The Opposite of Love: Fear

by Bishop Robert O’Neill

It is a simple, straightforward, and often neglected fact: The opposite of love is not hate. The opposite of love is fear.

It is just that basic. For fear is the breeding ground — the simmering cauldron so to speak — of all the resentments, bitterness, anger, and destructive behaviors that constitute and give rise to hate. It doesn’t matter whether our hatred targets others or is turned inward in a form of self-loathing. The opposite of love is not hate. The opposite of love is fear.

I believe that it is just that basic. The opposite of love is not hate. The opposite of love is fear.

This simple truth is at the core of the story of Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection.

That narrative is dominated and driven by a range of human fear, and a quick run through of the cast of characters makes the point.

Herod is a king whose power is waning in a rapidly changing political climate. He will do anything necessary to retain whatever power he can. Pilate is a mid-level manager in an unstable region within a vast empire. He fears losing control, failing in his post, and undoubtedly dreads the possibility of being consigned indefinitely to this political backwater of a post. The religious leaders in the story, having long struggled to maintain their position while living in an occupied territory, fear being sidelined, losing the position and privilege, the authority and respect and esteem they crave, which in the end may be more imagined than real. The soldiers inevitably fear losing face, or a promotion, or a paycheck. The multitudes, who in one moment hail Jesus as the king of the Jews but in the next call for his crucifixion, would seem to be carried along by the inertia of popular opinion, would seem to be afraid of the work, the effort, the care, the thought, the time, the will, the courage that it actually takes to be a well-differentiated individual within a community. Their failure? Silence — the inability to stand up for what is right and just in the face of overwhelming power — political, economic, and military. The disciples, of course, fear suffering and death. Who wouldn’t?

Any way you cut it, the story of Jesus’ crucifixion is dominated by fear, and most ironically, all the characters who would otherwise consider themselves to be separated by position or power or class or religion or politics or race or tribe unwittingly find themselves bound together as one. It is a unity of fear — everyone dancing together to the same deadly tune in a conspiracy that in the end accomplishes only one objective — to kill and destroy the very love that is the source of all life.

Most alarmingly, it is not a story that simply took place thousands of years ago in a distant and remote region. The same narrative has been played out over and over again throughout human history, and is, even now, being played out in our own time with disastrous consequences.

It is a fact: the opposite of love is not hate. The opposite of love is fear.

The good news, of course, is the resurrection, an event that reveals that there is more to the story.

What the disciples discover as they begin to encounter the risen Jesus is this — that this fear that leads only to death does not have the final word. The tomb is empty. The shrouds of death have been cast aside. The place in which Jesus’ cold, dead body had been laid is now occupied by angels, beings of divine light. Nothing is as they would have anticipated, and the disciples find their eyes being drawn elsewhere by these heavenly beings so that they can begin to discover a more transcendent reality — that this fear that so dominates their hearts and lives and which leads only to loss and grief and suffering and death need not, and in fact does not and never can, have the final word.

Like most epiphanies, it takes a while for those who would follow Jesus to actually get it — to parse out and to integrate the reality of resurrection into their consciousness.

As they hide in an upper room paralyzed by their own fear, the risen Jesus will breathe the spirit of love into their hearts and lead them out into the world to love. The disciples who labor all night on the Sea of Tiberius and catch nothing will hear the voice of Jesus inviting them to set the nets of their lives in a different way in order to haul in an abundance that will feed not only them but also countless others. The two disciples who would retreat to the simplicity of village life in the small town of Emmaus will meet a stranger along the way and discover that they will have to re-learn their faith from the beginning. They will need, literally, to travel in the opposite direction — retreating not into safety and security, but turning around and walking courageously back into the complexity and ambiguity and violence of life in the big city of Jerusalem. People like Peter will be challenged to break bread with those considered beyond the embrace of God’s love. Paul will find himself stopped in his tracks by the risen Christ, realize dramatically that he is in fact blinded by the rage that is driving him, and discover that his sight can only be recovered by embracing the very people he so fears.

This is resurrection — our awakening to, and our coming to consciousness of, the depth and power of love — for there is no place, no crack, no crevice, no dark nook, in all of this life, where the unfathomable, unconditional, unconquerable love that God does not reach, and there is no place in which we are not already in the love that is God.

I am not naïve. The world is a scary place. Bad things do happen, and bad things happen to good people. There is plenty in this world to fear and there are plenty of people in this world who are more than happy to exploit our fears to gain or maintain their own position and power.

But remember: the opposite of love is not hate. The opposite of love is fear.

The call of Jesus is a call to take heart, to have courage, to stand tall in the name of love. The daily invitation that the risen Christ extends to us is to be a people who refuse, in love, to step to the tune of fear.

Our life’s work is to be those who steadfastly give voice to compassion, who speak and act for what is right and just, and who become instruments of God’s peace in a world that knows no peace.

And we can do this confidently, because as the cross and resurrection of Jesus reveals, love wins — at all times, in all places, in all ways, under every circumstance, without exception.