This encouragement is written by Dr. Rebecca Konyndyk DeYoung, Professor of Philosophy at Calvin University in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
“Sovereign Lord,” they said, “you made the heavens and the earth and the sea, and everything in them… Indeed, Herod and Pontius Pilate met together with the Gentiles and the people of Israel in this city to conspire against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed… Now, Lord, consider their threats and enable your servants to speak your word with great boldness. Stretch out your hand to heal and perform signs and wonders through the name of your holy servant Jesus.”
-Acts 4:24-30, NIV
When was the last time you felt threatened?
You might feel physically threatened — like Peter and John in this passage, who might reasonably conclude that their arrest would follow this confrontation, along with beatings and death. That’s what happened to Jesus, after. And they were championing his cause.
You might feel like your job is under threat (from A.I., a corporate take-over, an economic downturn). You might feel like your reputation is under threat (it doesn’t take long on social media to feel attacked for saying almost anything). You might feel like a relationship that has been strained to the breaking point is under threat — and ready to break.
Fear is real. Sometimes it feels overwhelming.
Our fears reveal what we love. If we didn’t care deeply about anything, we wouldn’t be afraid to lose it.
What good thing are you afraid to lose?
Our fears track the goods that have priority in our lives. If you seek wisdom, you will fear missing out on the truth you might gain from not admitting you’re wrong, or being willing to look deeper, listen longer, consider another angle. If you seek to triumph in an argument, you will fear the humiliation that comes with being shown wrong and defensively refuse to yield any ground. Those different fears tap into different roots and reveal diametrically opposite ways of engaging others.
Throughout the history of the Christian church, thinkers have mapped these different kinds of fear.
- Worldly fear names the fear caused when we have made this life — and success and happiness in it — our highest priority. Our lives lean into making our projects and possessions here and now paramount.
- Servile fear names the fear caused when we care most about our own self-protection and self-preservation. It moves us to bow to whatever those in power tell us to do. Our life leans into pleasing and placating those with authority to reward or punish us.
- Filial fear follows this pattern but also transforms it. It’s named for the bond between a parent and child. It’s not about the good of me, but the good of we. Filial fear shuns whatever might break a relationship. What we love isn’t our stuff, our even ourselves—and these are real goods. What is loved most in filial fear is the shared good we have in a friendship with someone we deeply care about.
In the case of our relationship with God, this kind of fear is holy. The more we love God, the more we fear to do anything to weaken or break our relationship with him. We long to please God because we find life with God to be our greatest good and the source of our greatest joy. Of course, being in this kind of relationship with God also re-orders our relationship with others (whom God loves and calls us into fellowship with) and the world (a created but still limited good that we can appreciate but not make ultimate). To love God is to love what God loves. And that kind of love changes everything.
Likely you are painfully familiar with worldly fear and servile fear and the losses those emotions are responding to. Those losses are not trivial. They are worth grieving. The gift of holy, filial fear anchors those losses in a deeper love. It calls us to trust God for everything else. This kind of trust is what we’re made for.
We haven’t fully reached it yet, undoubtedly. It remains a call to grow in Christlikeness. Christ, God’s Son (filius), fully reveals what a life guided by this love looks like.
Our greatest human good is life in communion — a life lived in relationships of love. What if THAT love drove our deepest fears? What if fears of broken communion were foremost in our hearts and practices? How would our greatest conflicts be transformed?
When I watch the apostles Peter and John, along with the believers, respond to the threats of the religious leaders in Jerusalem, I see holy fear. Their deepest love and ultimate loyalty to Jesus Christ rises above their concern for their own physical wellbeing, their claims to political power or protection, their reputation or status or wealth. Their first words are “Sovereign Lord” and their final prayer is for the healing of the world that Jesus brings.
Lord, may our fears proclaim our love for you, too.