Our Deepest Fear

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.

It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant,
gorgeous, handsome, talented and fabulous?

Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God.

Your playing small does not serve the world.
There is nothing enlightened about shrinking
so that other people won't feel insecure around you.
We are all meant to shine, as children do.

We were born to make manifest the glory of God within us.
It is not just in some; it is in everyone.

And, as we let our own light shine, we consciously give
other people permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our fear,
our presence automatically liberates others.

~Marianne Williamson

I like this quote; it's very poetic. That’s not what I like about it though, since I don’t enjoy most poetry. I like this quote because it’s one of those sappy, inspirational quotes that begs for mutilation, which I am happy to provide. Really, I mean no disrespect to the author, or anyone getting warm fuzzies from reading her quote, but the premise is flawed at the most basic level and then a few decent ideas get thrown in the mix on top for a cheap finish.

From a religious standpoint, however, I have an issue with it for more than just its lack of logic. The illogical premise of the poem by itself should render the quote nonsense, but the way it’s twisted with seemingly wholesome, motivational Christian sentiment makes it downright dangerous. The underlying fallacy is a sinister one because it is shrouded in more warm fuzzies than a Johnson & Johnson cotton swab factory. After all, who didn’t find it inspirational when film writers included in the script for Akeelah and the Bee?

First, though, think about the opening line: Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Just think about it for two minutes and define for yourself what makes you afraid of anything. To find that root of your fear, it might help to consider what, if it were changed, could eliminate that fear.

The bottom line is: our deepest fear is inadequacy. A fear of inadequacy is at the root of every fear, without exception; it underlies any phobia you can think of. Seriously, is it even possible for you to be afraid of something if you feel competent to handle it? Without being at all presumptuous, I think I can say that you can’t find a single instance where you were afraid of something without feeling inadequate in some way. The fear of inadequacy in coping with any given situation is fundamental to every fear, making it our deepest fear.

If we fear being powerful beyond measure, it is because we fear being inadequate to control our own strength. If we are afraid of our light, it is because we feel inadequate to know how to use it. If we are afraid to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented or fabulous, it is because we doubt our ability to manage it. If we are afraid of anything positive, it is just as much because there is an underlying inadequacy as when we fear failure. There is never a need to fear unless one feels an inadequacy of some sort.

So what could remove your fear? Anything you think of that even theoretically could remove the fear is probably something to compensate for an inadequacy: a gun to protect against those more powerful than you are physically, a photographic memory to retain everything you studied for a test, social skills to keep you from making enemies among those envious of your abilities…the list goes on. I don’t know what world Marianne Williamson lives in, but on Planet Earth, fear means being filled with apprehension, intimidated by something you don’t have the ability to control. Inadequacy.

This, I think, is why the Bible says "Perfect love casts out all fear..." and "God is love." Therefore God, being omnipotent and without any inadequacies, is the only One who can displace fear. While He, love personified, lives in our hearts, His strength defies our inadequacies.

Ms. Williamson says that “We were born to make manifest the glory of God within us. It is not just in some; it is in everyone.”  She goes on to say that this glory, “our own light,” then liberates ourselves and others from our fear.

If God, being love, is what casts out all fear, there is something amiss in the notion that this “glory of God…is not just in some; it is in everyone.” Does God—His perfect love—abide in everyone? Or is she saying there is something God-like in everyone, the innate compensation for any inadequacy, which means we have no inadequacy to fear? I hope I don’t have to point out the New Age leanings of this idea.

The sentiment certainly tends toward some feel-good, motivational, “the light is within you” philosophy; but the premise is bogus because we are inadequate. We are human, not divine. We are weak, lacking, insufficient in more aspects than most of us want to admit, and therefore we fear. To pretend that we have no fear of inadequacy is a farce, and more likely to get us into dangerous or embarrassing situations than actually empower us.

I’m not preaching defeatism, don’t misunderstand. We can conquer fear, but not through “our own light.” When Jesus said, “In your weakness, My strength is made perfect,” He made a statement that may not sound as appealing as “Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure,” but it contains a lot more truth and reality.

There isn’t anything wrong with fearing our inadequacy because we are, in fact, weak. The real inspirational, motivational actuality, though, is that we don’t have to be crippled by it if we allow Christ to compensate for our inadequacies.

Perfect love casts out all fear…and God is love.

The Insurance Policy

The promised second installment to the Theodicy post...

During my time as a Bible worker I spent a considerable amount of time giving surveys to gauge the religious interest in different communities. Among the questions I routinely asked was: "Have you ever wondered, if God is so good, why does He allow so much suffering?" That one in particular generated a plethora of engaging responses, and I often found myself choking back the urge to respond too adamantly.

That temptation came most strongly when the person answering my survey would stare off blankly toward some distant horizon and say, "No, I think we really just bring it on ourselves, you know. I mean, it's the choices we make." Or perhaps, "It's just part of life--it's how we appreciate what is good."

It's a fairly common sentiment, the idea that some sort of bad is a good thing--that it keeps things in balance. I never did really see much value in that concept. I don't have to have food poisoning in order to know how delicious cake and ice cream are. It isn't necessary to have the bad before you can enjoy the good.

Newsflash: There is bad evil in this world. By bad, I mean that you can't always define some cause and then isolate the effect to the perpetrator alone. I completely agree that humanity has brought evil upon itself, but don't pretend that you can take every instance of evil and tell those involved that they brought it on themselves. There are children starving in Africa who are no more at fault for being born into famine than your child in America, England, or Australia was prudent for choosing to be born in a more developed nation.

So deal with the question. Why does God allow bad bad? The kind of bad that doesn't invoke some good moral lesson. The kind of bad that won't be dismissed with "just give it time." The kind of bad that leaves damaged people and damaged places. The kind of bad that demands to be called evil and nothing else. It does exist. But why?

I've asked that question, though I know I haven't seen a fraction of the bad bad in existence on Planet Earth. I've seen enough to know I don't need to see the rest. Somewhere along the line I discovered that bad is really bad. There is nothing good about it.

That's when I realized why God allows bad bad. When He pressed that long term plan "stop evil button," He knew it would never be effective if He filtered out all the serious evil that comes along with sin. Giving us the watered down version would merely teach us that the devil's alternative wasn't so bad after all. If He sheltered us from all the consequences of living in a world where sin permitted evil to mar perfection, we might have some mistaken illusion that bad wasn't really so bad.

However, that can never be the case with Solution X's insurance policy. After thousands of years with unabashed evil acting out in the worst of its nature, humans finally have the knowledge of good and evil that Adam and Eve so unfortunately bestowed upon our race. And that is the only thing that ensures that when God finally eradicates evil forever...it will be forever. There will be no resurgence because humans have known bad bad. Sin will finally have no attraction for them because they were, mercifully, not shielded from its very worst effects.

It's a very expensive insurance policy, but at least it will never expire. Besides, what price can you really put on a perfect eternity?

The Stop Evil Button or Solution X

David looked at his class studying the issue of a good God and a bad world and added another point to the theodicy: If there was a "stop evil button" that you could walk up and push, making all the bad in the world cease instantly, would you do it?

I was watching Theodicy, a Scripture mysteries documentary by Anchorpoint Films. Among the interviews, David Asscherick and Clifford Goldstein's comments took me back to seminars of theirs that I had been in and books of theirs I had read that discussed this issue of the problem of evil. The "stop evil button" illustration particularly intrigued me. More than likely, any of us would do it. Yet, ironically, God--the only One who could push the button--hasn't. Why?

As David Hume so succinctly formulated the problem of a good God and a bad world, "Is he willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then is he impotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then is he malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Whence then is evil?" (Hume). The youth class I teach at church discussed this question last week. We talked about the Biblical accounts, especially in Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28, of the perfect angel who chose to rebel and wreak havoc on the universe with his accusations against God and his thirst for power. All of that explained how evil originated, but it still didn't answer the question of why God didn't stop it.

Many people I have spoken with have used this as an impenetrable obstacle to any argument that God is good, fair, and just. There seems no intellectually honest avoidance of the question of what possible good reason could exist for why God has allowed horrific things to occur on this planet. Is there any way of justifying it?

Whether it is entirely new or valid theologically, the question and answer I put to the youth class was similar to the "stop evil button" illustration: Think of all the horrors and atrocities on Earth that you abhor, and imagine that there was one penalty that could be paid to end it all--forever. Nothing bad could ever resurface on the radar screen of human existence if you gave the "okay" to this one solution. But there is only the one solution. The solution, whatever it is, likely won't be pleasant in the performance, however it will be permanent. We'll call it Solution X.

Now try to calculate the cost of Solution X. You don't know what it is, so make it as terrible as you can possibly imagine it to be. Can you think of anything that would be too costly an exchange for the permanent eradication of evil? Philosophically I think the question is fairly easy to answer; selfishly, perhaps not. I'm not under the illusion that all, or even most, would honestly be willing to say "yes" to whatever Solution X might be because there are those who would not take a personal sacrifice for the ultimate good. However, many have done so and most, I hope, can appreciate that, logically, there could not be anything worse than eternal evil. Anything less to pay for a permanent solution would probably be better.

So the punchline is...that God did hit the "stop evil button." When He looked at the rebellion the devil had started and knew that destroying him would only eliminate the instigator, but not his rebellion and the issue of evil, the omnipotent and omniscient Creator already understood Solution X. The price was high--it meant letting evil mature so it could be destroyed completely. It meant allowing every horrific thing to happen in the great controversy that would forever convince the universe that the devil was wrong. It meant permitting a part of Himself, His own son, to leave heaven to live, suffer, and die on Earth to redeem humanity from sin. It meant allowing evil its day of power so that it could be eternally terminated. It was Solution X, the only remedy that wouldn't just treat the symptoms but would heal the underlying problem.

God said Solution X was worth it. He hit the "stop evil button," but sometimes, because Solution X requires more time than any individual lifetime, it's hard to appreciate the delayed effect. Someday we will, though, and I'm reminded of this when I read what John wrote in Revelation 21:4 of the end of sin and suffering: "And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away."

Note: This is the first part of a two-part post on the topic of theodicy.


Hume, David. Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. Project Gutenberg. Web. 22 Jan. 2011. .

My Favorite Spelling Bee

The Bible study for six little neighborhood girls had finished, and two of them asked if I would help them with their homework that evening over at "my church." Giving it long and careful consideration, weighing the pros and cons of getting the neighborhood children accustomed to being at my church, it took me about 2.725 seconds to agree to the proposition.

While Dahlia* was down the hall on a bathroom break, Meghan* strictly forbade me from coming into the Sabbath school room where she was experimenting with the chalkboard. Complying, I stood out in the hall and waited on both girls.

"How do you spell your name?" came a query from somewhere near the chalkboard.

"M-I-C-H-E-L-L-E...that's two 'L's," I explained.

Silence.

"How do you spell God?" the voice questioned me again.

I started to move toward the door.

Meghan caught me: "No, you can't look!"

Stifling my curiosity, I dictated slowly for the 1st grader, "G-O-D".

Silence.

"Okay, you can look now!" called the grinning voice near the chalkboard.

Stepping nearer to the doorway, I read the carefully etched message in bright chalk..."I love Michelle and God." Just five words, only one sentence, but they etched themselves in my brain more permanently than on the chalkboard.

When it seems like my work is hollow, my efforts shriveling with my heart in the biting Illinois wind, I pull out a mental picture, drawn on a chalkboard in childish innocence, and I fancy a small voice asking, "How do you spell God?"

Some days I feed the lambs...and then, some days, they feed me.

*Not their real names.