‘The only thing we have to fear is fear itself”. So said Franklin D Roosevelt in his 1933 inauguration speech. He was paraphrasing the American philosopher Henry David Thoreau, author of Civil Disobedience – more on which later.
Fear is a concept – or indeed a feeling – that is ingrained in many of us these days. The so-called war on terror has waxed and waned in its threat to society since the September 11 attacks in 2001. There have been moments in the past 21 years when these threats have felt very real. Coronavirus brought with it from Wuhan a fear of death, ubiquitous on our streets and in our homes since March 2020. More recently, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has inspired a tsunami of fear that we are heading into another world war.
Fear is instinctive and, on an evolutionary level, essential for survival (“fight or flight”). Without fear, few of us would be here today. And fear is inextricably tangled up with religion. “Thou shalt fear the LORD thy God, and serve him, and shalt swear by his name.” In the scriptures, we are instructed to fear God and to fear the consequences of our sinful deeds. In practice, we profess: “He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his Kingdom shall have no end.”
The role that fear has played in religious practice has arguably served adherents well: it encourages rigour, devotion and submission to God. However, fear has of course been weaponised in the application of the scriptures. Most of us will be familiar with horror stories of children being forced to learn the scriptures by heart and gory tales of the suffering of the martyrs.
As children, when my sisters and I complained of any scratch or ailment we were abruptly told it was “God punishing you” for some recent minor wrongdoing. (The other reprimand was “that’s how Grandpapa lost his finger”. We cottoned on to that one when it was employed in an argument about the juvenile theft of Walker’s salt and vinegar crisps. God trumped our grandfather after that.) I don’t remember being fearful of God’s punishment, but accepting it as a reasonable explanation for the bruise in question.
In a manner akin to a mother inspiring the fear of God in her child, we have all – all – recently been subjected to the manipulation of fear as a means to control us.
The Government’s totalitarian policy in the face of the coronavirus outbreak, together with the evils of a lazy and inaccurate press (“Ice rinks in UK could act as temporary mortuaries during coronavirus pandemic”) ignited a burning terror within the majority of us that ultimately led to our self-imprisonment for almost two years. And who can blame those among us who locked our front door and shuddered on our own inside? We were harassed by what has been described as a “Blitzkreig of daily fear bombs”.
It almost seems as if our day-to-day fears – fear of death, fear of war, fear of losing our job, fear of compromising our health – have usurped our fear of God. Are we more inclined to knead anti-bacterial “handwash” into our pores than we are to get down on our knees and pray? Does the former feel more cleansing than the latter?
Pope Francis has said “the fear of the Lord, the gift of the Holy Spirit, doesn’t mean being afraid of God, since we know that God is our Father that always loves and forgives us … it is no servile fear, but rather a joyful awareness of God’s grandeur and a grateful realisation that only in Him do our hearts find true peace.” Catholicism teaches that fearing the Lord spurs us into repentance and encourages us back to communion with Him – which is why fear of the Lord is one of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit.
But for some of us, that’s a bitter pill to swallow. Easier to keep reaching for the anti-bac. It can be – and has been – presented philosophically by Thoreau in Civil Disobedience. In his essay of 1849, Thoreau argues that individuals should not allow governments to overrule their personal conscience. He asks, “must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree resign his conscience to the legislator?” He asserts, “we should be men first, and subjects afterward.”
Although Thoreau’s essay was considered anarchic, he was in fact calling for conformity – but conformity to rule by conscience and not to the rule of the legislator. This is similar to what God asks of us. When it’s put in philosophical terms, it makes perfect sense. As is written in the Proverbs: “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge.”
This article first appeared in the Easter 2022 issue of the Catholic Herald. Subscribe today.
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