1 John 4:18 “Perfect Love Casts Out All Fear”
Fear is focusing on one negative possible reality. Fear is when we perceive a threat in our reality. It is the opposite of hope. Hope is focusing on one positive possible reality. Every fear has an equivalent counter of hope. I fear death but hope for eternal life.
Absolute fear is catastrophic: this is going to kill me. Mitigating fear is diminishing: this probably won’t kill me. There’s hope in it. You acknowledge that there is a chance that it doesn’t kill you. Anxiety is an addiction to fear.
There are always infinite possible hopes and fears in any moment, so the key is to properly mitigate. When you think I’ll definitely die today, you have to remember that the future is uncertain. If the future is uncertain, there are always good and bad possible outcomes. If there are possible good outcomes, thinking of those could transform your previous thought to maybe I won’t die to today. But remember, you have a very, very slim chance of dying today. So the good really outweighs the bad. I probably won’t die today.
That’s as far as I can get you without religion. But if you accept the thoughts of the afterlife, even death is not the end. Even the scariest I’ll definitely die today becomes something much different: I’ll definitely die today, but I’ll go somewhere much better.
So you see, with the addition of the afterlife, there is always hope. Even in our darkest days, because there’s always infinite potential positive outcomes. More than that, all outcomes are eventually positive.
[Please don’t misconstrue this as some strange way to say that if you kill yourself you’ll go to heaven. Because religious scholars really just aren’t sure about that. Don’t gamble with your soul.]
Don't Read This Blog 