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Following Jesus In A Culture of Fear: Ch 1 Dec 1st 2007

After doing some freelance work this morning, I stopped by Mardel’s to see if there were any sales happening. There really weren’t any but there was a book that caught my eye: Following Jesus in a Culture of Fear by Scot Bader-Saye. As I said, the title struck me so I picked it up to take a look at the back. The description read much as I expected it would after seeing the title. There were a couple of things though that immediately grabbed me: it is edited by the author of another book I’m reading now and loving (Torture and Eucharist) and it is promoted by two other authors I highly respect so I ended up picking it up. One nice thing about this book is that it includes discussion questions at the end of each chapter so it gives me something to explore and write about here. And so that is what I’ll do, starting with chapter 1, Fear for Profit.

Chapter 1 starts by examining how fear is sold in our culture. Fear, like sex, is a primal drive in humanity and appeals to us at a real basic level (just as sex/lust does). That makes fear quite profitable. Just look at any media source — stories are designed to draw us in using fear (*look what happened to X and here’s what you can do to prevent it from happening to you!, etc, ad nauseam). I worked in an office that for six months required CNN being on all day everyday; watching it that much made this point easy to see. Media isn’t the only source of fear peddling — our government uses it as well (the example given in the book regards the Bush’s administration linking Hussein to 9/11 to escalate public support of an invasion) as does the church (think how in some evangelical circles individuals are calling for an increased separation from the world at large and peddling products to go along with it). And with that briefest of chapter descriptions, discussion questions:

1. George Gerbner describes a “mean world syndrome.” Does this hold true in your experiences?

First of all, a definition. The “mean world syndrome” comes from a study of TV and violence. The study sought to link TV viewing to violent tendencies but instead found TV viewing better linked to an exaggerated fearfulness. And in my experiences I would say that this definitely holds true. Even just thinking back to the six months were I was constantly bombarded with CNN, there were many times when I’d have to get up and find somewhere else to work (or risk a director’s wrath and just turn off the TV). Even before reading this book or hearing the phrase “mean world syndrome” the pushing of fear by media is something that myself and co-workers discussed many times.

1. How can we avoid being manipulated by fear mongering?

I’ll give three things that immediately come to mind. The first I alluded to above: clear your mind every once in awhile. Turn off the TV. Go outside and forget about everything you may have seen and/or heard. Remove yourself from it for at least a spell. The second follows along with the first: be diligent in renewing your mind constantly (hopefully putting yourself in a place to pick out the manipulation). Being a spiritual person my how-to for this point would be prayer, meditation, scripture and community involvement and while I think this works best it might look different for other folks. The third is a simple call to wisdom: take a serious look at the issues presented definitely but know what matters and what doesn’t. Know that you can make numbers say whatever you want them to. Know that just because something happens every once in awhile doesn’t mean its every going to happen to you. (In truth for many of the things the media presents us with the likely hood of it happening is less than 1% and isn’t something we should even be bothered by)

1. Is the fear of hell as used in evangelism a legitimate use of fear?

Now this is something I’ve written of before. My short and sweet answer is no. My drawn out answer speaks to two areas: evangelism in the New Testament as well as personal example. First of all, evangelism in the NT: when Jesus came up beside someone His words were “Repent for the kingdom is near!” not “Repent or you’ll burn in hell!” This is off the top of my head but I can’t think of a circumstance where fear is used as a valid means of evangelization. Now for the second area, personal example: the story of one friend immediately comes to mind. He told me of growing up in a SB church and having hell thrust down his throat. He told me of being so scared that of course he did what the preacher said to do. He then talked of growing up and realizing how ridiculous it was that he was still afraid and how much he DIDN’T want to be involved in the church because of the fear they produced. His isn’t the only story like that that I’ve encountered. I’ve known many who have been completely turned off to the church because of this notion of fear and many who have walked away from the church because they saw and knew nothing of God other than fear and wanted no part. I see fear as having no legitimate part in evangelism.

Feel free to leave answers too if you are up for interacting…

tags: book, faith, Fear, media, review

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