Fear and Faith
Fear and faith are furthest apart, yet the space between them is among the fastest-traveled distances we know. In an instant it is possible to go from one to the other and back again. How might it be that we can go back and forth between them so?
Though fear creeps into the present, it is largely concerned with the future: that which is not yet, and which is not yet known definitively. Typically, fear concerns particular possibilities, often regardless of their actual likelihood. But fear also concerns the unknown and the unknowable as such, as well as the perceived possibility of the total absence of possibilities—or at least “viable possibilities”—altogether. When we are fearful about the future, we are prone to hesitancy, uneasiness, and even paralysis—being “paralyzed by fear.” Even after acting, fear will have us questioning whether or not we made the right decision; will things indeed end as we intended, or at least favorably? Will we indeed avoid the thing we feared via the choice we made in its shadow?
Faith, too, though felt with all of its comfort in the present, is primarily concerned with the future. Faith, however, seems to require a recognition of the future as such: as not yet and yet uncertain. As opposed to fear of the unknown, with its characteristic hesitancy and uneasiness, faith concerning the unknown is accompanied by anticipation, readiness, and excitement. Still without foresight, faith is open to the unknown, all the while privy to the knowledge that things often work out better than one could have imagined in advance. Faith is faith that despite not knowing exactly how things will turn out or how things will take shape, that things will ultimately end well; but this faith that things will end well seems to carry with it the requirement that we act in faith. Faith compels us to act entirely differently from the ways in which fear drives us to act; indeed, fear and faith both, by their respective natures, discourage and disparage the actions belonging to the other.
Fear entices a person to shy away from this or that possibility because of the worry that things may ultimately end badly, or because it is hard to imagine, in the present, the positive turns that things might take following the coming to fruition of whatever possibility one is afraid of. On the contrary, if fear has us avoiding, faith has us steadfastly advancing: faith beckons us forward with the acknowledgment that we cannot foresee how the future will unfold and the assurance that we do not know that things will end badly—and, indeed, things could very well turn out better than we could have imagined, in ways we could not have foreseen. While fear in the face of an undetermined future focuses on the possibility of things turning out badly, faith is keenly aware of the inherent promise that the future always holds: the future always has potential for wonderful outcomes that are, in the present, necessarily unforeseeable; we simply cannot imagine all the good things that could—and, indeed, often do—happen. In faith there is the knowledge that the future has not only the possibility of peril, but also the promise of yet unseen potential that is just as inherent. Faith’s acknowledgment and embrace of the future’s inherent promise, of its unforeseen potential, empowers us to choose and act on a basis other than avoidance of this or that feared outcome.
With the unknown future not being the deterrent that it is in fear, faith frees us to choose not in relation to this or that possible outcome, but instead out of deeper convictions concerning what it is we feel—or on some level know—that we must do, independent of concerns about how things might work out. When we choose and act from a position of faith, we are freed from concerns of the future and delivered over to conviction: we choose not based on an imagined future, but on the basis of what our convictions call us to do in the present, independent of imagined outcomes. Freed to act out of our convictions, faith compels us forward with courage, resolve, and excited curiosity about what the future may hold. Freed from fears about the future, we act faithfully in the present—where faith comforts and compels us to go forward with courage and resoluteness.
Despite enabling us to choose and act on a basis other than the future, in being faithful there is most of all hope for the future. All the more so is there hope because faith and conviction sure up our footing and steady our hands in action—sure footing and steady hands, it turns out, are much more suitable for action and success than the unsure footing and shaky hands; indeed, someone shaking in their boots is hardly able to advance, let alone triumph. Rather, when we act in good faith and have its sure footing we are in the best position possible from which to press forward. In faith and its freeing us to act on our convictions with sure footing and steady hands, we choose and act and advance from a position of power. A boxer who resolutely advances with courage and tenacity and who maintains a strong base from which to repeatedly attack has infinitely more hope against a formidable opponent than any boxer who steps into the ring with unsure footing.
But how is it that a fearful coward may become faithfully empowered? As was said, though fear and faith are furthest apart, the distance between them is among the fastest-traveled distances we know. In both fear and faith, we are most familiar with the feeling commonly described as “butterflies.” In both fear and faith, butterflies begin their fluttering in the pit of our stomachs; the question is where the butterflies go from there. In fear, the butterflies are confined inside and flutter incessantly and impatiently, the reverberations of their wings rendering us shaky inside and out; in faith we allow the butterflies to fly up and out and lead the way forward.