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About John Shore

John is the author of I'm OK--You're Not: The Message We're Sending Nonbelievers and Why We Should Stop (NavPress); Penguins, Pain and the Whole Shebang (Seabury Books); and co-author, with Richard Lederer, of Comma Sense: A Fundamental Guide to Punctuation (St. Martin's). Both Penguins and Comma Sense won San Diego Book Awards for best books in their respective categories (Religious/Spiritual, and How To/Reference). He is also co-author, with Stephen Arterburn (Every Man's Battle) of Being Christian: Exploring Where You, God and Life Connect, Midlife Manual For Men: Finding Significance in the Second Half, and Regret-Free Living: Tools for Building Strong, Healthy Relationships.

As e-books on Scribd.com, John has made available for downloading or reading online, collections from his blog, entitled Seven Reasons Women Stay in Abusive Relationships (and How to Defeat Each One of Them),  How to Make a Living Writing, and My Funniest Stuff. He has also made available his book, I'm OK--You're Not: The Message We're Sending Nonbelievers and Why We Should Stop.

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John Shore

Writer, Editor, Author

Tuesday, June 30, 2009

The Fear That Feeds Our Discontent

We all struggle with too often or habitually doing or thinking things that we know are bad for us and/or those around us.

Our dysfunctional behavior is fueled by anger and resentment deeply rooted within us. We are angry at the fact that, somewhere along the line of our lives, our core emotional needs were not met.

Like so much anger we manifest, that which fuels our dysfunctional behavior is a reaction to fears we hold.

We fear that our core emotional needs cannot be met.

That enduring, fundamental human fear is two-fold: that God (or something/someone like it) is not in control of things, and that we are not lovable.

Those two fears---the one which looks to the outside world, and the other which looks to the inside---are complementary aspects of the same fear: That we and the world at large are not grounded in love.

The deep and abiding fear that the system in which they live and operate is not ultimately defined by love has always made everyone, in one way or another, crazily insecure.

The conditions necessary for the reality of human free will---being mainly our absolute autonomy---means that it always will, too. The cost of our ineradicable uncertainty is our free will.

(Note: While its assertion that God is love automatically renders Christianity a perfectly comprehensive answer to the one great human fear, being Christian does not inure anyone from the acute, ongoing angst of existential doubt. Every Christian remains, after all, a human---free will and all.)


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