Sunday, September 14, 2014

Perfect love casts out your constant companion, I mean fear

Doctor Who intrigues me.  I'm an evangelical young earth creationist who loves Jesus and loves Ken Ham.

The BBC is quite possibly Richard Dawkins's evangelistic program.

And the same time, British culture is so alluring to me.  Nothing is so alluring as Doctor Who.  I love the characters, the relationships, the stories, and just the British awkwardness.  But the writers make it no secret that they are atheists.

So last night's episode, "Listen" intrigued me.  It opens with the Doctor asking, "Why do you talk out loud even though you know nobody is listening?  Or is it nobody?"  He then spends the rest of the episode interviewing people with that same question.  My answer: "It sounds like you might believe in God."

Stuff like this is why I love the Doctor.  Yes they are atheists, and yes, they don't mind letting you know, but they also present their information in a way that God might possibly still exist.  No matter, how hard they try to suppress him, it is obvious that God exists, or else nothing in the universe would make sense.  Paul is so right in Romans 1.

So the Doctor and his current sidekick, Clara, decide this non-entity has a name.  It's fear.  "Fear is okay.  It is your constant companion.  It makes you either crumble or stronger, but it is the one thing that stays with you."

Man, what a bleak outlook on life.  I know the atheists love to tell people like me that we invent God to make ourselves feel more comfortable about death and life's meaning.  Even if that was true, do they have anything better to offer me?  Do I really want to give up my hope of a God who saves and a Jesus who never leaves and a time that never ends in exchange for a dead universe that ends and is barren where fear is my only companion?

In church this morning, I sang the words of "In Christ Alone."  It has the words, "No guilt in life, no fear in death.  This is the power of Christ in me.  From life's first cry to final breath, Jesus commands my destiny."  Amen.  How comforting to know that Doctor Who is only a fairy tale. Jesus is the reality and life's only meaning.  I just don't see how people want so badly to control their own lives and their own moralities that they would rather live in a world where fear is their only companion.

But we are friends with Fear.  His name is Jesus.  If our fear is directed to him, then we're complete.  He receives our fear, and is completely disappears, replaced by his Spirit.

1 John 4:13-21:
"By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. 14 And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. 15 Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. 16 So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. 17 By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world. 18 There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. 19 We love because he first loved us. 20 If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot[a] love God whom he has not seen. 21 And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother."

Perfect love casts out fear.  Yes we will fear, but we take Fear and accept him as a friend and he changes that into eternal Love and Life.

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