pioneermeditations

If  fear has mastered us we must have an enemy. Fear needs to focus our attention on anything but itself.

FDR’s famous line, “We have nothing to fear but fear itself” has a profound wisdom we need to recapture.

When we stop looking at other people or problems as objects of fear, then we can recognize what fear is doing to us.

Fear needs to be fed. While it shifts our focus on one thing after another it is feeding on us. Fear will always find another enemy while it consumes its host- our hearts.

How to master fear instead of letting it master us? I’ve found that trusting in the higher power of love goes a long way toward that goal. Love at the core of our being is courage to master fear.

Shame and guilt are closely associated for most of us. For me, shame is about who we are, guilt is about what we do.

If shame is about being less than or other than we ought to be, I’m not sure who gets to decide the ought. Usually what happens is that communities decide how everyone ought to be. Then as individuals we take that in. We end up feeling shame when we accept the judgments of others upon our being.

When shame masters us we cannot accept ourselves. Then we cannot feel truly accepted by others. Our relationships will always be lacking a wholeness on our part.

From the Ground of our Being ( I AM) we need to hear that we are accepted -now- completely. We are fully loved.

We can still change, but we do so because we want to change, and we want to change the world. Whenever we see others enslaved by shame we want to pass on the blessing acceptance -full and immediate.

For some reason -or maybe no real reason- we think of some sins as worse than others. As an evolving species we have placed many meanings on sin that simply do not make sense. For now, I’m using sin to mean those things we do, feel or think that are hurtful.

Twelve is a cool symbolic number, so I stopped there when making my list of sins that can master us in ways that are hurtful. This dirty dozen tends to destroy relationships and thus can be called deadly (as in thanatos, see previous blog).

The first seven are famous as the seven deadly sins: anger, apathy, envy, gluttony, greed, lust and pride. These things can make great servants but are destructive masters.

Personally, I add five more: fear, shame, guilt, despair and bitterness. I’m not sure a church could approve elevating these to the status of deadly sins because the Church is so often guilty of using these to control its members. Nevertheless, they are destructive.

The first seven tend to dehumanize others and elevate self. The last five dehumanize self. They all can master us and keep us from healthy relationships.

We can’t get rid of this dirty dozen because at some level they are each part of who we are as human beings. Cleaned up they can actually serve to make stronger, healthier bonds.

We miss some of the meaning of a text whenever we translate from another language. This Sunday, for instance, there were two different words involved in the ideas of death and life.

In Romans 6:13 “we have been brought from death to life,” the word nekros is used for death. It means we have been empowered for living. We are no longer helpless slaves of destructive forces, internal or external.

In Rom 6:23 “the wages of sin is death,” the word thanatos is used for death. It means that sin separates us from God, others and even our own best self.

It flavors the whole passage of slavery to sin or slavery to righteousness. Basically it is talking about the idea of relationships. If we want to maintain good relationships with God and with others, we need to stop letting sinful, destructive forces control us. The good news is that we are empowered to do that when grace becomes a reality in us.