When Helena Knowlton of Confusion to Clarity first began talking to me about fear in the cult she came out of, I knew I wanted to write about fear. But since I wanted to have a better grasp of the concept, I spent time studying fear in the New Testament.
So, it may not come as a surprise, but there’s more than one kind of fear.
And . . . it may not come as a surprise, but it’s important, when we read the Bible, to understand which type of fear God is talking about in each passage.
After all, when someone says, “Don’t be afraid,” does that mean of everything and everyone for every reason? (When someone says, “Be afraid” . . . same question.)
I found that the New Testament describes a few basic types of fear. Three kinds of fear are necessary and good (meaning they please God).
But there are times when fear is unnecessary and potentially harmful. (Does that mean they’re sins? I would say not necessarily, but that’s something to look at when we get there.)
When is fear for sure necessary and good?
1. When it’s fear for physical safety in the face of a genuine threat that motivates you to take essential action.
This is part of the body’s warning system, which when the brain is healthy (undamaged by trauma, or healed from it), can be regulated by the mind/heart that is submitted to God. Though it’s only one of the six kinds of fear described in the Bible, it’s the kind people think about most often when they think of the word. It’s the kind described and validated in Gavin deBecker’s excellent book The Gift of Fear.
As a Scriptural example, Matthew 2:19-23 says,
But when Herod died, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt, saying, “Rise, take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel, for those who sought the child’s life are dead.” And he rose and took the child and his mother and went to the land of Israel.
But when he heard that Archelaus was reigning over Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there, and being warned in a dream he withdrew to the district of Galilee.
Joseph was exercising the healthy God-given gift of fear to make a wise choice to stay away from Judea where a wicked king wanted to kill the babies.
In my blog post Don’t be a martyr, but do suffer in your marriage to an angry husband (and other “Biblical counseling”), I said this:
Some of the bravest women I know are women who have come out of abusive homes. They had to face their fears—all of them fears of real dangers, not imagined dangers, but things that could really happen, perhaps had even been threatened—and do almost impossibly hard things, often because their love for their children was greater than their fears. Even in spite of their fears, they did trust God as they moved forward. I would never accuse them of sin for being afraid in a situation such as this.
These women’s fear is not sin any more than was Joseph’s wise fear of Herod that kept him from going to Judea. I wrote about Joseph’s wise fear in the blog post Joseph wasn’t afraid of “rebellion, the sin like witchcraft.”
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I am also afraid of the wrath of God.
That is one of the deterrents from sin.
Hmmm. What is your Biblical basis for you, as a born-again child of God who has received His Spirit, fearing the wrath of God?
Great question Rebecca- when I discovered, while studying evil to understand my ex, that the wrath of God is reserved for unrepentant wicked people, not for us who are saved, it set me free from so much fear of God and of myself. I was amazed at how the common teachings had it all wrong and incorrectly directed verses aimed at the wicked ones to us. Brenda, dear one, He has no wrath towards you!!
It’s so important when we’re staying the Scriptures to recognize who each particular Scriptures are talking about or to.
So interesting that this kind of fear
“who agonized in prayer for the souls of the spiritually desperate people around him.“
surprised you because I feel like you ( and others) do this as you come alongside of people through prayer ministry. Thank you for this… i will be sharing.
Yes, that’s true, but I just hadn’t thought of it as fear. It gave me a new perspective on a more robust meaning of the word.
Thank you for these helpful thoughts, which give me much fodder for contemplation. Both my father and my spouse’s mother had crippling fear issues, and I believe were in many ways misunderstood. Because some of the fear they dealt with was based in genuine threats that were seemingly inescapable and too big to handle, they were never able to take steps to eliminate the ‘dangers’ in their lives, and ended up with constant fear.
For instance, a child with an abusive parent is going to have a good deal of genuine, reasonable fear unless and until they can escape from the constant threat of abuse. A person with a severe, life-threatening allergy to peanuts is going to have some real fear in a world in which children are raised on peanut butter, and peanuts are handed out freely on airlines.
Some fears are healthy and reasonable. They serve to protect us from genuine danger. People who have such fears need to be able to understand, and to seek, wherever possible, the assistance of those who might be able to help them lessen or eliminate the risks in their lives.
But the Institutional Church, at least as I have experienced it, has a faulty, one-prong approach to fear: label it as sin. Thus, needy individuals with legitimate fear find their burdens increased by being told their fear is sinful, a sign of their obvious lack of faith.
Too many blithely avoid fear by ignoring reality, denying the true evil of oppression and abuse in our world and living in a happy-ever-after, God-is-great imaginary world.
I suspect that some who deal with more fear than others have had their eyes opened to realities others refuse to face.
Good thoughts! I’ll be addressing some of those tomorrow.
The fact that the Bible contains several (was it 365?) verses with ‘Do not fear!’ is often used against the healthy concern at a dangerous situation. Often it is even used as a trap, to entice and lure people to do something very unwise and potentially hazardous (in order to prove that they have no fear..) If you stand your ground, you are labeled as a coward…
The enemy knows the Scripture well and can quote it.
I also do believe and have experienced the supernatural peace which comes in the midst of fear, at the face of danger.. so I know it is there too.
Because of that I get upset when genuine concerns are not taken seriously and those voicing them are ridiculed and mocked.
Tomorrow I’ll be addressing times when it’s unnecessary (and possibly harmful) to experience fear, and the “lack of fear in the midst of danger” is one I’ll be talking about.
Good points. I’ll be briefly addressing the “Fear not” Scriptures tomorrow, but will be looking at them more fully in a future blog post.
So excited for this series!! I love how you think so clearly and show us what the Bible says. Congrats on getting it researched and written 🙂
Thank you, Helena. I appreciate how you spurred my thinking.
Thank you for this blog post! I appreciate when you do posts like this one where you clear up misunderstandings about scripture. I look forward to your next post tomorrow.
As always, Rebecca, thank you.
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