Paul Tripp writes about handling our fears: “Own your fear and run to the only one who can defeat it. Confess that you don’t always remember his presence and glory. Confess those places where you assess situations as if he didn’t exist. Own the fact that you often love your comfort more than you love his glory. Confess that you are sometimes more in awe of people than of him.”
This reminds me of a Camp Meeting I attended a couple of years ago. The theme was Fearless. As the week progressed I grew more and more disgruntled with the speaker on two fronts.
One, The Bible was uses as a source for examples, but his analysis and solutions came from modern pop psychology.
Two, He treated all fear as bad. That didn’t jive with my experience where many forms of fear are good because fear causes us to take precautions in the presence of danger.
I thought about visiting the Black Hills when my kids were 8 and 6. They had no fear of the edge of the cliffs, which left me very nervous for their safety. In Scripture we are urged over and over again to fear the Lord. In the Small Catechism the meaning of every commandment begins with “We are to so fear and love God that. . . ” Fear that causes us to seek safety and avoid danger is a good thing.
As I thought about this, it struck me that the problem is not that fear is bad. The problem is that we live in a corrupted world and live with a corrupted nature that leads us to fear that which we should not fear and to not fear that which we should fear. Or to put it another way, we see danger where there is none and fail to see danger where it does exist. As Jesus said in Luke 12:4-5 “I tell you, my friends, do not fear those who kill the body, and after that have nothing more that they can do. [5] But I will warn you whom to fear: fear him who, after he has killed, has authority to cast into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him!” (ESV)
Yes, fear may be better called respect in some ways, but are you saying you think Paul Tripp is getting it mostly wrong? His emphasis is that we reject a fear of man in favor of a fear of God, a fear which will inspire confidence and assurance in our relationships.
What you’ve said about fearing the wrong things is great.
My issue wasn’t so much with his content as with his format. What struck me as I read through it was the omission of all Scriptural documentation. He is speaking as a personal authority rather than drawing on the authority of God’s word to support his positions.