The Right Kind of Fear

I continue to read through the Bible with Hillcrest and we finished Deuteronomy and are into Joshua now. It’s interesting how significant a theme courage is in these sections as the Israelites get ready to take over the promised land. They are taking the land that their parents’ generation was too afraid to take. They are going to 'burn the ships' once they cross the Jordan and there’s no going back. You can certainly think there’d be some healthy sense of fear going into their preemptive strike, but for the Israelites (at least for the new generation led by Joshua and Caleb), the fear of going into these occupied lands is outweighed by the fear of going back to Egypt or being taken into captivity again.

I’ve also been reading in Tim Kimmel’s Homegrown Heroes, where he writes that fear can often paralyze children and parents, but we need to be motivated by the right kinds of fear. The fear of letting my character derail me keeps me from giving into things that would allow my character to slide; the fear of raising undisciplined kids keeps me from giving into the fear of them not liking me when I say no to certain things; these are examples where fear is ok, you just need to be fearful of the right things so that it motivates you to keep doing the things that you need to do.