Posted by
Diocuore on Thursday, May 21, 2009 7:13:58 AM
FEAR IS GOOD "However honest you are about your need to plead with me, remember to be careful that such tactics as appealing to fear won't pull in 'false converts.' If I am to believe, then it's the existence and action of God that will save me – not fear."
Not according to the Bible. Let me explain. The use of fear tactics, using computer graphic pictures of New York with water halfway up skyscrapers, and threats that in 30 or 40 years we will be eating each other, etc., may be backfiring on environmentalists who are trying to educate young people about the dangers of global warming. A new telephone survey commissioned by Habitat Heroes and conducted by Opinion Research polled a national sample of 500 American preteens – 250 males and 250 females. According to treehugger.com, "On a sliding scale of anxieties, minority kids have it worst; 75 percent of black children and 65 percent of Hispanic children believe that the planet will be irrevocably damaged by the time they reach adulthood." The threat of global warming just adds to an even more depressing outlook to a generation that is already under a cloud of economic gloom, massive unemployment, terrorism, school shootings and escalating incidents of parents killing their children. Remove God from the equation and you leave a young person with no knowledge of his origins, no purpose for existence and no knowledge of what happens after he dies. So when a problem comes along that seems insurmountable, he doesn't turn to God for help. Instead, he turns to the quick fix of suicide.
We SAY: I am thankful that I have a fear that causes me to put on a parachute before I make a 10,000-foot jump. In such a case, fear is your friend, not your enemy, and the fear of God is the ultimate friend of all who have it.