Max Lucado’s “Fearless”

The church which I attend has a lending library.  I had never checked out a book to read until recently, when I picked up and started thumbing through Fearless by Max Lucado.   Because my every waking moment (and most of my dreams) are overflowing with fear in one form or another, I figured this may be a good book to read at this point in my life.

Now, the full title of the book is  Fearless: Imagine Your Life Without Fear.  Hey, that sounds pretty sweet, huh?   Yeah, a life without fear is a life I wouldn’t mind living.  I had never read a complete Max Lucado book before.  My mom is big on reading Christian books and is always sending the wife and me books that she feels will help us in our daily struggles with life.  I’m sure I have a Max Lucado or two in my current library that the wife has read .  I’m sure I have read their back covers as well.  Books that show one how to apply the bible to his or her life should probably consume more of my free-time, but I have always preferred reading books that help me escape from reality.  Because of the high level of fear I have been experiencing recently and  because Max Lucado is a best selling author, I figured this was the time to give Fearless a read.

I was disappointed.

Max Lucado is a good writer.  He has a very casual style and he incorporates great little stories into his writing that help emphasize his points.  The stories seem like they could be true, but could very well be made up; either way, the stories make the read more interesting.  I guess I was hoping that reading his book would cause an epiphany.  You know, there would be that one passage that would change the way I look at things.  I guess my major disappointment was that passage doesn’t exist.  The book wasn’t really that deep.

Max did a great job of highlighting most of my major fears.  The problem is, he kept going back to the Bible.  I know, I know, the Bible should be the source for alleviating fears.  The Bible should be the reference one turns to when times are tough (and when times aren’t tough).  After all, the Bible is God’s Word, right?  The Bible should have all of life’s answers, right?  A person should be able to live a fearless life with little stress by trusting in God’s word, right?  Yeah, easier than it sounds.

Faith is hard.  Life is hard.  Constantly having examples thrown at you of people from like 2000 years ago who actually saw Jesus, and saw his miracles, and touched him, often sounds a little empty to those who have never heard a voice from the clouds overhead… or seen the dead brought back to life.  If it was easy, it wouldn’t be called faith.

In the portion of his book dealing with those who find occasional doubts in their faith, he uses himself as an example.  He claims that he overcomes his doubt by remembering that even the disciples doubted after the crucifixion.  Jesus had to physically visit them after the crucifixion to get them to believe.  Thomas actually had to put his fingers in the wounds on the hands of Jesus to believe… and these are the guys who saw the miracles.   That is how Max overcomes his doubt.  Seriously?  I’ve never met Jesus in the flesh, all I have is the Word of God contained in a testament written over 2000 years ago by a bunch of guys who had to touch Jesus after the crucifixion to truly believe.  I was hoping to find an epiphany regarding faith in Fearless.  What I found I already knew: faith is hard.

Max stresses again and again (and uses Biblical quotes to drive the point home) that God does not want us to be afraid.  Jesus does not want us to be afraid.  As bad as the world gets and as hard as life can become, don’t get stressed.  There is nothing to fear.  I fear pain.  I fear getting my throat slit by a radical muslim because having my throat slit would hurt.  I fear dying a slow, painful death by cancer because it would hurt.  I know the pain would be over when I’m dead, but I fear the pain.

“But look at the pain Jesus endured before he dies,” you may say.  “Jesus didn’t complain about the pain!”

In response to that, I’m pretty sure that it is glaringly obvious that I am not the son of God… and before the crucifixion, even Jesus prayed that He might not to have to go through what was about to happen.  He didn’t complain, and He did submit Himself to the fact that God’s will be done, but he did throw out a “Hey, if there’s anyway We can do this sin-forgiveness thing without My flesh being stripped from My body and the whole trip to hell thing, that would be cool.”  I’m paraphrasing, of course.

There is a section of the book where Max discusses the fear of global calamity.  He begins the chapter discussing disclaimers.  He makes fun of disclaimers from pharmaceuticals and goes on to a “what’s next?” type disertation on how maybe babies should be given a disclaimer before being born about the hazards of life.   It is all tongue-in-cheek, of course, but it got me thinking.  Why weren’t we given a disclaimer before birth?  Wouldn’t that have been fair?  You know, something like the following:

You are about to be born.  God loves you and wants you to become a faithful servant.  Of course, after you pass through these vaginal walls, you will have no recollection of God… nor anything else.  You will be an infant who must learn everything that you are ever to know in this life starting in a few minutes.  This life will not be easy.  If you are lucky enough to be born in a place that allows Christianity, you will have to build your faith based on the writings of people who lived thousands of years ago.  If you are not born in a place that allows Christianity and you still become a Christian, there is a chance you and those you love will be brutally murdered.  There is also a chance that you will never even hear about Christ; if so, you’re on your own.

This life will also contain sin.  Sin is full of fun things that everyone else is doing that are bad for you and God doesn’t like it.  Sin should be avoided, but you are human, so you will sin.  Sin is accompanied by much guilt, but if your faith is strong, you can ask for forgiveness for your sin and the guilt should disappear.  At times, the sin will be quite tempting.  You must focus on your faith to avoid the temptation.  Faith most likely will not always come easy.  If you decide that faith is not for you, you will find yourself in hell after you die.  Hell is an awful place  full of constant suffering.  It appears that a vast majority of people in this life will end up going to hell.  The odds are stacked against you.

The choice is now yours:

1)  You are about to enter a life where there is much pain and suffering, many broken dreams, and physical and emotional pain (and where the odds are strong that you will end up in hell, where the pain and suffering are multiplied by infinity for infinity).  This life also contains bouts of unexpected joy and happiness, but they don’t last for long.  If you make it through this life with your faith intact, you will gain entrance into heaven.  Heaven is a great place with no pain or suffering, and you will be surrounded by the constant presence of God’s love.  All of your questions will be answered and you will have no fear.  But please remember, the odds are stacked against you.  If you are willing to take the chance,  please proceed toward the light… and don’t say that you weren’t warned!

2)  If you prefer to go back to the black nothingness from which you came, please press the exit button to your left.  No harm, no foul… thank you for your time.

I don’t remember being given the choice, do you?  Not to say that I would have chosen option 2, but sending a bunch of people to hell without giving them the choice pre-birth doesn’t seem quite right.  We all have the choice after birth, but that’s when we have been touched by sin and have the influences of the world to deal with.  Sometimes I get quite pissed at Adam and Eve for eating that stinking apple!

I always have issues taking advice from someone who makes a ton of money giving out advice.  Dave Ramsey is an example; Max Lucado is another.  Max has written dozens of best selling books, and you don’t get poor by writing best selling books.  As noble as his intentions may be, he still has a financial security that the average person does not have.  Why don’t we hear from more poor Christians proclaiming that the only true security is in Christ?  It’s always the rich dudes who are telling us that money can’t buy security, and this is usually in the same breath with which they are trying to sell us something else.  In Fearless, at the end of the book, Max is trying to peddle everything from calendars to more books to stinking t-shirts.  It always seems to me that professional advice givers are teeming with hypocrisy.  Dave Ramsey tells us to only spend on the things we need in the same book where he peddles his coffee mugs and crap.  Max Lucado portrays himself as a good Christian who tries to lead a Godly life not focused on the things of this world, as he tries to sell his readers all kinds of worthless crap.  Isn’t buying worthless crap a sin?  If not, it should be 🙂

Max’s book is good reading for the existing Christian.  I don’t think he is going to convert anyone, but I’m not sure that was his purpose.  I don’t feel any less fearful than I did before reading it.  The epiphany I was hoping for didn’t come.  I guess that’s what I get for trying to find epiphanies in the words of man.  I need to look Elsewhere.