Across the Pastor’s Desk by Tom Biatek

Have you ever heard of a ghost pepper? From what I have heard, the ghost pepper in one of the hottest peppers in the world. It grows in New Mexico and is used in sauces when you really want a burn. Its oils are said to burn so hot they can cause blisters.

I’ve never eaten one.

I do have a small bottle of hot sauce sitting on the shelf that was made with ghost peppers. Someone gave it to me as a gift. I have never opened it. It sits there, with my spices, just waiting.

I am afraid of it. I won’t use it in my cooking. I have read so much about this ghost pepper that I believe if I were to try it, it would burn my mouth and cause me great pain. But the thing is, I have never tried it. I honestly don’t know if it will do what I am told it will do. I don’t even know if that hot sauce is actually hot or has ghost peppers in it. Everything I know about this hot sauce is something that someone told me.

The jar of hot sauce has sat there so long that the liquid inside has separated. There is a clear liquid on top and a thicker red liquid on the bottom. I assume that the red part is the pepper part.

Last night I shook the bottle up, opened it and gave it a taste.

It was good. Hot but not blazing hot, a good burn as I like to say. In fact, I am going to use it on my baked potato tonight. I like this hot sauce.

The thing is, we often fear without reason. Fear is an important instinct and sometimes being afraid is a good way to know we are in danger but fear, without reason or logic, can be harmful. Without even knowing it, we are taught as children that there are things to fear. When my mom taught me “don’t talk to strangers” she never anticipated that I took that to mean not to talk to any stranger — even my pastor at church. He was a scary stranger to me that stood in the pulpit and spoke like a stern father. Once, when I was lost in church, he tried to help me out and find my parents but I refused to tell him my name. He was a stranger and I was afraid. I remember my first day at school and being afraid of all the strange children gathered around me in class. I was afraid of roller coasters for years because my brother insisted that I would die if I tried to ride one. The funny thing was that he rode them all the time!

Fear can be good but it is also good to check our fears to try to understand their roots. We may fear change in our lives and so miss out on a new opportunity. We may fear new people and so miss out on making a new friend. We may judge someone that we do not know by the color of their skin or their clothes or who we think they are or what religion they profess or the language that they speak, and in so doing miss an opportunity to learn, grow and love.

It seems to me that we are told that there is a lot to fear in this world — terrorist attacks, riots in the street, unseen monsters that we are told wait for us to cause us harm — but it has been my experience that most people are good, most people are kind, most people are trying to do their best to live and thrive in this work. Our media sometimes focuses too much on what is wrong while overlooking the tremendous and overwhelming good in our world. We tend to want to gossip about the bad parent or the unruly child, but do we also celebrate the wonderful and joyful?

There is little reward and blessing in being overly cautious. There are few opportunities to be had without risk. Hope is rooted in the faith that something new, something better and something good can be waiting for us in the future.

To live in fear is to close us off to the wonder and beauty of God’s world.

What does the Bible tell us about this? In Genesis, God surveyed all that was created, and saw that it was very good.

 

Tom Biatek is the pastor of the United Methodist Church of Albert Lea.