In Praise of Fear

Many of us have been taught for most of our lives that fear is a sign of human weakness, an instrument of the Adversary to be avoided at all costs. After all, fear is the opposite of faith; therefore, it is not of God and has no place in the hearts of His people.

Today, however, I wish to speak in praise of fear.

As a disclaimer, I am in no way attempting to be a “devil’s advocate,” nor am I presenting these points “for the sake of argument.” I don’t believe in argument for argument’s sake, nor am I concerned about Lucifer being in desperate need of advocates. Rather, I have long been troubled by this glaring inconsistency between the common perception of fear’s role and the teachings of the Church. I feel that by clarifying this matter, we can all gain a deeper understanding of what God expects from His children and how we can meet those expectations.

Elder David A. Bednar gave a talk during the April 2015 general conference called “Therefore They Hushed Their Fears.” He makes an often-overlooked distinction between what he calls “worldly fear” and “godly fear.” He describes the former as creating “alarm and anxiety,” stemming from a mortal instinct that he nonetheless calls a “potent emotion [that] is an important element of our mortal existence.”

Elder Bednar then goes on to discuss the positive effects of “godly fear,” which “is a source of peace, assurance, and confidence.” It’s “a deep feeling of reverence, respect, and awe for the Lord Jesus Christ, obedience to His commandments, and anticipation of the Final Judgment and justice at His hand.”

The more we come to understand and trust God, the more godly fear we develop. Rather than diminishing our faith and resolve, godly fear strengthens both and provides a healthy, constant reminder of our dependence on and ultimate accountability to the Lord. As President Russell M. Nelson has said, “guilt is to the spirit as pain is to the body,” and without the guilt for our sins produced by godly fear, we would surely be lost.

While it is true that prophets have taught us the necessity of overcoming fear, the existence of the emotion itself shouldn’t necessarily be erased completely from our lives. We are familiar with Lehi’s words on agency: “For it must needs be, that there is an opposition in all things. If not so…righteousness could not be brought to pass, neither wickedness, neither holiness nor misery, neither good nor bad” (2 Nephi 2:11).

Fear is no different. How could we know what it is to have confidence if we didn’t know what it feels like to be insecure? How could we truly have faith if we had nothing to be afraid of losing? We couldn’t. Fear is one of the emotions we had to experience on this Earth to be able to make fully accountable choices.

If you still doubt fear’s importance, think of what God wants us to become: “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). Think of what the Savior had to endure in order to reach that state Himself. Even after living a perfectly righteous life, He was subject to the full range of human emotions just like us: joy, sadness, anger, disgust, love, and—heaven forbid—fear.

Yes, He had a perfect trust in Heavenly Father’s plan and His ability to fulfill His role in it. But I would be very surprised if in the next life, when I’m talking with Him face to face and asking Him all the obscure questions I’ve ever wondered about, He denied having felt fear for the people who refused to live His gospel (or worse—who actively fought against it); fear when He was about to drink a cup overflowing with almost infinite pain; fear when He hung on the cross and when, in His darkest hour, His Father’s presence abandoned Him. The one constant He could always count on had gone. Like all mortal men, He was capable of feeling afraid without committing any manner of transgression.

Perhaps the falsest dichotomy associated with fear is that separating it from courage. Our culture tends to view courage as some kind of imperviousness to fear, yet personal experience and illustrative pop culture examples suggest to me otherwise.

Though this might sound like an absurd thing to cite, when I was a child I remember being exposed to a single traumatic episode of The Powerpuff Girls, in which three little girls use superpowers to stop the Boogeyman from plunging their planet into an eternal night. One of the girls, Bubbles, happens to be deathly afraid of both the Boogeyman and the dark, but while trying to fall asleep, she tells her father how she wishes she could be brave like her sisters. The father’s response is rather profound: Courage isn’t a lack of fear; it’s being afraid but doing the right thing in spite of it.

My good friend Atticus Finch, the iconic lawyer-hero from To Kill a Mockingbird, would agree with this idea. He tells his children, “I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do.” In other words, rather than precluding bravery, fear makes it possible in the first place.

Nothing difficult I have ever done in my life was accomplished without feeling at least some degree of fear at the outset. I was afraid to go to my first day of school; to jump off my first diving board; to go on my first date; to move out of my family’s house and leave for college; to spend two years talking to strangers as a missionary; and I am still afraid when a new challenge presents itself and forces me out of my comfort zone.

But in each of these frightful cases, you have to make a choice: Do you succumb to your fear, or do you subdue it? Do you allow the emotion to paralyze you or empower you? This, in my experience, is what has made the real difference.

Many things have been said to warn us against the dangers of fear. “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” said FDR. “Fear leads to anger; anger leads to hate; hate leads to suffering,” said Yoda. “Fear of a name only increases fear of the thing itself,” said Hermione. And they bring up a valid point: Fear can be destructive. It can, but it doesn’t have to be.

On the contrary, if we let it, fear can both protect us from jumping off cliffs (literal and metaphorical) and enable us to attain a higher level of godliness than we could have reached any other way. As we learn from Pixar’s Inside Out, every emotion has its place, and for too long, fear’s place has been misunderstood and misrepresented.

But just how do we use fear to our advantage? Elder Bednar suggests that we do three things: “(1) look to Christ, (2) build upon the foundation of Christ, and (3) press forward with faith in Christ.” It sounds like a generic gospel answer to almost anything, and it is. But that’s because it works.

By experimenting upon the Word, we will see repeatedly throughout our lives, hundreds and thousands of times, evidence that Christ will comfort us during our stormiest trials and help us to overcome our fears. Those fears will turn into miracles, into solid rivets that hold our testimonies together. In addition, the Spirit will use fear to alert us to danger, whether temporal or spiritual—if we are in a position to hear him, and if we do not assume that the natural emotion of fear is an automatic sign of cowardice. It is not, any more than frustration makes you a murderer or sadness makes you a crybaby.

My hope is that in recognizing our mortal imperfections, we will be observant enough to differentiate between influences that will inevitably drive us away from happiness (drugs, pornography, greed, envy, etc.) and influences that can go one way or the other—propel us into heaven, or drag us down to Hell. Fear is one of these.

God gave us the ability to feel fear on purpose; he made no mistakes. Those who think otherwise—who would critique their own design and thereby critique the Designer—might as well complain to Him about the shape of their nose. We might not like having a crooked, hooked nose like Snape, but seeing as God is the all-powerful, all-seeing, flawless creator of the universe, I’d say his opinion matters just a little more than ours.

We might not like being afraid—especially in front of those we wish to impress—but that’s because we don’t see ourselves as God sees us: as kings- and queens-in-training. Indeed, our fears may not coexist with faith, but they can lead to it. It’s up to each of us, then, to acknowledge rather than deny our fears.

When we open up the vulnerabilities of our souls to Christ, He will then be able to succor us and “make weak things become strong unto [us]” (Ether 12:27). And our godly fear will ultimately help us become like Him.