Shifting Fear From the World to God Does Not Solve the Spiritual Problem of Fear

7/12/2022

Some Christians understand that fear has been the driver of world events since 2020. They are perspicacious enough to comprehend that evil forces have utilized and continue to utilize fear as a form of social control and spiritual sabotage. They quickly discern that this perpetual state of living in fear the demonic forces have fomented in modern people is un-Christian.

At the same time, these perceptive Christians believe the spiritual problem of fear can be solved by shifting fear. Instead of fearing the world, they argue, Christians should get back to fearing God.

Christians who air such beliefs are not referring to fear in the reverential, awestruck, wonder sense of the word, but to the flat-out, shit-your-pants, terrified sense of word.

Why? Because they understand that fear controls people. Thus, people should fear God above all else and allow themselves to be controlled by Him rather than fear the world and be controlled by it.

That makes sense, right? Sure, but only if you believe fear and control are major components of God’s divine plan for humanity.

Unfortunately, many Christians believe exactly that, which helps explain the logic behind the idea that Christians must aspire to live in fear of their loving, heavenly Father.

Moreover, Christians must regard such fear as a high value and good because it allows them to put their complete trust in God and primes them to obey His every command.

The problem with this approach is simple – it utterly fails to address the real spiritual problem of fear. Although this line of thinking acknowledges fear as a spiritual issue, it reduces the issue to a matter of misapplication and refuses to view fear as something that must be overcome.

The core of the problem then isn’t fear itself, but what you fear. Thus, worldly fear is bad but fear of God is good. Fearing the world is vice, but fearing God is a virtue.

Here’s the snag. Satanic forces use fear to govern the world. Demonic power thrives on fear. Think about how the demons and their minions have employed fear in the past two years alone.

They have used it to drag people down to lower levels of consciousness, often down to the lowest level of animal consciousness where nothing but survival matters. They have invoked fear to strip man of his dignity and to drag man away from his higher spiritual faculties and potential for spiritual creativity. They have instilled fear to distort and poison thinking. They have promoted fear to fill people with the terror of possible suffering. They have promulgated fear as a high virtue and as a perfectly sound justification for social destruction. They have demanded obedience via fear. They have administrated fear as an excuse to dehumanize and oppress. And they do all of this because they know perfect fear casts out love. A world stripped of love is the foundation of Satan’s kingdom – totalitarianism.

With this in mind, do you honestly believe that our loving, heavenly Father considers fear to be a high virtue or desires us to fear Him?

Have considered that this injunction to fear God might be an example of a misguided attempt to communicate with God?

If fear lowers the dignity of man, then how could fear possibly increase the dignity of God?

After all, if Christians fear God, then they also fear Truth.

The problem of fear is the first spiritual duty of every Christian, and it cannot be boiled down to a matter of where it is applied or to what Christians fear. The spiritual problem of fear is a matter of victory over fear.

God cannot control us, and he does not want us to fear Him. He wants us to overcome fear. He wants us to be able to control ourselves in freedom.

He wants us to overcome fear because overcoming fear is the only path to perfect love, spiritual freedom, and spiritual creativity. And none of that can happen as long as we choose to live in fear -- yes, even in fear of God.

10 Comments

Kristor link

7/12/2022 23:22:12

"Coincidentally," I just yesterday heard a priest interviewed on Catholic Radio who was discussing fear. He pointed out that fear is not in itself bad, but rather a useful tool given us by God and Nature to help us in situations of dire emergency. The problem of fear is not in fear itself, he said, but in *disordered* fear: fear that is inordinate, or inappropriately directed. The proper fear of the Lord is the fear of awe; of numinous dread of the holy, that should engender fear that through sin - through disloyalty to him, and to the Truth, in favor of lies about lesser goods - we shall render ourselves unfit for his Presence. Refraining from sin takes courage despite our fear of loss of worldly goods; and we can persevere in holiness only insofar as we are not conquered by worldly fear, thanks to our ultimate confidence in God's goodness, power and mercy. It was a tight, insightful explanation.

Francis Berger

7/13/2022 05:41:51

@ Kristor - Much of this comes down to motivation and the old adage about whether it is better to be feared or loved. We seriously need to think more deeply about this.

The priest's point about fear itself not being bad is precisely what I am arguing against. Though I can somewhat accept the awe aspect of fearing God, I think it is misleading to classify this sort of reverence as fear. Moreover, I find it is an inadequate motivation. Terms like "Holy dread" strike me as oxymoronic and anathematic.

Furthermore, the choices the Catholic Church and all organized forms of Christianity made during the height of the birdemic -- choices for which barely anyone within the Catholic hierarchy (or the leaders and figureheads of other Christian denominations) has expressed even a peep of regret or repentance -- reveals much about how they haven chosen to use "the tool of fear" during a supposedly dire emergency. They refrained from courage and allowed themselves to be trampled by worldly fear. Thus, I generally take anything people like this priest have to say with a massive grain of salt -- regardless of how tight or insightful explanations appear to be.

That aside, back to fear or love -- to put it in more worldly terms, which is the better husband? The one who doesn't cheat on his wife because he is afraid of being disloyal and rendering himself unfit for her presence or the husband who loves his wife so deeply that he has conquered all impulses toward infidelity and cannot conceive of cheating on her? More to the point, if you were the wife, which husband would you prefer to have?

Lady Mermaid link

7/14/2022 02:57:09

The illustration of a husband and wife is a beautiful picture of how we should relate to God. Fear of consequences may be a necessary starting point if someone is weak spiritually. However, we must grow beyond fear or obligation into a relationship of love. It's the transformation from law to grace.

Craig Davis

7/13/2022 17:12:39

I have come to believe that fear is a sin. It is a lack of faith and a lack of love of God.

Having said that, I think it is important that we define fear. In the same way that evil has different manifestations (luciferic, ahrimanic, sorathic), fear also has various aspects which are more or less related depending on the situation. The simplest type of fear and the one which is, perhaps, not a sin at all, is the adrenaline based fear experienced in a fall, or car accident, or tiger attack. Because this fear is effectively a spontaneous and uncontrollable biological reaction, I think we should, for the sake of clarity, call it something like adrenofear to distinguish it.

The next type of fear is the short term, often overwhelming mind based reaction to adrenofear. This fear can and should be quickly suppressed by a faith based perspective and belief that God is with us and will provide the strength required to see us through.(Side note: See us through does not necessarily mean survive or escape unharmed.) Unfortunately, this fear can also be suppressed by repeated exposure to adrenofear (skydiving, bungee jumping, etc.), and thereby numbed to the point of having a destructive effect on faith.

Long term, brooding fear can probably be broken down into subcategories, but I haven't given it enough thought to do that at this point. Generally, though, this is the most sinful type, because it is almost wholly fabricated in the mind. It is reasonable and normal to have apprehensions about the uncertainty of the future. The sin comes in stepping beyond apprehension into fear and is then compounded by allowing small seeds of fear to grow into debilitating terror of things over which we have no control and which may never come to pass. This is the type of fear which the devil most effectively uses to destroy our faith and love of God. The solution is to pray and to make a conscious effort to see fear for what it is.

7/13/2022 22:57:46

@ Craig - Great comment. You've provided me with much to think about.

7/13/2022 19:48:43

No argument about the pusillanimity of the Catholic hierarchs, most of them. I listen to Catholic radio a fair bit when driving around town – maybe 20 minutes a day on average – and I often hear priests echoing that same sentiment. The rank and file and the younger priests are upset with the hierarchs; almost every day someone calls in and asks why *all* the bishops in the world – including the Bishop of Rome – have not long since instructed Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden not to present themselves for communion *anywhere on Earth* until they have repented their scandalous public repudiations of plain Catholic doctrine on abortion, transsexuality, homosexuality, marriage, and so forth.

The interesting thing about this is that it reflects a generational shift. It is the younger generation of priests and laity who are for the most part more conservative, whereas most of the hierarchs got their professional start in the famously corrupt seminaries of the 70’s and 80’s.

As for holy dread, it is a technical term for the sense of the numinous at the awareness of the presence of the mysterium tremens. It might seem oxymoronic to you because “fear” denotes three quite distinct feelings: that of the worldly fear that arises in us quite properly when we find ourselves in danger (e.g., in combat, or confronted by a big cat in the wild), that of supernatural dread (e.g., the spooky terror of a haunted house or of a demon), and that of religious awe. All three have some physiological similarities, such as increased heart rate. The first two sorts of fear are unpleasant, and urge us to flee, or perhaps to fight. The last sort is sublimely wonderful, and urges us to approach, to be still, and to worship; it is, in fact, the feeling of intense love for the supremely lovable.

The locus classicus for the latter sort of fear is The Idea of the Holy, by Rudolph Otto. If you have not read it, I cannot too highly recommend it.

When I spoke of the fear of sinning one feels in the presence of the Holy, I was being sloppy in my diction. It isn’t fear, really, but rather something like a combination of horror and disgust at sin; I suppose abhorrence is the right term. It has none of the physiological concomitants of the three sorts of fear.

There are indeed many devout Christians who try to avoid sin because they are afraid of Hell, rather than because they love God and therefore *want* to keep his Law. But while it is obviously a good idea to avoid sin for any reason, the fear of Hell is problematic, inasmuch as it springs from a misprision of the sinner’s true soteriological predicament. That in turn wounds his ability to avoid sin. In reality, the *only* way to succeed at holiness is to love God, and to say to him honestly, “not my will, O Lord, but thine be done, in Earth as in Heaven.”

In short, and to agree with your basic point: if you are observant because you are afraid of Hell, you’ve got it backward, and are crippling your chances of success at holiness; at goodness, truth, and beauty.

7/13/2022 23:02:34

@ Kristor - "The last sort is sublimely wonderful, and urges us to approach, to be still, and to worship; it is, in fact, the feeling of intense love for the supremely lovable."

Yes, that gets close to what I'm trying to communicate. It also underscores why fear is not the proper to word to describe such an experience/mode of thinking.

7/17/2022 03:39:26

The word is worship; or, adoration.

Perfect love drives out fear. Yet religious experience often begins in terror. The angels are always reassuring their human auditors – Mary, Zechariah, the shepherds, the Holy Women at the Tomb, etc. – “Do not be afraid …”

7/14/2022 02:53:41

This discussion brings a C.S Lewis quote to mind “He (the devil) always sends errors into the world in pairs--pairs of opposites...He relies on your extra dislike of one to draw you gradually into the opposite one. But do not let us be fooled. We have to keep our eyes on the goal and go straight through between both errors."

Many traditionalists are rightly appalled at the state of the modern world. The examples of Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi openly advocating sin while the Church leadership winks and nods is a case in point. Many modern people have taken God's grace a license to live selfishly and call evil good. God is viewed as a big buddy in the sky who doesn't care what you do.

However, as Lewis brilliantly states, it's important not to err in the opposite direction. While God is certainly not a big buddy in the sky, He is not a Kim Jung Un tyrant who is ready to strike you dead for the slightest disobedience either. He is our Heavenly Father who abhors sin and wants us to mature into sonship. This is why I'm hesitant to describe myself as a reactionary despite sympathizing w/ much of the movement. Simply reacting against liberalism is not a viable strategy.

Understanding the purpose of this life and why God sometimes judges us can help us avoid the pitfalls of the buddy in the sky v. autocratic tyrant portraits of God. This brings to mind a beautiful post from Bruce Charlton describing the judgment of Sodom and Gomorrah as a picture of God's mercy.

https://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2022/06/a-picture-of-gods-mercy.html

7/17/2022 05:26:53

@ Kristor - "The word is worship; or, adoration."

Yes, I suppose you could call it that, but I believe you would need a firm grasp of what worship and adoration mean -- or, more to the point, what kind of worship and adoration God desires from man.

Religious experience may begin in fear, but I don't believe God desires to keep the religious experience embedded in fear. Nor do I believe that he desires to keep the experience confined to conventional expressions of worship and adoration. Overcoming fear involves overcoming that.

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Shifting Fear From the World to God Does Not Solve the Spiritual Problem of Fear

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