Can we conquer fear and anxiety on our own?
Balak, the name of this week’s parashah, was king of the Moabites. God has such a sense of humor. Balak’s name means destroyer as opposed to Tzippor, his father’s name, which means “bird”, but this destroyer was like a little bird. He was terrified of the Israelites. Balak knew that Israel had conquered Sihon the king of the Amorites and Og, King of Bashan, who had conquered Moab. Balak’s people were wailing: This horde will now lick clean all that is around us like an ox licks up the grass of the field.”
But everywhere they went, the Israelites said: “Let us pass through your country. We will not turn off into fields or vineyards, and we will not drink water from wells. We will follow the king’s highway until we have crossed your territory.” That didn’t matter to Balak because when fear and anxiety take hold of us, all reason flies out the window. Then King Balak sent messengers to Bilaam, a prophet of God, asking him to curse these people who he described as “…a people that came out of Egypt who hides the earth from view…’. It sounds a little like exaggerated drama to me!
This reminded me of Pharaoh. The Israelites had become so numerous that Pharaoh was afraid that they would join his enemy and defeat him. When did we ever hear that this was Israel’s intent? Right up until today, Israel has never been the aggressor. We Jews have always wanted to live in peace, wherever we are. In fact, our army is called the IDF, Israel Defence Force. But Pharaoh’s fear caused him to react and so he enslaved them. If their numbers were so great, why didn’t the Israelites rise up against Pharaoh? Were they also frozen by fear? Shouldn’t their numbers have helped them get over their fear, but even after they left Egypt, with a fully armed force of 600,000 young men, they still lived in fear. What does that tell us about the nature of fear?
Forty years in the desert did little to change their attitude. Ten of the twelve Hebrew scouts who were sent to reconnoitre the land that GOD had told them would be theirs, cried to Moshe instilling fear in everyone “…we looked like grasshoppers to ourselves, and that’s how we must have looked to them.” Fear whether real or imagined, stood in the way of them being able to see that their GOD was Adonai Tzevaot, the LORD of the armies. Everything that GOD had done for them in the past was forgotten, except for Joshua and Caleb, two examples of the possibility that we can overcome fear.
Now let’s look at Bilaam, a prophet of GOD hired by King Balak to curse the Israelites. Bilaam heard directly from the Creator and knew that he had no power to curse whom God had blessed, still, he tried three times because Balak kept insisting and tempting him with more wealth. But every time Bilaam opened his mouth, out came a blessing instead of a curse. He finally gave up and left, but his part in the cursing of Israel was far from over as we read at the end of this portion. But that’s a topic for another day.
In Genesis 12:3, GOD declares: I will bless those (notice “those” is plural) who bless you and curse the one (singular) who curses you and all the families of the earth shall bless themselves by you.” The Torah is sending a message to the few yet noisy ones, who are cursing Israel today (including our own people). Our haftarah portion from Micah 5:14 declares: “In anger and fury will I wreak retribution upon the nations, that have not obeyed.” Obedience to our Creator is a key factor to having a blessed life. How do we know what to obey? No mystery…God spelled it out at Mount Sinai. However, most people prefer to live by their own rules refusing to believe what GOD inscribed in stone and subsequently gave to Moses.
Here’s an analogy with GOD being the CEO. Imagine that there is an important project that we have been hired to work on. The CEO, the Chief Executive Officer, is someone we can trust because we have seen his credentials. We know from experience that he has the capability and we can depend on him to get the job done. We can feel at ease because he is responsible for the outcome, not us. All we have to do is our small part and although it may be challenging at times, this helps us to ‘breathe easy’. It’s important to know our place in the scheme of things and not to take on more than has been assigned to us. Once our role has been clearly defined and the rules laid out, we can choose to accept our role and obey the rules or not. If we accept and obey, everything runs like a well-oiled machine. If we don’t, chaos ensues. We see that in sports. Every player is taught where they need to be, and what they need to do but when one lone wolf tries to do things on his own, the game is at risk. It won’t be long until that player is replaced by someone who can obey the rules.
The level of fear and anxiety in every family, city and nation is on the rise again. Many of us are dealing with it in our own families. It’s so easy to fall into fear. It is all around us. We don’t know what to believe in the news; war is raging in various parts of the globe and we are especially touched by the war in Israel; most governments are not for the people; the daily battle for our health and well-being is out of control as well as the cost of living, and the media is expert at building fear in us. Millions, if not billions of dollars are spent on psychiatrists, psychologists, self-help programs, meditation, drugs, alcohol etc., because society is drowning in fear and anxiety. This causes us to forget who we are, what we are capable of, what our purpose is and above all, we have forgotten that our Creator is our Protector and that He supplies all our needs.
This is important: if we cannot control or even defeat fear, God would not repeatedly tell us, “Do not fear.” He never asks anything from us that we are unable to do. No one is born that way! I love the song, “Fear not for I have redeemed thee, I have called thee by thy name, thou art Mine”. Those are the most powerful words that we will ever hear, but believing and trusting them is quite another matter. That takes time and a lot of practice and exercise. Many years ago, when I was practising hypnosis, I started to do a lot of work on myself through autosuggestion. I realized that during our early lives, others tell us who we are and what we can achieve. If we believe them, we live within their paradigm, for better or worse, but God has another paradigm in mind for us and it doesn’t include fear. There is, of course, our natural response to stimuli both real and imagined. We have an amazing imagination and most things that we fear or worry about, never happen.
All these stories in the Scriptures are to teach us the principles by which we can learn to conquer fear and anxiety, to keep our sanity and our shalom in the midst of all that is happening around us. Finding and keeping my shalom is an everyday task. I begin in the morning by dedicating my day to GOD, ”Order my way, Oh LORD and show me what You have in mind for me today”. I look at my agenda and do the practical things that I need to do to keep my life running in balance and order. When I am hit with a negative emotion, like fear, that rises up to destroy my inner peace, I stop… whatever I’m doing and stare it in the face. Is it real or is it imagined? Is it from my past? Can I fix it? Can I deal with it? Does it involve another human being with whom I need to communicate? I’m like a dog with a bone and don’t let go until I find a solution. If I can’t fix it, I have to let it go and give it to GOD and watch how He always steps in. I say Psalm 46:10 to myself out loud: “Be still and Know that I am GOD.” I give it all to Him and say, “Hineni, LORD, Here I am, use me.” I don’t know about you, but the thing that I have noticed throughout my walk with my God is His fulfilment of Proverbs 3:5-8: “Trust in GOD with all your heart; don’t lean on your own understanding; in all your ways, acknowledge Him and He will make your paths straight…” It has been my experience that GOD allows me to walk a hard and bumpy path to help me trust in Him and then He makes the things that I do smooth and easy. It doesn’t just happen; it takes work. Faith without works is dead. That’s when I learn that I have nothing to fear.
When Bilaam was on his way to curse Israel, he was blind to the fact that an Angel of GOD was blocking his path. But his faithful donkey saw it and froze trying to protect him from the Angel’s sword. Perhaps Bilaam was blinded by greed, or perhaps by fear of what Balak would do to him if he didn’t obey, but then we read in Numbers 22, “Then GOD opened the eyes of Bilaam, and he saw GOD’s Angel standing in the way…” GOD had made it clear to Bilaam what he could and could not do. In the same way, God laid out the rules for humanity. Although they are not complicated, they are far from easy because of our nature with which we struggle every day. We can be like Bilaam, a blind and lone wolf prophet who needed to have his spiritual eyes opened.
In the annals of our people, there have been good kings, unlike Balak, and good prophets, unlike Bilaam, who have heard God’s voice and obeyed. The Torah was a gift from our Creator meant to be shared with all the nations. Israel, however, is the host nation and is responsible for the preservation and dissemination of this most important project. We were told by our Creator, “Do not add and do not take anything away from my Words”. That’s where all religions fail. Belief in, trust in and obedience to the Creator is not a religion; it is a two-way relationship.
Who are the main characters of our story and what can we learn from them? Balak represents those who refuse to consider that there’s a Supreme Being upon whom he could rely …perhaps he believed like Pharaoh that he was a god. But when push came to shove, he couldn’t trust in himself and allowed fear to influence his choices. Bilaam used his relationship with GOD to get what he wanted; he was a greedy prophet for hire. The donkey was the only one of the three given the gift of vision into the spiritual realm. He was loyal to his owner until the end and spoke the truth as he saw it. If GOD can speak through a donkey, He can speak through you and me. My vote is for the donkey. The moral of the story: If others make us feel like a donkey because we trust in GOD, be glad; we’re on the right path. We cannot solve the vast problems of this world, He can. What we can do is what Micah (6:8) tells us in our haftarah portion “You have been told, O mortal, what is good, and what GOD requires of you: only to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.”
Shabbat Shalom
Peggy Pardo