When You Stop Fearing, Fear Loses its Grip

In authoritarian states  people are ruled by fear. You’re told there is a king and if you challenge the king, you’ll die. And since people like to live in peace and stay alive,  they shut up about the king until it becomes unbearable.

As they say, we will only change when the pain of status quo is greater than the pain of change.

When people have had enough and decide they’re not afraid anymore, revolutions happen. Thousands upon thousands on the Tahrir square demonstrating. People taking up arms in Libya. Christians in Algeria saying, fine if you want to imprison us, build a bigger prison.

They refuse to be ruled by fear and fear loses its grip. Just like that.

The Bible says fear not for every day of the year. The only good fear the good book talks about is the fear of God. For Christians you could define fear Biblically:  fearing people more than fearing God. When we see the people and circumstances around us as greater than God, we’re in distress. But when the tables are turned and we see a good God absolutely in charge, fear is expelled. We’re more afraid of Him than of others. It is liberating to know that ultimately, whatever happens God knows what he is doing and nothing, no thing, can happen without him seeing it.

The Weight of Calling

French monks lead a quiet life in the Atlas mountains of Algeria, until a band of terrorists arrive. Based on a true story the French film, Des hommes et des dieux, paints unhurriedly a picture of the decision the monks have to make. Namely, to stay and face likely death or to leave, but to what?

In a slow moving, reflective and beautiful way the film describes the peaceful life these Christian monks live side by side with their Muslim neighbors. This has been (and is) the reality in many countries, until war or extremism breaks out and cuts divisions hard to bridge. In a moving scene the monks reveal their plans of escape, saying they are like birds on a branch. A Muslim lady from the village responds, you can’t leave. We are like the birds and you are the branch, you carry us.

This tips the scales towards staying.  Many of them have to go back to their original calling of becoming monks, and of becoming followers of Jesus. They gave up their lives already then.

The film is moving in its portrayal of making a heavy choice, weighing the pros and the cons and still making the tough call of staying, of risking ones life. Then when the inevitable happened, they were ready.

In the face of violence and hatred, they had peace and faith. They were true heroes, who willingly laid down their lives for the sake of a greater cause. Who can argue with that?