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a well lived bland life
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A Place for Fear
Is there a place for Fear in faith? We seem to have arrived at a place where we believe fear should have no place in our lives and see fear in only a negative light. Some people are offended by verses like “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge” (Proverbs 1:7), claiming that promoting a life lived in fear is life not worth living. However, contextually, these verses paint fear in a positive light. So how can fear be a good thing or is this a different kind of fear?1Some biblical translations translate the Greek word phobos to mean “awe or reverence”. While I think this is part of fear, I think you use lose some of the meaning by watering it down.First off, I think we all live in fear today. We just don’t call it fear. Why do we wear seat belts, spend money on safer cars, put money into savings accounts, spend large sums of money on home security systems, eat healthy, have insurance, or even drive on the proper side of the road? We do these things out of fear of the consequences. If you drive on the wrong side of the road you should fear getting into an accident. We put money aside so we can have a secure feeling because we fear losing our job or incurring unseen expenses. As a parent I am bombarded by a plethora of child security devices, and why do we as parents buy them, because we fear for the safety of our children.Fear can be healthy and natural and drive us to protect ourselves or follow rules or laws that bring us some level of security from that fear. From this standpoint the use of Fear in scripture as a natural response to a creator who has warned us of an ultimate judgment should be motivating to us to repent and abide by the instruction given. If we will be judged by God we should fear that judgment. If we don’t fear that judgment we probably won’t live our lives in accordance to God’s instruction just as if we didn’t fear being in a car accident we would not follow the rules of the road.I was discussing this idea with a friend of mine and he told me an example from his days in the Navy, of which I shall now greatly misquote. They would wheel missiles to different locations around the ship and as the missile was rolled by you had a healthy fear of those missiles. They weren’t armed and weren’t going to be detonated on the ship, but if you didn’t respect the missile you would not live to regret it.As believers we know that we have been forgiven through undeserved grace and our fear of judgment is diminished to a respectful fear, but there is still more to this than simply awe and reverence. In The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe C.S. Lewis describes Aslan, the allegorical God-like lion in the following dialog:
“Ooh!” said Susan, “Is he safe? I feel quite nervous about meeting a lion.”“Safe?” said Mr. Beaver. “Who said anything about safe? ’Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good.....”No matter how good a lion is, it would be so foolish to approach a lion without any fear. How much more foolish would it be to approach, without fear, an all-powerful God who created lions and who will judge the living and the dead?1While there is also unhealthy fear, I did not delve into it here as it was not my purpose in writing this. Fear can be destructive and unhealthy in areas such as abusive relationships or dictators as well as many other examples, but we must also realize that there is a natural, healthy side to fear just like there is to pain.Leave a Comment
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Blando's Blog
Disciple of Christ, Husband, Father, and IT-guy.
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