There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear . . .

"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."

President Franklin D. Roosevelt uttered this now famous assertion in his first inaugural address on March 4, 1933, against a backdrop of 25 percent unemployment, pervasive bank failures, a near collapse of the manufacturing and agricultural sector, and increasing homelessness.

FDR was fighting fear. A nation fearing failure. Fearing uncertainty. Fearing poverty. Fearing the future. Because we humans are not so different from the rest of God's creatures when survival is in question. Fear evokes two reactions. Fight or flight. Thoughtless, reflexive reaction or paralysis. The first would cause mass hysteria, perhaps anarchy. The second would assure that the free fall would continue. FDR knew that his first job was to expose the enemy, fear, harness its energy for survival, and give the nation confidence to move in a positive direction.

People still argue about the radical policies instituted by FDR. But few can deny that by giving the nation a positive, hopeful way to move despite and beyond its fears, the nation recovered.

Meanwhile, across the pond, in February, 1933, 32 days before FDR's inauguration, another leader ascended. Adolf Hitler became .Chancellor of Germany. The good people of Germany were suffering the same fears that came with the world-wide Great Depression.

Hitler also harnessed the energy of his people's fear. He spoke of protecting the Christian faith against the immoral, against the atheists, against the inferior, against the Jews. He spoke of the superiority of the true Germans and the inferiority of just about everyone else.. In 1922, as he was laying the groundwork for his rise to power, he said:

"I say: my feeling as a Christian points me to my Lord and Saviour as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded only by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to the fight against them and who, God's truth! was greatest not as sufferer but as fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and of adders. How terrific was His fight for the world against the Jewish poison. Today, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before—the fact that it was for this that He had to shed His blood upon the Cross. As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice. And as a man I have the duty to see to it that human society does not suffer the same catastrophic collapse as did the civilization of the ancient world some two thousand years ago—a civilization which was driven to its ruin through this same Jewish people."

• Adolf Hitler, Munich speech of April 12, 1922

And the good people of Germany, paralyzed by fear of the future, followed. They allowed and assisted in the holocaust, the brutal torture and murder of millions of human beings. How in the world could that have happened?

They were afraid.

When I was younger, much younger, I took a lifesaving course. We were taught how to go out into deep water and assist swimmers in trouble. We were warned that a drowning person is not rational, they are afraid, and as a result of that fear, they might overpower you, grab onto you, and take you under with them. It was difficult to arrange a real drowning person to participate in the lessons, so we just did the best we could to simulate as we took turns being the drowning swimmer, flailing and grabbing and struggling against our rescuer.

I passed the course and got the card to tote in my wallet.

Then, one day at a camp, I had the chance to use what the card said I was qualified to do. But this wasn't a simulation. The swimmer was a skinny young fellow, smaller than me, so I wasn't worried. I was a certified Red Cross Lifesaver, after all. I approached him cautiously, trying to say calming things, but before I could say a whole lot he lunged for me. Somehow this slight young boy had morphed into a raging eight tenacled monster octopus intent on dragging me to the bottom of the lake. Fortunately another swimmer arrived about that time, and saved the young swimmer from the water and me from octopus-boy. We all made it back to the dock.

Octopus boy was tiny and shaking..

Fear is a powerful thing. It makes normally intelligent people do crazy things. It makes normally good people do monstrous things. And it does it powerfully.

We live in a fearful time. But what is it that we fear?

It's an important question.

Because we may be fighting against our best hope of rescue.

Or we may become monsters.

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