Most of us live in fear every day. You hear me say that and think, “What’s he talking about? I’m not afraid!” But that’s simply because you’ve become so used to this fear that you are no longer aware of it. Unless you are a very unusual person, you are deeply acquainted with this fear. What I’m talking about is the fear of your fellow human beings.
Not the crude sort of fear you experience when you meet someone who is physically threatening. I’m thinking about something much more subtle. I’m thinking about the fear that most of us have of being rejected, ignored, and disapproved of by others.
It’s remarkable how much this fear can control you. For example, someone makes a joke you don’t really like, but you laugh because you want to be “one of the crowd”. Someone tears down a colleague, but you don’t stand up for them, because you don’t want conflict. Someone expresses an idea that you find deeply repugnant, but you stay silent because you don’t want disapproval. And so on.
More than anything else, this fear is what stops us from sharing our faith. People come up with a million different reasons for not being upfront about their beliefs, but I don’t accept most of them. Usually we stay silent because we are afraid - afraid of being rejected, afraid of suffering disapproval and ostracism
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