sermonette: Fear is the Mindkiller

Jarod Ritenbaugh
Given 12-Apr-25; Sermon #1812s; 14 minutes

"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 my inner eye to see its path. Where fear has gone, there will be nothing. Only I will remain."

I first read Dune when I was about 12 or 13 years old, and at that time I did not think much about this piece of inner monologue, which has been named the Litany Against Fear. I just thought it was a cool little mantra before an even cooler scene of the Gom Jabbar, where our protagonist Paul gets tested by the Reverend Mother to see if he could overcome his primal instincts in the face of fear and pain, proving he is human. I have since reread Dune about four or five times and changed how I think about the litany quite a bit. I still think it is really cool, but it is just psychology. A little trick to distract the mind when it is in a panic, calming oneself to take your mind from pure instinct back down to rational thought and sound decision-making, so you can take logical action while under duress.

Consider what happens when fear surges through you. Your blood turns to ice, your mind turns to a thoughtless panic. Perhaps your muscles lose their strength. Maybe you start to feel a cold sweat form. And then it kicks in. Your survival instincts, fight or flight.

Those fight-or-flight instincts are what we will be taking a much closer look at in our remaining time, but I am going to Jarodify the analogy, because I think fight-or-flight actually leaves out a very important response to fear. And that would be: to freeze. So the Jarodified version of survival instincts would become fight, flight, or freeze. And I think you will come to realize that this can apply to pretty much every situation you possibly run into, whether you would categorize it as fearful or not. You seize up and hope someone comes to save you. You run away from your problems, or you face your fear, calm your mind, and act to try to attack or try to find the path forward.

Let us take a look at some examples of these three responses to fear and how God views them. And since I am absolutely out of control, we are going to go in reverse order and start with freeze. So, if you will, please turn with me to Matthew 25, starting in verse 24. And everything we read today is coming out of the ESV. We know this story pretty well. The master gives ten, five, and one talents to his servants respectively. But we want to see the response with the one with one talent.

Matthew 25:24-30 "He also who had received the one talent came forward, saying, 'Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you scattered no seed, so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here, you have what is yours.' But his master answered him, 'You wicked and slothful servant! You knew that I reap where I have not sown and gather where I have scattered no seed? Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and at my coming I would have received what was my own with interest. So take the talent from him and give it to him who has ten talents. For to everyone who has will more be given, and he will have an abundance. But from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away. And cast the worthless servant into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth."

If someone is coming at you with a knife and you just scream and stand still, hoping and praying that Spider-Man is going to come swinging in to save you, well, you just illustrated the fear of freezing—freezing in the face of fear—accepting your fate like a deer in headlights. Tangentially, you can see how this kind of attitude is emblematic to our attitude towards so many other things in life today. When we run into the first sign of a struggle, a common reaction for us is just to duck the responsibility, hope it is not important, or maybe someone else will take care of it for us.

The second of the Jarodified survival instincts is flight, and it is probably the one you and I are most familiar with. How prevalent is it in our culture today to simply abandon ship when the going gets tough? You see this all the time with stuff like college. Classes get too hard, or your career, where you feel like the job is too difficult or you are not rewarded enough for that. So let us take a look at another example in the Bible of running away and that would be in I Kings 19. We are going to kind of hop, skip, and jump through this, but we will be starting in verse 1.

I Kings 19:1-4 Ahab told Jezebel all that Elijah had done, and how he had killed all the prophets with the sword. Then Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah, saying, "So may the gods do to me and more also, if I do not make your life as the life of one of them by this time tomorrow." Then he was afraid, and he rose and ran for his life and came to Beersheba, which belongs to Judah, and left his servant there. But he himself went a day's journey into the wilderness and came and sat down under a broom tree. And he asked that he might die, saying, "It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life, for I am no better than my fathers."

I Kings 19:9-10 There he came to a cave and lodged in it. And behold, the word of the Lord came to him, and he said to him, "What are you doing here, Elijah?" He said, "I have been very jealous for the Lord, the God of hosts. For the people of Israel have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword, and I, even I only, am left, and they seek my life, to take it away."

And then down to verse 15, and we will hear what sounds like God getting tired of Elijah's antics here.

I Kings 19:15-18 And the Lord said to him, "Go, return on your way to the wilderness of Damascus. And when you arrive, you shall anoint Hazael to be king over Syria. And Jehu the son of Nimshi you shall anoint to be king over Israel, and Elisha the son of Shaphat of Abel-meholah you shall anoint to be the prophet in your place. And the one who escapes from the sword of Hazael shall Jehu put to death, and the one who escapes from the sword of Jehu shall Elisha put to death. Yet I leave seven thousand in Israel, all the knees that have not bowed to Baal, and every mouth that has not kissed him."

For running away and fearing Jezebel more than he had faith in the Lord, God just retires him right then and there, even telling him, "Go anoint this guy Elisha, he's taking over for you." Brutal—but that is how God sees this kind of cowardice in the face of fear.

Before we move on to the last one, I want to make a quick observation about the connotation of these two that we have just gone over. How has God reacted to these two examples? Very negatively. The foolish servant, while for one being called wicked and slothful, he gets thrown into outer darkness for freezing up because of his fear and failing to take advantage of the opportunity before him. In Elijah's case, God says, "You're done. You ran away." He was manic to that fear to the point of despair, even suicide, as we saw in verse 4. They show how God sees fear, especially falling to that fear as a lack of faith.

And while it is not the only time that this is alluded to, it is probably the most prominent one. If you will turn to Matthew 14, verse 24. We are kind of going to be jumping into the middle of this.

Matthew 14:24-31 But the boat by this time was a long way from land, beaten by the waves, for the wind was against them. And in the fourth watch of the night he came to them, walking on the sea. But when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were terrified, and said, "It is a ghost!" and they cried out in fear. But immediately Jesus spoke to them, saying, "Take heart; it is I. Do not be afraid." And Peter answered him, "Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water." And he said, "Come." So Peter got out of the boat and walked on the water and came to Jesus. But when he saw the wind, he was afraid, and beginning to sink he cried out, "Lord, save me." Jesus immediately reached out his hand and took hold of him, saying, "O, you have little faith, why did you doubt?"

This is probably the most directly it is stated in the Bible. But we can go all over and see other similar examples proving this kind of thing, this lack of faith in the face of fear. You could go to Revelation 2:10-11. You can look at all of Hebrews, which is full of individuals proving their faith in the face of some very terrifying situations. Genesis 22 with Abraham and the sacrifice of Isaac, if you want to get really specific with it. But keep this in mind as we tackle the last of the survival instincts, because it fits right in as the other side of the coin with this last instinct.

And so we come to fight, which for our purposes means something more like "to act." I do not think God would exactly appreciate a right hook being our only positive response to fear. But I digress.

Fighting is doing something in response to fear. Of the three, it is the most simple in theory, but the hardest in practice. You have to clear the hurdle of paralysis and tell yourself, like the litany against fear we started with, "I must not fear." Even calming yourself down is something that would fall under fight because you took action to clear your mind and get yourself back down to earth.

So as with the other two, let us take a biblical look at it in Exodus 14. We are going to pick up verse 10 and then we are going to drop down to verse 13 and read through verse 15.

Exodus 14:10 When Pharaoh drew near, the people of Israel lifted up their eyes, and behold, the Egyptians were marching after them, and they feared greatly. And the people of Israel cried out to the Lord.

Exodus 14:13-15 And Moses said to the people, "Fear not, stand firm, and see the salvation of the Lord, which he will work for you today. For the Egyptians whom you see today, you shall never see again. The Lord will fight for you, and you have only to be silent." The Lord said to Moses, "Why do you cry to me? Tell the people of Israel to go forward."

God wants action. You can almost hear the, "What are you talking about?" come off the page when Moses suggests that they just sit by and watch. God will fight for us, yes. But He still requires us to move and act on opportunities that He lays before us.

Fear is paralyzing. It is the mind-killer. It pushes us towards our cowardly carnal instincts like freezing up or burying our heads in the sand, or turning tail and running away. Those are the easy choices. They take away responsibility from us. They do not require hard work and willpower to overcome the paralysis of fear.

Action is hard. Fighting past the fear is hard. But it is necessary. God expects it from us, and as we have seen, it is the only response to terror that He respects. But He is not without encouragement for us, as we all struggle to swim upstream.

So let us turn to our final scripture. My favorite verses in the whole Bible, Hebrews 13, verse 5, starting about halfway through. I will read through verse 6. This one is easy for me to get to. I have my ribbon there.

Hebrews 13:5-6 For he has said, "I will never leave you nor forsake you." So we can confidently say, "The Lord is my helper; I will not fear; what can man do to me?"

It may be the hardest thing we ever have to face but what do we have to fear on this earth that the great Creator God cannot protect us from?

And since we started this message with the Dune quote, I think it is only fitting to end on one too. "Ya Hya Shouhada." Or if you have not been keeping up with your Fremen on Duolingo, "Long live the fighters."