Fear with a Familial Hat
Martin Luther's wife Katerina once attended to one of the reformer's black moods by donning funeral garb herself. Since God is dead, she reasoned, she figured she would join him in mourning.
Conscious that my anxiety or discouragement can be contagious to my household, and not always in instructive jest, I find myself resolving to contain and constrain it in light of impending adoptive parenthood. So far as this desire that my daughter see what is good in God's world reflected on her father's face, this is edifying for us both. But so far as I then worry about the compounding cost of my worrying to succeeding generations, I have just redefined legalism with the excuse of focusing on my family. I'm pretty sure, as the eldest sister on Madam Secretary said to a brother who did not want to distract from his mother's presidential campaign with less than sterling college performance, is just fear with a hat.
There is encouragement here even in a biblical passage more confrontational toward fear excused as concern for family. God has cared for the Israelite exodus all the way through. They are on the border of the promised land, and then they despair for the fate of their children. Fear is deadly, God illustrates with the penalty that none of the generation who complained against Him, save faithful Joshua and Caleb, will enter the land. But, He says, the very children they have used to license their worrying and complaining will see the salvation of the Lord for themselves. They will enter into the promised land.
So it is, then, that we re-examine our motives for exfoliating worry, complaining, or any other vice. Where we do it to make a better impression upon people, or to train them more effectively, we hope for fruit from very shallow roots that inevitable dry seasons will expose. Where we see sin first and foremost as against God and as interfering with the intimacy that preceded and will outlast every human relationship, then and only then does our cry for more of His holiness in our lives drive down to sustaining marrow.
Conscious that my anxiety or discouragement can be contagious to my household, and not always in instructive jest, I find myself resolving to contain and constrain it in light of impending adoptive parenthood. So far as this desire that my daughter see what is good in God's world reflected on her father's face, this is edifying for us both. But so far as I then worry about the compounding cost of my worrying to succeeding generations, I have just redefined legalism with the excuse of focusing on my family. I'm pretty sure, as the eldest sister on Madam Secretary said to a brother who did not want to distract from his mother's presidential campaign with less than sterling college performance, is just fear with a hat.
There is encouragement here even in a biblical passage more confrontational toward fear excused as concern for family. God has cared for the Israelite exodus all the way through. They are on the border of the promised land, and then they despair for the fate of their children. Fear is deadly, God illustrates with the penalty that none of the generation who complained against Him, save faithful Joshua and Caleb, will enter the land. But, He says, the very children they have used to license their worrying and complaining will see the salvation of the Lord for themselves. They will enter into the promised land.
So it is, then, that we re-examine our motives for exfoliating worry, complaining, or any other vice. Where we do it to make a better impression upon people, or to train them more effectively, we hope for fruit from very shallow roots that inevitable dry seasons will expose. Where we see sin first and foremost as against God and as interfering with the intimacy that preceded and will outlast every human relationship, then and only then does our cry for more of His holiness in our lives drive down to sustaining marrow.
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