Fear
June 18th, 2007[Editor's note: this is the final installment from Ed Welch. This post considers some ways he, as a biblical counselor, looks at fear--an emotion that underlies most mental health concerns.]
Flip through the most recent version of the DSM and you find, of course, a rapidly expanding assortment of problems. Some of them clearly link to Scripture, others seem outside Scripture’s reach. With Oppositional Defiant Disorder Scripture comes alive, but with Asperger’s Syndrome or Paranoid Schizophrenia it seems silent. But if Scripture is really about a worldview – the lenses through which we see everything – then Scripture will color, clarify and reinterpret everything, even modern diagnoses.
Scripture is in the public domain. It aims for the person in the street. Therefore, it begins its reworking of the DSM by taking the technical terms and reducing them to their basic observations. When we do that with sophisticated terms such as paranoia, generalized anxiety, panic attacks, phobias, and many others, we find that they are versions of ordinary fear and anxiety. (And this doesn’t include the fears and anxieties that mobilize depression or addictions.) The American existentialists such as Irving Yalom are right. There is fear and anxiety everywhere.
If this is true, we would certainly hope that Scripture speaks early and often on these topics, and, indeed, it does. If you track fear chronologically, it is the most prominent consequence of sin in the account of the fall. Going to the end of Scripture, fear is clearly in view behind the final words of blessing in Revelation 22. If you want to look for the sheer number of times it occurs, fear and anxiety are among the largest sections in a concordance. The number one command in Scripture? “Thou shall not have sex”? No, by far and away the most frequent command is, “do not be afraid.”
The problem is that, in the imperative form, there is not much more to say. Don’t fear. Don’t be anxious. If you are either one, repent. End of story. Or, if you happen to remember Philippians 4 you know that when you are anxious you should pray. End of story. But there is more to say. While it is true that there are some passages that call fear sin because it kept people from acting on God’s explicit commands, such as the command to the Israelites to take the promised land, on the whole the commands are more pastoral than authoritative.
Luke 12 would be an example. It is the Sermon on the Mount passage, “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life . . .” What Luke adds, however, reveals the tone of the passage.
Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom. (Luke 12:32)
This changes everything. It is like a father who, when his daughter is taking the car out for her fist solo trip, says, “Drive carefully honey.” Though technically in the imperative form, that is not meant as a command but as a statement of his love and care for her. With this in mind, we would expect God’s words about fear to be plentiful, beautiful and persuasive, which they are.
• The terse, “do not worry” does not capture God’s intent. In the Sermon on the Mount passages (Matt.6, Lk.12), you can hear Jesus working hard to persuade. He appeals to his Father’s care for creation. If he cares for the rest of creation, don’t we realize that he is going to care for children who he created in his image? You can almost see Jesus’ understanding of how fears can be so recalcitrant, so he patiently returns to them with surprising words of comfort.
• In theological discussions there is a lot of talk about God’s covenants with his people. Are they unilateral? How many are there? What we often miss is that covenants were usually made during times when people had reasons to be afraid. In other words, at particularly difficult times God doesn’t say, “I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a thousands times. I am not saying it again.” Instead, he ratchets his persuasiveness up a notch and makes promises. Then he delivers his promises in way that invited certainty. He swears that what he said will come to pass. He even swears it on his very life. The death and resurrection is the final swearing that God’s promises to us are true and certain.
• The greatest promise is “I will never leave you.” The Scripture always points to God himself as our peace. All change from fear to peace and rest comes as we know God better.
• The existentialists are right about the prevalence of fear. They are also right that the fear of death lurks right under the surface, though camouflaged. God’s response? Certainly, the gospel of Jesus demonstrated its global authority by defeating death. All world empires hold their power, ultimately, by the power of the sword – follow or die. The cross abolished that power and set us free from the bondage of fear and death.
Here is what I am saying. First, fear and anxiety are my specialties. So thank you for indulging me as I quickly rehearse some of God’s words to fearful and anxious people. Second, where we as Christian counselors can get waylaid is when we overlook the richness of Scripture. If we think that God’s words on fear can be reduced to “don’t” and “pray,” we feel like we better look other places for help. But when we get glimpses of the depth of Scripture, we persevere in it and keep working at it until it gives up its riches. Biblical counseling, of which I am part, is not against extra-biblical data. Rather, it is for the breadth and depth of Scripture as it relates to the details of life.
June 22nd, 2007 at 7:00 pm
It is refreshing to read a Christian counselor, fully committed to Scripture, but not mechanical or reductionistic.
You leave room for the mystery–to let God be God and do His thing in amazing ways, through relationships, through the Holy Spirit and through His Word. I think if a formula (such as “Don’t” or “Pray”) could have done it, we wouldn’t have needed Jesus. And, as you said, God could have just kept writing us off with an “I already told you what to do about this problem.”
I especially appreciate that you don’t minimize the richness of Scripture as you reject a reductionistic, black and white application of it to “spirituall fix” the “problems” identified by DSM. Truly, Scripture is a worldview and much more.
August 14th, 2007 at 7:46 am
I really appreciate the rooting of perspective in Scripture. I have a bugging concern which I am grappling with.
The issue of fear originated in the fall and persists to this day. For the redeemed who have to be transformed by the renewing of our minds there is the lingering issue of converting our thinking to lining up with the Word so that we can manifest the prosperity and good health mentioned in the epistle of John.
My question is beyond our conscious knowledge and confession of Scripture there is a hidden iceberg that exists beyond our conscious mind i.e. our subconscious. In reading books like Blink (Malcolm Gladwell) we see that our choices are conditioned if not made beyond our conscious mind so that a man like Samson can inexplicably defy explicit commands despite “knowing better” and become blinded.
In my research on the matter once we start talking about the subconscious and how to deal with it the controversy about how to do it and the screams of “New Age Thinking” raise but I see it as a basic element of the conversion process.
The Word guides us to meditate on it day and night to make our way prosperous and to have good success but beyond that what relevance have the advances in the study of the mind/personality etc have with the believer?
Can anyone point the way forward?
August 18th, 2007 at 1:39 pm
A scriptural clarification of the unconscious mind is required. The understanding I accept originated in the fall. Adam, disintegrating, “you will surely die”, projected a fear filled identification toward God and received mercy in the capacity to repress and situate lost communion grace and the impending death instinct into an unconscious state. The pre-conscious, unconscious activation of that element is the primordial fault of humanity. The evoked loss arousal constitutes the accompanying loss, fear, need, desire, and defense as configured in humanitarian secular relational/emotional logic and theory; embodied in second cause. The foundational need is to be born again, to become a new creation in Christ and experience restored relational emotional communion with God. The personal original sin unconscious is encompassed in new cognitive scriptural structure, the redeemed unconscious. Sanctified healing occurs as we reconfigure cause and effect from the conflicted unconscious into redeemed unconscious/conscious relatedness.
November 17th, 2007 at 6:03 am
As Dr. Welch points out that the emotion of fear underlies most health problems, that in itself should point us to the essential need of fear in our lives. Our lives are emotionally driven. We don’t do things because we have discovered the principles that make life work. We do things that effect and impact us at the point of our emotions and feelings.
It is in the books of Job,Psalms,Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, Lamentations that we find great emphasis placed on this subject. And in looking at Psalms and Proverbs we find the positive and the negative aspects of this fear.
It is our fear of God that brings us into a right relationship with Him through Jesus Christ. It is fear that keeps us on the right path. It is fear that protects our life in so many ways in the spiritual and the physical realms.
Fear reveals our true relationship to the Lord. And this is the great mystery of our life. God is present within us, and through Jesus, He is on our side, why should we fear?
The Apostle Paul has a good word to say on this subject in Philippians 4:8, “The peace of God, which goes beyond our comprehension, shall keep (guard, protect) our hearts and mind through Christ Jesus.”
The opposite of fear is trust. It is our trust in Jesus that overpowers crippling fear, and that works because this basic emotion in our make-up is directed toward its true goal … Jesus.
This basic human emotion has two sides: fear that is crippling and respect for the One who can cripple.
January 16th, 2009 at 5:06 pm
Good Evening……I grew up in a Southern Baptist church and from a very young age I can remember being very afraid of God and very ashamed when I prayed to jesus. Never developed a loving relationship it was always either terrified or very shameful….I am an adult now and I am fearful all the time. My mind continually thinks about death and dying. I have extreme panic and anxiety.years of counseling. How can I overcome this??