especially within a “culture of fear” in which the media and market forces not only espouse the virtue of eliminating fear but also use fear as a tool to elicit attention and create desire.3 Second, biblically, the Johannine literature is a (if not the) dominant voice in the minds of contemporary Christians so that when one reads, “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love” (1 John 4:18), the