Why Every Fear is Irrational - Eliza Colbert
I’ll be honest, I really really dislike Beatrice. If we were reading Paradiso, I would go on a long rant about how much I dislike her and Dante’s admiration of her. But, even though I dislike her, there was something she said that piqued my interest. As she spoke to Virgil, she said, “‘The only things that justly cause us fear / are those that have the power to do us harm’” (2.88-89). This statement doesn’t seem very radical at first glance. But the more I think about it, the more crazy it gets. Bear with me as I try to explain my thoughts.
Most everyone understands the concept of irrational fears, those things we are afraid of for no rational reason (hence the name). Beatrice says that it would be irrational for her to fear hell because it can’t harm her. I could get really philosophical here and attempt to define what “harm” is, but it would probably turn this post into something akin to Plato’s dialogues. Since I have neither the time nor the philosophical acumen to attempt such a thing, I will simply move on and assume that the people reading this have a vague idea of what “harm” is.
Beatrice doesn’t take the time to define harm either. She simply states that we should only justly fear things that have the ability to hurt us.The question that Beatrice’s statement brings up is this: what are those things? What actually has this power to harm us? As I thought about these questions, I remembered Matthew 10:28, which reads, “‘And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell’” (ESV). This verse directly states that we shouldn’t worry about what people can do because they can’t really do anything. God is the only one with enough power to “destroy both soul and body.” I say that this qualifies as the harm that Beatrice was talking about.
Now this is where things get really interesting (and why I brought up the concept of irrational fears). According to Matthew 10:28 (and the rest of the Bible), God is the only one with “the power to do us [real] harm.” If this is true and God really is the only one with this power and if “the only things that justly cause us fear are those that have the power to do us harm,” then God is the only thing we should be afraid of. We have no real reason to fear anything other than Him. Thus, all our fears are irrational. I’ve heard people hint at this idea before, but I’ve never heard it said quite like this. I still don’t like Beatrice, but at least she gave me something to think about.
P.S. I commented on AnnaKate’s and Madison’s posts.
I would agree, except you then have to define the intensity of harm. I can be afraid of murderers because, when given the opportunity, they could kill me and I want to live. It has the power to harm me, but only in the physical sense. The intensity of the harm is much less compared to God, but it doesn't mean harm is unfathomable in the world we live in now.
ReplyDeleteGreat post by the way, I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Although I'm not sure exactly how to tackle these problems, I'm going to give it a shot.
ReplyDeleteLet's broadly define fear as the internal feeling that you get when you are startled by a jump scare in a movie or being chased by a grizzly bear. Now to straighten out Beatrice's statement we have to realize a few things. For one, fear can be useful. If you want to survive, fearing bears might be a good thing. Likewise, some people sometimes enjoy fear, so they intentionally induce it by watching a horror film. On the other hand, if you don't enjoy fear, you may want to get rid of it. If that dead tree limb over your house is driving you crazy, you might want to get it removed. If you can't afford to get it removed, then might want to intentionally forget about it, as there's no use worrying about something that you can't fix.
I don't like the term rational because everybody has his own definition, but, as an example of an "irrational fear," let's say that you're afraid of a harmless spider. If you dislike the feeling of fear, then you may want to desensitize yourself to the spider, but, if you can't help the fear, then you may want to get rid of the spider, even though it can't physically harm you.
I don't think that there is any reason to define harm. Merely speaking of a person's goals and the things that obscure goals is sufficient to satisfactorily treat these questions. So if you care about things like not dying, then fearing non-God things isn't "irrational." Only if you care only about your soul, are non-God fears "irrational."