“…I was afraid, and went and hid your talent (God’s gift) in the ground…”
Matthew 25.25
Fear is a common human emotion, but it’s designed by God as an alert signal. It provides the shot of adrenalin to deal with the immediate threat. Fear is not an empowering emotion. Fear, long term, has a disabling effect when it settles into our subconscious. It actually has been demonstrated to make us less healthy emotionally, but it also hinders the body ability to recover physically.
It’s strange, but secular reasoning and a Biblical understanding of human frailty intersect at times, but with very different outcomes. Secular reasoning can’t contemplate anything other then what the human mind can conceive. Christians, on the other hand, believe God is the ultimate power in the universe. With God, all things are possible. All things bend to his will.
When Christians lose sight of that truth, it produces the same level of fear as a secularist encountering something outside their capacity to control. Fear, when it becomes engrained in our psychic, replaces our creative function with despair and limits our ability to respond to challenges. God’s remedy for fear is faith. Christian are instructed to get moving. Trust God to direct your foot steps and don’t bury the talent he has given you to invest. Our human tendency is to hide from danger.
“For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.”
2 Timothy 1.7
This doesn’t mean that Christians see the world through “rose colored glasses” or that we glibly ignore danger. Not at all. Christians are to take reasonable precautions but also to see themselves empowered by their creator to discover solutions to vexing issues.
They should never be overcome and disabled by fear. Christians have been at the forefront of science and medicine. The names of Francis Bacon, Galileo, Blaise Pascal, Robert Boyle, Issac Newton, Kepler, Louis Pasteur, George Washington Carver are just a few familiar names from the past who’s faith propelled major discoveries laying the foundation for modern science and todays technology revolution.
