Facing our fears

I am so sick of the fear mongering that has taken over the election and our country that I could scream. Everywhere I turn all I hear is fear. Being fearful has become the new patriotism. Fear of the right. Fear of the left. Fear of loss. Fear of being wrong. Fear of immigrants. Fear of the Islamists. Fear of health care. Fear of the media. Fear of guns. Fear of gun control. Fear of blacks. Fear of Wall Street. The list goes on and on.

We've become a nation of fear addicts and unfortunately, fear breeds violence. We simply won't get any real solutions to our many problems until we address our national obsession with fear. Yes, there are scary things out there. Yes, our world feels like it is coming apart at the seams. But in the end, fear only leads to irrational and dangerous decisions. The opposite of peace is not war It's fear!

I became a 12 stepper when our kids were teens and got caught up in the drug culture. I was terrified! Feeling a failure as a parent and person, I joined a 12 step program called Families Anonymous. That program not only saved my sanity but the life of at least one of our children who later confessed he was suicidal. I went into the program to change and fix my kids and their problems. I quickly learned the program was not for them; it was for me because I was part of the problem! Tortured by my fears and anxieties my actions and reactions had become irrational and insane! The only person I could change was myself so once I began changing my responses and behavior, learned how to detach with love, everyone else in the family was forced to own their own behavior and change as well.

I fantasize about our nation moving toward healing by insituting a 12 step program focused on getting a realistic handle on our many fears. Here are the 12 spiritual principles we'd use:.

Admitted that we were powerless over our fears and other peoples' actions and that our lives had become unmangeable.

1. Came to believe a power greater than ourselves can free us from our fears and restore us to sanity.
2. Decided to turn our will and our lives over to the care and guidance of God as we understood God.
3. Made a fearless and moral inventory of ourselves our fears, and resulting crazy behaviors.
4. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another trusted person the exact nature of our fears and wrongs.
5. Became ready to have God remove our fears and the resulting defects of character.
6. Humbly asked God to remove our fears and resulting defects of character.
7. Made a list of all the people we have harmed because of our fears.
8. Made direct amends to such persons unless doing so would injure them or others.
9. Continued to take daily personal inventory of ourselves and our fears and promptly admitted our wrongs and shortcomings.
10. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, praying only for God's will for us and the power to carry it out.
11. Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of practicing these steps, we tried to carry this message to others and to practice these principles in all of our affairs.

Joyce Shutt is pastor emeritus of the Fairfield Mennonite Church. She participates in a 12 step program called CoDa (codependents anonymous) which focused on self improvement and facing our fears.