The Three Elements of Fear

Many people, some Christians included, see death as an intruder. Gandhi, the great Indian leader and politician, said that he started his Swaraj movement to help people overcome the fear of death. Politics was only a minor part of his purpose. “My aim,” he said, “was the abandonment of the fear of death. So long as we let ourselves be influenced by the fear of death, we can never attain freedom.”

When we come to analyze the fear of death, three elements can be seen to be present: the fear of the physical act of dying, the fear of finality, and the fear of judgment. Let’s look first at the fear of the physical act of dying. This is very real to some people. Perhaps they have suffered and know, through bitter experience, how pain lacerates and hurts.

Doctors assure us that what people normally call “the agony of death” is felt much more by those who are watching than by the one who is passing away. Sir Frederick Treves, the eminent surgeon, said: “A last illness may be long, wearisome and painful, but the closing moments of it are, as a rule, free from suffering. There may appear to be a terrible struggle at the end, but of this struggle the subject is unconscious. It is the onlooker who bears the misery of it.” Add to this natural phenomenon the supporting power of God’s never-failing grace, and it is possible to look even this physical aspect of death quietly in the face and say, “My enemy—you are not really the terror that you seem.”

Further Study

Isa 43:2-3; 1Co 15:1-21; Jn 11:11; Ac 13:36

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