Timidity

Yuta Sakamoto was exhausted from selling home-improvement projects, including the boss’s demand that he help clean up at renovation sites on weekends. One day, he mustered his courage and announced he wanted to quit. But his boss warned him he would be ruining his future, and Sakamoto shrank back.

Then a friend proposed a solution. Sakamoto didn’t have to confront the boss again—he could hire someone to do it for him. After sending $200 and his case details to a quitting agency, he was finally a free man.

“I would have been mentally broken if I had continued,” says 24-year-old Sakamoto, who found a new job as a salesman at a printing firm.

A labor shortage in Japan means underpaid or overworked employees have other options nowadays. The problem: this famously polite country has a lot of people who hate confrontation. Some worry they’ll cause a disruption by leaving, or they dread the idea of co-workers gossiping about what just transpired in the boss’s office.

Enter a company called Exit. Toshiyuki Niino co-founded it to help people quit after experiencing his own difficulties in leaving jobs. “Americans may be surprised, but I was too shy or too scared to say what I think,” says Niino, 34. “Japanese are not educated to debate and express opinions.” Exit now handles more than 10,000 cases a year in which its staff quits on behalf of clients.

Possible Preaching Angles:

There are several approaches you might take with this story: 1) Fear and Courage – Learning how to overcome fear with faith and courage (2 Tim. 1:7); 2) Work Ethic – Finding a career that fits with our skills and well-being (Col. 3:23); Wisdom and Guidance – Sakamoto’s friend suggesting the use of a quitting agency illustrates seeking counsel from others when making decisions (Prov. 11:14).

When talking about the harms of social media today, one of the first problems people mention is FOMO—fear of missing out. Scroll through Instagram and see your friends having fun at a party you weren’t invited to. Check Snapchat to find everyone’s Bitmojis together on Snap Map without you. This feeling of constantly missing out, we’re told, is a major cause of anxiety and depression for Gen Z.

But that’s not true anymore. More often, it’s the opposite. We want to avoid the risk, the rejection, the awkwardness, the effort, and energy that the real world demands. Our major problem isn’t fear of missing out. It’s fear of taking part.

Look at how many young people are scared of doing everyday things. Not just fear of learning to drive, or getting a job—but scared to order in restaurants. Can’t walk into a cafe. Don’t want to open their door for a delivery. Under the hashtag #socialanxiety on TikTok, which has nearly 3 billion views, young people are sharing symptoms, describing debilitating anxiety, even recording their panic attacks in public.

One British TikToker hosts a series called “Doing Things You’re Afraid of To Show You It’s Okay.” In the series, she films herself facing challenges like getting in an elevator, asking for help in a supermarket, and asking for directions. It’s great to see someone working on their anxiety — but what’s alarming is how popular these videos are, and how many users say they have the same fears. Meanwhile forums like r/socialanxiety on Reddit–which has over 400,000 members–are filled with teenagers and young adults admitting that they are afraid of the real world. They feel much more comfortable online.

Many young people even fear making phone calls, and avoid it as much as possible. One study from last year found that 90% of Gen Z say they have “phone anxiety,” writing down scripts before they speak.

Across social media, there’s also a growing celebration of missing out. The phrase “JOMO” (Joy of Missing Out) is catching on, along with TikToks, tweets, and memes about the relief of cancelled plans. They say this is about wellness and self-care but that just sounds nicer than self-isolation. Missing out is good for our mental health, we tell ourselves. We’re better off inside.

Gen Z is the first generation who had a phone-based childhood, who spent their formative years in a pandemic, who have had less face-to-face interaction than any other in history. The only world they’ve ever known is one where they can get everything they need without interacting with another human: self-service checkouts, delivery apps, online porn, online lectures, and online communities.

Possible Preaching Angle:

The only thing scarier than the real world is never being brave enough to enter it. The life to be afraid of is the one unlived. Learn to trust God and live life. Discover the gifts and abilities that God has given to you. Get up. Get out. Give it all you’ve got. Fear missing out again. And then refuse to do it any longer.

A surefire way to never get hurt: Imagine a life free from heartache and disappointment, a world where you are impervious to the pain that comes with emotional vulnerability. Picture yourself gliding through your days without the sting of rejection or the ache of unfulfilled dreams. Sounds perfect, doesn't it?

After all, you've learned from an early age that vulnerability can lead to pain. A harsh word from a friend, an unreciprocated crush, a family argument, each instance teaches you to guard your heart. This foundational fear shapes your approach to relationships and life. You begin to understand that vulnerability is a double-edged sword, capable of bringing both joy and sorrow. Your instinct to protect yourself becomes the cornerstone of your emotional defenses.

As you grow older, you start constructing your fortress brick by brick. First, you hold back your feelings, and you certainly don't let anyone see your weaknesses. This way, you prevent others from having the power to hurt you. Next, you refrain from sharing your opinions. By keeping your thoughts to yourself, especially on controversial topics, you steer clear of potential conflicts and judgment. You begin to distance yourself from people and avoid deep connections that could lead to betrayal.

This isolation does protect you from immediate pain, but it slowly starts to build a barrier between you and the world. At this point, your defenses are at their peak. You've perfected the art of non-participation, and your emotional fortress is impenetrable.

You've built walls around your heart so high, that you've effectively isolated yourself. The fear of getting hurt has led you to a place where you're no longer living, but merely existing. Your fortress, meant to protect you, has now become a prison. As you reflect on your life within these walls, the consequences of your choices become painfully clear. You've successfully avoided heartbreak, but you've also missed out on love.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Choosing to be vulnerable in our interpersonal relationships requires true faith and humility. No one likes to get hurt and everyone wants to feel safe at all times. The consequences of building an emotional fortress around ourselves are very serious.

An article in The Financial Times claims that “the west is suffering from a crisis of courage.” The author notes:

And the problem is much broader than politics. Society itself seems to be suffering from a crisis of courage … Virtue signaling might be endemic, but courage, like honor, is not deemed a virtue worth signaling. Indeed, all the incentives are stacked on the opposite side: there is little to lose from going along with what everyone is saying, even if you don’t believe it yourself, and much to gain from proving that you are on the “right” side. Courage — sticking your head above the parapet and saying what you really think — can, conversely, get you into a huge amount of trouble, and, usually, you are not rewarded for it.

The mere mention of courage has been in decline for a long time. A 2012 paper in the Journal of Positive Psychology that tracked how frequently words related to moral excellence appeared in American books — both fiction and non-fiction — over the 20th century, found that the use of the words “courage, bravery and fortitude” (which were grouped together) had fallen by two-thirds over the period.

Moral courage does not equate to recklessness, and neither does it mean being a provocateur for the sake of it … But if we want our societies to thrive, we must be courageous enough to think for ourselves and stand up for what we believe in. The late writer Maya Angelou was right when she said: “Courage is the most important of all the virtues, because without courage you can’t practice any other virtue consistently.”

When journalist John Branch covered the Winter Olympics in 2022, he observed the level of fear that athletes face. Branch wrote:

The Winter Olympics are a carnival of danger, a spectacle of speed and slick surfaces, powered mostly by the undefeated force of gravity. Skiers hurtle themselves down mountains faster than cars drive on highways. Sliders ride high-speed sleds down a twisting chute of ice. Ski jumpers soar great distances through the air, and snowboarders and freestyle skiers flip and spin in the sky and hope for a safe landing. The next wipeout always feels moments away.

The athletes who perform these daring feats are not crazy. They are not reckless. But they do have one thing in common that might surprise those of us who watch. They are scared. Every one of them.

Do they admit and discuss their fears? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. U.S. Alpine skier Alexsander Kilde said:

There’s a lot of people that have the mind-set that if I show some fear, then I’m going to be slow. I’ve never talked to anyone about being scared before. We are probably hiding it behind something. And I guess it’s because we don’t want to put ourselves in that position and to kind of seem weak or scared.

Conventional story says that journalists should avoid becoming a part of the story they are trying to cover. But when budding reporter Hilde Lysak left her hometown to chase a story, her steadfast fortitude enabled her to face off against an unexpected foe, earning her kudos from around the nation.

Lysak, 12, publishes the Orange Street News out of her parents’ home in Selingrove, Pennsylvania but in February, she traveled to Arizona to file a story near the Mexican border. While riding a bike in pursuit of details, she was accosted by a local law enforcement officer.

The officer asked her for identification, falsely claimed that her video recording of him was illegal, then threatened to have her arrested and placed in a juvenile detention center. He literally told her, “I don’t wanna hear about any of that freedom of the press stuff.”

Not only did Lysak refuse to stop recording, but she transcribed the interaction and posted the video to her news site. The resulting story went viral, and the city of Patagonia later issued an apology.

From a statement by mayor Andrea Wood:

We are sorry Hilde, we encourage and respect your continued aspirations as a successful reporter. We believe and fully support the constitutional right to freedom of speech in the public sector. We will not tolerate bias of any kind including infringement of freedom of speech.

Potential Preaching Angles:

When we armed with the truth, we don’t need to be afraid of opposition. Even young ones can operate without fear if they submit to God’s truth as the ultimate authority.

A 12-year-old girl in New York City is being hailed for her bravery in a recent argument with a male classmate that almost turned violent. The dispute? The boy asked for one of her McDonald's chicken nuggets-but she refused. The police report says that after being denied once, the boy then followed the girl into a nearby subway station, pulled out a gun, and pointed the weapon at her head. Incredibly, reports say that the girl slapped the boy's hand away, told him to leave her alone, and went about the rest of her day. Police found and appropriately charged the boy for juvenile attempted robbery, and the chicken-nugget-loving girl of New York City quickly become an internet sensation. You go, girl.

Potential Preaching Angle: (1) Courage; Boldness; Temptation; Satan —With a positive take on this story, you could talk about this girl's courage in refusing to give in to intimidation, oppression, or temptation. Sure, it was just a chicken nugget, but this girl refused to be bullied by a force for evil. (2) Temptation; Sin; Addiction—In contrast, a negative take on this story could focus on the girl's inability to let go of a chicken nugget—just like we hold on to our sin.

The NPR radio show "This American Life" featured a story about a French comedian named Gad Elmaleh, probably the most famous stand-up comedian in France. He performs in huge arenas and gets mobbed everywhere by fans and paparazzi. But about a year ago, Gad embarked on a strange quest. He decided to try making it as a comic in America in English. This is an incredibly difficult and totally unnecessary thing for anybody to try to do. In France, everybody knows Gad Elmaleh. It was going great for him, but instead he gave all that up to start again at the bottom, doing small clubs and venues. He had to reinvent how he does his whole job. And he was struggling, and sometimes his acts completely bombed.

So a reporter turned to four famous American comedians and asked them to watch a video of a 15-minute set Gad did at the Comedy Cellar. They all agreed he's a pro, but that he has a long way to go to make it in America. Could he be a great comedian in America? Here's how the reporter summarized his findings about Gad's chances for success in America:

The comedians I talked to were adamant. For Gad to come up with the kind of material he's going to need to be great in America—the personal stuff, the stuff he really cares about—the only way to develop that is to do painful sets on stage where he tries out all kinds of stuff and lets himself bomb. In France, he doesn't do that. And Gad told me it goes against all his instincts—against 22 years of training—but he's going to have to override that instinct. He's going to have to embrace bombing, learn to fail at comedy at a whole new level, if he's going to succeed here. It's a concept that's totally foreign to him.

Possible Preaching Angles: The advice to "fail at a whole new level" and to "embrace bombing" could apply to so many important areas of the Christian life—service, mission, ministry, preaching, volunteering, the use of spiritual gifts, etc.

Medieval cartographers (mapmakers) sketched hic sunt dragones (translated "there be dragons") on the edges of their maps. Those three words were used by the medieval cartographer of the famed Lenox Globe (c. 1503-1507) to describe the outer boundaries where knowledge ended and speculation began. After drawing on all of his knowledge, the mapmaker could only write those three provocative words to convey that these areas were at best unexplored, and at worst, perilous.

Yet maps of that era often held another image—Christ. For instance, The Psalter map (c. 1250), so called because it accompanied a copy of the book of Psalms, featured dragons on the bottom, as well as Jesus and the angels at the top. Such a map reminds us of the availability of "true north" as followers of Christ: Yes, there be dragons; but there is also Jesus and the angels. And we can follow him—and find our way.

The 2011 film We Bought a Zoo was based on the true story of a British man named Benjamin Mee. In 2006 Mee and his family purchased and moved into a 30-acre zoo. In his book with the same title, Mee says that his new "neighbors" included "five Siberian tigers, three African lions, nine wolves, three big brown European bears, four Asian short-clawed otters, two flamingos, a Brazilian tapir called Ronnie, some large boa constrictors, and a tarantula."

The zoo was dangerously rundown. Mee was faced with a series of challenges, including dealing with a rat infestation, and finding enough money to feed the animals. On the fourth day of their new lives, the jaguar escaped, endangering the neighborhood. Despite the difficulties, Mee and his family restored the zoo into a place of beauty and safety that provided healing for themselves and for their surrounding community.

But it wasn't easy. Mee admitted, "There were lots of times when I thought, What have I done?" So why did he buy and remodel the zoo? In the film version, Mee (played by Matt Damon), says, "Sometimes all you need is twenty seconds of insane courage. Just literally twenty seconds of embarrassing bravery. And I promise you, something great will come of it."

Possible Preaching Angles: "That's not just a great line from well-written screenplay. It can change the plotline of your life. That's about how long it took for Peter to get out of the boat. That's about how long it took for David to charge Goliath. That's about how long it took for Zaccheus to climb the sycamore tree." (Mark Batterson)

In his novel Jayber Crow, Wendell Berry describes a character from the fictional town of Port William named Ray Overhold, a quiet, smiling man who "was about as ordinary as a man could be." Berry writes:

Roy, who had never claimed to be a lion, would thereupon be discovered to not be on the attack, or even on the defense, but merely not present …. In all his life he never did anything that surprised Port William. Except for the sometime extremity of his misery, I don't think he ever surprised himself …. I don't think he ever fought with [his wife] or made much of an argument in his own favor. When she raised the pressure, he just escaped. He just quietly shifted off into one of the maybe innumerable precincts of Port William or the surrounding outdoors where she disdained to go …. As a rule when the pressure was on, Roy eased away. He was not by nature a man who was very much in evidence.

Imagine picking your car up from the shop after a routine tune-up, and the technician says, "This car is in great shape. Clearly you have an automotive genius to take great care of your car." Later that day, your brakes don't work. You find out you were out of brake fluid. You could have died.

You go back to the shop, and you say, "Why didn't you tell me?" The technician replies, "Well, I didn't want you to feel bad. Plus, to be honest, I was afraid you might get upset with me. I want this to be a safe place where you feel loved and accepted." You'd be furious! You'd say, "I didn't come here for a little fantasy-based ego boost! When it comes to my car, I want the truth."

Or imagine going to the doctor's office for a check-up. The doctor says to you, "You are a magnificent physical specimen. You have the body of an Olympian. You are to be congratulated." Later that day while climbing the stairs, your heart gives out. You find out later your arteries were so clogged that you were, like, one jelly doughnut away from the grim reaper.

You go back to the doctor and say, "Why didn't you tell me?" The doctor says, "Well, I knew your body is in worse shape than the Pillsbury doughboy, but if I tell people stuff like that, they get offended. It's bad for business. They don't come back. I want this to be a safe place where you feel loved and accepted." You'd be furious! You'd say to the doctor, "When it comes to my body, I want the truth!"

Obviously, when something matters to us, we do not want illusory comfort based on pain avoidance. We want truth.

Most people are afraid of the unknown. Those things we have never seen or experienced can seem overwhelming.

On the old maps, back before the world was understood in modern terms, cartographers, map makers, would put down what they knew, but at the edges of the map, beyond which they had no knowledge or understanding, they would often write, "Beyond here, there be dragons."

We must not mind insulting men, if by respecting them we offend God.

— St. John Chrysostom, Archbishop of Constantinople and Church Father (349–407)

In the later months of 1862, during the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln was angered by General George B. McClellan's inactivity despite superiority in numbers over the Confederate forces. In the end, he wrote McClellan a letter consisting of only a single sentence:

"If you don't want to use the army, I should like to borrow it for a while. Yours respectfully, A. Lincoln."

The Discovery Channel aired "Selling Murder: The Killing Films of the Third Reich," a documentary on films found in archives after German reunification. The Nazis had a public relations problem: they wanted to exterminate weaker members of society, but Lutheran Germany had a history of compassion toward the old, infirm, and the mentally ill. In order to change public perception, the Nazis hired some of Germany's best filmmakers.

I watched the Nazi films with chilled fascination. Certain qualities—the narrator's "objective scientist" voice, the soothing, classical soundtrack, the follow-the-dot reasoning—reminded me of a fifth-grade science film. A hunter strides through the Black Forest. "Nature runs by fixed laws," says the narrator. "The fox catches the weak rabbit, and the hunter shoots the weak deer."

Any realities that challenged the film's message—Don't hunters go after strong deer with big racks?—were glossed over. This was Nazi propaganda, not pure science. Next the film showed patients at Hadamar, a facility for the mentally disturbed. Klieg lights aimed at unnatural angles made the patients look ominous, their faces angular and deeply shadowed, their eyes wild.

Shift to a bureaucrat displaying budget graphs. It takes 100,000 Deutschmarks to keep one of these defectives alive, he explains—money badly needed by the Fatherland. We should follow the example of nature and allow the weak to die….

"Selling Murder" ended with a surprising twist. Despite their slick films and other attempts to sway public opinion, the Nazis failed to exterminate the physically and mentally disabled. Jews, Gypsies, and homosexuals they murdered virtually without protest; the disabled, they had to let live.

Why? The change in Nazi policy traces back to one brave woman, a Christian nurse who worked at Hadamar. When the facility was converted into a gas chamber, she could not keep silent. She documented the facts and reported them to her bishop, who released them to the public. The resulting outcry from the church forced the Nazis to back down. Perhaps her courage can serve as a prophetic model for Christians today.

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, and comes short again and again, because there is not effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at best knows in the end the triumphs of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.