Fearless Families: Building Brave Homes in an Uncertain WorldSýnishorn

Fear: A Bad Driver

Fear is a notoriously bad driver. While it’s an acceptable — even expected — passenger, we should never allow fear to drive our decisions, attitudes, or perspectives. Yet the modern family is often ruled by fear. 

Many of us parent primarily from a position of fear: How do we raise them right? How do we avoid messing them up psychologically? How do we keep them reasonably happy, healthy, and responsible so they won't still be living with us in their forties?

Marriages today are often driven by fear too. Many of us are afraid to reveal our true thoughts or say what is truly on our hearts. We long for more — more intimacy, more passion, more romance — but we don’t do anything about it. And we turn a blind eye to obvious problems instead of confronting and solving them because we’re afraid to have the difficult conversations. 

Fear rarely leads to good decisions, yet so many of our choices, actions, and attitudes are based on the deep-seated fears residing within our hearts and minds. 

But it was never meant to be this way. People were created from a place of perfect, infinite love — and we were intended to live in love for one another and to make choices each day based on that love. But love is expelled where fear is allowed to rule. Love fixates on meeting the needs of others, while fear focuses on fulfilling one’s own needs and wants. We cannot truly love when we’re afraid, because we cannot look beyond our own selfish desires to see to the well-being of the ones we’re supposed to love.

Fear is often caused by the failure of our idols. We all place our trust in something, and we have learned from our story-obsessed culture to design our lives around a personal narrative involving that trust: "If I love and/or pursue ________ , I will be safe (or successful or happy)."

Whatever we fill in the blank with becomes the object of our worship. We entrust our lives to it. We honor it. Give it time. Protect it. Value it. Organize our lives around it. All with the expectation that it will give us the life we want.

No matter what we choose to fill in the blank, if it’s not God with a capital G, that thing will not provide what it promises. It can’t. Humanity is unable to create for itself a life free of fear and worry apart from God. Without divine intervention, fear is unavoidable. And when our idols fail us, the result is more fear.

What will you do if your idols fail you?