Fear is a powerful emotion. Its potency lies not so much in the fact that it involves uncertainty about the future but that, if we are honest, it involves uncertainty about all of the future. It is the totality of fear that really drives us mad. Think about how much you could be fearing right now about your future. What if I lose my job? What if my spouse divorces me? What if my child dies? What if I get in a car accident? What if I lose my mind? This is what I call the fear freefall.
Logically, we know that everything that we fear cannot happen to us all at once. And that's at times precisely what scares us! Although we may do everything in our power and our control to keep our spouse happy or to keep an employer happy, perhaps our spouse dies in a tragedy or the business shuts down. As we all know, the most scary events in our lives are often ones that surprise us and what we least expected.
Fear has a funny way about getting us to live in a future, imaginary world. We lose sight of what is present before us in our Father's world because we are far-sighted. We keep looking for a danger down the road all while missing what God is calling us to in the present moment. Fear is also unreasonable. When we try to reason ourselves out of fear, it turns into obsessive compulsive behavior ("I might die in a car accident if I get on the highway"; compulsion: "I will avoid highways). When others try to reason us out of the fear, it often seems unsympathetic. When my wife touches me on the shoulder and says she hears someone outside the house at 2 am and she is scared and I grumble (through my sleep), "Don't be afraid", I am not really showing my concern for her fear. I am devaluing her fears because I haven't really expressed compassion and entered into her world. Perhaps I should wake up with her and reason and explain that we have never been burglarized before, that the area is a safe area, or that most criminals look for convenient crimes and don't want to break into homes that are securely locked, but all I have done is really tried to reason with her fear. And her fears cannot be reasoned with. Fear is sub-logical or, as Ed Welch says in his book Running Scared, it has its own logic to it. Fear says, "Well, I have never been burglarized or the victim of a violent crime before so it has to happen sooner or later, right?"
Additionally, while I protect my wife and children and like to think I can defend them adequately, ultimately it is the Lord who protects them. I cannot protect them from every robber, thief, or murderer. I cannot protect them from a car accident (no matter how careful I drive). I cannot protect them from an airplane crash. I cannot protect them from getting cancer. Jesus Christ does. Thus, here is the key to finding a landing spot in the freefall of fear: faith in a God who is both sovereign and caring. The great news of the gospel is that not only does God control everything that takes place in his universe but he also cares for all his children. While we may temporarily assuage our fears with rationalizations or other people, in the end we must go to the King of Kings who is powerful and loving to soothe our restless hearts.
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