FROM THE PRESIDENT
John Upton Confronting Our Fears It seems the best place these days to do reflective thinking
is while flying for long stretches of time. It was on a recent flight that I had opportunity to reflect on some common themes I have been hearing as I have traveled. It always amazes me how similar the conversations are throughout the world even though circumstances, culture, language, perspectives, and goals all are unique to those regions.
What has caught my attention is how often fear, and its
derivatives, attempts to dominate our minds. Suppose I were to hand out a slip of paper and ask you to write down your answer to this question: “What scares you?” Do you know how you would answer that question? What are you afraid of? And then suppose we collect those slips of paper and I read
them out loud. What words would fill the room? Would these words be financial struggles, unemployment, dying, pain, the loss of people we love, certain illnesses, personal failure of any kind, being unwanted, living alone in the world, discovering my life was meaningless? What if after each of these I paused and asked, “Please raise your hand if this one is something you have feared.” I think many of us would raise our hands more than once. Maybe for some, fear may be too big a word to use in an exercise like this and they would prefer to replace the word “fear” with the word “dread.” Then we would reframe the question to be: “Is there anything that you dread?” Something you hope you won’t have to face? Or something you know you will face but don’t want to? To be honest, fear has many faces and the true name of what some of us feel is really fear. Now fear is something that God has wired into us that often
can be good and healthy, but unfortunately can mutate into something monstrous. It is impossible to calculate the world of damage our fears have done. When we are afraid we are more likely to do harmful things, or fail to do right things for the people around us. You have noticed, as well as I, that hatred is poisoning our world because we are frightened by finances, religions, shifts of power, suspicions of intent, and on and on we could go. It gets even worse as those who speak words of fear do so
to appeal to the fears of others and to stoke hatred in them. It is the nature of fear to weaken, if not to damage, relationships. To be anxious about my needs is to be less anxious about your needs. When we feel threatened we hardly even notice what is threatening people around us and we are quicker to resent. Some of us disappear inside ourselves. Individuals do this. Nations do this. Denominational organizations do this.
So, what can help us? I know what won’t help us. It won’t help for anyone to tell us, “Don’t be afraid.” Have you ever been with a child who is scared to death and your best idea to help is to say, “Don’t be afraid?” It is a waste of breath. Frightened people, anxious people, don’t need to be told to not be anxious. What they do need, in one way or another, is new vision, a new way of seeing that which is true, a new way of learning to gaze, to let the heart and the life gaze on something that outshines all else. In Psalm 27 we are told: “I see my fears…but one thing I ask for and only one, to gaze on the beauty of the Lord.” In the past several months I have had opportunity to be with those who have looked at the mess, and sometimes even horror, that is around them. Fear and withdrawal would have been understandable responses. The most recent was a trip to the Brazilian Baptist Convention in Iguasu Falls, Brazil. It was on mission night when I learned how the Brazilian Baptists, in cooperation with the police, developed a ministry to go into the poorest, most drug-infested, and violent area of Sao Paulo called “Crack Land.” This was an area no self-respecting person would dare venture. It was a frightening place. Yet, the convention did not back away. They created a new
vision for that area. Instead of calling it “Crack Land,” they had a vision it could become “Christ Land.” In two years more than 1,000 have been baptized in that community. At the convention I witnessed 48 being baptized from Crack Land. While the baptism was taking place a 75-member choir made up of former drug addicts and dealers from Crack Land led the service in song and testimonies. Rather than responding out of fear and withdrawing from the challenge, Brazilian Baptists caught a new vision that is changing lives, as well as an entire community. And as an entire community is being made new, so is a Baptist convention. It can be dark inside fear. I would never suggest that we not be afraid. But perhaps we can hear another voice. Perhaps we can suggest to each other that it might make all the difference if we were to shift the gaze of our heart to look more and more on the beauty of the Lord and to seek more and more the presence that helps us dream new dreams and see new vision. I am grateful to those with whom I have visited in the name of the BWA in recent months for reminding me of this great truth. May we all be so courageous.
BWA
President John Upton with Brazilian Baptist
Convention President Paschoal Piragine Júnior, in Iguasu Falls, Brazil, in January
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