves then, are we bringing a fearful heart to our daily decisions, and thus injecting fear into our relations with others? Or are we full of love, and thus creating a new space for love to flourish by casting out the fear in others? Like an overflowing fountain, the human walking in God's Spirit makes heaven on earth wherever they go. Wherever the one who loves with perfect love finds themselves, their natural work is to make a space which is ruled by a logic other than fear, opening up a space for new possibilities to emerge which would have been foreclosed by the power of fear.