Life Repurposed

Life Repurposed


Has Fear Replaced Our Love?

March 05, 2020

In this episode:

We have been subtly tricked into believing that fear is the voice we should listen to. We have become enemies of one another, champions of causes over people. What if we found new purpose for life and we shut out the fear and lived by love?

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Inspired Life
I read a book recently that really opened my eyes to something that had become a habit for me, and it made me want to break it. It’s an attitude that came on gradually when I wasn’t paying attention.
Some of it came throughout my upbringing and some from my own reading, observing, etc.
The attitude is fear.
When I read a book called  Love over Fear: Facing Monsters, Befriending Enemies, and Healing Our Polarized World (affilate link) by Dan White Jr. it made me realize that I have been motivated by fear when I didn’t even realize it. The author says:
“The raw experience of fearing a common enemy bands us together and can energize use to action. In the early 1980s, a group of psychologists developed a way to study how fear influences our behavior. Their approach to understanding fear is using the Terror Management Theory. These psychologists were able to determine that, in general, when fear influences our decisions, we can be made to respond in wild ways.” (Pg. 20 )
"Nah, I’m not susceptible to that sort of manipulation," I thought. But I kept reading.
“They assembled a long list of fear-based code words such as hurt, danger, unsafe, peril, problematic, injure, sick, threat, and then tested them out in various communication forums. These words elicited a dramatic response of action from people...This language has become the constant drumbeat of American political speeches. Politicians play to our gut fears of each other.”
Again, I didn’t think this was true, until I started to listen objectively. On both sides of campaigns, it’s used as a tactic!
White says the report showed that positive language didn’t elicit the same action, therefore politicians who run on positive language don’t get the support. “Not surprising, this psychological Terror Management Report has become a formal guidebook for writing political speeches. Both Republicans and Democrats use this report as a framework for peppering their speech with fear-based code words.” They are experts at leveraging our fears.
Fear is good when it motivates us to flee imminent danger. But it isn’t good when it motivates us to hate people.
It has opened my eyes to see how often I have lived in fear.
White said, “When we are injured, dashed, and royally let down, we begin to fear those around us—we look for monsters. When we lack control over the suffering in our lives, our fears direct us outward into suspicion rather than inward to confront the pain in our souls.” P 30
So the more pain we have, the more we fear. We close down. We put up walls. We block out the love because we can’t take the risk of hurting. We manufacture hurts and fears that aren’t there. White says, “Fear ultimately does this—it shuts down relationships. This is quite arrogant, isn’t it? We assume we know who someone is, and what they are about, from a snapshot, from a distance.” P 31
This applies to more than just relationships. We have a natural scarcity mindset and zero in on lack, says White. This is the emotional framework that says we don’t have enough time, money, energy, education, protection, etc. (pg 33).
As we look at the comparison between how Jesus lived and how the Pharisees (religious leaders) of his time lived, there is a contrast. The religious leaders were afraid of him taking away their power, so they acted from fear. But Jesus acted from love.
Even when his life was on the line Jesus did not react from fear.
 

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