Thursday, October 2, 2008

More on Fear

I previously stated "Fear is the motivation of the unrepentant heart." We fear not getting the things we want--e.g., money, fame, power, success, possessions, etc. And we fear getting the things we do not want--e.g., abandonment, punishment, rejection, etc. However, is there something more here that drives our fears? I think there is.

Below our fear of not getting what we want and getting that which we do not want I think is the fear of not measuring up. We fear
failure most of all. We fear we do not measure up to our own idea of what is good or successful; or we fear we do not measure up to someone else's or God's idea of good or successful. For instance, my root fear of not measuring up to other people's opinions of me might manifest itself in the fear of rejection or abandonment. Or, my fear of not being rich might be driven by my own idea of success. If it is true that my root fear is the fear of failure--whether in my own eyes, someone else's, or God's, then in order to overcome this fear I need to first decide whether what I am measuring myself against is legitimate.

Is measuring myself against my own idea of good and successful right? Why is my measurement correct? What if it isn't the right "measuring stick", then what? If I live my life trying to reach my own idea of good and successful then come to the end of my life and find out I was measuring myself against the wrong idea, then what?
The same is true for measuring myself against someone else's idea of good and successful--whether it is my parents, my friends, my church, or my culture. Is their measurement correct? How can I know? What if their idea of good and successful is not correct? Where does that leave me? Cultures and people differ; how can it be that cultures and people with vastly different ideas of good and successful can be correct?

Two mutually exclusive and contradictory ideas cannot both be correct at the same time. Saying, "what is true for you is good for you and what is true for me is good for me" when the two ideas of true are mutually exclusive and contradictory is not good enough. That is moral relativism and it is wrong.
Contradictory ideas can have only two outcomes--either one is correct and the other is not, or both are incorrect. Two contradictory ideas both correct--that is a logical fallacy. So, since people and cultures have competing and contradictory ideas of what is good and successful, I cannot depend on either my own ideas or the ideas of others by which to measure my own success. Where does that leave me? It leaves me looking outside myself, my culture, and other cultures for the measuring stick by which I obtain my idea of good and successful.

I need an objective source by which to measure myself. But, what is objective? Obviously anything made by humankind is not objective, since all humans are part of cultures and influenced by what the culture says is good and successful. Maybe the five senses since my senses only tell me what is going on around me regardless of what my culture says? Hmmm.....that leaves alot unsaid, plus my five senses are notoriously unreliable. For instance a physical ailment can affect the way I smell, taste, hear. A disease like leprosy can affect my sense of touch. Besides, the physical world can't tell me what is right and wrong, or good and successful. It tells me what is, not what should be.


Ultimately, I need an objective One, who is not part of me, any culture, or the physical universe, intelligent, morally reliable and consistent, and can engage me so I can what is good and successful. That One is God. Proverbs states, "Fear of the L
ord is the beginning of knowledge. Only fools despise wisdom and discipline" (Prov. 1:7). St. Augustine stated that it is from the fear of God that we first learn to recognize His Will: what He wants us to do and what He wants us to avoid. This fear should awaken in us a healthy reflection of our bodily death and possible spiritual death, if we continue to choose to run away from Him. Our deepest seat of fear should be fear of God. But God does not leave us in a constant state of fear because He loves us. John 3:16 states, "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life."

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