Theophobia

Contemporary America is full of fear; fear is not a Christian habit of mind. It’s not merely that fear is incompatible with faith. According to God, fear is evidence that your faith is actually in something other than God. Fear is an indication that the god whom you allegedly trust is not the Living God. If it was just some dude named Isaiah preaching “Do not fear,” it should have no more effect on you than me preaching the very same message. It would have no power. My words— our words— lack the capacity to work what they say. “Do not fear” is groundless sentimentality if the one who utters the command is not also the powerful one, if God is not the Living God, himself the subject of the sentences that make up our lives. It makes all the difference, therefore, that “Do not fear” in Isaiah 41 comes couched in this five-fold “I” assertion, five promises in which we are the object of God’s every verb:
I am with you.
I am your God.
I will strengthen you.
I will help you.
I will uphold you.