by Terry 11 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
Fear is always real. It is the object of our fear that may be illusory.
Confusing the two is not so easy to get a handle on emotionally.
If I step out of my back door and think the water hose coiled by the steps are a snake I will get a jolt of adrenaline that is very real.
I will probably jump back with my heart pounding wildly in my chest. All very real.
But, the object of my fear is a water hose.
The Fear is real but the snake is illusory.
Fear of Demons is real fear. Demons are not.
BUt, Terry, there really are such things as snakes and they really are dangerous. In your example, you mistook something that was not dangerous for something that was both real and dangerous. So I'm not sure your example works. I mean, we are afraid of weird shapes in the dark simply because we have historically been greatly threatened by incongruous shapes in the dark -- they could be predators.
Do we have other examples of irrational fear? I mean genuinely irrational: kids are afraid of monsters in the closet when there are not literally monsters in the closet. But they are correct to be afraid of potential ambushes by people or animals launched from concealment. Doesn't this suggest that oppositional supernatural forces are more likely to be close to real than they are likely to be close to unreal?
