We are only a few seconds from the clutches of our greatest fears. It is in these split seconds that the doctor comes through the door with test results or the phone rings in the early morning hours with the news of someone’s passing. The situations that we worry about vary from person to person, but the paralysis that comes from mankind’s common experience of dread is universal. The icy claws that tear at the throat and the chilling hopelessness that seems to scoop out a man’s insides like a clam shell are experiences which analogies fail to show the aggregate of emotions.
It doesn’t take someone long to learn that the lives we live are fragile. The soft cushions of security that are pampered around us as children are often wrenched away by unexpected events causing us to crash onto the proverbial hardwood floor. The safe world we thought existed is thrown into the box of lost dreams like Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy. We are courted by reality and the fear of the things that we could lose.
Fear is a funny thing. It can make some of the strongest people quake and bend. It is an idea; it isn’t matter. It isn’t a tornado ripping apart a small house and sucking away its inhabitants into a fierce maelstrom; it is the idea that it could happen—however likely or not. It is the substance that is felt in the unknown, the monster that is waiting unseen around the corner.
Some fears are trivial. For the hypochondriac, every bump or bruise can be a fatal disease that threatens to snuff their life away. Such fear is unwarranted and causing such a person to live in an endless cycle of worry. However, some fears are warranted. For the single mother who just lost her job and has four young children to feed, fear of not being able to provide for her children is a very real thing. Both people may experience the weight of fear just as much as the other, but only the latter has a true threat that is the face of her fear. But such sentiments do not diminish the reality of the fear that the former experiences.
While fear is an idea, it remains as powerful in our minds as any foe that might stand against us in the flesh. It is precisely this reason why fear is such a powerful adversary. It hides itself in the unknown. It would be hard to find someone afraid that they won’t get the job if the employer already told them they had been hired. One may fear they would lose the position, for that is part of the unknown future. Fear often cannot be destroyed with logic alone. While it may help ease the fear for some, there is still the slight possibility of the unknown that only time can unfold. As long as there is a slight possibility that the object of our fears might come to fruition, it can cause fear to fester like gangrene, wreaking havoc on the soul of man.
One may say that is necessary to stand up to one’s fear and be courageous. Such a person would be correct. However, one cannot say that courage is the fuel to defeat fear. The opposite of fear isn’t courage; it’s love. Love causes people to do unthinkable things. It causes fathers to run back into a burning building to rescue their children. It causes a married couple to carry on together through a severe illness. Love motivates those laid off from work to find a new job so that they can feed their family. Love is a force that causes people to break through the barriers of fear.
In fact, the Apostle John says, “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear” (1 Jn. 4:18). Love is something that is so key to the Godhead. One of the attributes of God is love. Not just that God is loving or that He chooses to love people, rather He is love. This means that at the center of the most powerful Being in the universe, fear has no stronghold. It doesn’t even exist. This God who produced such a show of love through the cross invites mankind to dwell under the shelter of His love. He invites us to turn our eyes from temporal worries and gaze into an eternal substance that is God. When we step into the love of God, temporal worries aren’t as powerful as they are before. It doesn’t mean that the sickness will leave or that a job will appear out of thin air, but it does bring the assurance that the Being who has put everything into place is present. And that casts out fear.
