Open Letter to Max Lucado #1.009
Chapter 1: Why are We Afraid?
Page 9
+ “Matthew and Mark record their responses as three staccato Greek pronouncements and one question. The pronouncements: “Lord! Save! Dying!” (Matt. 8:25). The question: “Teacher, do You not care that we are perishing?” (Mark 4:38).”
Your use of the “three staccato Greek pronouncements” is a different way of viewing this text, but it is valuable, nonetheless. Writing it alongside a traditional quote (like the ESV translation for Mark 4:38) helps to clear up any question about what is being discussed in that moment without people having to dig in their bibles.
+ “Fear corrodes our confidence in God’s goodness. We begin to wonder if love lives in heaven. If God can sleep in our storms, if his eyes stay shut when our eyes grow wide, if he permits storms after we get on his boat, does he care? Fear unleashes a swarm of doubts, anger-stirring doubts.”
Anyone who has ever been afraid All of us can relate to this. While in the moment of panic, our thoughts may not be upon the sleeping Son of God, it is so easy to camp on those kinds of questions, “Does anyone care about my troubles? What about you, God? Do you care?” all the while forgetting that He cared enough to leave Heaven to die for us.
+ “And it turns us into control freaks. “Do something about the storm!” is the implicit demand of the question. “Fix it or . . . or . . . or else!” Fear, at its center, is a perceived loss of control. When life spins wildly, we grab for a component of life we can manage: our diet, the tidiness of a house, the armrest of a plane, or, in many cases, people. The more insecure we feel, the meaner we become. We growl and bare our fangs. Why? Because we are bad? In part. But also because we feel cornered.”
I’m glad to see that you didn’t soften matters here at all. You didn’t write, “It turns some of us into control freaks.” You instead state that this is the natural course of events for the person who is chained to their fear.
(You then follow this up with a snapshot of Hitler and his own personal fears. My advice: You’d do better to use Scripture to show how fear leads to insecurity and meanness than to go biographical with a historical figure that most of can’t relate with.)
