Perfect love casts out fear.
(1 John 4:18)
The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.
(Franklin D. Roosevelt)
Recently I had an opportunity to catch up with a fellow Christian who strongly opposes a Charter. I asked him to say more about his view. “It’s a risk,” he told me.
Not being afraid of fear is tough. Studies show that humans have an in-built tendency to avoid what is seen as risky; that fear is sometimes generated by the unconscious. Others have shown that we are twice as fearful of losing something we already have, than losing something we might gain (although it’s amazing how easily this is overcome when money is involved).
As our conversation went on, he mentioned Australia’s wonderful quality of life, which he put down to a system giving us access and liberty. “Yet what a Charter will do”, he claimed, “is put all this at risk.” Wow. The whole Australian way of life at risk! Others call a Charter a ‘threat to democracy’. If we’re twice as fearful of losing something most of us already enjoy (our quality of life / democracy), then that seems small compared with what we might gain (better protection for the vulnerable). Why risk it?
Yet, as Martin Luther King said in his last sermon before he was assassinated, love is a risk. King was preaching on the Good Samaritan (Luke 10). He imagined that one reason why the two who passed by the wounded man didn’t stop was because they asked the question, “what will happen to me if I stop?” Instead, King said the question that starts from love turns that fear-based one around to say this: “what will happen to the other person, if I do not stop?” This, said King, is the question of love, a risky question.
Surely it also the question we must ask ourselves regarding a Charter. Not, ‘what will happen to my way of life if we have a Charter?’ But the risky question of love, ‘what will happen to the needy if we do not have a Charter?’
Angus McLeay, for IsaiahOne
Thanks for “The Power of Fear and the Risk of Love”. A support for an Australian charter of human rights is all about our love of “neighbour”. I am especially interested in how this charter will help reconciliation with Indigenous Australians. Our record in relation to the First peoples of this land is abysmal.
Hi Pamela,
Yes, Australia’s record in relation to the First Peoples is abysmal. IsaiahOne will shortly be posting a brief paper in answer to your question.
I have come to realise over the past six months that in my own life, I must struggle daily to love without fear, and without self-regard.
In a sense, the latter is a fruit of the former. If you cannot love without self-regard, it is probably because you are afraid; afraid of vulnerability, afraid of lack of reciprocation, afraid of being hurt, etc. And so your love is wary, self-referential, and cautious.
But the problem with that, is that it isn’t actually love.
There is probably no other word for how I feel when I speak with my Christian siblings who are opposed to a Charter because of the risk they see to religious freedom:
Dumbfounded.
Actually, there is another.
Sorrow.
Let’s for a moment play ‘even if’. Even if a Charter were to impinge on our religious freedom: Are we completely missing the point? Have we lapsed into mass-amnesia, that we have forgotten that Jesus TOLD US that we were going to be persecuted? His advice in the face of that impingement of our ‘rights’ wasn’t to look to our self-interest as a Church. It was to turn the other cheek, to consider others better than ourselves (Phil 2.3) as we imitate Christ’s humility. It was to pour ourselves out for the sake of the poor, the hungry, the voiceless, the needy. There cannot be a calculating hesitation when it comes to a crossroads between defending the rights of the least of these, and defending our own rights.
Isaiah 59 says that TRUE fasting is spending ourselves on behalf of the hungry, and satisfying the needs of the oppressed. If we do those things, God says that He will sustain us.
I think that the fear of the impact a Charter will have on religious freedom is a deeper heart issue.
Are we not trusting God? Have we slumped back into the religion that was so repulsive to God in Isaiah 1?
I pray so fervently that He would ignite His people again by the Spirit that is without fear and full of love (2 Tim 1.7), so that we might pour ourselves out for the poor and needy, with the confidence that we need not defend ourselves, because God Himself is our defender.
Hello Mark,
Yes, I’ve just read your article on Indigenous People and Human Rights, thank you. I am very happy about the current Hands Across the Nation appeal which is bringing books to young Aboriginal children from children in city schools. Thanks again for article.