The Old Antidote For The Poison Of Fear

The recent attacks on America have put us in frightful straits. Defenseless people have been slaughtered. Our wall of peace breached, Fear, Anxiety and Sorrow stalk wherever they will. We are exiles in a country far different from the one we enjoyed just days ago. What can we do?

More than 2,500 years ago, the tiny kingdom of Judah was overrun by Nebuchadnezzar, who devastated the land. This heartless conqueror murdered the sons of Judah's king in his sight--and then gouged out his eyes. Leading citizens were carted to Babylon as exiles. With lives flipped upside-down, fear and terror became cruel taskmasters.

But a wise man, Jeremiah, counseled the exiles: "Build houses and live in them; and plant gardens, and eat their produce. Take wives and become the fathers of sons and daughters… and seek the welfare of the city where you are in exile…."

Are there lessons for us in his message? Yes.

First, he did not encourage them to abandon mourning for lost love ones and the homeland they remembered. But "normal" would not return, and they must seek to establish new lives with a long-range view: families should be reared, homes built and gardens planted. Life must go on--despite the catastrophes.

Second, welfare and security need not be permanently compromised. But Jeremiah added a compelling contingency: "…and pray to the Lord on the city's behalf; for in its welfare you will have welfare."

They had already pursued gods aplenty--gods who proved powerless against the cataclysmic collapse of peace and prosperity. Materialism and Self-sufficiency fled before the specter of terror. Adultery and Perversion had excited their bodies but rotted their souls. Pride and Arrogance had puffed up egos that buckled before the enemy's war machines.

Jeremiah beseeched them to abandon those gods and seek another: the Lord, the God of their forefathers, whom they had forsaken. Their homeland would eventually be reclaimed.

When our own forefathers encountered grave uncertainties and fears in laying America's foundations, they exuded hope and confidence. The exclamation point to our Declaration of Independence appeals to "the Supreme Judge of the world" and expresses "firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence." Would enemies plunder the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?

Francis Scott Key's emphatic "No!" climaxes our National Anthem: "Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just; and this be our motto: 'In God is our trust!' And the Star-Spangled Banner in triumph shall wave o'er the land of the free and the home of the brave."

Has our founders' vision of "one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all" become a nightmare? Not necessarily.

The poison of today's fear has the same antidote prescribed by Jeremiah during Nebuchadnezzar's reign of terror: forsake those age-old, impotent gods and return to the God of our forefathers.

Ground may have been lost in the land of the free and the home of the brave. But it can be reclaimed.

Copyright 2001 James McAlister

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