The New Monster



The New Monster--July 13, 2017

"[Jesus] called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, 'If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their live? Indeed, what can they give in return for their life?'" [Mark 8:34-36]

Some fears in this life disappear in a puff of smoke the instant you realize they will never come true.  Monsters, for example.  Every kid goes through a period where they are afraid of monsters under the bed or in their wardrobe, but at some point, you realize there are no such creatures, not in your bedroom and not anywhere else, and you outgrow your childish fear--as well as your need to have a mom or dad do a nightly monster-check under the bed.

Some fears in this life are shrunk down to a manageable size by making them seem unlikely to affect you, either by statistical probabilities or by distance in time.  This is how a lot of people get past their fear of flying, for example--someone tells them the statistics of how small the percentage of flights with any kind of issue at all, much less crashes, and they begin to feel at ease by just playing the odds.  Or someone acknowledges the fear is real, but that it won't affect anybody for a long, long time--Woody Allen's character in Annie Hall, for example, is troubled in childhood by the fear that one day the sun will explode... and his parents and therapist all tell him that he doesn't need to worry about that because it won't happen for billions of years and he would be long dead already (great way to calm a kid, right?)  Well, whether it's pretty or not, it's a strategy for bringing fears down to size--you minimize them by making the odds seems small or distant.

This approach works with monsters and plane crashes, with UFOs and lightning strikes, perhaps.  But some fears are immune to that counter-attack.  Some fears resist being turned into statistics.  And some are scary precisely because the statistics are so certain--the death rate, after all, is at 100%, so there's no way to convince yourself that you'll beat the odds and never die.

All of this is to say that there are some fears that you cannot deal with by making the object of the fear disappear or shrink out of your awareness.  Some fears can only be dealt with by facing them head on and considering the worst that can happen.  My fear of death changed when I first experienced the death of someone I loved--it didn't stop the hurt, but the fear of "what if So-and-so dies?" became a more subdued, "Ok... what are we going to do to pick up the pieces how that So-and-so is no longer with us?"  My fear of being discarded by a friend changed when I experienced the letdown of being forgotten, overlooked, and not chosen.  It doesn't stop the hurt of feeling snubbed, but you learn that the things you thought you could never face... are face-able.  It just hurts.  But feeling hurt is something you can deal with--fear's power is that it keeps us almost in a trance of feeling unable to do anything.

In those cases, it is only once you have lived through the experience you were most afraid of that you find the fear itself is emptied of its power.  Fear works, in a manner of speaking, by making us imagine terrible hypothetical situations:  "What if.... happens?" and the like.  And you can't stop thinking about what might happen or what you would do as long as it is a future possibility.  But once you have faced it--once you can say, "Well, it did happen... and I am still here."--then fear is hamstrung.  You still have to deal with the consequences of whatever thing happened, but the fear itself can't paralyze you in quite the same way any longer.

I would call our attention today, then, to the way Jesus handles our fears... especially that monstrous fear that plagues humanity in our fear of losing.  However we picture it or define it, we seem to have this inescapable fear caught up in loss.  Losing the people we love.  Losing the things we have worked hard for. Losing our acceptance by others.  Losing our feeling of security when we shut the door and turn out the lights at the end of the day.  Losing the Plan A way that "things were supposed to go" in life.  Losing other people's respect or admiration. Losing our power or privilege.  "Loss" is the new "monster-under-the-bed."

In the name of avoiding being seen as losers, we do all sorts of awful things.  We sell out our values.  We step on other people.  We cover up the truth.  We lie to ourselves.  We construct fake versions of ourselves to show to the world that make us feel like "winners"--or at least that we use to try to convince ourselves.  And we invent all sorts of self-deceptions to make ourselves think we are safe from losing, too.  Post a couple of photos on Facebook of you and your spouse out at a restaurant smiling, and you'll have convinced the world you've got a fairy-tale marriage--and you can convince yourself that you don't have to deal with the conflicts and fights brewing underneath the surface...right?  Always keep talking about your accomplishments and your past successes, and you can make yourself believe that everyone envies you and wants to be you... right?  Buy yourself a gun and you'll be safe from ever losing your security to a break-in or having your kids' safety lost to an intruder... right?  We tell ourselves lies like these because we are afraid of losing--losing our relationships, our prestige, our peace of mind, our stuff.

But Jesus has no room for that kind of illusion, and Jesus pulls no punches.  He doesn't play statistics about loss ("Only a very few of you will actually be executed by Rome for following me, so the odds are in your favor--be my disciple!") and he doesn't suggest that the fears of loss are imaginary like monsters under the bed ("There's no such thing as a cost of discipleship; that's just something your older brother told you to mess with you--be my disciple!").  Instead, Jesus insists we face the reality of loss--"You want to be my disciples?  Get ready to lose it all."

Jesus disarms the power of our fear that we might lose something important in our lives by just laying it out there.  Basically, Jesus says, Yes, following me will make you a loser.  "Get ready to lose your comfortable way of life as you start to question your old apathetic indifference to other people. Get ready to lose your reputation when you follow me to go hang out with all the people deemed too sinful, too wayward, too abnormal, or too damaged to be acceptable.  Get ready to lose the illusion of your security as I teach you to love your enemies and not to hit back when someone slaps you in the face.  Get ready to lose that carefully-crafted fake self you have projected to the world as I show you that I see you all the way down to your deepest secrets... and love you anyway."  Jesus never hedges about the reality of loss--he flat out makes being a loser a condition of belonging with him.  And in doing so, Jesus breaks the damnable power of our fear of losing.  Jesus hamstrings the power of fear to paralyze us with 'what-ifs' by just coming out and saying, "There will be loss.  It will happen. We will endure it.  And I will still be here."

How much of our lives is spent doing mental paces worrying about the possibility that we might lose something? And how much does that fearful fuss actually do to stop any of that loss?  What if today, we let Jesus help us to stare down the reality of losing it all--and of finding ourselves found at the very same time--and allow Jesus to break the power of our fear of loss? 

Unlike monsters, loss is real.  And unlike lightning strikes, loss is a statistical certainty in life.  But rather than running or pretending, we are freed to face it with courage because we know Jesus only recruits losers.  And he has already claimed you to belong to him.

Lord Jesus, help us to lose like you--freely, lovingly, and without fear.