Four Sources of Fear

As many of you know, one of the biggest goals that I would like to accomplish during my time on this earth is to completely overcome fear. I know it’s a rather lofty goal, but as I’m sure you’re also quite aware, if you know me very well at all anyway, I tend to have some pretty pie-in-the-sky goals that might seem a little crazy. But… that’s me. 🙂 And… well…

I actually believe I can accomplish them. 🙃

Bring it on.

Accordingly, the same goes for this current challenge that I’m undertaking–I do believe that I can completely overcome fear; and I’m gonna be even crazier, perhaps, and say that I don’t think it has to take all that long. Time will tell, and I’ll obviously need gobs of God’s help to reach the finish line, but I’m going work my now tiny little hiny off to accomplish the goal.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve done a bit of pondering about fear, where it comes from how to overcome it, etc; and over the last few days, I’ve begun recalling little tidbits about fear that I learned years ago but had forgotten since stepping away from my faith.

Some of the things I’ve recalled have brought me to realize that a handful of the things I wrote about fear in my journal and other posts are actually inaccurate/incomplete/misleading, but such is the process of learning (or re-learning in this case). It’s a process. You make mistakes. You often don’t have the whole picture at first, and you often fill in the pieces as you get them along the way, and so previous understandings are not fully formed and can even cause problems.

Tis life.

Thus, instead of going back and re-writing my journal entries to make the principles expressed accurate, which would give an inaccurate representation of my history and growth, I’m just going to write this post here to delineate my current understanding of the sources of fear (subject to change and revision per the principle just mentioned).

Hopefully, you find this little presentation of my current understanding beneficial to you.

It should also be understood that these sources of fear listed here are based on my personal worldview, heavily influenced by the doctrines of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Those with differing belief systems might well have differing primary sources of fear in some areas, while other areas could remain the same across belief systems and cultures. There are also other methods to overcoming fear outside of the gospel principles listed here, such as simply coming to terms with and accepting whatever may come, even without the “happy” ending that one might choose to believe in through their faith. However it is for you, please feel free to pick and choose whatever rings for you personally, if any of it does at all.

#1. Not Completely Trusting God

The first source of fear that I’d like to present is our mistrust of God.

Sure, we might trust him with some things here and some things there, but I would posit that the vast majority of us don’t trust him completely.

Why don’t we trust him completely?

The simplest answer is that we don’t actually know him. We know of him, and we know about him, but we don’t know Him. We don’t know his nature. We don’t know his character. We’ve been told what they are, but we don’t know for ourselves through indisputable personal experience.

Much like acquaintances we might have. We might know a lot about them, but do we actually know them? No. Why? What does it take to get to the point that you actually know someone, know their heart, know their capabilities? What do you have to do? What kind of effort do you have to put in? What kinds of experiences do you have to go through?

I’ll let you ponder that one for yourself, as it’s not really where I’m going with this little thought piece here, although I think it would be highly beneficial to spend time contemplating.

The interesting thing is that you don’t have to know God to trust him. There’s another option.

Faith.

We can choose to trust God, even trust him completely, despite not knowing him fully yet. We can look at how we’ve seen him work in our lives and the lives of others, and we can extrapolate from there. We can simply choose to trust that, based on the limited experience we have to this point, he really is who the scriptures and prophets say he is.

It really is simply a choice, just like believing whether or not there’s a God in the first place is simply a choice. The existence of God can be neither scientifically proven nor disproven.

We can choose to believe or not believe in his existence, and we can simply choose to believe or not believe in his nature and character as being all-knowing, all-wise, all-powerful, all-loving (what I call the four pillars of God’s nature and character that are each required in order to have a God that is completely trustworthy. Without even one of the four, he cannot be completely trustworthy. I’ll explain that in another post if it’s not already clear here).

So… since very few of us on this earth, at least according to my personal, quite ignornt assertion, actually know God, we can start, which I would recommend, with choosing to trust. In time, it’s my belief that we’ll actually come to know him, and then it will be faith no longer, but knowledge. There will be no need to trust because we know. 

Now, it’s important for me to recognize here that fear can come upon us seemingly instantaneously and can be so overwhelming that even when we have made the choice to trust God, we can lose sight of absolutely everything, forgetting even the existence of God, let alone one who’s got whatever we’re going through covered.

If we’re unable to keep our faith and trust in God at the forefront of our minds in such situations, we’ll be quite vulnerable to falling into the trap of fear even if we’ve honestly, sincerely, and completely chosen faith.

It does us no good in the moment unless we can apply it to the moment.

In summary, this first source of fear comes because we either don’t know God, have not chosen to trust in him, or can’t recall in the necessary moment the knowledge or faith we do have.

#2. Not Knowing Ourselves

The second source of fear comes if we do not truly know ourselves, and when I present that, I mean our own hearts, then there is a possibility that we will fear because we do not trust ourselves. If we believe in a God that won’t force us to do the right thing, and we don’t know for ourselves whether or not we are truly a good person to the core, then… we might fear, in the gospel sense, that we won’t be able to do what is necessary to become who we want to become because we don’t know if we have the capability or desire within us to commit to and follow through with what’s required for growth and change.

For those who trust in that four-pillared God and who know for themselves that their own hearts are good, those fears melt away (with the same caveat as the first source of fear, that if we forget in the moment, all bets are off).

#3. Pride

The third source of fear comes from pride. It comes when we are afraid that we’re not going to get what we want, which, in the heart of the proud person is to be a step or 20 above others. Have more money, more fame, more talents, more beauty, more things, more influence, etc., than do others. We can fear that the prideful desires of our hearts will not come true.

#4. Fear of Pain & Suffering

The fourth source of fear comes from our fear of pain and suffering. We can trust God, know our own hearts, and be free of pride (an incredible feat to accomplish even with only those three), and we can still be afraid of the physical and emotional pain that comes simply as a part of life.

Trusting that God will see you through hardship. Trusting that your heart can handle hardship, etc., doesn’t mean digging out your ingrown toenail won’t hurt a whole ton, and that you won’t fear anticipated pain. It doesn’t mean that giving birth won’t be excruciating, and that you won’t fear the inevitable pain. It doesn’t mean that the bee buzzing by your head won’t sting and cause you pain.

No, I think this fear can still there, even if the other three have been overcome. I could be wrong, but it seems reasonable to believe it could still be there.

…

Anyway, that’s my little treatise on the four sources of fear. If you can think of any others that don’t have their roots in these four, please let me know in the comments below.

I hope that this has been beneficial to you in some way.

Loves and hugs to all.

Lift the World.

~ stephen