Fear that fixes us on God

How often has fear held us back from doing something important and influential? If the truth be known, the term ‘Don’t be afraid’ is pretty ineffectual - after all, if fear is going to come upon us against our wishes, there is not much we can do to stop it. It is no use telling us to not be something if we cannot help being it. So if fear is stopping us doing practical and important things and we cannot do very much about our fear when it prohibits us, how can we hope to break through our fears?  

 

First off, it might be useful to know that there are many sensations that only come upon a person if the opposite positive sensation is part of their make up. Someone who expressed fear might himself be rather wise in his furtiveness - he might be braver for being scared. Four boys who jumped over an electric railway line and then mocked the fifth boy for holding back and deciding that not jumping over it was most sensible could not be justifiably called ‘brave’, rather they would be pretty foolhardy and reckless with the own safety. Of course, the fifth boy might well have been afraid, but fear only bothers those who are wise enough to be afraid, not those who are so reckless that they do not care enough.

 

We see this truth extended to other areas of life too. The feeling of romantic heartbreak does not at all bother those who have never had a girlfriend. The feeling of claustrophobia does not at all bother those who have never experienced confined spaces. In actual fact, this probably means that in being afraid we have inadvertently accepted in our hearts some form of bravery to begin with; that is to say, being in touching distance of bravery is really what induces the fear, just as making ourselves vulnerable to some of life’s deeper treasures enhances our emotional sensations. 

 

When we read in the Bible that the beginning of wisdom is fear of the Lord (Proverbs 1:7), we do not of course infer that we must be so tremulous that we fail to recognise His presence in our life. If fear is a corollary of bravery and wisdom is understanding a situation more clearly than most, this also must be true of our fear of God. The biggest fears we face in a daily relationship with God are fears of failure – the biggest fight we have is primarily against the bad one and secondarily against ourselves, for as soon as we allow our weaknesses to become exposed the Devil will capitalise, for he loves that vague cloud of unspecified feeling, whether it be guilt or shame or doubt - if it is clouded (and let’s face it, most bad things are), it enables him to entice us into either despair or presumption and both can be used as tools against our faith.

 

The sorrow that is induced by fear is not a state but a process, for fear is not really a fixed point, it is a circuit board of experience through which wisdom lights up the points and faith interconnects them. Notice how even the pleasant places sometimes look bleak when seen as a horizon. Christianity is no different, the further away you are from godliness the more fearful the journey, and the worse it looks. And sometimes the more you contemplate it from the outside, the more constricting it appears. While it may often be true that the more you feel you need God, the further away He seems, this is really because of a clamorous need to shut oneself off from the thing needed, thus fear is no longer a help but a hindrance. In the sense that we should always be seeking growth and wisdom, God has seen to it that the more godly we become the less fearful we shall be, as increased godliness increases our growth and wisdom.

 

But we should not be too surprised if there are struggles and obstacles, for the mind is constantly fluctuating between seemingly disparate feelings, in love, in war, in jealousy, in insecurity, and in much of everyday living. Christ gives us the chance to break through all of these demons and find some clarity and fresh vision. And here it is easy to see why those who do not know God are disquieted by the prospect of a fresh analysis. Our ignorance, that is, our not knowing, turns out to work in the same way as our analysis of the truth of knowing. Some of the things we have longed for turn out to be grains of sand when we get them and some of the things we have most dreaded turn out to be quite pleasant, so our fears and our keen anticipations are not always reliable arbiters of truth.  

 

There is another stumbling block – and that is the desire to live independently or autonomously. But always, in some mode or other, one has lived on others; economically, intellectually, spiritually. When we get paid we (particularly self-employed people) are dependent on others for that money - but notice what happens if we do not receive what is owed to us. The dependence which has all the time been our real condition is magnified in a moment of neediness, indigence or poor financial circumstances, just as when we are truly starving the body reveals to us our ultra-compulsory dependence upon food and drink. In the same way, Christ teaches us, through the trials and tribulations on earth and through every facet of daily living, that we are part of Him whether we choose to recognise that fact or not, so best not let fears stand in the way if we can help it. 

 

If there is beauty in the kind of fear that produces in oneself a sharp and dignified discipline in serving Christ Jesus, then we must remember that outside perceptions will seem hazy to those who do not understand this beauty. Even in earthly terms beauty has been disfigured by much of the contemptible modern way of thinking, almost to the point that most girls secretly resent it if they do not have it and feel subsumed by it if they do. In stating this, it reminds us how worldly distractions are very unhelpful to us. All along, in our quests we search for a reassurance, and if we are not disciples of Christ we have nowhere to find that assurance but in ourselves, or more precisely in our own cognitive abilities. We end up being susceptible to the pressures which are put upon us, pressures to conform, pressures to succeed, pressures to fit a stereotype or archetype, and many other debilitating and debasing pressures. So unless fear is really a fear of the awesome nature of God, our fears are usually from the Bad One – his pathetic attempts to halt our progress. In Christ there are better things for all of us; there are ways to subvert the pressures. When God says there is no reason to be afraid on our walk with Him, He is also reminding us that our fears of the world must constitute a wrongness - although often we can hardly be blamed; we are, after all, only humans. But we must not be afraid of the walk, for God says…

 

 

I suppose it is possible that when it comes to Christianity too much analysis of fear is bad for us. We can be analytical when thinking about the efficacy of Christianity, but analysis (at the present moment) does us no good when we are in mid-search, for only when we are looking for Christdo we find God. Every other form of analysis is a structure of thought, words, feelings and acts, and indeed all of these things, including fear itself, work best when we don’t have to think about them too much. As long as you notice what keys you are hitting when you type, you are not typing as quickly as a fast secretary who simply needs to look at the screen and read the words as they appear. To let fear become too predominant in our daily walk is a bit like watching your fingers hitting the keyboard, anxiously trying not to make a mistake but forgetting all about the written project or piece of work that necessitated the typing in the first place. 

 

If we are going to conquer this we must, as Milton said, ‘make persuasion do the work of fear’, for in doing this we can share with the New Testament writers and absorb more fully what they were talking about when they tried to encourage us to share in Christ’s suffering. The love of Christ that they were trying to convey had to, just like human love, involve a sharing of every part of life. And just as fear of earthly things involves a form of externality; real fear almost always has to begin with a type of self-fear; a realisation that our inner-state is in need of some providential guidance. It is then that our fear of Him, or perhaps a more gentle explanation - our realisation of His awesome presence - leads to the allaying control of other things in our lives. 

 

There is, of course, one other factor with fear that I touched on earlier; it very often turns out to be very different to that which we first anticipated. That is, supposed fear of one thing is usually a mere by-product of a bigger fear or a bigger dissatisfaction to which God is - either through prayer, or the Bible, or Christian friends - the answer. It is a very comforting truth that every one of life’s travails has real spiritual value which is very often present in areas of life that we do not always know about at the time of experience. And even those who doubt, or insist that their lives are fine without Him - He will show them a better way - through both good and bad life experiences. Every single event has a purpose; that is, every single event is either a small or large part of the Divine will, or can be used in a secondary way to attach itself to the Divine plan. There are, I would say, no neutral events - each one is leading us closer to the Lord or reinforcing the tight grip of the bad one – and the key to the continual progression of closeness is to stay fixed on God. 

 

It is when Christianity comes most natural to us that we can feel it most, and since we were created to know God, it shouldn’t be that difficult to locate, unless we make it more difficult. Just as a comfortable shirt is one that you don’t really notice you are wearing, fear is best for us when it is most natural to our created self - a fear that fixes us on God – a fear of not becoming all that He intended us to be. When we remain strong in our commitment and dedication to His plan our best fears are naturally supplemented by the wisdom that comes from fear of the Lord. 

 

Perhaps with regard to fear we sometimes wish to avoid feeling like the fifth boy on the right side of the electric railway line. Yet we must strive for reverence through an awareness of our real creaturely position, but we must, in doing this, be wary of frightening ourselves out of it, for it is a chilling state of mind that experiences the reverence while at the same time denies the need to adapt to the changing patterns of growth. They are changing, not as our evolution adapts our eyes to the comforts of colours, but as migrating creatures adapt to a new environment, or as island species that are windswept onto a different part of the archipelago become distinct from their progenitors. The latter is the truest description because in Christ we do, in fact, become a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17) - a creation which is distinct from our former selves, a creation that takes our initial fears and turns them into growth, wisdom and blessedness.