Today we are going to talk about fear. Not the fear that you feel when you go to a horror movie. I am talking about longer-term fear that causes anxiety, worry, stress, discomfort, and health problems. COVID-19 has brought a great deal of fear with it - fear of getting sick, fear of death, and fear of getting loved ones sick. We will discuss fear of World War II, terrorists, GMOs, and the Apocalypse. We will discuss the fears that parents have for their children and how to not pass them on to those children. Neither your Heavenly Father nor your Savior wants you to worry or be anxious. In today's world, we must consciously fight back fears, realizing the awful effect they have on our minds and spirits.
Email at scottrfrazer@gmail.com
S1E23 – The Destructive Effects of Fear
This is the podcast Science and Scriptures, Season 1, Episode 23, or “The Destructive Effects of Fear”
Hello again. This Scott Frazer of the podcast Science and Scriptures. Today we are going to talk about fear. Not the fear that you feel when you go to a horror movie. I don’t understand the entertainment value of horror movies, but, unless you are prone to nightmares, that fear is short-lived.I am talking about longer-term fear that causes anxiety, worry, stress, discomfort, and health problems. COVID-19 has brought a great deal of fear with it - fear of getting sick, fear of death, and fear of getting loved ones sick. With the vaccines, it feels good to feel some of that fear dissipate.
The word “fear” is used 649 times in the scriptures and in 96 of those times, it is followed by the word “not”.The Savior used the expression “fear not” a number of times during his teaching. He understood the ill effects of fear and that faith needed to replace it.
Fear is a destructive emotion. We fear that which we don’t understand. From one of my favorite science fiction books, Dune by Frank Herbert, we read this mantra against fear.
“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”
Fear really is a mind-killer. Individuals or entire nations often make terrible decisions out of a place of fear.Let me give you a few examples.
After World War II had started, but before Pearl Harbor, most Americans did not want the United States to join the war. Our allies in Europe were pleading with the US to join the fight. But World War I had just ended in 1919. The Great Depression had ended in 1933, but its effects still lingered. People were afraid. By the middle of 1941, the Netherlands, France, Belgium, and Poland had fallen to German armed forces. Great Britain was fighting for its life. Still, the US hesitated. On December 7, 1941 Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. This event forced Americans to do what they knew they had to do. A favorite question of historians is “If Pearl Harbor had never happened, and America had stayed out the war, what would the world look like today?” Could Nazism have been stopped? But for Pearl Harbor, America’s fears almost let us find out.
After the attack on the Twin Towers in New York City on Sept. 11, 2001, the nation was plunged into fear of terrorists. A whole new cabinet position was established, called the Department of Homeland Security, which now employs 240,000 people. Based more on fear than actual military Intelligence, President Bush sent our armed forces to invade Iraq, looking for Weapons of Mass Destruction. No weapons were found. Fear leads entire nations to do things that history will judge as foolish.
Wars and terrorist attacks are so far out of our comfort zone, that our minds don’t know how to handle the news. We certainly can’t control world events - which causes even more anxiety. My favorite poem, the Serenity Prayer is as follows,
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
Serenity is the opposite of anxiety – and we should seek it out whenever possible.
There are also fears that are closer to home. Many of those fears exist because we don’t try to understand them. I worked in the food industry for over 20 years. One of the great fears that I heard from many people was also the most nonsensical. Many of you have probably heard about Genetically Modified Organisms, or GMOs. I realize that biologists should have found a name that is less scary than Genetically Modified Organisms. It brings up images from horror films about carnivorous daisies, giant ants, and zombies. Foods made from GMO ingredients have been nicknamed FrankenFoods by GMO critics that want to make them appear even scarier.
Despite all the bad press you have heard about them, if you investigate far enough, you will find that GMO foods have never harmed anyone. Nobody has died or even gotten sick from a GMO food. There are people who want you to be afraid of GMOs, but they have absolutely no proof it does any harm.
One of the claims is that the DNA in the GMO food could get into your DNA and cause cancer or cause you to transform. This is nonsense of course. By this logic, if you eat a hamburger, you could turn into a cow. During my career in flour milling, I dealt with a number of wheat breeders. Yes, wheat breeders breed different crosses of wheat, looking for strains that give better yields, resistance to disease, etc. Wheat breeders change the genetic coding of wheat strains all the time through selective breeding. But research into GMO food has stopped due to public outcry. There is no danger from the starch or the proteins in GMO food. Both are broken completely down in your stomach to their component parts – amino acids and glucose respectively.
It’s interesting to see where that fear has taken us. In September 2012, a group of researchers in France fed rats GMO-enhanced NK603 corn and published the claim that the corn caused kidney disease and mammary tumors. GMO critics waited for decades for such a report. But other scientists, who had conducted similar studies, attacked the findings as flawed. The French researchers were flooded by calls for the raw data. But the requests were not met. The lead scientist refused to return phone calls. The journal Food and Chemical Toxicology withdrew the paper, thereby admitting that the study had no merit. GMO critics continue to wait and wait for proof that their fears are real, and still cite this French study as proof of their claims.
These fears have halted almost all of the Research and Development in the area, and this is a shame. It is known that GMO crops could be developed with improved drought resistance. They could be used in African countries that often have such droughts. GMO crops could be developed with better resistance to pests and disease, but unfounded fears of uneducated people prevent such development. Future famines could be averted by GMO crops – but fear prevents companies from developing the technology to do so.
Worry and anxiety are different
Since we are discussing fear, let’s define some terms. Worry comes from the rational, thinking side of your brain. On a positive note, a little worry can be good for you. In making plans or solving problems, your conscious brain looks for weaknesses in your plans. Are your plans feasible? Are your resolutions logical? Worry helps you fine-tune the decisions in your life.
However, too much worry takes the fun out of life. Whether you are worried that you are feeling a little congested or the world is under attack by a new virus, practiced worriers will dwell on their troubles. Habitual worriers can never enjoy their plans or accomplishments, because neither is ever perfect – and they must forever worry about those deficiencies. That much worry is also unhealthy.
Anxiety, in contrast, originates from emotional side of your brain. A highly anxious person is preoccupied by the what-ifs of life. What if my child is kidnapped? What if my husband loses his job? The difference is explained by neuroscientist Alex Kolb,
“Anxiety and fear activate the same stress response in brain and body, but anxiety is different from fear… Fear is a response to actual danger that is right here, right now, while anxiety is concern for events that only might happen… Put another way, fear comes from seeing a lion jump out of the grass and start running toward you. Anxiety comes from seeing the grass rustle and assuming that a lion is hiding there.”
Anxiety stems from natural processing by the brain. A little anxiety is beneficial, since figuring out the what-ifs in life can help you avoid tragic accidents. If you are stepping to the edge of a sheer cliff or driving your car while trying to physically control your toddler in the back seat, asking a what-if question can be very valuable. But high anxiety is bad for you. High anxiety, like worry, is a negative emotion. It puts you into a fight-or-flight mode, causing high levels of adrenaline and stress hormones. Even without COVID-19, anxiety has been on the rise for the past several decades. One of the best examples of this rise can be found in… parents.
The Frazzled and Fearful Parent
It is believed that parents started to become overly fearful in 1983, when the abduction and murder of a young boy named Adam Walsh became a made-for-television movie. The broadcast was viewed by a record-setting audience. Photos of child abduction victims were soon emblazoned on the side of milk cartons. In 1996, the AMBER alert was initiated, so that whenever a kidnapping occurred, alerts were broadcasted through radio, TV, road signs, and cell phones.
Parents started walking their children to school, through the front door, and, if allowed, into the classroom itself. Fear continued to build. Kidnappings have always made great news stories, so the media covered them in detail. The term “helicopter parents” was coined in 1990 for parents who constantly hovered over their children.
Most young parents today are not even aware of the history of how parental anxiety has been magnified over the past 30 years. The resulting parenting style has been passed down to them from their parents and they know of no other way. In the book, How to Raise an Adult, we read a summary of where parents often find themselves today.
“Too many of us do some combination of overdirecting, overprotecting, or over-involving ourselves in our kids’ lives. We treat our kids like rare and precious botanical specimens and provide a deliberate, measured amount of care and feeding while running interference on all that might toughen and weather them… And what of our own lives as parents? (“What life?” is a reasonable response.) We’re frazzled. Worried. Empty.”
Remember, anxiety is an emotional fear of what might happen. The fear doesn’t have to be rational. Most parents are anxious about the possibility of their children being kidnapped. But the odds of having your child kidnapped are much lower than parents think. Though we hear of child abductions, the vast majority of them are parental kidnappings, such as occur in custody disputes. Since 2010, the FBI reports that the United States averages fewer than 350 kidnappings of youth (under the age of 21) per year by strangers. Doing the math, if there are 329 million people in the United States and 27.7% of them are under 21 years of age, the odds of a true kidnapping are… about 1 in 260,000. For comparison, the chances of your son being struck by lightning in his lifetime in 1 in 15,300 - or about 17 times the probability of his being kidnapped. Yet young parents will continue to walk their children to school, because anxiety does not really care about odds.
From a recent Time article, we can see that parental anxiety, especially in mothers, is still an on-going issue.
“Anxiety is a silent epidemic among American mothers. It is debilitating, but normalized and even socially sanctioned. We’ve come to confuse fear with love, and the pursuit of zero risk with responsible parenting”
Fear and anxiety are passed down from one generation to the next. Parents should be aware of this possibility as they warn their children about dangers. Your child’s serenity is important and should be considered before making decisions. For example, if there was a proposal to install a walk-through metal detector in the lobby of your neighborhood elementary school, would you support it?
The knee jerk reaction may be to support any effort to ensure the protection of our young children. But let’s look a little deeper into the question. There are about 89,000 elementary schools in the United States. Only a very few of these schools have ever had shootings occur in them. (Neither locked doors nor security systems prevented the attacks anyway). So, one must ask, what is the probability that a metal detector will make your children more secure? Very, very, incredibly low. On the other hand, when your children learns that a metal detector is being installed to keep bad men from bringing guns into the school to shoot them, what is the probability that your children are going to feel threatened and less secure? Rather high, don’t you think? Why would we ever suggest to elementary children that such violence in their school is even possible? Every time they walk past the metal detector, your children will be reminded that bad men want to hurt them. What will happen to their peace of mind? Is the extremely small likelihood that a metal detector will ever help protect your children worth the anxiety it will most certainly bring into each child’s life? A child’s happiness and security are very important. Should we strike fear in our children’s minds in an effort to keep them safe from near-impossible parental fears?
Apocalypse Anxiety
Many good Christians are highly anxious about having to endure the final days of the Apocalypse. The name of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints reminds us of the possibility of witnessing the events described in the Book of Revelations. However, even as He taught us about the trials of the days preceding His Second Coming, the Savior gives us encouragement not to be anxious about it. In Luke 21, the Savior describes the wars, earthquakes, famine, and pestilence of the last days. He also foretells that His followers will be persecuted, jailed, betrayed, and hated. These verses (and the whole book of Revelations) have the potential of creating loads of anxiety among those reading them. Then the Savior reassures us that,
“But there shall not an hair of your head perish. In your patience possess ye your souls”. (Luke 21:18-19)
“Possess ye your souls” is a poetic phrase that I interpret as “get ahold of yourself”. In Luke 21, Jesus continues His descriptions of the desolation that will come and that those alive will see signs in the sun, moon, and stars. Men’s hearts will fail them from fear and from witnessing the signs of the times coming to pass. Even the powers of heaven will be shaken. But then, He assures us,
“And then shall they see the Son of man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. And when these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh.”
Finally, in the book of Revelations, John the Beloved documents his very symbolic vision of the Apocalypse. Even heavily symbolized, it is quite apparent that none of the world wars or the coronavirus will match the final days before the Second Coming. In Revelations 8-11, we read of seven angels whose trumpet blasts bring hail, fire, falling stars, a darkening sun, smoke, death, and earthquakes. But then, after all of this is accomplished, we read in Revelations 21 what happens in the end.
“And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away”.
The mystery is solved! We know what is going to happen the end of time. The end of the world as we know it is rather like reading a mystery novel that you spoil by jumping ahead and reading the last few pages. You know how everything turns out. The suspense is gone. If you have a testimony of the Gospel, you should have confidence in the final outcome.
President Russell M. Nelson tells a story about when he was traveling in a small, commuter airplane and an engine caught fire and exploded. The plane started to spiral down out of control. He mentioned how sorry he felt for one woman who became uncontrollably hysterical. President Nelson reported that he was calm, even though he knew he might die within a few minutes. He was ready to meet his Maker. President Nelson refers to Luke 21:26, which describes that in the latter days men’s hearts will fail them for fear. But we do not need to have such fear if we recognize, as he put it, “with an eternal perspective that all will be well”.
I was once in a similar, though not as dangerous, situation as that of President Nelson. I was also traveling in a small commuter airplane when we entered a major storm cloud. The buffetings were intense, the plane rose and fell like a roller coaster, and lightning flashes filled the cockpit. One woman in the back of the plane became uncontrollably hysterical, screaming and pulling her hair. I feared she might actually run to the plane door and try to open it to escape. I got up, sat down next to her, and held her hand until it was all over. I was calmer than I expected to be. I even remember feeling perturbed that this woman was making such a fuss.
Afterwards, I recognized that, perhaps like President Nelson, I had faith that I knew the ending of the story of Earth life. Had my plane crashed, I would have missed my family terribly – but it would have been only temporary. We would be reunited. In any story, it is the long-term ramifications of the plot that’s important. I would have an eternity of time to catch up with my family. It is amazing what that realization does to your outlook on life and fear of death.
In Luke 21 and the book of Revelations, the attitude of the text is that “It’s all good in the end, so really, why worry?” I know this attitude is harder that it sounds. Your emotional brain is naturally fearful of discomfort and death. Your rational brain may accept the fact that the world has turned upside down, but it will probably downplay the likelihood that it will affect you personally. All that is left to comfort your mind is your testimony and your spiritual self, which must step up and insist to your mental self that all will be well in the end.
Scriptural Encouragement to NOT Worry
The scriptures tell us that neither your Heavenly Father nor your Savior wants you to worry or be anxious. After all, worry and anxiety conflict with the doctrine that “Man is that he might have joy”. So we are told throughout the scriptures to “fear not.”
Matthew 6
“Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed? (For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things.”
Doctrine & Covenants 6:34
Therefore, fear not, little flock; do good; let earth and hell combine against you, for if ye are built upon my rock, they cannot prevail.
Doctrine & Covenants 50
Fear not, little children, for you are mine, and I have overcome the world, and you are of them that my Father hath given me; And none of them that my Father hath given me shall be lost.
COVID-19
We will never be able to calculate the cost of the coronavirus crisis to the world in terms of mental health. Fear and anxiety have run rampant for over a year now. Some people have handled that fear poorly, battling one another in store aisles for toilet paper. But other people, especially our medical providers, sacrificed their time and risked their own health to help others. It is during the most difficult times that we show our true character, mental control, and spiritual strength. Pandemics are not new to this earth… but they are new to our current generations. We have never seen anything like this biological threat and fear is still turning lives upside down.
In regards to COVID-19, we need to fight back our fears, realizing the awful effect they have on our minds and spirits. Recite the Serenity Prayer each morning. Take the vaccine as soon as it becomes available to you. Wear a facemask and practice social distancing. But try not to fear. It just makes the situation worse and can cause you to make decisions that you will regret later.
So, that is all I have for you today. Thank you for listening. If you have any suggestions for future topics, please let me know at scottrfrazer@gmail.com. This is Scott Frazer from the podcast “Science and Scriptures”. Have a great week and take care.