Fear Not

Every day, it seems, Donald Trump says something outrageous, offensive, down right mean and frequently contrary to the very highest and noblest values upon which the United States of America is founded. And every day his poll numbers rise.

What in the world is going on? Pundits are scratching their heads. Republican Party leaders are increasingly frantic. Ordinary citizens are beginning to ponder the possibility of a Trump nomination and presidency which, on the face of it, in the party of Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan, is preposterous.

My sense is that Trump has become a masterful manipulator of fear. History is full of examples of opportunists who gathered enormous political power with disastrous results by understanding the power of fear and stimulating yet more fear.

At a particularly fragile time in our history, when the nation was in the grip of the Great Depression and people were wondering if a democratic United States would survive, President Franklin D. Roosevelt addressed the nation on the radio, March 4, 1933, and told the millions of anxious Americans that “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

Novelist Marilynne Robinson, (Gilead, Home, Lila) wrote recently in the New York Review of Books:

           “I have something I have felt the need to say.
           1. America is full of fear.
           2. Fear is not a Christian habit of mind.”

Robinson elaborated with several succinct observations on the power of fear…”We make irrational responses to irrational fear.” One thinks, for instance, of the ludicrous suggestion to bar all Syrian refugees from entering the United States. And “fearfulness obscures the distinction between real threats on the one hand and on the other hand terrors that beset those who see threats everywhere.” e.g. the proposal to bar all Muslims from entering the country. Finally, “Granted the fears of the world, it is potentially a very costly indulgence to fear indiscriminately and to try to stimulate fear in others.” That is it exactly – Trump is a “very costly indulgence.”

Walter Brueggemann said once that the message of the Bible can be reduced to two words – “Fear not.”

When Moses is becoming nervous about leading his people out of Egypt, God says, “Fear not. I will be with you.”
To a frightened people, quaking in fear before a cruel and overwhelmingly powerful enemy….”Fear not. I will be with you.”
To any who face the ultimate threat to life…”Even though I walk through the the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.”
To shepherds startled in the middle of the night by bright light and angel choruses… “Fear not. I bring you glad tidings of a great joy”.
And at the end of the story, to frightened disciples at an open and empty tomb…”Fear not. He is not here. He is risen.”

In the middle of Advent’s lengthening darkness, when we remember that the light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not, and will not, overcome the light, I’m singing to myself daily my favorite line from one of my favorite carols, “O Little Town of Bethlehem”…

Yet in thy dark streets shineth
    The everlasting light.
    The hopes and fears of all the years,
    Are met in thee tonight.