Fr. Dwight LongeneckerWe should also expect the usual and predictable response from the authorities. In the face of widespread rage, rioting and chaos we’ll see an increasingly militarized police force, further restrictions in personal freedoms, increased surveillance and a growing presence of “armed security.”
What is really needed is a cure for the fear, and that cure is found in a spiritual remedy. “Perfect love casts out fear.”
Where do you find “perfect love”? Perfect love is self sacrificial love. “Greater love has no man than this–that he lay down his life for his friends.”
This is where the Christian church comes into its own. The message of the Christian faith is that there is a love that casts out all fear and individuals can find that love, accept it and live it.
However it is not only the message and meaning. This is why Christians must live the example of self sacrificial love that those who are dying from fear will begin to find the deep peace that casts out all fear.
Such a solution is not easy or quick. It is not a superficial “spiritual” answer, but one that requires real action in the world–in a multitude of ways making that sacrificial love alive in the world for those in need.
Christian action is therefore not simply because hungry people need a meal, homeless people need shelter and sick people need healing. Christians offer this help because through this the world experiences self sacrificial love in action and they have a tangible means of accepting and being open to that love.
It is through this love in action that they might receive at the depth of their being the love that casts out all fear.
Until that love finds a way the fear will remain and the fear will continue to burst out into irrational rage.
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