Have we missed the point when it comes to fear?
I’ve so often remarked and had it remarked to me that God constantly says to us, “Fear not!” and so we have no reason to fear. We should be strong and courageous, standing in the face of anything that assails us. However, as I was thinking about it this week, I started to think that in our society where we seek simple answers that we have simplified this statement as well in an attempt to build the strong self assured individual modern society seems to so often demand.
Surely God created fear. It keeps us away from harmful things and is a natural instinct to keep us from danger. We are even told to fear God. That being the case I propose 2 options on how we should better view and teach on fear. I’m not sure which is true or whether they are both true. I would love your feedback but I propose these 2 perspectives as they seem more reasonable and consistent to real spirituality and scripture while also allowing us to accept fear rather than struggle with the feeling that we are weak in our faith because we feel fear. This to me seems more consistent with the nature of God.
Proposal 1: We misunderstand fear and being scared.
I know I often define fear and to be scared as the same thing. Fear I think would be better defined as a healthy respect for the power that something has over us. Therefore, I can fear a wild dog that’s running towards me and fear has served its function of protecting me. Whereas simple being scared would be simple the emotion without cause (i.e. scared of the dark is an emotion without, in most cases, the healthy function of self-preservation).
Proposal 2: Fear not is conditional
This is actually my preferred position on the topic at the moment. Proposal one is semantics and definition not the real outworking of the issue. This perspective makes more sense to me. I suspect this is how many of us view fear but it doesn’t seem to be taught this way.
When God or one of his agents says “Fear not” he wasn’t saying that fear should be ignored or part of the believer’s life, rather he is saying you don’t need to fear in this situation. I believe that we have fallen into the trap of taking this phrase in scripture because it is what we or society wants it to say or rather as a wish rather than view its context. It also unfortunately make our faith flat and 1 dimensional. This also works for me as if God appeared right now to give me a message of good will I would imagine he would say “Fear not” but if he came to correct me I would expect and hope to receive that in a spirit of holy fear (with fear defined as in proposal 1).
What do you think?