Love not Fear

Sharlee Mullins Glenn was raised in the John Birch Society:

But one Sunday my mother emerged from her bedroom, her well-worn Bible in her hands, and announced that she was leaving the society. How long had she been contemplating this move? I don’t know. But we children were shocked. “Why?” we asked. “Because I’ve realized it’s based in fear,” she told us. Then she quoted from the second book of Timothy: “God hath not given us the spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.”

Those words changed my life. My mother did leave the John Birch Society, and though she remained mostly committed to conservative ideals for the rest of her life, her views were always filtered through the lens of Christian compassion. “If you can’t find the love, it’s not of God,” she would say. “Love saves; fear destroys.”