This post will be short because today’s principle is simple, but life-changing. Here it is:

Love trumps fear every time.

I’ve heard it said that we are born with only two fears: a fear of falling and a fear of loud noises. Every other fear is accumulated, constructed by our experience. What sway those fears have over us! Even more so, what power is wielded by those who would motivate by fear. Evidence of motivation by fear abounds. Much of our educational system, for example, is grounded on fear. Instead of nurturing a child’s natural desire to learn, we beat him from behind with a stick called “grades.” Now we may have some high performing students (maybe), but their fear of failure drives them into a kind of mania. Meanwhile, the other students grow more apathetic by the day because they have nothing to love.

Christians, of all people, should see the folly in this. Even non-believers like Lawrence of Arabia saw how corrosive such fear can be. He roundly criticized one of the military leaders for relying on fear to motivate: “Years before, he had published his confession of faith in Fear as the common people’s main incentive to action in war and peace. Now I found fear a mean, overrated motive; no deterrent, and, though a stimulant, a poisonous stimulant, whose every injection served to consume more of the system to which it was applied.”

Lawrence saw that we are stimulated to action by fear, but he also recognized that fear corroded everything within the system. He knew that love is a more lasting motivation, so he inspired his troops with something noble and good to love. In other words, he fed their imagination with transcendent desires. Their victories are now the stuff of legend.

Love trumps fear every time.

Where is this applicable? Everywhere:

• Students: loving the material will make grades obsolete. Aim higher.
• Parents: spend less time driving them with the hounds. Instead, inspire your kids to love something, to aim for something noble. Aim higher.
• Boss: your employees will work twice as hard for someone who inspires them and loves them. Productivity and quality correlate to the quality and intensity of love involved. Aim higher.
• Friendships: stop worrying whether your friends like you. If you like them, they’ll probably like you too. And if they’re that fickle, you should probably find better friends. Aim higher.
• Discipleship: yes, we should fear God. It is, after all, the beginning of wisdom. But it is the quality of our love for him that decides what we think, what we do, what we say, and how we spend our lives. Aim higher.

So what can we learn from Lawrence of Arabia? At least this one thing: motivation by fear is convenient and cheap, but it might cost everything in the long run. And that’s one more reason why Paul wrote “these three remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love” (I Cor. 13:13). Love drove Paul to his own crucifixion (as vividly portrayed by Caravaggio in the above image) and it is love that drives us to imitate him.

Yes, indeed, love trumps fear every time! Aim higher.