Some Thoughts about Fear in the Church

 Luke 22-26 (ESV)

22 One day he got into a boat with his disciples, and he said to them, “Let us go across to the other side of the lake.” So they set out, 23 and as they sailed he fell asleep. And a windstorm came down on the lake, and they were filling with water and were in danger. 24 And they went and woke him, saying, “Master, Master, we are perishing!” And he awoke and rebuked the wind and the raging waves, and they ceased, and there was a calm. 25 He said to them, “Where is your faith?” And they were afraid, and they marveled, saying to one another, “Who then is this, that he commands even winds and water, and they obey him?”

My dog doesn't like thunder.  The change in pressure doesn't worry him, wind and rain don't even wake him up and lightening doesn't seem to worry him, but thunder drives him mad.

I try to look at it from his perspective: thunder is loud and the walls will shake under a good thunderclap and perhaps even the floor vibrates a little and he can feel that on his paws.  When he was younger that didn't bother him, but in his old age perhaps he feels more vulnerable and since the sound is, from his perspective, coming from the house, he considers the house to be a dangerous place.

In any case, he will pace around and pant, always looking for a place that will shelter him from the noise.  Sometimes, he even wants to go outside: which would seem to be the last place he'd want to be. But he either doesn't realize that the noise is coming from out there, or maybe he thinks that if he's outside at least he won't be trapped in a dangerous situation and can better fend for himself.

Probably not helping from his perspective is that my wife and I don't much seem to care about the wind and thunder.  We just turn the TV up or roll over and go back to sleep.  That puts even more pressure on my dog because now he's on his own.  

The going-outside bit might be because he doesn't much like the sound of hammers and drills when I or the workmen I hire are fixing something in the house. In that case, he IS better off outside as there's no such noise out there. It's possible he equates the two sounds and since one comes from inside the house, the other must as well.  Or it could just be irrational action borne of fear.  (He's just a dog, after all.)

What he clearly doesn't understand is that he's safe no matter what: the hammers and drills may not sound too good given his superior hearing, but no one is threatening him.  And the house is there specifically to protect the occupants from the weather that so distresses him.

Watching him in so much distress recently reminded me about the current distress that I and others feel in the Church.  There's a huge storm brewing and plenty of angry and threatening noise reverberating around and it's hard to know where to go to get away from it.  Indeed, the noise seems to be coming from within the Church itself.  Scandals rock the faithful from every direction and no one seems to be in control.  It definitely seems like the passage from Luke above where the boat is ready to sink and Jesus is apparently indifferent to their plight.

Sometimes people even want to leave, even though leaving the Church means walking into the eye of the storm itself.  The storm may reverberate throughout the Church, but if the New Testament is correct, the storm is not coming from the Church itself: the Church being the Bride of Christ whom Jesus will never abandon.

However, in real life, we have a lot of experience that points the other way.  Storms do destroy buildings and the occupants are swept away.  Here in Texas, tornados are a harsh reality and many times fear is warranted.  Our alarmist press once recommended people wear bike helmets during a thunderstorm in case their house came down on top of them (that may have been a little over the top).

So which is it: is the Church some supernatural reality that will keep the occupants safe from the storm outside, or is it a human contraption that will guard against some storms, perhaps even most storms, but not necessarily this particular one.  Or is it, as the Blue Oyster Cult song Astronomy goes: "The nexus of the crisis and the origin of storms"?

Of course, all of that doesn't address the fact that even within the Church, it's possible to lose one's salvation.  And while that can happen in many ways, I would guess one way that may be new in this case comes from fear.  In the past, Chesterton's quote "Christianity has not been tried and found wanting, it has been found hard and not tried" may have been the reason for people leaving, today I think people are just scared and feel left alone and, in that case, it seems reasonable to leave. Even when it's irrational to walk directly into a situation that is far beyond your means to control.  But at least you're not trapped, i guess.

It's a tough time.  I've not felt like leaving, but I have a hard time with the outside noise reverberating in the Church.  There are actual malignant influences in the Church which I used to be able to ignore but which seem to be, if not the origin of the storm, at least a part of it.  But since God has indisputably saved me, I can't leave and somehow have to hunker down without an umbrella or -- pace our idiot press -- a bike helmet until it all passes.

It's hard.