Much
of what I do as Pastoral Counselor is help people manage their fear. It is really amazing how much fear creeps
into our lives (and I use “our” because I am not immune). People can be paralyzed by their fears of
being wrong or being “bad”. We can live
in fear that others will not like us. We
fear other’s judgment and we fear being hurt.
We fear being abandoned in relationships (or never being loved at
all). We can live in fear of losing our
jobs and we can live in fear of another’s anger. There are specific fears about closed spaces
(been there, done that), spiders, other people and even the number 13. We live with fears of flying and driving,
which are mostly fears of crashing. We
all live with the knowledge that we will die some day and somehow must deal
with at least some anxiety about when and how that will come to us. Some people
fear death so much that they don’t ever let themselves live and others act as
if they have no respect for death and continually challenge it.
Some
of these fears seem healthy. Fear is a
way of letting us know when we are in danger.
The difficulty is that too often, we are conditioned to feel fear that
is out of proportion to the stimulus or feel fear when there is no real threat to
us. Trying to discern the real threats
from the imagined threats is not an easy task.
The difficulty lies in the fact that there are some real threats in the
world. There are dangerous activities
and dangerous places. There are
dangerous people and potentials for pain. For example, there are some dangerous dogs,
but not all dogs are dangerous. Under
the right circumstances all dogs might be dangerous sometime. Just because we may have been bitten once by
one dog does not mean that we must avoid all dogs forever, but that is exactly
what some people do with dogs, situations, and people. Sometimes just knowing that a “dogs have the
capacity to bite” is sufficient for some to fear them. There are others who know that dogs can bite,
but assume their dog never would.
In
a similar way, many people seem to try to avoid fears by doing anything, but
facing their fears. People try to
medicate their fears with prescription and non-prescription drugs (I am not
talking about those who are treated for anxiety as part of comprehensive plan
to overcome the fears). There are those
that withdraw from the world or from other people because they don’t want to
risk anything. People have a tendency to
draw the circles of safety farther and farther out from the potentially hurtful
thing. Using the analogy of the dogs,
some people are not content to avoid some dogs, but they feel they must avoid
all dogs and can even come to avoid any place where there might be a dog. With each avoidance the person is trying to create
the feeling of safety.
I
John 4:18 says that there is no fear in love and that perfect love casts out
fear. It makes sense to understand this
in terms of our friendships and other relationships. When we are loved unconditionally and when
another loves us so much that they seek what is best for us, there is no room
for fear. People often confuse many
other things for love, but there is NO fear in love. However, there is another way to think about
this as well. When we approach ourselves
with love and we allow the love of God to fill us, then fear is also cast
out. When we interact with the world
around us, we do not fear what the other may do or what may happen because we
are driven by the love that is in us. We
can better deal with our lives and difficulties, because we are not afraid to
deal with difficult things; we can approach the world with confidence. When love is present, fear cannot take
hold. A good process of pastoral
psychotherapy seeks to help people develop this kind of approach to God,
themselves, life, and the world. I praythat you not just have life, but have it abundantly!
