Mark Thompson: The Eclipse of Freedom

Like most in my generation, I recoil from Doomsday preaching. the announcement of impending disaster, the prediction of the widespread persecution of Christians just around the corner, the naming of this or that group as the antichrist or as an enemy set upon the absolute destruction of Christianity, still makes me wince. After all, the production and nourishing of fear among Christian people — especially fear of this group or another — has all too often proven to be just a means of gaining influence or excluding others from influence, control and power. It's not a tactic I want to employ, even unwittingly.

What is more, where there is fear there is often little love. In its original context, the apostle John's comment 'Perfect love casts out fear' (1 Jn 4.18) has to do with the fear of judgement and the wonderful way in which the love of God gives us confidence in the face of the day of judgement, 'because as he is so also are we in this world'. However, it is not hard to see that a wider principle is at work here as well. Islamophobia — the fear of Muslims or the confident equation of Jihadist fundamentalism with the belief and practice of all Muslims — keeps some from seeing Muslim men and women as those outside of Christ who need the gospel as much as anyone else. I've just been reading a novel about the Dreyfus Case, an incident in late nineteenth century French history in which a fear of the Jews and their influence led to widespread antisemitism and ultimately a very serious miscarriage of justice.

There is a danger here, of course. Too often opposition is psychologised as fear in order to suggest the people with the problem are those who are doing the opposing, not those whose behaviour is giving rise to the opposition. Often 'homophobia' is used in this way. While there are undoubtedly some who are motivated a fear of what they do not know, not all opposition to homosexual behaviour is an expression of psychosis on the part of those doing the opposing. It may just be that they are convinced of the need to oppose this behaviour for all sorts of cogent reasons (not least because God's word prohibits it — the Old and New Testament, Jesus and Paul). Keep reading