Fear: Bad Master, Worse Weapon

Fear is that little darkroom where negatives are developed. — Michael Pritchard

Strolling through Atlanta’s airport recently, Fear assaulted me. Announcers repeated messages from the Department of Homeland Insecurity. “Guard your bags.” “Report suspicious behavior.” “The Terrorist Threat Level is Orange.”

Such announcements can only be the product of a government that’s living in sin, who does not believe in democracy. So it rules by fear. Long before 9/11, our government had this policy called “Really Bad Things Can Happen.” Keeping the citizenry off-balance (aided by its lapdog, FOXNews), it seeks our compliance. Fear is national policy.

General Douglas MacArthur said, “The powers in charge keep us in a perpetual state of fear; keep us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor with the cry of grave national emergency. Always there has been some terrible evil to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it by furnishing the exorbitant sums demanded. Yet, in retrospect, these disasters seem never to have happened, seem never to have been quite real.”

The Master called Fear has led us into needless wars, multiplied enemies, gotten good religious folk all a-lather to go against their religion and kill, and helps justify a multitude of wasteful spending projects. (I feel safer, don’t you?) We don’t have a government “for” the people, but one “against” them.

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Scene change. Forget government. Let’s think “religion.”

Fear and religion are a bad chemistry. Arguably humanity’s worst trait, fear is the foundation of so much religiosity. Religions become mad systems of anxious reward and punishment, where creation and Creator are estranged, where – like in our government –the mouthpieces of faith spout inanities to keep us spiritually off-balance.

Code Orange in airports? Where did you think they got the idea? Religion can become one long announcement to watch our spiritual baggage, suspicious faith behavior, to ever-remind us how we’re always living in some hell called Code Red.

• Satan’s out there prowling around. (Be on the watch!)
• Santa (Satan anagrammed!) informs our religions with “You better watch out!” and “Be good,” and then it’s Reward Zone; but it’s coal-fire if you’re bad!
• What you don’t know can hurt you! (Let’s invent mysterious gods and afterlives to keep people tranquilized and questions minimized.)
• Get saved! (Don’t bother finessing that salvation is more about working relationships in this life than being saved from hell-fear in the next.)

In government and religion, Fear keeps us from asking important questions. Quiet people in either domain enable the few in power to sustain and increase their control.

The God of fear is a small reflection of our fearful selves, where God’s chief intention is to reward and punish creation. While “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom,” the Lord of Fear has no place in a healthy soul.

Without fear, there probably would be no religion (although there would be faith). The fear of death spawns endless varieties of gods, end-time scenarios (none of which have materialized) – and ignorance. How many times have I heard that the mind is a terrible thing in matters of faith? How many times have you heard that we are too puny and God is too big ever to comprehend faith mysteries, so shut up already?

Just believe, belong, behave, or be-damned. These four horsemen of the apocalypse are fear-enabled, and sustain so many cruelties in the name of god.

Bertrand Russell has the last word: “Fear is the basis of the whole thing – fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death. Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion have gone hand in hand. It is because fear is at the basis of those two things.”