You've probably heard that there are only two motives in life; love and fear. The more I consider this, the more I believe it. Our thoughts, actions, perspectives of people, parenting styles, career management decisions - and a host of other things are motivated and guided by love or fear. Too simplistic?
Consider for instance, that many of our career decisions may be motivated by fear. For example, comparison with others out of concern that we might not be measuring up drives a certain career decision (a fear based perspective). We might take a job we don't want but which pays well. We accept it because we're concerned that we need to make more money in order to look successful and have others think highly of us. Or, consider what could appear to be a career decision made out of perfect security but which may prove to be a fear based decision when a person is offered a promotion in another city and turns it down. Ostensibly they turn it down because they are happy and content and like the friends they have in their current city. Possibly though, it's more fearful than that, and the person is afraid they would not, or could not, make really good friends in the new city. So they turn it down based on this fear. Only we know the true placement of our hearts. Actually - only God knows this. Often we don't know our hearts as well as we think we do.
Parenting: consider that we may parent in a way that hovers over our kids unnecessarily because we want them to succeed. Is it that we want them to succeed - which could be love based - or that we don't want them to fail, which is fear based...? Perhaps we try to control our children to get them to behave in a way that others will think highly of us as parents - which is another way of saying, I am trying to control my children so they don't misbehave so people wont think poorly of me. That's fear based parenting. Just one aspect of it. What about this one - a very understandable one: You are 34 years old and you decide to get married to a person you know is not a great choice for you. But, you do it out of fear; fear that you might not find anyone better later on. This is a very normal and very understandable dilemma in life - but it's a fear based decision.
Most of us have both love and fear inside of us, operating in a gray mixture of interrelated cross currents. But here's the deal, fear is crippling and imprisoning while love is freeing and life giving. Which would you rather have?
This is where Jesus' example becomes stunning to me. Jesus created a world, entered it, and allowed it to have its way with Him. It begins where God created people to whom He gave the freedom to choose Him or not. Stunning. This is the essence of love, hard as it is to imagine. Then they chose to turn away from Him, so Jesus came into the world to redeem us. At the hands of the world He had created, that very world put Him through an unjust trial and a tortuous execution. The Bible says He could have called down a legion of angels to rescue Him, but He didn't. He didn't intercede with his power to control. Wow. How free He must have been. Free from what people thought of Him. Free from what people did to Him.
Control, I'm learning, is often a fear based behavior. We are nervous what will happen if we don't control something. In other words, we are fearful. It's a hard way to live, an anxious way to live. We all know it, we've all done it.
A current learning area for me is the invitation from God to trust Him completely so that we are moving away from fear in our lives, and toward love. As we grow in this, we are being freed. And we are setting others free. Wow Jesus - you have shown us a lot.
