Between Fear and Faith

The common misconception about faith is that it’s somehow at odds with rational thinking, suggesting that a person of faith is being irrational.

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Precaution is our natural instinct to danger. It’s a rational assessment of risk, realistically calculating our likely exposure to harm contrasted with being able to live our lives unencumbered by fear. Reasonable people may disagree with what percentage of exposure to harm they’re willing to live with before engaging in various measures of precaution. But what constitutes reasonable and rational, very often is interpreted on a sliding scale – allowing the phobic, possessed of irrational fear to assume that they too are simply being reasonably precautious . . . and there is no arguing with their calculations, because, by definition, there is no argument irrational fear will ever be willing to hear.

Fear is arguably the most conspicuous impediment to faith — for it can quickly imagine every obstacle and scenario of calamity associated with every choice we make . . . preemptively compromising any confession of faith we may be inclined to speak. This likely occurs because we’ve allowed fear to masquerade as the rational voice of reason for too long, convincing us that being in control is how we keep calamity at bay. But believing we can control our exposure to every possible circumstance is the grand illusion of an irrational mind . . . which is why fear is best understood as a liar.

A lie can only thrive where the truth has been obscured – which is to say, a reasonable rationale has to be concocted in order for a lie to obfuscate the true nature of our circumstance. In other words, a lie requires an entire contextualized fictional narrative before it can appear reasonable – until our perspective has become so skewed that all of our fears begin to call the shots . . . pretending it will always protect us from the ugly truth about the world around us. Conversely, faith is not afraid of the truth.

The common misconception about faith is that it’s somehow at odds with rational thinking, suggesting that a person of faith is being irrational. It’s a misconception usually held by someone incapable of explaining the rationality of their own views without a self-affirming definition of rationality. But I would say faith is better explained as being beyond rational. Because rationality can only ever be an existential assessment of value, it will always be limited to the scope of the person making the assessment. In this regard, faith is more than willing to go as far as rationality . . . and then go beyond it – a distance that fear dare not go.

“So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him, ‘If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” ~ John 8:31, 32. It is our relationship with the truth that eventually distinguishes our path between fear and faith. Faith is willing to humbly confess that truth is immutably transcendent, and then fearlessly accepts its conclusion – while fear can only linger in the shifting shadows of half-truths and out-right lies. To have faith is to look beyond your own understanding (Proverbs 3:5) . . . whereas, to have fear inevitably leads to being trapped in the rationale of your own understanding.

I’m not sure why, but this old Jackson Browne song
seems to always make me ponder the space between fear and faith

This is an updated post originally published on Still Chasing Light

Featured Image by Antonio López from Pixabay

 

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