Fear Feels New, But It Isn’t

it's just wearing modern clothes

Photo by Alwi Alaydrus

Let’s not fool ourselves into thinking our fears are brand new. They’re just wearing modern clothes.

Certainly, the news is unsettling. Maybe you lie awake wondering about invasion, the collapse of democracy, the rise of authoritarianism, being replaced by AI, an economy that no longer feels stable, or the psychological cost of living under constant alerts, updates, and warnings. But the truth is, people have always lived with the threat of something. Plagues. Empires. Famines. Dictators. Bombs. Fear isn’t unique to our time; it just feels closer now, because the headlines are always in our hands.

But even before all this, before modern warfare or cyber attacks or political chaos, you and everyone you love were already going to die. Not to be bleak, just honest. The world has always been dangerous. Death has never waited for permission.

So let’s stop living like fear is in charge. Don’t let your life become a long panic attack. Instead, live awake. Live ready. And remember, God isn’t pacing heaven, worried about what happens next.

Here’s the first thing to remember: we have to pull ourselves together.

If the world really does fall apart, if a war breaks out, or the economy crashes, or some new crisis takes center stage, then let it find us living. Let it find us praying, working, folding laundry, teaching our kids, reading good books, making dinner, texting friends, planting flowers, laughing at something ridiculous, worshiping on a Sunday morning, not spiraling through headlines or doom-scrolling our sanity away.

Yes, disaster might touch our bodies. Even a virus can do that. But it doesn’t have to take our minds. It doesn’t get to own our days.

Live as someone who knows this isn’t the end of the story. Because it’s not.

Here’s the real question, and it’s not whether war will destroy our world or if civilization is on the brink. The deeper question is this: Is the physical world all there is?

Because if it is, if nature, politics, and science are the only forces at play, then of course we’re going to panic. Of course, every threat feels ultimate. Every crack in the system feels like the end of everything.

But if there’s something more, if there’s a God above it all, then yes, the ship might sink someday. It was always going to. But we don’t have to lose our minds when someone shouts “boiler explosion.” We already knew the ship wasn’t meant to last forever.

And that changes how we live on board. We may care deeply about what happens here; we should, but we won’t be paralyzed by fear, because we’re not pretending this ship was our forever home.

(Paraphrase of On Living in an Atomic Age, by CS Lewis)