Perfect love casts out fear?

When I was being raised as an Evangelical, I was told that what we believed was all about love. I mean, the one Bible verse every Evangelical knows by heart begins "For God so loved the world". We were supposed to love the Lord our God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength, and love our neighbors as ourselves. My favorite hymn, often played at altar calls, was "My Jesus I love thee". Ask any Christian of any denomination what their religion is about - ask any member of ANY religion what it's about - and they'll say that it's about love.

But in retrospect: Evangelicalism was NOT centered around love, but around fear and power. Fear of hell, fear of demons, fear of the Rapture, fear of our own "sin nature", fear of sinning and falling short, fear of our god, fear of death and what comes after. Power to heal the sick through prayer, power to speak in other tongues, power to cast out demons, power to overcome the evil within ourselves (which generally meant any sexual desires that the pastor told us our god didn't approve of), power to overcome the evil in the world (which generally meant liberals, when you got right down to it).

And with that realization, it makes a whole lot of sense that Evangelicals followed, and continue to follow, someone who plays on their fears and promises them power. It makes sense that they fear an imaginary "gay agenda" and want political power to try and stop LGBTQ people from existing. It makes sense that they fear women being allowed to make difficult ethical decisions for themselves and want political power to take that choice away from them. It makes sense that they fear the truth about how they and their ancestors treated and still treat minorities, and want political power to keep their children from learning about it. It makes sense that they fear change, and want political power to force the country back to a mythical past when everything was better because everyone was more Christian.

The more I learned to ACTUALLY love people, the less I feared the people and ideas I'd been raised to fear. And the less I feared them, the less I felt the need to control or stop them. 

But, I began to realize more and more how much there is to fear from Evangelicals getting power.

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