And they were sore afraid …

VIEWPOINT

By RALPH HARDIN

Evening Times Editor

A while back, my Sunday school class started a new unit. I was a little disappointed to see that it wasn’t a big series of lessons leading up to Christmas. It was, instead, about “Facing Your Fears” in these troubling times.

Well, I peeked ahead (don’t tell Jesus) and it turns out that by the time we get to Sunday, Dec. 25, we will, in fact, be getting some Christmas-themed discussion going, while still keeping the fear thing going.

If you’re familiar with the birth of Jesus as told in the Gospel of Luke, you might already know where this is going. When the Angel of the Lord appears to the shepherds who were watching their flocks by night in Luke 2:9, they were, as the scripture puts it, “sore afraid.” Sure, if you’re using a different translation, you might otherwise get “terrified (NIV), “filled with great fear” (ESV), or “terribly frightened” (NAS), but I think the King James Version really nails it with “sore afraid” in this case.

It is, to my knowledge, the only place I have ever seen the phrase “sore afraid,” and I think it pretty much defines how most of us would feel when confronted by an angelic presence. It’s basically saying they “feared with great fear” at what they were seeing.

I don’t know that I’ve ever really been “sore” afraid of anything but we’ve all got fears. The ultimate thing the Sunday school series is trying to teach us is that there is a such thing as “good” fear or “healthy” fear, and above all a “reverent” fear of God. There’s the well-known quote from President Franklin Roosevelt that says, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

Great line. Inspirational for sure … but not entirely accurate.

I mean, I get what FDR was trying to say, but there really are things out there to fear. I, for example, am now terrified of spiders, ever since I got bitten on the arm by a brown recluse back in 2019. We all, of course, share a few common fears, like losing a loved one, financial ruin, frogs – oh wait, that one is just my wife’s weird phobia.

There are plenty of things that only make sense to be at least wary of, if not downright afraid of, in this world. I’m not afraid of getting robbed or murdered, but I’m also not going to go walking down a dark alley in a bad part of town. If you’re going to get me, it’s going to have to be in a well-lit public place. I’m pretty afraid of heights, but that’s (at least to me) perfectly reasonable. If I fall from a height of more than a few feet, I’m going to have severe medical issues, especially at my age. They call it acrophobia, but I call it common sense.

A lot of what we fear comes from the very real danger that is poses. My lovely wife, for example, absolutely forbade our son from getting a motorcycle when he was still living at home. She had seen or heard of too many motorcycle crashes to be able to take the stress and worry she would have from the very idea of him riding up and down the streets of this community on one. And she’s right. They can be dangerous, so I was willing to back her up on that one. “When you’re grown and making your own money, then you can get your own motorcycle!” That’s what she told him. Fast-forward to today, and now he has a wife who won’t let him get a motorcycle.

I feel like maybe God is looking out for him. So, if there’s “good” fear and “bad” fear, how can we know the difference? I’m no expert but I think that any fear that keeps you from having a quality life or finding happiness is a bad fear. For example, I have a pretty strong fear of failure. It has kept me from really taking some chances in my life. Now, I won’t say it has kept me from having “A Wonderful Life” (to borrow from the popular film) but it has kept me from pursuing some endeavors. On the other hand, if it hadn’t been for me overcoming my fear of rejection, I never would have landed my aforementioned lovely wife.

Fear of the law can be a good thing. Fear of being caught doing a “bad” thing in general is a good motivator in general. In fact, that might be the only thing that keeps many folks out of jail. Fear of dying is a common one, and unfortunately it’s one we will all have to eventually face. The key, I think, is to not let that play a major role in how you live your life. Overcoming one’s fears might, in fact, be the real true key to a good life. So, whatever it is you’re afraid of, don’t let it stop you from being happy and doing what brings you joy.

But above all, watch out for spiders!