Page 93 - Biblical Counseling II

Your BCI course goes on to state that sinful fear can be destructive. It can cause physical problems and
destroy relationships (fight or flight). Fear can paralyze and lead to loss, as it can keep you from work and
from receiving blessings (opportunities). Let’s read about how psychology explains fear and see where
science and the Bible agree.

What is the function of fear, and how do we learn fears?
Fear can be poisonous. It can torment
us, rob us of sleep, and preoccupy our
thinking. People can be literally scared
to death. Fear can also be contagious. In
1903, someone yelled “fire!” as a fire
broke out in Chicago’s Iroquois Theater.
Eddie Foy, the comedian on stage at the
time, tried to reassure the crowd by
calling out, “Don’t get excited. There’s
no danger. Take it easy!” The crowd
panicked. During the 10 minutes it took
the fire department to arrive and quickly
extinguish the flames, more than 500
people died, most of them trampled or
smothered in a stampede. Bodies were
piled 7 or 8 feet deep in the stairways,
and many of the faces bore heel marks
(Myers, 2009). (photo:
people.howstuffworks.com)

More often, fear is adaptive. It’s an alarm system that prepares our bodies to flee from danger. Fear of real
or imagined enemies binds people together as families, tribes, and nations. Fear of injury protects us from
harm. Fear of punishment or retaliation restrains our harming one another. Fear helps us focus on a problem
and rehearse coping strategies. Fearful expressions improve peripheral vision and speed eye movements,
thus boosting sensory input (Myers, 2009).

Learning Fear

People can be afraid of almost anything – “afraid of truth, afraid of fortune, afraid of death, and afraid of
each other,” observed Ralph Waldo Emerson. The “politics of fear” builds upon people’s fear – fear of
terrorists, fear of immigrants, fear of criminals. Why so many fears? Behaviorists John B. Watson and Rosalie
Rayner showed that infants can learn to fear furry objects associated with frightening noises. When infants
begin to crawl, they learn from brief falls and near-falls – and become increasingly afraid of heights. Through
such conditioning, the short list of naturally painful and frightening events can multiply into a long list of
human fears – fear of driving or flying, fear of mice or cockroaches, fear of closed or open spaces, fear of
failure or success, fear of another race or nation (Myers, 2009).

Learning by observation extends the list. Susan Mineka sought to explain why nearly all monkeys reared in
the wild fear snakes, yet lab-reared monkeys do not. Surely, most wild monkeys do not actually suffer snake
bites. Do they learn their fear through observation? To find out, Mineka experimented with six monkeys
reared in the wild (all strongly fearful of snakes) and their lab-reared offspring (virtually none of which feared
snakes). After repeatedly observing their parents or peers refusing to reach for food in the presence of a
snake, the younger monkeys developed a similar strong fear of snakes. When retested three months later,
their learned fear persisted. Humans likewise learn fears by observing others. This suggests that our fears
include the fears we learn from our parents and friends (Myers, 2009).

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