Love casts out fear

There is a sound the old life made, so constant you stopped hearing it: a low hum of fear running underneath everything. Fear of not being enough. Fear of being found out. Fear of the dropped mask, the failed grade, the withdrawn approval, the punishment you were sure was owed. It drove the striving and the hiding both, the long hours and the careful editing of yourself, the bracing for a blow that always seemed about to fall. John, the old apostle who had leaned on Jesus at the table, names the one thing strong enough to evict that hum. There is no fear in love, he writes, and perfect love casts out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. Picture it as a tenant being put out: love moves in, and the dread that had squatted in every room for years finally drains out the door. The perfectly loved are not bracing for a blow. They have stopped listening for the footsteps on the stair. Paul says it from his own cell: God did not give us a spirit of fear, but of power and love and a sound mind.

So much of the old life ran on fear, and you may not have noticed because it was always there, the way you stop hearing a noise that never stops. Fear of failing, of exposure, of punishment, of being finally rejected once someone saw the real you. John names the single force that evicts it, and it is not willpower or positive thinking. It is being loved. Perfect love casts out fear, he says, because love like that has no punishment waiting inside it. The more deeply you come to know yourself loved by God, not tolerated, not on probation, but truly loved, the more the old dread loses its footing and drains away. You were not handed a spirit of fear in the first place, and you are not required to live under one now. Let the perfect love of God move into the very rooms where fear has been living rent-free for years, and do not be surprised when the old terror finally has nowhere left to stand.