Reflections on Fear and Love

According to Master Yoda, “Fear is the path to the Dark Side.”  Yoda continues to digress that fear begets anger which begets hatred which begets suffering.  In the end, the root of suffering comes from fear.  However, fear has its own father.  Nothing in mankind’s history produces more fear than the unknown.  Whether an explorer’s ignorance of the frontier or an American’s uncertainty of the future, the unknown makes us all tremble with fear.  On the other hand, nothing in mankind’s history produces more joy, more sagas or songs than love.  Love glues us to each other and cements our place in society.  The Christian Bible states that there is no fear in love (1 John 4:18), providing the impression that fear and love stand at odds to each other.  In my opinion, fear results from ignorance while love results from knowledge.

Before fear catalyzes the response towards suffering, fear must develop from not knowing.  We fear what we do not know.  Ancient cartographers lacked the knowledge about what could be found between continents or what laid to the west of Europe.  They depicted their ignorance as sea monsters or the edge of the world, clearly expressing their fears of what lay beyond the known world.  A bigot’s ignorance of other ethnic groups can be seen the violence of hate crimes and wars.  The American public reached near meltdown in their fear of Swine Flu (H1N1) or Avian Flu (H5N1).  One factor has always protected us from our fears: knowledge.

As humans continue learning about the world our fears are laid to rest (until some other unknown is found).  Explorers braved the uncharted waters between continents and calmed the fears of land lovers, erasing the monsters of the sea from our maps.  Integration and multiculturalism bring people of all groups together to learn about each other and to relieve the fears we have of people who don’t look like me.  Medical understanding of the Swine Flu has waned our fear of the less virulent strait of influenza moving through the world.  The more we know the less we have to fear.  We see ignorance as the driving force of all fears in the world.  Likewise, knowledge brings forth calm.  The more we know, the less we fear and in effect, the more we love.

Love makes our society flourish.  Artists, musicians, poets, and sculptors profess love everyday.  Love is the byproduct of knowledge.  We know more about our favorite subjects than any others.  The people that we love the most are the ones that we know best.  We love our family members because of our understanding of who they are, for good or for bad.  In marriage, love comes from fully knowing who the other is and who they want to be.  Marriages break down when our lover does something that we thought they could never do.  The unknown in the person frightens us and replaces our love with fear.  During courtship, a man and woman learn everything about each other.  When secrets are kept between the two, love cannot flourish as it should.

The contrast between fear and love truly result from the conflict of the known and the unknown.  This can be seen in the development of many religions throughout world history.  Before Pasteur, illnesses were not thought to be the result of viruses, bacteria or fungi, but the effects of evil spirits, demons or the punishments of sins.  The Germ Theory of modern medicine relieves our fear of disease and helps us find new and better ways to cure patients.  How many disorders, diseases and just bad luck have been blamed on the devil?  When the cause is unknown, our inquisitive minds may produce elaborate tales to explain the cause.  Knowledge eliminates superstitions.

For many, an important aspect of God is omniscience.  God must know what happens throughout the world across time.  God is love because love is knowledge and God knows all.  This theology brings relief to the people who do not know why things happen as they do.  We don’t know why bad things happen to good people, but God does.  God knows why people suffer and even if he won’t share his secret, at least the answer is known.  Modern Christianity mixes a fear of God with the love of God as both represent our knowledge of who God is.  The message of Jesus is a personal understanding of God hence more knowledge of who God is.  Jesus describes himself as the Way, the Truth and the Light: three common metaphors for knowledge and learning.  Christianity, as well as other religions, presents the opportunity to understand the unknown.  If we mortals cannot control our future, then someone, something must have the ultimate knowledge of time.  Pagans seek to understand the world through the worship of nature, Greeks and Romans create elaborate mythologies, Buddhists seek Nirvana, and Christians, Jews and Muslims seek a personal relationship with an all-knowing God.

The greatest gift God gave man is not love, but knowledge.  Knowledge and reason set us free from the oppression of ignorance and uncertainty.  The future of scientific understanding will open new doors to the mind of God.  We learn more about biology and astronomy.  For those who don’t know, the ideas of evolution and black holes will only produce fear.  The more we learn, as individuals and as a culture can eliminate the fear we have over these subjects.  The frontiers of mankind’s knowledge hold both the greatest risk and the greatest opportunity.