A new year may have just arrived, but it is sure to bring with it the same fears as 2020. And for Christians, the task ahead is the same as it was the previous twelve months: to be people of hope, confidence, and thankfulness as we lean into the fact that we are not in control, that our lives are small but valuable, and that our task is love, not self-advancement.

If I had to choose a single word to describe the past twelve months, it would be fear. It’s run roughshod over people’s lives since early 2020, showing up in toilet-paper shortages, stay-at-home orders, murder hornets, and violent protests. People are terrified. But of what? I think there are two answers.

The first, and more obvious one, is death. Humans have always, and will always, grapple with this fear. But it was amplified as COVID-19 swept across the globe, making death counts part of the daily headlines. In their response to the pandemic, governments, organizations, and individuals have operated as if death must be feared above anything else. That’s why they are closing businesses, instituting lockdowns, and spending billions to develop vaccines in record time. They do this is all to help you—to protect you from this fearsome dragon of death which the world believes now lurks within every social interaction.

The second cause for fear is less obvious, but in some ways, more insidious. It is the fear of losing control—of not getting the life people think they deserve. The fear grabs hold of people when the world is not bending to their will. It was behind the protests—whether in Minneapolis or on Capitol Hill. It drove people to the ballot box. It’s why people shout so loudly on social media. Driven by fear, they desperately point out when the other side seeks to take away deserved rights or institutes policies that are not in line with their vision of the good life. This form of fear is incubated by a world that says the individual is in charge, that he gets to set the agenda, and that the only true evil is to deny someone that which he or she wants.

As this two-fold fear dominates the culture, how are Christians to respond? And how can we best help our believing and unbelieving neighbors live with less fear? Believers will find helpful answers in a recent book from J. Todd Billings, the Gordon H. Girod Research Professor of Reformed Theology at Western Theological Seminary in Holland, Michigan. The book is titled, The End of the Christian life: How Embracing Our Mortality Frees Us to Truly Live. In exploring a subject most live-in-the-moment Americans, including too many Christians, would prefer to ignore, Billings seeks to rouse the world to a simple reality: death is imminent. It can come for anyone, at any time, as Billings learned during his battle with a terminal form of cancer.

In chapter five, perhaps his best chapter, Billings critiques the prosperity gospel. Christians do not deserve health, financial success, or healing. Adherents to this heresy forget that “the God of Jesus Christ promises something much better than a prosperity defined by financial and physical blessing: God promises us an inheritance as children of God through the resurrection of Christ that is ‘imperishable, undefiled and unfading’—kept safe by God in heaven and revealed in its fullness only on the last day” (140). Billings says that too often, even critics of the prosperity gospel live as if they deserve prosperity and “deny their weakness and the frailty of their mortal state, acting as if they can command the material world to bend to their will” (Billings, 142). For this chapter alone, the book is worth the price.

I don’t agree with everything in Billings’ book. He gives too much credence to near death experience testimonies, ala Heaven is For Real. But for this cultural moment, Billings’ book provides three practical insights that can free us of the second fear I mentioned earlier, and ultimately, the primary fear of death.

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