By Ferb1972 - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0 pl, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=39901125
I remember four events in my lifetime when the pallor of fear blanketed American society.
My earliest recollection is the Cuban Missile Crisis. My mother picked me up from fifth-grade dismissal in her silver-grey Mercury Comet. The expression on her face mimicked Munch's The Scream. I could feel the terrifying apprehension in her voice when she said, "Hal, we're going to have nuclear war." That pallor of fear lasted from October 16-28, 1962.
My next memory of an all-pervasive pallor of fear occurred almost one year and one month to the day on November 22, 1963. In what until that moment seemed a safer and more innocent world, my junior high permitted 7th-9th grade students to leave campus for lunch. My habit was to walk to Sadler's Restaurant in Jacksonville, Texas - 100 miles east of Dallas - and eat a flat-top-grill hamburger or a chicken fried steak. I don't recall what I ate that day, but I do remember that the autumn day was warm and clear, and that crossing South Jackson Street on my way back to school, a student approached me and said, "President Kennedy has been shot!" I walked back into Mrs. Kerzee's classroom to hear the school PA broadcasting the news, and Mrs. Kerzee, tissues in hand, weeping profusely beneath the newly fallen, ashen pallor that would not lift for years.
The third time I recall a global pallor is, of course, September 11, 2001. I stepped out of my office to find my board chair and assistant glued to the television - one tower had fallen, the other soon to fall. I had 600 kids under my watch. We emptied the classrooms to the gymnasium, locked town, and released frightened children one-by-one to their pallored-faced parents. Later, I learned that one of my school-parents, a traffic controller at D-FW International, had guided Air Force One that day.
Now, the same pallor has fallen over American society, even over the whole world. I don't have to tell you what it is - you know. Upon your brow you may feel the death dew, down your spine the chill, and in your throat the anxiety, if not for yourself, then for your children, your friend going through chemotherapy, or your elderly mother or father. If you cannot feel it, you can certainly hear it and see it - the pallor of fear blanketing the world.
Most of you can recall how momentarily religious we became after 9/11, interfaith services in D.C., "thoughts and prayers" on the tongue of every politician, a fleeting wave of altruistic patriotism, and a temporary spike in church and synagogue attendance. Though churches and synagogues are now closed beneath this most recent pallor, similar emotions and intentions have begun to arise underneath the grey skies - we're in this altogether, be kind to one another, thoughts and prayers, etc., etc.
I won't ask for forgiveness regarding my skepticism of adversity-triggered idealism and altruism. I've seen it before. More than that, I understand it. Whatever you believe about the Garden of Eden narrative - historical, metaphorical, fictional - one thing is indisputable. The story explicitly identifies the first effect of The Fall upon humanity - the pallor of fear -
"I heard thy voice in the Garden, and I was afraid."
Coupled with that pallor of fear was a misguided and disconcerted effort to alleviate the threatening distress - "fig leaves" we might say - self-motivated, self-guided, and self-interested attempts to remedy the dire and deadly effects of human misjudgment and transgression. Such fear-based and egocentric motives and actions may create a psycho-emotive release from the pallor of immediate fear, but as soon as the threat is removed, the pallor of fear evaporates like a fog at sunrise and, like Browning's naive Pippa, we go on our merry way singing, "God's in His heaven. All's right with the world."
The kind of fear we need is something much more powerful than nuclear war, assassinations, terrorist attacks, or a microscopic virus. Yes, God can and does use such things to get our attention. C. S. Lewis refers to such adversities as "God's megaphone." But how many times did God shout at Pharaoh, and with how many plagues? How many times did the pallor of fear motivate Pharaoh to temporary and shallow repentance or for that matter - National Israel, Esau, or Judas Iscariot? I remember Jesus Christ said something about that, something about fowls, shallow soil, and thorns . . .
The pallor of fear we now feel, now hear, now see, is but a "mourning" fog that hides the sun. We would do well to remember the next to last prophecy in the Hebrew scriptures, which tells us that kind of fleeting fear will one day evaporate when . . .
The day cometh that shall burn as an oven;
And all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble:
And the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the LORD of hosts,
That it shall leave them neither root nor branch,
But unto you that fear my name shall
The Sun of Righteousness arise with healing in His wings.
"The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom," and for those who have that godly fear, all other fears disappear. As the hymnist sings,
"Twas grace that taught my heart to fear,
And grace my fears relieved."
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