It was on Oct. 30, 1938 at 8 P. M. when about 6 million people
across the United States were listening to the radio. Orson Wells on
The Mercury Theatre Of The Air presented the War Of The
Worlds. Dance music was suddenly interrupted with a flash news
story. "A series of gas explosions has just been noted on the planet
Mars," said the announcer. He went on to report that a meteor had
landed near Princeton, New Jersey, killing 1500 persons. In a few
minutes the announcer came back to correct the report. It was not a
meteor but a metal cylinder from which poured Martian creatures
with death rays to attack the earth.
In spite of the fact that two announcements were made that it was
only a fictitious story, many people were so gripped by fear that they
did not hear these announcements. Twenty families on a single block
in Newark, New Jersey rushed from their homes to escape what they
though was a gas raid. Their faces were covered with towels and
handkerchiefs. In Mount Vernon, New York an invalid was so
frightened by the invasion that he left his wheel chair and drove
away in his car. Thousands were on the phone saying farewell to
loved ones. Psychologists have used this event as a classic case
history of the power of fear.
It is also a classic study of how poorly people pay attention. Those
who listened did not get disturbed, but those who did not listen went
into a panic stage. It was all unnecessary if people would have just
listened. It is important to take action when danger is present, and
fear is good as a motivation. We need to fear danger, but it is tragic
to fear it when it is not real. Joyce Landorf in The Fragrance of
Beauty says that fear is one of the most destructive forces in the life
of a woman, and it robs her of her beauty. She quotes,
Where worry is a mouse,
A small scampering thing with sharp tiny feet,
That scurries over our souls-
Fear is a roaring lion,
With huge paws, extended claws and teeth
That slash us into strips.
In other words, fear is an emotion to fear. It is like the Devil
himself, and it is a roaring lion going about seeking whom it may
devour. This is not to say with Roosevelt, "We have nothing to fear
but fear itself." The world is full of things that we need to fear.
There are dangers everywhere just as there was in the day of David
when he cried out in Ps. 55:4-5, "My heart is in anguish within me,
the terrors of death assailed. Fear and trembling have beset me,
horror has overwhelmed me." Unfortunately nobody had yet come
up with the comforting statement that we have nothing to fear but
fear itself. So poor David had to have fear, and as you read the lives
of great people of God all through history you discover they had
plenty of fears. It is folly to say to anyone that there is no need to
fear, for fear is real and legitimate in many circumstances. But it is
also true that it is often not necessary and often even folly to fear.
An ancient legend of the Orient tells of a man who met the
Cholera and said to the plague, "Where are you going?" It
responded, "I am going to Bagdad to kill 20,000." Some time later
he met the plague again and cried out, "You vagabond! You killed
90,000." "No, no," said the Cholera, "I killed 20,000, fear killed all
the rest." Trouble has slain its thousands, but fear has slain its tens
of thousands. Earnest M. Ligon in The Psychology Of Christian
Personality says, "...fear is the most disintegrating of all the enemies
of personality. Worry, anxiety, terror, inferiority complexes,
pessimism, greed, and the like are all varieties of this one great evil."
He says fear is involved in every complex, and it is the basic cause of
all repressions.
Fear can produce the very thing that is feared. If you fear you
will get sick, that can lead to getting sick. If you fear you will fail the
test that fear can make you fail it. The fear of failure is the biggest
cause for failure. It is an inside partner with the external forces that
seek your defeat. The evil that you fear gets an advantage over you
when you are full of fear. It has won half the battle by capturing
your heart and mind. That is why in sports the opponent does all he
can to make you fear losing, for if he can get you full of fear he has a
partner inside you that is helping him win.
From the cradle to the grave man is plagued with fear. Babies
are born with two fears. They have a fear of loud noises and a fear
of falling. Drop a tray of bottles in a hospital nursery and all of the
babies will burst into bitter crying. All other fears, other than these
two, are taught. They are not natural. A fear of animals is not
natural. It has to be learned. Tests have shown that a baby will pet
a tiger and try to chew a rabbit's ear. But as a child grows it learns
a multitude of fears. Some are real, but many are false. There are
hardly enough words to list all of the things that people learn to fear.
The list of phobias is very long, and some people are even afraid of
being afraid. Fear can be the greatest hindrance to a fruitful life.
That is why it is strange when Peter says in verse 17 that we are to
pass the time of our sojourning here in fear. This sounds like a
contradiction of all I have said. Fear is one of our greatest enemies
and yet we are told to fear. This apparent contradiction runs all
through the Bible.
The Bible says that perfect love casts out fear, and that God
does not give us a spirit of fear. Dozens of times we are told not to
fear. On the other hand, we are told to fear the Lord. In at least 24
verses we are commanded to fear God, and many verses describe the
blessings of fearing God. We want to look at these two sides of fear
in order to better understand the Bible and our emotional life. First
of all lets look at-
I. THE EVILS OF FEAR.
The fear that the Bible disapproves of might better be called
anxiety. When Jesus said that we are to take no thought for the
morrow, it is better understood if we say do not be anxious about the
future. To fear the future is foolish said Jesus. Worry won't help
you any more than it will cause you to grow an inch. The unknown
is the great cause for fear, but this is the very fear that we do not
need to have, for this is the fear that leads to all kinds of abnormal
behavior. True fear is emotional agitation because of specific
danger. Anxiety is emotional agitation with no recognizable cause.
It is one thing to be afraid if you are standing on the edge of a cliff,
but it is another to be anxious about falling off a cliff when you are
at home in your living room. The first has a definite cause, but the
second is an emotion that is totally subjective. The first is real, but
the second is imaginary, and it is this last kind of fear that is a curse.
It is this kind of fear that creates a man like the one who hid three
hundred thousand dollars in his house and starved to death.
Normal fears of germs cause us to wash our hands before we
eat, but it is this abnormal anxiety that causes people to wash a
hundred times a day until their hands are so chapped they have to
go to a doctor. It is this kind of fear that fills our hospital beds with
neurotic patients. Christian people are not exempt from such fears.
It is this kind of fear that the Bible rejects, for it is all based on
ignorance, lack of faith, an inadequate conception of God. Luther
was one who lived in fear until he discovered the Bible remedy for
fear, which is faith. He was following a procession of the mass one
day in the town of Eisleben when suddenly he was overcome by the
thought that the wine that was carried was really Jesus Christ, and
he later wrote of this experience and said, "A cold sweat covered my
body, and I believed myself dying of terror." This is an example of
the false fear of God based on ignorance. Only when Luther came
to know God as his Father through Jesus Christ could he escape his
fear that nearly drove him mad.
When ever a Christian does not fully trust in God as his
heavenly Father he is in danger of suffering from guilt feelings.
These can be repressed and come out in all sorts of foolish fears.
For example, there was a young woman with a strange phobia from
age 7 to 20 this girl had a fear of running water. She couldn't stand
to hear her bath water run, and it was only after a violent struggle
and much screaming that her mother succeeded in getting her clean.
At school the drinking fountain was just outside of her room. If
children made too much noise drinking she would be frightened, and
once she even fainted. Why would this be? She knew there was no
danger, but she couldn't help herself. There was no reason for it,
and no one could explain it. She needed professional help to
discover the reason.
When she was 7 her mother an aunt were with her on a picnic.
It was getting late and the mother had to go. She begged her mother
to stay and the mother allowed her to stay if she would remain close
by her aunt. She soon broke that promise and ran off alone. When
the aunt found her she was lying by a small stream wedged among
some rocks. She was screaming and crying in terror for the
waterfall was pouring down over her head. She was rescued but
was in great distress about what her mother would do because of her
disobedience. The aunt promised not to tell, and the next day she
left for a distant city. The girl was left with no one to confide in, and
so she repressed her sense of guilt, and it came out in the form of
fear of running water. She could have been spared all of this if she
had confessed her disobedience and taken her punishment.
This same thing happens in the lives of Christians who do not
confess their guilt but try to repress it. They can lose all of the joy of
their salvation, and it can lead them to have many fears. Perfect
love cast out fear, but imperfect love that does not confess opens the
door to a host of fears. The Christian should never be in a state of
guilt, for they should always confess their sins to God and claim His
promise to forgive and cleanse. Next lets look at-
II. THE VALUES OF FEAR.
In a world filled with fears the Christian has a weapon to
destroy them. All men long for such a weapon.
The thing that numbs the heart is this,
That men cannot devise
Some scheme of life to banish fear
That lurks in most men's eyes.
Men cannot devise such a scheme, but God has revealed one to
us. We fight fire with fire, and we fight false fear with true fear.
Just as humility is the way to exalted life, so the fear of God is the
way to security and freedom from fear. The biblical concept of
positive fear is very close to faith, and it goes together with love.
Duet. 10:12 fear, love and obedience are the three things God
requires of people. It is this superior fear that drives out false fears.
It was the fear of God that gave the martyrs the courage to face
death without fear. This is the fear that is the other side of coin of
faith. Dr. William S. Sadler said, "The only known cure for fear is
faith."
Positive fear is basic to our health and security. Healthy fears
make us more efficient, and they give us more energy just when we
need it most. Fear is the glue that holds society together. How
would you like to have a druggist who had no fear of giving you the
wrong medicine? What if he was so completely carefree that he had
no fear of what the authorities could do if he poisoned people? Who
wants a surgeon with no fear? We want all professionals to be
fearful of failure so that they do there very best to succeed. Someone
said, "Fearlessness is wedded to recklessness." We want
professionals not to be reckless, but to fear making mistakes so that
they are cautious and effective.
John Southernland Bonnell is an outstanding Christian leader
in the realm of psychology. He tells of an experience in Britain
during World War II. The Germans had flown over and dropped
land mines on parachutes. In the morning one of them was
discovered hanging from a steel girder swaying in the breeze. A
demolition squad was called and a young officer ordered a 30-foot
ladder to be put up and everyone to be cleared from the area. He
climbed up and examined the cylinder closely to see if it had an
inner fuse that would explode a few seconds after the outer one was
removed. He carefully took a wretch and removed the fuse and then
lowered the mine. One of the men came up and said, "How do you
do that without being afraid?" He said, "You are wrong. Every
time I am called to do this I am afraid, but I master my fear, for if I
tremble while I remove the fuse that moment could be my last." He
told of how his mother taught him the 23rd Psalm about fearing no
evil as he walked through the valley of the shadow of death. He said,
"I believe God is with me and nothing else matters."
Bonnell said, "Courage is not the absence of fear but the mastery
of it." The brave man is not a man without fear, but one who has
his fear under control. The boys who play chicken on the highway
do not exhibit bravery, but rather folly. To be free from all fear is to
be abnormal as those who are afraid of everything, and it is even
more dangerous. The proper use of the emotion of fear is to be
controlled by the committed mind, which is the mind of Christ. His
mind is to guide our mind to an honest evaluation of our fears.
Where ignorance thrives fear reigns, but where knowledge increases
fears depart. When we have a full understanding of God's
Fatherhood we can be set free from our foolish and false fears.
Some poet has written-
My Father God! That gracious sound
Dispels my guilty fear;
Not all the harmony of heaven
Could so delight my ear.
The child of the king can sit on his father's knee even when all
the nobility of the land are excluded from his court. We must take
the fatherhood of God seriously if we are to be free from false and
foolish fears. But again, we see balance in Scripture. We must see
God also as an impartial judge and one who must carry out
discipline in guiding his children. The fear of the Lord is based on
his righteousness and justice. He judges his own children according
to their works, and the word here refers to a continuous judging and
not a judgment at the end of history. Then non-Christian is storing
up the wrath of God for the end, but Christians receive discipline all
through life in order to teach them.
The fear of the Lord is a respect and reverence that makes the
Christian want to avoid offending God by disobedience. A person who
does not fear God can sin with boldness, but the more
committed a person is to God the more he trembles at the thought of
disobedience. This is especially so when he considers the price God
paid for his redemption. The knowledge of the great value of our
redemption compels us to be cautious. It is just like our attitude is
different when we are carrying a fruit jar from when we carry an
expensive piece of china. We are far more cautious with the china,
and so we need to be far more cautious when we realize we carry the
reputation of God, which is judged by our character and conduct.
The fear of the Lord is to compel us to search the Word, which
shall endure forever. We cannot have an adequate adult Christian
life on a child's understanding. A little boy struggled through the
story of the Three Little Pigs, then he said, "Dad, this is the greatest
book ever written." If that is still his attitude as an adult, it is
pathetic. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, for it
drives us to search His Word, to flee from sin, and to overcome all
other fears by faith in Him. We need to commit our mental, moral
and emotional life to God through Christ and live in reverent fear.
One of the things that we should fear is the lack of honest
expression of our feelings to those we love. Cecil Osborne, an
outstanding Christian counselor had a friend who told him this
experience: He and his wife had been married for 16 years and
every year they had driven some 800 miles to spend the holidays
with her parents. He had no desire to drive 1600 miles on possible
icy roads, but it seemed to mean so much to her that he endure it
year after year. Finally on the way home for the 16th time he said,
"Honey, I know how much this visit to your parents means to you,
but to be honest I am getting to resent it a little. I wonder if we could
settle for just every other year?"
She responded, "You mean you've been doing this all these years
for me? Good grief, I've hated it! But you seemed to derive so much
enjoyment that I went along with it. I thought you got a real kick out
of it." He confessed that he faked it, and they both sat in silence for
miles considering how much easier life would be if they were just
honest about how they really felt. They feared to hurt each other
with the truth, but they should have feared hurting each other with
the lie of their faked enjoyment. The point is that some sort of fear is
good, but we need to use fear in the right way. The bottom line is we
should fear to do anything that does not allow us to be who we really
are. The ones we love may wish we were not exactly the way we are,
but they can better deal with reality than with the unknown.
The reverent fear that Peter deals with is the fear of respecting
God too much to fake it. It is being fully honest before God in
expressing how we really feel. It may be that we ought not to feel as
we do, but being honest about it helps us deal with it and if it is
wrong, it makes it possible for God to forgive it, for we are
confessing it as we share it. When we fear to be dishonest with God
we will develop an intimacy with Him that will make prayer more
meaningful, and it will make us have a better self image, for we will
be fully who we really are before God. This is healthy fear, and the
kind of fear that make us faithful to our Lord.
