Cruelty

Journalist Simone Ellin, editor of Baltimore Jewish Living magazine Jmore, endured relentless bullying in high school, resulting in “low-grade depression, anxiety and feelings of inadequacy and underachievement that have persisted despite years of therapy.” Decades later, she decided to reconnect with her former classmates—bullies, bystanders, and fellow victims alike.

Through social media, Ellin easily found many of these women, who were surprisingly willing to share their stories. One former bully, reached via Facebook, called and tearfully confessed: “I’m so sorry. I swear I’m not a bad person. I think about what I did to you all the time. I don’t know why I chose you. I had a miserable home life.” Hearing her classmate’s trauma firsthand, Ellin was finally able to forgive her, and hoped the woman could forgive herself, too.

Ellin discovered that even the “popular” girls suffered. “I was surprised to learn that many of the 'popular' girls paid a steep price for maintaining their social standing,” she wrote. One former cheerleader admitted, “The girls in her clique were so mean to each other that she grew up distrusting other women. 'I didn’t have a real female friend until I was 43.'”

Another woman, once bullied, became a bully herself: “I had no way to stand up for myself... I became a bully, and I would kick them with my clogs. I got suspended and I remember thinking, Now I’m the strong one.”

Ellin also reflected on her own actions, regretting times she gossiped or shunned others. “This was crystallized for me when a couple of women I interviewed mentioned that they felt 'invisible' in school.”

Ultimately, Ellin’s project offered healing and perspective: “We can never really know what’s going on in other people’s lives... After decades of hurt and resentment, I now see them as they were—young girls experiencing their own trials and tribulations.”

London's metropolitan police force has seen just about everything in terms of crime, and they've saved much of the evidence. A forward-thinking officer in 1874 began saving items from historic cases to show new recruits. The museum includes items like: Letters from the Jack the Ripper case, an oil drum used to dissolve murder victims in acid; Cannibal Dennis Nilsen's cooking pots; The umbrella-fired ricin bullet that the KGB used to kill a Bulgarian dissident in London during the Cold War; Items that once belonged to Charles Black, the most prolific counterfeiter in the Western Hemisphere, including a set of printing plates, forged banknotes, and a cunningly hollowed-out kitchen door once used to conceal them.

The museum houses evidence from some of the most twisted, barbaric criminal cases of recent history. It is not open to the public, as some people think it's just too gruesome for public viewing, but it is used as a teaching collection for police recruits. It also may show the monstrous side of humanity, what we have been and still are capable of doing to each other.

Because the British royal family lives under constant media scrutiny, it’s usual for any member of the family to stay out of the limelight for an extended period. So, when Catherine of Wales hadn’t been seen in public for months, and her Mother’s Day photo was scrutinized as possibly being doctored, conspiracy theories began to proliferate.

All these theories proved to be irresistible for online jokesters. “Perhaps Kate Middleton had been using a body double, or was in a coma, or was engaged in an illicit tryst,” people speculated online. Even American late night comedy hosts were getting in on the action.

But it turns out the truth was much less exciting, and much scarier: Kate Middleton was undergoing chemotherapy treatments for a form of cancer.

For many people, this news created a regretful reckoning. A 58-year-old woman named Dana spoke to reporters at The Washington Post about this. Dana had been joking with her friends about the Kate Middleton rumors; when she heard the truth, she was filled regret. She said, “This woman’s sick and afraid. And I just lost my mom to cancer. I am devastated at my inhumanity.”

Many of the online entertainment personalities simply ceased joking and moved on to other targets, but CBS’ late-night host took an extra step, apologizing during a segment of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. He said:

There’s a standard that I try to hold myself to. And that is I do not make light of somebody else’s tragedy. Any cancer diagnosis is harrowing for the patient and for their family. Though I’m sure they don’t need it from me, I and everyone here at The Late Show would like to extend our well wishes and heartfelt hope that her recovery is swift and thorough.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Telling jokes can be a great way to bring levity to your friends, but take care that your jokes do not veer into harassment or defamation of character.

In his article for The Atlantic, David Brooks says that recently he’s been obsessed with the following two questions:

The first is: Why have Americans become so sad? The rising rates of depression have been well publicized, as have the rising deaths of despair from drugs, alcohol, and suicide. But other statistics are similarly troubling. The percentage of people who say they don’t have close friends has increased fourfold since 1990. The share of Americans ages 25 to 54 who weren’t married or living with a romantic partner went up to 38 percent in 2019, from 29 percent in 1990. A record-high 25 percent of 40-year-old Americans have never married. More than half of all Americans say that no one knows them well. The percentage of high-school students who report “persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness” shot up from 26 percent in 2009 to 44 percent in 2021.

My second, related question is: Why have Americans become so mean? I was recently talking with a restaurant owner who said that he has to eject a customer from his restaurant for rude or cruel behavior once a week—something that never used to happen. A head nurse at a hospital told me that many on her staff are leaving the profession because patients have become so abusive. At the far extreme of meanness, hate crimes rose in 2020 to their highest level in 12 years. Murder rates have been surging, at least until recently. Same with gun sales. Social trust is plummeting. In 2000, two-thirds of American households gave to charity; in 2018, fewer than half did. The words that define our age reek of menace: conspiracy, polarization, mass shootings, trauma, safe spaces.

Brooks concludes: “We’re enmeshed in some sort of emotional, relational, and spiritual crisis, and it undergirds our political dysfunction and the general crisis of our democracy.”

In 2019, David and Ina Steiner were running a newsletter called CommerceBytes. The newsletter reported on a lawsuit by online retailer eBay alleging that its rival Amazon had poached many of its third-party sellers. The Steiners probably knew the story would anger officials at one or both of the tech companies, but had no idea how far they might go to retaliate. As it turns out, they went too far. Way too far.

The intimidating harassment included bizarre and unexpected deliveries of items to the Steiners’ home, including live spiders, cockroaches, a funeral wreath, and a bloody pig mask. U.S. Attorney Josh Levy said, "eBay engaged in absolutely horrific, criminal conduct.”

James Baugh was eBay’s senior director of safety and security at the time. Prosecutors called him the ringleader of the harassment, citing an email where he called Ina Steiner “a biased troll who needs to be burned down.”

The company announced in January it will pay a fine of $3 million to resolve criminal charges levied against several of its employees in connection with a campaign of harassment against the Steiners.

The CEO of eBay, Jamie Iannone, called the employee behavior “wrong and reprehensible.” He went on to say, “since these events occurred, new leaders have joined the company, and eBay has strengthened its policies and training. EBay remains committed to upholding high standards of conduct and ethics and to making things right with the Steiners.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

Uncontrolled anger and a thirst for revenge can lead to many costly mistakes, both in the business world and in a person’s private life.

You've never heard of Tanuja Ghale. She's a fellow believer, salon owner, and evangelist in Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal. One day she saw a young woman on the streets of that city and told her she was beautiful. Inexplicably, the woman began to weep. That morning, her husband had beaten her and told her she was, "… the worst woman in the world."

When Tanuja tells women they're beautiful, they're shocked, and want to know what beauty she sees in them that their loved ones have missed. Then those women may be ready to hear that God loves them unconditionally. Our words can have such a profound positive (or negative!) impact.

Gun violence is an ongoing problem in the city of Chicago. Now, a new study finds 56% of the city’s Black and Hispanic population, and 25% of Whites, witness a shooting by the age of 40. Researchers say residents were, on average, 14 years-old when they saw their first shooting. The findings add to growing concerns that people witnessing constant shootings may have chronic stress and other health issues related to violence.

Researchers say, “Our findings are frankly startling and disturbing. A substantial portion of Chicago’s population could be living with trauma as a result of witnessing shootings and homicides, often at a very young age. ... Since 2016 we have seen another surge in gun violence. Rates of fatal shootings in Chicago are now higher than they ever were in the nineties.”

Over seven percent of Black and Hispanic Chicagoans were shot before turning 40, compared to three percent of White people. On average, these residents were struck by gunfire by age 17.

While Chicago was the example for this study, it is not the only place in America experiencing the effects of increasing gun violence. The team believes these public health consequences apply to cities experiencing upticks in shootings across the U.S.

Administrators for the 911 response bureau in Buffalo, New York, announced that they have terminated the employment of a dispatcher who mishandled a call during the shooting at the Tops grocery store that claimed the lives of ten people.

During one of the many 911 calls during the shooting incident, Tops employee Latisha Rogers was inside the store, and was whispering so as not to give her position. Apparently, that displeased the dispatcher.

Rogers said, “She was yelling at me, saying, ‘Why are you whispering? You don’t have to whisper. And I was telling her, ‘Ma’am, he’s still in the store. He’s shooting. I’m scared for my life. I don’t want him to hear me. Can you please send help?’ She got mad at me, hung up in my face.”

Local news identified the dispatcher as Sheila Ayers, an eight-year 911 veteran of the Police Services Department. Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz said her actions were “inappropriate” and “unacceptable.” According to Poloncarz, dispatchers are trained to recognize whispering as a likely sign of imminent danger.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Walking in wisdom with a servant’s heart prepares a person to respond appropriately in stressful situations. It will prevent a person from jumping to conclusions that are harmful.

Horrific gun violence in schools continues to be an ongoing problem in America, but a new study finds children around the globe are fearing for their safety as well. Researchers have found that one in three adolescents say they feel unsafe in their own school. Importantly, these children did not come from the US, researchers surveyed adolescents from 13 nations throughout Europe and Asia between 2011 and 2017.

Concerningly, two in three children in Japan say they feel unsafe when they go to class. Other countries at the top of the spectrum include Vietnam (1 in 2 children), Russia (1 in 2 children), and China (1 in 2 children). At the opposite end of the spectrum, just 11 percent of girls in Finland and eight percent of boys in Norway fear going to school.

Researchers believe one of the biggest components in creating a school environment that feels safe is the relationship between teachers and students. The study finds that if a student feels their teacher cares about them, they’re more likely to feel safe in school. Fair, clear, and consistent rules while in class also contributed to a student’s feeling of safety.

Meanwhile, students who experience bullying reported feeling less safe on school grounds. Researchers add that the result of feeling less safe at school can lead to mental health problems, which stay with a child throughout their life.

A former Colorado police officer was sentenced to five years in prison in connection to his conduct during an arrest of a 73-year-old woman with dementia. Loveland Police officer Austin Hopp arrested Karen Garner after she reportedly stole about $14 worth of merchandise from a local store.

Footage from his body camera showed Hopp grabbing her arm, twisting it upward as he pushed her onto the hood of a car, then pushing her to the ground. Hopp was also captured on police surveillance video laughing and joking about his treatment of Garner as he reviewed the body camera footage with another officer. At one point he even called attention to the popping sound her shoulder made as he dislocated it.

Hopp entered into a settlement with the prosecution, pleading guilty to second-degree assault in exchanged for a reduced sentence. Garner received $3 million in compensation from the city of Loveland. Family members say that money will help pay for the medical costs incurred from the injurious arrest.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Servants in positional leadership must exercise humility when dealing with others, particularly those who have fallen into trouble.

Annahita Parsan shares how she survived snowy mountains, a filthy prison, and an abusive husband as God brought her to faith in Christ.

I was born in beautiful, peaceful Iran. My life was good, and it got even better when I fell in love, got married, and gave birth to my son, Daniel. Even the fact that my country was being overtaken by Islamic revolutionaries couldn’t dampen my joy. Like so many people whose lives feel perfect, I had little appetite for God. But all that was about to change.

Death came like a thief one morning soon after Daniel was born. My husband was killed in a traffic accident, and in an instant my life was robbed of joy. I was in shock. I was in denial. And for the first time in my life, my mind turned to God. I asked, What have I done to deserve this?

In time the pain dulled a little, and I remarried. But from the first night we were together, my new husband revealed himself to be a violent, abusive man. My life was once more plunged into pain and sorrow. Only this time, there was no end in sight.

I gave birth to a daughter, Roksana, but my husband’s beatings continued. And when he got in trouble with the authorities, I had no choice but to join him as he fled across the mountains into Turkey. It was a terrible journey. We weren’t equipped for the snow, and soon my fingers, mouth, and toes were black with frostbite. And when I realized that Roksana was no longer breathing, my thoughts once more returned to God. Why are you punishing me this way?

Crouched on the cold ground, my baby’s tiny body hanging limply in my arms, I was at my lowest point. I had nothing left with which to fight. I wanted to die. I had no idea that God was right there with me.

Hours later, as we sat by a fire in the custody of Turkish police, I got my first real glimpse of God. Roksana was alive. It was a miracle. Throughout the next four months that we spent locked up in a filthy Turkish prison, God was right there. He kept me safe from many dangers, and I know he was there too in the kindness of a stranger: a businessman, once imprisoned alongside us, who helped secure our release through Amnesty International.

But it wasn’t until I was far away from Turkey that God started to reveal himself more clearly. One day two men knocked on my apartment door. They wanted to talk about Jesus, but I was too scared of my husband to talk to strangers. They returned the next day and handed me a Bible. I knew I should have thrown it away, but something made me want to keep it. So I hid it where my husband couldn’t find it. The next time he beat me until my body was bruised and sore, something compelled me to give the Bible a look. It spoke to me, and I started to speak to God. If you really are there, God, please help.

Eventually, with the help of the police, I was able to leave my husband. My children and I were relocated to another city and offered emergency shelter by nuns. As I listened to them talk and sing about loving and following Jesus, something awakened within me. Could I ever learn to love and trust you too, Jesus?

Years passed before I had an answer. I was back in Iran, having returned to visit a dying relative. The authorities were suspicious as to why I had left Iran in the first place, and I knew I couldn’t tell the truth about my escape without facing a return to prison. After three months of court hearings and interviews, I stood before a judge, waiting to hear his verdict. Powerless and desperate, I turned fully to the One who had been beside me throughout it all. I promised God I would give my life to Christ if he could deliver me from this ordeal.

Right then, as I prayed, he freed me from the enemy’s grip. The judge, who saw that I was crying, had mercy on me and let me go free. The very next day, I was back in Sweden—God had rescued me and brought me safely home. From that day on, my life has been his.

Today, at my church in Sweden, I have the privilege of seeing God powerfully at work in the lives of so many Muslims. All over the world, God is appearing in dreams and visions to men and women who have previously followed Allah.

Hell is not a popular topic today, except for all the wrong reasons.

The theme song for the film Cruella tells us right up front that Ms. de Vil was "born to be bad." Estella Miller is a creative child with a talent for fashion but has a cruel streak, leading her mother Catherine to nickname her "Cruella." After a tragic series of circumstances Estella finds herself an orphan on the streets of London. She tries to be good, but when she befriends fashion legend Baroness von Hellman, she embraces her wicked side to become the raucous and revenge-bent Cruella.

The chorus to the theme song reads:

Call me crazy, call me insane

But you're stuck in the past

And I'm ahead of the game

A life lived in penance, it just seems a waste

And the devil has much better taste

And I tried to be sweet, I tried to be kind

But I feel much better now that I'm out of my mind

Well, there's always a line at the gates of Hell

Possible Preaching Angle:

The truth is, almost everything about these lyrics is wrong. Penance is not a waste, when won through Christ. The devil does not have better taste. But the one area where the lyrics are spot on, there is a long line at the gates of hell.

In March of 2018, California Highway Patrol discovered a GMC Yukon driven by Jennifer Hart had plunged off a cliff with her wife Sarah and their six adopted children inside. All were either confirmed or presumed dead. After a yearlong investigation officials have identified a troubling trend in Oregon’s child welfare agencies.

Social media photos of the family engaged in a variety of wholesome activities appeared to contradict allegations of abuse and/or neglect that continued to surface. Just days prior to the road trip, a Woodland neighbor had called Child Protective Services. Internal documents showed that during their residence in Oregon, CPS was aware that the Hart family had been investigated for child abuse back in Minnesota. Nevertheless, DHS closed the investigation, concluding they were unable to determine if abuse or neglect had taken place.

This was not an uncommon conclusion. According to a federal survey, officials in Oregon were closing one in every five child welfare investigations as inconclusive. Case workers sometimes felt pressure not to report allegations of abuse because they felt the sanctions were too harsh. “We put kids in peril, because there was just a big push to make sure we didn’t take kids into custody.”

Possible Preaching Angles: Children are precious in the sight of God. When our mechanisms to protect children fail, God is grieved.

In an article for Christianity Today, sociologist and researcher Brad Wilcox has investigated the claim that evangelical Protestantism is bad for marriage and "good" at fostering domestic violence. Wilcox admits, "Domestic violence is still present in church-going homes, and Christian clergy, counselors, and lay leaders need to do a much better job of articulating clear, powerful messages about abuse," but he also responds the question, "Do traditional evangelical marriages lead to abuse?"

The answer is complicated, since some research suggests that gender traditionalism fuels domestic violence. … In general, however, the answer to these questions is "no." In my previous book, Soft Patriarchs, New Men: How Christianity Shapes Fathers and Husbands, I found that women married to churchgoing evangelical men—compared to women married to men in other major religious traditions or women married to unaffiliated men—report the highest levels of happiness. Their self-reports were based on two markers: "love and affection you get from your spouse" and "understanding you receive from your spouse." This same demographic of women also report the highest levels of quality couple time.

My newer [research] reveals similar findings. Men and women who attend church together are almost 10 percentage points more likely to report that they are "happy" or "very happy" in their relationships, compared to their peers who attend separately or simply don't attend religious services at all. On average, then, evangelicals (as well other religious believers in the United States) who attend church regularly enjoy higher quality marriages compared to their less religious or secular peers.

Novelist William Giraldi, a contributing editor to The New Republic, wrote an essay on the modern phenomenon of online hate mail, most often found in the comments section below an article. Comments often devolve into hate-filled insults, but Giraldi draws some conclusions that Christians could agree with. First, Giraldi writes that hate mail proves that, "People are desperate to be heard, to make some sound, any sound, in the world, and hate mail allows them the illusion of doing so. Legions among us suffer from the [boredom] and [unhappiness] of modernity, from the discontents of an increasingly [isolated] society."

According to Giraldi hate mail also means that at least someone is listening to your viewpoints—even if they hate you for it. Giraldi writes, "Part of a writer's [we could insert Christian here] job should be to dishearten the happily deceived, to quash the misconceptions of the pharisaical … to unsettle and upset. If someone isn't riled by what you write, you aren't writing truthfully enough. Hate mail is what happens when you do."

Possible Preaching Angles: Jesus promised that we would be hated for his name's sake. Even if we speak the truth in love, some people will still be unsettled and riled by what we write or say.

In his book Vanishing Grace, Philip Yancey shares a story about a World War II veteran, currently serving as a pastor, who had participated in the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp. At the end of the war, as the U.S. soldiers marched through the gates of Dachau, nothing could prepare them for what they found in the boxcars within the camp. The man said,

A buddy and I were assigned to one boxcar. Inside were human bodies, stacked in neat rows, exactly like firewood. Most were corpses, but a few still had a faint pulse. The Germans, ever meticulous, had planned out the rows—alternating the heads and feet, and accommodating different sizes and shapes of bodies. Our job was like moving furniture. We would pick up each body—so light!—and carry it to a designated area. I spent two hours in the boxcar, two hours that for me included every known emotion: rage, pity, shame, revulsion—every negative emotion, I should say. They came in waves, all but the rage. It stayed, fueling our work.

Then a fellow soldier named Chuck agreed to escort twelve SS officers in charge of Dachau to an interrogation center nearby … A few minutes later the crew working in the boxcar heard bursts of a machine gun. Soon Chuck came strolling out, smoke still curling from the tip of his weapon. "They all tried to run away," he said with a leer.

When Yancey asked if anyone reported what Chuck did or took disciplinary action, the pastor said,

No, and that's what got to me. It was on that day that I felt called by God to become a pastor. First, there was the horror of the corpses in the boxcar. I could not absorb such a scene. I did not even know such Absolute Evil existed. But when I saw it, I knew beyond doubt that I must spend my life serving whatever opposed such Evil—serving God. Then came the incident with Chuck. I had a nauseating fear that the captain might call on me to escort the next group of SS guards, and an even more dread fear that if he did, I might do the same as Chuck. The beast that was within those guards was also within me.

As a supermodel, Tyra Banks is used to the stares of others and the snap of camera shutters every time she steps out in public. But in 2005 she experienced scrutiny of another kind when she donned a "fat suit" in public that made her appear to weigh 350 pounds. Banks wore the suit for an undercover taping of her talk show in an attempt to learn how it feels to be mistreated as an obese person.

"The people that were staring and laughing in my face—that shocked me the most," Banks said. "As soon as I entered the store when I went shopping, I immediately heard snickers. Immediately! I was appalled and hurt!"

Through bus rides, shopping, and blind dates, Banks put herself in the shoes of large people and experienced their feelings of hurt and rejection. "There's no excuse for rudeness. There's no excuse for ugliness. And there's no excuse for nastiness, and that's what I experienced," Banks said.

Only 12-years-old, and in a moment one Ethiopian girl's world turned into a nightmare. Seven violent men abducted the pre-teen, intending to force her into marriage. The men held the girl for seven days, beating her repeatedly.

Such incidents are common in Ethiopia, as several men band together to abduct young girls for the purpose of securing a bride. The girls are typically beaten into submission and raped. In this particular instance, there was not a human being within earshot to hear the cries of this girl. But her cries were heard.

The unlikely heroes were three majestic Ethiopian lions. Famous for their large black manes, these lions are the national symbol of the country. In response to the girl's cries for help, three large lions leapt from the brush and chased her captors away. Perhaps the child thought she had traded one danger for another, but remarkably, her heroes formed a protective perimeter around her. A half-day later, when the police arrived, the guardian lions simply stood up and walked away. Sgt. Wondimu Wedajo said, "They stood guard until we found her, and then they just left her like a gift and went back into the forest."

Among the explanations for the lions' unusual behavior, one wildlife expert suggested the girl's whimpering could have sounded like a lion cub. For whatever reason, the predator served as protector. The carnivore became a sentinel. "Everyone…thinks this is some kind of miracle," Wondimu commented.

This 12-year-old girl was helpless, powerless to change her horrific circumstances. Her deliverance had to come from a power greater than, and outside of, herself. In the same way, we are powerless to save ourselves from sin and death. Our only hope is in Christ, the Lion of Judah.

Calos Chereza tried to hire a hitman and got caught. The "killer" Chereza hired turned out to be an undercover detective.

Sadly, Chereza is only 17-years old. Sadder still, the person he wanted killed was his own mother. A domestic disagreement prompted the teen to ask around for someone willing to shoot his mother and make it look like a robbery. The detective volunteered and was promised $2,000 out of the money Chereza expected to collect after his mother's death.

Fort Myers, Florida police arrested Chereza for solicitation to commit first-degree murder. They reported that Chereza provided everything needed to carry out the "hit." He gave the undercover detective a map, a key to the apartment, and a picture of the intended victim. Then the teen added a final instruction.

Carlos Chereza did not want anything to happen to the television.

Al Janssen writes in "The Marriage Masterpiece":

Late one evening, while attending a conference in the German city of Hamburg, I boarded a commuter train and headed for an outlying suburb. The train car was completely empty at that late hour, and I dozed sleepily as it rattled past the harbor and then through the industrial district. Some minutes into the trip, an elderly man, dressed in rags and clearly suffering from a mental disability, shuffled into the car, closely followed by four teenagers. The young men, sporting an assortment of chains, tattoos, and body piercings, entered the car amid raucous laughter and loud talk. Almost immediately their attention focused on the old man who had seated himself near the center doors.

The four began to taunt him, shouting obscenities and making humiliating references to his mental condition. Then one of the teens shook up a half-filled can of beer and aimed the foamy spray directly into the old man's face. Without warning they began kicking his legs with their heavy boots and punching him in the arms and face.

Seated toward the back of the car, I looked on with a mixture of horror and fear as the terrible scene unfolded before me. I am not a big person; I am not trained in any of the martial arts; I have never considered myself particularly brave. Yet as a professing Christian I knew with absolute certainty that I could not simply sit back and watch this helpless old man be mercilessly beaten.

I whispered a deep prayer: "God, calm my fear. Show me the right thing to do." And then, without really giving my next actions any careful thought, I got out of my seat and walked purposefully toward the old man and his attackers. "Hans!" I called out in my best German, "Hans, how are you? It's been such a long time since we've seen each other!" And then, slipping between two of the surprised men, I embraced him, helped him to his feet and said, "Come sit with me, Hans. We have so much to catch up on."

The old man followed me toward the rear of the car and slid into the window seat. The teens looked on, not sure how they should respond. For a time they talked among themselves. But when the train pulled into the next stop, they got out. And at the following stop, "Hans" left as well, mumbling a word of thanks.

A love that is stronger than our fear. The common sense of our culture teaches that the only way to respond to fear is a cowardly retreat or a fight to the finish. The beauty and power of the gospel, by contrast, is that Jesus Christ offers a third alternative: trust in God —and in the transforming, surprising, power of love.