Things Of Which I Am Afraid

“You’re always going to be afraid, even if you learn to hide it. Fear is like a companion, a constant companion, always there.”

Doctor Who S8 E4, ‘Listen’ (2014)

1) Starting a blog.

But let’s dig a little deeper than that, shall we? After all, I’m not afraid of word processing, or using the Internet, or building words into paragraphs such as to express an idea.

I’m afraid of starting a blog because I’m afraid of starting anything that isn’t going to be perfect. Getting up later than I planned leaves the whole day tainted by my failure. The first crossing out on what was a beautiful, clean, new page before I had the presumption to start writing on it is like a dull blow reminding me of my inadequacy. Burning a batch of shortbread,¹ or smudging my nail varnish before it dries, or missing a side quest while gaming in whatever format, or consistently catching a wrong string in a violin piece I know is within my capability - it all just screams out the inevitability that everything I do in this life is going to be flawed. And that makes me afraid to try.

I’m also afraid of big drops on rollercoasters, so this picture seemed vaguely appropriate.

2) Starting this blog.

It’s called ‘Through Faith and Fiction’ because that’s what it’s going to be about. My faith is, and, perhaps more importantly, should be, so central to my life that I can’t picture writing a blog that didn’t heavily involve it. (Now is probably a good time to declare myself as a follower of Jesus, the Christ. It can be awkward to try to slip that into conversation later on.) Of course, part and parcel of discussing faith is confronting big, controversial questions about which people frequently have opinions held very strongly and close to the heart, which makes it scary turf from the start.

Still, bizarrely enough, the other half of my title scares me too, indeed, for the very reason that it isn’t a big and controversial and concerned-with-the-eternal-destiny-of-the-human-soul type topic. I love fiction: stories take hold of me in a way little else does.² That’s precisely the problem. Even though I know how trivial it ultimately is, fiction too easily sets itself up as an idol for me. Yet story itself provides a lens which adds to my understanding of so many other things, including my faith – after all, the Bible is a story, and full of stories. So, in short, I’m afraid of getting the balance wrong.

3) Starting this blog non-anonymously.

Dearest Internet age, how good of you to save us from having to take the consequences for what we say by offering a cloak of anonymity beneath whose disguise the most mild-mannered of us will happily screech accusations and abuse at strangers!

This fear really stems from the two above. Firstly, if my work is bound to be flawed, when those flaws emerge, it will be obvious whom to blame for them. Secondly, if I say something controversial about a touchy subject here on this blog, I’ll have to stand by it in real life as well.

4) Letting fear get the better of me.

At first, ‘Listen’ seemed like a promising episode of Doctor Who. (To remind you, the premise was investigation of the existence of a creature perfectly adapted to hiding its presence: how could one know whether it existed or not?) However, I really disliked the speech Clara made about fear towards the end of the episode.³ The idea, as expressed earlier in the episode, of fear being a superpower in an immediate set of frightening circumstances because it makes one able to run faster, jump higher, fight harder, be more alert, makes sense enough. But fear the constant companion? That’s not a superpower; it’s a crippling disability.

Fear stops you investigating because you’re too afraid of what you might find out. Fear stops you giving your honest opinion because you’re too afraid of what people will think of it. Fear stops you trying because you’re too afraid of failing.

The good news is, we don’t always have to be afraid.

The famous line ‘perfect love casts out fear’ is from 1 John 4: 18, but the logic of the verses 13-18 crescendos something like this:

We know that God remains in us because he has given us the Holy Spirit,

And we who have the Spirit are those who have seen, and been convinced by, the evidence that Jesus, God’s Son, was sent to save the world;

Therefore, God remains in anyone who declares as much,

Which means that that person can directly know God’s love,

And so can trust it,

Because God is love – love itself, pure, unadulterated, perfect love;

So if God is in us,

That means we have in us perfect love,

In which we can have confidence and so be without fear:

Perfect love casts out fear,

Because fear is present where there is the threat of some negative consequence,

But no negative consequence looks like much to be afraid of when we have confidence in the perfect love of God.⁴

Not being afraid is therefore deeply, deeply rooted in a belief in God’s love, manifest in his gift of his Son to save us. Once we believe in him, we have no reason to be afraid. In fact, even more than that: we are not permitted to be afraid, because fear is contrary to the character of the God whom we are aiming to follow and imitate. Being rid of fear frees us up to love – and love is the real superpower.⁵

Of course, casting out fear is an ongoing process, and none of us can claim to have reached the end of it yet. Still, by the grace of God, I do believe, bit by bit, I’m getting braver.

Footnotes

¹ I use this recipe: http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/butter_shortbread_74896. I’m not sure whether the dough is supposed to be quite as crumbly as it proves when I make it, but it’s good once it’s baked. (Unless I burn it, obviously.)

² Beyond that – because I can never resist the opportunity to share fun Classical etymologies – the word ‘fiction’ comes from the Latin ‘fingo’ (fingere, finxi, fictum), which, according to the ever-trusty dictionary of Lewis and Short (available via the Word Study Tool here: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/search), means to form, shape or fashion, and hence to imagine, contrive, invent. So, in a loose sort of way, ‘fiction’ could include all sorts of products of human creativity: music and poetry and fashion and architecture and visual arts and so on.

³ You can find the whole speech at http://www.doctorwhoquotes.net/listen/, though it’s rather oddly split in half and the second part wrongly attributed to the Doctor.

⁴ Here’s the whole chapter for your comparison: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20John+4&version=NKJV.

⁵ See also Blimey Cow’s video, ‘The Opposite of Love’, which I reckon hits the nail on the head about why fear hinders love: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akayzakrTs0.