“There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love.” (1 John 4:18). One definition of fear is a negative image of what could be. Funnily enough, a “negative image of what could be” is an essential part of casting raw, unshaped, liquid metal into beautiful and intricate metal objects. Without the negative image, we could not create the final object. Without fear, we could not create perfect love. I know the common understanding of John’s words when he says that “perfect love casteth out fear”, he means that love expels or banishes the fear. But it might be more useful if instead we imagine that the warm, glowing, liquid gold, perfect love of Christ is poured into the negative image of our fears and once that love settles and crystalizes, it has been cast out of the negative images of our fears. Fear is an emptiness inside of us that is begging to be filled with God’s love. Without our fears, we would not be able to give shape and create such wondrous manifestations of pure love, far more beautiful for their intricacies and complexities shaped by our very fears than they could have been if we had no fear and no negative image to receive that love. Fear, properly utilized, paves the way for the works of God to become fully manifest. Fears do carry with them torment, but it is the torment of an unfinished job that is crying out for completion. I hope that wherever we find fear, we choose to pour in the perfect love of Christ, so that we can cast out of those fears works more lovely and wondrous than we ever could have imagined.
