DR. JOHN E. HARNISH
Retired Pastor DAC
“Perfect love casts out fear” (I John 4:18)
I’ve always had a hard time making sense of that verse. Exactly what does that mean?
I’ve known fear and I’ve known the gift of wonderful, if not perfect love. I’ve been never been in a foxhole under enemy fire, but I have experienced the fear of a deadly diagnosis for someone I love, and quite frankly, the love I felt for the person didn’t cast out the fear, it only made it more daunting. I have never been in the clutches of the murderer on Elm Street, but I have felt the fear of uncertainty about the future and loving life the way I do only made it worse. Thanks be to God, I have known the feeling of overwhelming love for a woman, the inexplicable love for my sons, and even better, the undeserved, unlimited love of grandchildren who love me in spite of myself and call me Papa. And in all these situations, love actually produces fear when something threatens their well-being rather than casting it out. So what in the world does this verse mean?
In the light of our current global situation, with the evidence of hatred expressed in terrorism and the knee-jerk reactions caused by fear, I think it means something like this. I think it means when I allow love to guide my thoughts and actions, I find I cannot give in to the by-products of fear. When politicians try to play on the authentic fear we all feel, perfect love steps in to say “I beg to differ”. When fear of “Islamic terrorism” would lead us to bar the door to the very victims of the terror, perfect love calls us to respond to the helpless and the hurting, the homeless and the lost with compassion rather than rejection.
I can understand the fear that drives us to want to keep the terrorists out, but I don’t understand why that fear is directed at Syrian and Iraqi refugees. Since the terrorists in Paris were actually French and Belgian citizens, why aren’t we barring the door against the French and Belgians? And when to this point most of the terrorists who have brought havoc to our homeland have been home-grown white males, maybe we should ask all white males to be registered and marked in order to keep us safe. If you were trying to slip a terrorist into the United States, wouldn’t it be a whole lot easier to come in as a tourist or on a student visa, rather than in the hordes of refugees through the long and difficult process of immigration? Maybe we should block tourists and students from entrance to the country. And if you really want to keep the nation safe, maybe we should be doing something about the flood of weapons and guns which are killing innocent children and movie goers in this country every day.
“Perfect love may not entirely ‘cast out’ fear, but it does confront fear and calls us to respond in ways which reflect the compassion of the Christ.”
You see fear can drive us to do and say things which really don’t make sense and in the end don’t keep us safe. Perfect love, on the other hand, calls us to stop long enough to take a deep breath and ask “What would Jesus do?” and “What does the Lord require of thee?”
The answer to those questions is unequivocally clear. The Old Testament holds up welcoming the alien and the stranger as one of the highest values in the Covenant Community and in the New Testament, care for the widow and the orphan, the least and the lost is one of the greatest values of the Kingdom of God and the early church. Perfect love may not entirely “cast out” fear, but it does confront fear and calls us to respond in ways which reflect the compassion of the Christ. The secular world and the world of preening politicians can do what they like, but those of us who call ourselves Christians are called to live in the spirit of Christ and to model the values of the Kingdom even when we feel afraid. Perfect love may not entirely cast out the fear we feel but it does confront it and it offers us a better alternative than succumbing to it. And in the process, it creates a more humane and sane world.
~Dr. Harnish is currently the interim pastor at Traverse Bay United Methodist Church, Traverse City, MI.
Last Updated on November 24, 2015