I've been thinking a lot about this verse the past few days, that perfect love drives out fear, about how mostly I allow myself to be driven by fear instead. We fear the unknown. We fear that which we cannot control. We fear the court of public opinion.
The ICS staff spent Friday and Saturday on retreat at a beach side resort a few hours from Bangkok. It was a nice opportunity to not only spend time with friends, but to also talk to colleagues whom I normally don't interact with very much. A common theme was the fear of judgment. Not real judgment, not the day of judgment when Christ returns to "judge the quick and the dead," but rather the judgment of everyone around us. If it weren't so sad, it would be rather amusing how many times this came up in conversation in those two days. The more liberal among us worried about being judged for the ways they choose to live their lives. The more conservative among us worried about being judged for choosing not to do certain things, for the choices they make in how they choose to live their lives. Everyone running around fearfully hiding their true selves out of fear of the judgment of others. And sadly, for fairly good reason. Because behind most comments about others judging us are our judgments of them for judging us. We fear their judgments and know they're judging us because, let's face it, we're judging them. Is anyone else as confused by this as I am?
Being overly critical and judgmental is something I have struggled with all of my life but I don't know that I've experienced it as much on a community wide scale before.
I was chatting with a friend recently about how social media like facebook, twitter, pintrest, and blogs make this all the worse. They give us so many more platforms to a) present only our best sides so as not to be judged for our flaws and b) judge everyone else. Even with this blog, I struggle. How do I speak honestly and truthfully about life here in a way that is neither holier-than-thou or self-condemning or makes people think I'm as lost as perhaps I really am.
Though I would not normally characterize myself as a fearful person, these past few days have brought many of my fears front and center, forcing me to take a closer look at them. Fears of judgment for my linguistic abilities. Fear that I will never truly learn Thai. Fear that I will never quite fit in with this ICS community. Fear that people (both here and back home) will accept me as I am even though we are so different. Fear that there is some big thing in life, something everyone else has figured out, kind of like the punchline to an inside joke, that everyone else gets and I just do not get. Fear that crops up when people ask me how long I plan to stay in Thailand and the answer is I simply don't know. The ever-present enormous fear among singles here that the rather small pool of single Christian men in Bangkok will leave them single. Forever. Fear about my inadequacies as a teacher. The list goes on.
And I keep coming back to, keep hearing, perfect love drives out fear. What if I, what if we, let His perfect love drive out our fears, instead of letting our fears drive us? What if I could fully know the depth and height and greatness of this love to the degree that it would drive out these fears of mine and allow me to live a full life, a transparent and real and honest life that does not hide behind the masks of fear? May I, may you, may each of us know more and more each day of this love beyond comprehension, this perfect love that drives out fear.
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