5 Fear is an Emotional Sin
Many people make decisions based upon how they feel. They will say, “I have a gut feeling about this.” What people don't understand is that emotions were designed by God to be responders to thought, not the source of thought itself. Emotions cannot think. In a given situation you may not feel good, but you still can think and apply doctrine. Courage is defined as the ability to think under pressure. We have already noted the calm rational thinking of Moses at the Red Sea. Emotion only produces a smoke screen of courage, not the real thing. Thinking and applying Bible doctrine under pressure is what produces true and lasting courage.
Fear is irrational and irresponsible. The cowardice it produces leads to irrational decisions as it did in Isaac’s life when he feared the king and his men. When the men of the place asked about his wife, he said, "She is my sister," for he was afraid to say, "my wife," {thinking,} "the men of the place might kill me on account of Rebekah, for she is beautiful" (GEN 26:7). Fear not only prevents Bible doctrine from being your number one priority, but it fragments and destroys the function of your spiritual life, and then moves you into the eight stages of reversionism. The last three stages of reversionism (blackout of the soul, scar tissue of the soul, and reverse process reversionism) destroy all previously learned Bible doctrine, and hinders any use of problem solving devices.
Fear is also a function of self-absorption. You are absorbed with yourself and your problems. You want the world to center around you. You want everyone to stop what they're doing and help you. Meanwhile you are filled with fears and very emotional. Emotion is not a criterion for the spiritual life, despite what many emotional Christians say. How you feel at any given moment is never the issue in the spiritual life, but rather the issue is always what you think. To make emotion the criterion for the spiritual life is to marry the arrogance skills to the emotional revolt of the soul. This is not to say that emotion is not a part of the spiritual life, but that emotion should always be responding to the thinking of Bible doctrine. Therefore normal emotional activity in the soul functions in subordination to the absolutes of Bible doctrine circulating in the soul.
Emotion can be normal or abnormal, good or evil. However, regardless of what it is, emotion is never a tool of cognition. You do not learn by emotion. God gave us emotion to enjoy the truth, but emotion is not a criterion for the spiritual life, nor was it ever designed to be a substitute for the problem solving devices. Sinful emotional activity such as fear, worry, anxiety, hatred, anger, revenge, and guilt are reactions which are totally rejected by the absolutes of Bible doctrine. Emotional reactions, such as false spirituality, or emotional revolt of the soul are a distraction to the execution of the PPOG. Given a situation of testing, the loser believer under emotional revolt of the soul will scream, blame, and fall apart under the pressure of unrealistic expectation, illusion, denial, projection and even hallucination. So the believer must distinguish between normal emotional response, like enjoying a good movie, or excitement over the understanding of a doctrine, and the abnormal emotional reaction to life in the form of the emotional revolt of the soul (making decisions based on how you feel, falling apart under pressure, substance abuse etc.).
download PDF
