Facing Fear Within and Without

Y2K AND OURSELVES:

FACING FEAR WITHIN AND WITHOUT

Samuel Ling

Fear and anxiety fill the air as the millennium approaches. The Y2K bug has grown from a computer glitch to global fear for survival. Christians, pastors and entire congregations have relocated themselves, stockpiling food and fuel, to survive the turn of the century. As an interdependent global economy, we are now required by law to prepare. Advertisers capitalize on the millennium while prophecy writers and speakers interpret AD 2000 for us in light of millennial views of the Second Coming of Christ.

Fear and anxiety fill the air. Why?

The end of the twentieth century is a time when people rightfully feel anxious because at this moment in history, modern civilization as we know it has collapsed. Modern civilization began in the sixteenthcentury when humanity began to exalt itself and its reason, logic, science, and technology. It came to fruition in the eighteenth century through the “Enlightenment,” when humans began to throw off God as the Lord of the universe, and began to construct ideas and institutions which are purely secular, that is, with no need for God of the Bible. The result: in the twentieth century we no longer have any foundation or center for our lives, for morality, education, society, and philosophy.

When we abandon God and reject the Bible there is going to be fear and anxiety because truth is ejected from our minds and lives. The only way to hope and reality-based living is a return to God’s Word, and a return to God himself, asking for forgiveness and mercy.

Christians are people of the Book, the Word of God. We need to pray that the church of Jesus Christ returns to a strong, solid, systematic, and dynamic teaching ministry, which is centered and grounded in the Bible. The church of Jesus Christ has become too much like the world and too little like the people of God and kingdom of God which Jesus came to establish. We have uncritically imported secular ideas, methods and goals from marketing, psychology, communications, and “spirituality.” While there are helpful insights to be gleaned from God’s general revelation (some of which are analyzed by psychologists and business thinkers), true solutions to our problems, true power for living comes only from God and His Word.

As the world lies in gloom waiting for Y2K to happen, may the church proclaim hope: hope not as wishful thinking, but hope because, even when the flood waters rise, God still sits on the throne. Jesus sits on the throne because He is risen and is coming again. There is hope because God is involved in this world; he is not ignorant, blind or powerless.

Fear within and fear without … what a time for bold, biblical witnessing!