Scary Things

This is the time of year that people seem to enjoy scary things. Some $300-500 million dollars are spent on Haunted Houses yearly. Another $500 million to $1 billion is spent on going to horror movies. Then there are the Halloween decorations that people buy to spook up their houses and yards. Most of the time we spend our lives trying to get away from scary things, but at least for a few months out of the year a good portion of our population seems to embrace the “fear.” While our brains and our sympathetic nervous system seem to respond to these activities with the initial “fight or flight” response, I believe we are also able to detect the difference (or prepare for it) in the real thing and the false thing.

In the not-so-distant past, and even in some places around the world today there are things that we look at as harmless and silly that many people believe very seriously about. “Witch doctors” and voodoo practices don’t pose much of a threat to me. In fact, they are more silly and strange than actually threatening in any way. However, there are people in other parts of this country or around the world that are very fearful of those things.

I once heard a missionary speak about the fears people had of those practices in the country where he served. Some people had seen things they couldn’t explain. Things that frightened and scared them. When asked how they are able to convince them that those events weren’t real or that they didn’t really pose a threat he replied, “We cannot convince them that they did not see the thing they are fearful of; we simply spend our time proving to them that Jesus is bigger than their fears.”

I’ve often heard people speak of seeing ghosts or having some paranormal experiences. These are people I know and trust. I didn’t have their experience and I can’t convince them they didn’t see what they saw. The point remains the same as that of the missionary in a foreign land. Our God is bigger than their fears. Even Joshua and Caleb didn’t attempt to disprove the experiences of the other spies. They had all seen the “giants” of the land but their perspectives were different based on their belief. The spies saw threats — monster sized men that could not be defeated. Joshua and Caleb saw people who were much smaller than the God they served (Numbers 13:25-14:10).

Later in the history of Israel David would stand before a much larger and much more trained opponent in Goliath (1 Samuel 17). Daniel would spend the night in a den of lions (Daniel 6). His three friends, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego would face a flame too strong to survive — yet they did (Daniel 3). The list goes on and on of individuals that went through all sorts of scary things, but their faith led them through it. Many of those people didn’t survive physically, but their faithful resolve determined that they would die before they would give up on God.

The answer to the fear, then, is not about the size of the threat but about the God that stands with us in fearful times.

Ben