They fear growing old so they dose themselves with a succession of drugs advertised to keep them young. They fear bad health so they begin to find evidence of disease in every meaningless symptom. There are those fears that fall under the category of “personal anxiety.” Everywhere we find men and women facing these fears. There are those superstitious fears that range from the fear of walking under a ladder to a fear of Friday the thirteenth. Our fears assume many different disguises and dress themselves in strangely different robes. ![]() Like a nagging hound of hell, fear follows our every footstep, leaving us tormented by day and tortured by night. Today it has become almost a truism to call our time an “age of fear.” In these days of terrifying change, bitter international tension and chaotic social disruption, who has not experienced the paralysis of crippling fear? Everywhere there are people depressed and bewildered, irritable and nervous all because of the monster of fear. “For God hath not given us the spirit of fear but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.” II Timotny 1:7. For fear has to do with punishment, and he who fears is not perfected in love.” I John 4:18. “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. Or to put it another way, not but disarmament will cast out fear, and disarmament will never become a reality until enough goodwill and good faith are released to make mutual trust a reality.” ![]() 2 King identifies fear as a major cause of war and prescribes love as its remedy: “Only love, understanding and organized goodwill can cast out fear. 1 In this sermon, developed from one that he preached at Dexter in 1957, he draws on the work of Riverside Church ministers Harry Emerson Fosdick and Robert McCracken, and theologians Paul Tillich and Joshua Liebman, to offer ways to conquer modern fears. King first developed a sermon on the subject of fear during the early years that King assisted his father at Ebenezer.
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