Stealing Candy
It must have been about the fifth or sixth grade. I had a couple of friends who began to brag about how they had started stealing candy from one or two local stores. They kept telling me how easy it was and how, if you did it right, you wouldn’t get caught. As I recall, doing it right meant cramming several pieces into your pockets when no one was looking and then picking out one or two other items and paying for them.
One day one of these friends and I decided after school to walk up town and buy a coke. Coke is spelled in the prior sentence case in the lower case because in Kensett, like much of this part of the country, coke could mean anything from Sprite to Fanta Orange to Nehi Peach. It was not uncommon to hear someone say, “What kind of coke do you want?” and hear replies like, “grape,” “root beer,” or even “Coke!” My favorite is when someone would reply “Pepsi!” to the question, “What kind of coke do you want? Anyway, as we were walking to town, the friend began trying to persuade me to steal some candy. After hearing for days about how easy it was and how much fun it was, I said I would give it a go.
We walked into Ted and Mable Tettleton’s store which sat on the northwest side of the railroad tracks between Glenn Jones’ Mobil station and Bill’s Barber Shop (affectionately known as Butcher Bill’s). It was just a typical little grocery store like you used to see in small towns. Both Ted and Mable were there. Mable knew me well because she went to the same church as my family. I would say she was our operatic soprano, but I’m not sure. I just know it was loud. However, when I walked into that store with my friend, it became quickly apparent that we were going to be watched very closely as he was very much a suspect at this point. I can still remember walking over to the corner where the candy was kept which was atypically on the other side of the store from the counter. I walked up and down the row several times. My heart was racing. If I got caught, well, I don’t even want to think about what might have happened. Ted and Mable were definitely watching. I would like to say I was too honest to steal. In fact, I think I was too scared. I picked up a Three Musketeers, walked to the register, dug twenty cents out of my pocket, and walked out of that store with no criminal record.
It still makes me shudder when I think what my parents might have done if they had been told I was stealing from a store. The reason I walked out of that store was because of fear. However, after I was grown, if I had stolen something and my parents found out, the greatest emotions I would have felt would have been shame and embarrassment, not fear. That was because I had a more mature relationship with my parents after I was grown. I believe there is a parallel in the Christian life. While we should never be unafraid to sin, I also believe that the mature Christian feels more shame in his life when he sins than he does fear. A relationship with God, while reverential, should be based on a love for God because of what he has done for us. It should not be based only upon fear. Is not this what the “great and foremost” commandment is? “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind (Matt 22:36).” God’s action toward the world was based on love (John 3:16), and he wants us to respond in kind.
This idea is also seen in the first epistle of John. There, the apostle “whom Jesus loved,” says:
(NASB) By this, love is perfected with us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment; because as He is, so also are we in this world. There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love. We love, because He first loved us.
Sure, I feared my parents when I was younger, but as I got older, fear was replaced by love. It wasn’t that I didn’t love them when I was young, but as I got older, that love became mature, and the fear went away. That word that is translated “perfect” in the passage above is from the same word which we get “telescope” and carries the idea of seeing the end of it or nothing else being necessary for completeness. In other words, it is the love for God that is complete and mature. When we have that love, John says there is no fear.
That is a tough concept and one that is even tougher to achieve. That is because it involves complete trust and that is something many of us find hard to give. It involves giving up our control and understanding we are not in charge. It involves giving up the idea that if I can just be good enough, smart enough or talented enough, I can somehow earn God’s love or approval. But that is not the way it works. Paul says in Romans 5 that we were helpless when Christ died for our ungodly selves. And despite that, God demonstrated his own love for us and died for us.
Jesus puts it in perhaps even starker terms when he says in Luke 17:10:
(NASB) So you too, when you do all the things which are commanded you, say, “We are unworthy slaves; we have done only that which we ought to have done.”
In other words, helpless. Absolutely dependent upon His mercy. And yet, as Sigrid Fowler says in a blog post from 2020, “The charge, do not be afraid, weaves through the gospels like a refrain, punctuating most high points of the story. The connection with love is not to be forgotten.”
Perfect love casts out fear.