Growing up I had an overwhelmingly vivid and overactive imagination, the only time that this became a problem was when I was going to bed…or to a lake…or to the ocean. 

We’ll get to the lakes and ocean later, but when it came to bed time, there were a few bedtime rituals that had to be adhered to. 

1.) Closet doors completely shut…no cracks allowed.

2.) Everything cleared out from under my bed and a 5 foot radius around my bed.

3.) Night prayers…I couldn’t go to sleep until my mom or dad had come in to hear my night prayers. 

The reason for all of these rules, was fairly simple. Monsters. I don’t really know what they were supposed to look like, but I knew that they were up to no good, and they all but relished the thought of my paralyzing fear. I’m not entirely sure where they were coming from, but I also knew that they could get in through the closet, but they couldn’t enter the sanctity of my room if the doors were shut, they just had to stay in the closet all night. (Which now that I think about it, isn’t such a bad deal…I had all sorts of awesome in my closet, those monsters probably had a blast spending every night playing with my Disney Farm, and be-headed Barbies).  

The bed thing was different…I just didn’t like the idea of having anything around my bed, that I could step on in the middle of the night…and when I did wake up in the middle of the night I would stand on the end of my bed and then jump as far away from the bed as possible, you know just in case one of those closet monsters was sneakier than I knew. Finally the prayers were just a comfort to know that my parents were there for me, and would be all night, and so would Jesus. 

Now when it comes to bodies of water I was afraid of all sorts of things, but especially sharks. I mean seriously have you seen some of the marine life that exists? Terrifying. It didn’t help that my brothers thought it was funny to pull me under the water when we were swimming, or to yell “Shark!” just as I was jumping in. Fear of sharks is fairly rational, they’re scary. What’s irrational about this was I was afraid of sharks in all bodies of water…yes even swimming pools. 

My brother use to tell me that when he would yell, “shark!” I would immediately try to get out of the water, and I hadn’t even touched it yet, apparently it was the most cartoonish I’ve ever looked. 

Thankfully I’ve outgrown the closet thing, and the bed thing (under the bed is important storage space, especially in a college dorm room). I still have a fear of large bodies of water, I still freak out when someone swims up underneath me and pulls me under, which some of my former summer camp co-workers can attest to first hand. (I am not sorry for the bruised faces and bloody noses).

Talking with my roommate about these childhood fears, I had a realization, how did I ever become afraid of monsters in the closet? It’s not like my parents put me to bed as a child and told me to not open the closet or the monsters would suck me back into their circle of hell. So how is it that seemingly all children have some innate fear of the dark, and the monsters that lurk in the shadows?  Is it human nature to fear darkness and the things that can hide there? Is this fear something that is ingrained into our DNA? Can we escape it?

We seem to spend a lot of time fearing things that are inevitable, such as change, we cannot stop change from happening. Sorry team. It’s not possible. But the things we fear as children, like monsters and the dark, we tend to outgrow. Or maybe a better way to say it, is that our fears evolve to suit our maturity. 

Fear is a natural part of life. We should have a healthy fear of certain things. One of the gifts of the Holy Spirit is Fear of the Lord, but not so much in a way that we may fear a spider, or for drastic measure, a serial killer, but more so to be in awe of God’s power. Because the things He can do, should illicit a reaction that is nothing short of jaw-dropping-loss-of-speech awe, and naturally that should also scare us a bit, simply because we cannot begin to wrap our heads around all of His power and mystery. And that is a beautiful thing.

Scripture is filled with different verses about darkness, and Christ being the light of the world (for example check our John 9:5), and most prominently the words “Do not be afraid” appear 365 times in the Bible (that’s basically one for every day of the year-I say basically because we all know that a year is technically 365.25 days) We’re not supposed to fear the monsters that lurk in our closets or in the shadows, because we know that Christ conquers all, but just because we’re not supposed to be afraid, doesn’t mean we aren’t and shouldn’t be wary of what is out there. We know the devil exists, we know he plays on our fears, we know that there is some force of evil in this world that seeks our destruction. AND we as Christians know that evil is fighting a battle that has already been lost. (Hello crucifixion and resurrection)

You might be reading this and thinking, we don’t KNOW any of those things you just stated about evil, but I would ask you to go to the nearest website that shows movie trailers and take a look at the most recent and popular trailers. I bet you see at least 5 trailers for horror movies that deal with the supernatural, and there are at least two of those that talk about some sort of demonic possession. We as a culture are fixated on evil, but that is a conversation for another time. But I do believe society as a whole embraces the idea of evil being present in our world in some way or other. 

As long as we face our fears, and do not let them control us, and we always remember the words of Christ. Our fears cannot conquer us, we will conquer them. 365 days a year, wake up and say it in the mirror and mean it, “Do not be afraid.”

But seriously this is a real thing…Who wouldn’t be afraid of this?

This is not an April Fools joke…read about it here 

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/01/070124-sharks-photo.html