Fear​—Friend or Foe?

“I think about how I want to die. I don’t want to get shot, but if I do, I want to get shot in the head right here, so I die instantly.”

A REPORTER for the Los Angeles Times heard that from a 14-year-old girl. He was interviewing students about recent killings​—youths killing both adults and other youths. The report was entitled: “The World of Fear.”

You cannot fail to know that many live in a world of fear. Fear of what? It would be hard to single out any one fear. See if you can find in the adjacent box things that your friends or many people in your area fear. The box is from Newsweek of November 22, 1993, and it shows the results of a poll of “758 children between the ages of 10 and 17, along with their parents.”

If those youths were interviewed now, they might state added reasons for fear, such as earthquakes. Following the disastrous quake in Los Angeles in January 1994, Time reported: “Among the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder are uncontrollable flashbacks, nightmares, hypervigilance and anger about the lack of control over one’s life.” A businessman who had decided to move from the area said: “The damage is nothing. It’s the scare. You go to bed downstairs with your shoes on. You don’t sleep. You just sit there waiting for it every night. It’s bad.”

“A String of Disasters Leaves Japanese on Edge” was the title given to an April 11, 1995, report from Tokyo. It said: “The nerve gas attack . . . was a particularly serious blow to the Japanese psyche because it came as part of a string of events that collectively created fundamental new uncertainties about the future. . . . People no longer feel safe in the streets that were once famed for their safety day or night.” And it is not just the elderly who fear. “Professor Ishikawa [of Seijo University] said the anxiety . . . was particularly pronounced among young people, who often have no clear image of what the future holds for them.”

Evidence suggests that an “instance of overwhelming terror can alter the chemistry of the brain, making people more sensitive to adrenaline surges even decades later.” Scientists are trying to understand how the brain interprets a fearful situation​—how we size up details and respond with fear. Professor Joseph LeDoux wrote: “By uncovering the neural pathways through which a situation causes a creature to learn about fear, we hope to elucidate the general mechanisms of this form of memory.”

Most of us, though, are not so much interested in the chemical or neural basis for fear. We may realistically be more interested in the answers to such questions as, Why are we afraid? How should we respond? Is any fear good?

You probably would agree that sometimes fear can help you. For example, it is dark as you approach your house. The door is ajar, though you left it shut tight. Through the window you seem to see moving shadows. Quickly you tense, sensing that something is very wrong. Perhaps a thief or a knife-wielding intruder is inside.

Your instinctive fear of such situations could save you from blithely walking into a dangerous situation. Fear may help you take precautions or get assistance before you face possible harm. There are many such examples: a sign alerting you to high voltage; a radio announcement of a storm roaring down on your area; a piercing mechanical noise from your car as you are driving on a crowded road.

In some cases a sense of fear certainly can be a friend. It can help us to protect ourselves or to act wisely. You well know, though, that constant or intense fear is truly no friend. It is a foe. It can bring on shortness of breath, heart palpitations, faintness, trembling, nausea, and a sense of being detached from one’s surroundings.

You may find it most interesting that the Bible specified that our time would be marked by fearful developments on earth and by intense fear. How is that, and what bearing should it have on your life and thinking? Also, why can it be said that from the Biblical standpoint, there is a daily fear that is particularly helpful and good? Let us see.

[Box on page 3]

Asked what concerns them and their families most, adults and children say they fear:

CHILDREN PARENTS

56% Violent crime against family member 73%

53% An adult losing a job 60%

43% Not being able to afford food 47%

51% Not being able to afford a doctor 61%

47% Not being able to afford shelter 50%

38% Family member having drug problem 57%

38% Their family won’t stay together 33%

Source: Newsweek, November 22, 1993

Justified Fear of War

Military conflicts have left many parts of the earth devastated. For example, Geo magazine called oil wells that were left burning at the end of a recent Middle Eastern conflict “the greatest environmental catastrophe ever inflicted by human hand.” Wars have killed or crippled tens of millions of people. Beyond the millions of military and civilian deaths in World War I, 55 million were killed in World War II. Recall that as part of the sign that the end of the world was near, Jesus said that “nation [would] rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom.”

We also cannot overlook man’s attempts at genocide​—destruction of whole races or peoples. The deaths of millions of Armenians, Cambodians, Jews, Rwandans, Ukrainians, and others have added to mankind’s staggering bloodguilt during the 20th century. The slaughter continues in lands where ethnic hatreds are encouraged by religious extremists. Yes, wars still soak the earth with human blood.

Modern wars claim victims even after the fighting ends. For instance, consider the indiscriminate sowing of land mines. According to a report by the research organization Human Rights Watch, “some 100 million mines around the world threaten civilians.” Such mines continue to be dangerous to innocent men, women, and children long after the war they were used in has ended. It is said that each month thousands are maimed or killed by land mines in more than 60 countries. Why is this threat to life and limb not systematically removed? The New York Times noted: “Far more mines are being planted each day than are deactivated in mine-clearing operations, so the casualty toll is steadily increasing.”

That 1993 newspaper article reported that selling these mines has become a business that “pays up to $200 million annually.” It involves “some 100 companies and government agencies in 48 countries” that “have been exporting 340 different types” of mines. Diabolically, some mines are designed to look like toys in order to make them attractive to children! Imagine, deliberately targeting innocent children for maiming and destruction! An editorial entitled “100 Million Infernal Machines” claimed that mines have “killed or maimed more people than chemical, biological and nuclear warfare.”

But land mines are not the only death-dealing commodity sold on the world’s markets. Avaricious weapons dealers are doing a multibillion-dollar business earth wide. The Defense Monitor, published by the Center for Defense Information, reports: “Over the last decade [a leading nation] exported weapons valued at $135 Billion.” This powerful nation also “authorized the sale of a staggering $63 Billion worth of weapons, military construction, and training to 142 nations.” Seeds are thus being sown for future warfare and human suffering. According to The Defense Monitor, in “1990 alone, wars kept 5 million people under arms, cost more than $50 Billion, and killed a quarter of a million people, most of them civilians.” You certainly can think of numerous wars that have raged since that year, bringing fear and death to millions more!

More Ruining of the Earth and Its Life

Professor Barry Commoner warns: “I believe that continued pollution of the earth, if unchecked, will eventually destroy the fitness of this planet as a place for human life.” He goes on to say that the problem is not ignorance but willful greed. Do you think that our just and loving God will tolerate this situation indefinitely, leaving us to increased fear of pollution? The despoiling of the earth cries out for an accounting with the despoilers and then a divine rehabilitation of the planet. That is part of what Jesus dealt with in his reply to the apostles concerning ‘the end of the world.’

Before we consider how God will bring about that accounting, let us further examine man’s record. Even a partial list of man’s desecrations is saddening: acid rain and greedy logging practices that destroy whole forests; careless dumping of nuclear waste, toxic chemicals, and raw sewage; weakening of the protective ozone layer; and careless use of herbicides and pesticides.

Commercial interests befoul the earth in other ways for profit. Tons of waste products are daily dumped into the rivers, oceans, air, and soil. Scientists litter the heavens with space junk, not picking up after themselves, as it were. Earth is fast becoming ringed by an orbiting garbage dump. If it were not for the natural processes that God made so that the earth can renew itself, our terrestrial home would not support life, and man would likely long ago have suffocated in his own refuse.

Man even pollutes himself. Take, for example, tobacco and other drug abuse. In the United States, such substance abuse has been termed “the nation’s number one health problem.” It costs that country $238 billion annually, $34 billion of which is spent on “unnecessary [that is, avoidable] health care.” What do you think tobacco’s cost in money and lives is where you live?

Permissive and deviant life-styles, which many insist on as a right, have produced a frightening crop of death-dealing sexually transmitted diseases, bringing many to an early grave. It has been observed that the obituary columns of major city newspapers now show an increasing number dying in their 30’s and 40’s. Why? Often because destructive habits soon caught up with them. Such tragic increase in sexual and other diseases also fits into Jesus’ prophecy, for he said that there would be “in one place after another pestilences.”

The worst pollution, however, is that of the human mind and spirit, or attitude. If you review all the forms of contamination we have mentioned until now, is it not true that most of them are the result of polluted minds? Look at the havoc sick minds create in the form of murders, rapes, robberies, and other kinds of violence inflicted by one person on another. Many recognize, too, that the millions of abortions performed annually are a sign of mental and spiritual contamination.

We see much in the attitude of youth. Disrespect for parental and other authority is contributing to family breakdown and defiance of law and order. This lack of a healthy fear of authority is directly linked with youth’s lack of spirituality. Therefore, those teaching evolution, atheism, and other faith-destroying theories bear considerable guilt. Also guilty are the many religious educators who, in their efforts to be accepted as modern and “correct,” have turned their backs on God’s Word. They and others imbued with the wisdom of the world teach contradictory human philosophies.

The results today are obvious. People are driven, not by love of God and fellowman, but by greed and hate. The bad fruitage is widespread immorality, violence, and hopelessness. Sadly, this leaves honest people in fear, including fear that man will destroy himself and the planet.