Fear: The Good, The Bad & The Ugly

Put simply, there are two kinds of fear, the good, or the bad and ugly.

Good fear is when the hairs stand up on the back of your neck – as you walk into a holy place. It is the kind of fear that keeps you alive and alert, tells you to be careful, cautious and listen more carefully to your instincts and feelings.

In contrast, the bad and the ugly may create similar physical sensations: increased heart rate and blood flow, rapid short breathing and hyper vigilance. But the bad is rooted in all forms of ‘what if?’ – the unrestrained feeding of the imagination, that reduces practical options. It keeps blood from the brain, thereby drastically polarizing us from effective decision-making.

In this workshop Peter Holmes and Susan Williams consider these various types of fear from Biblical and psychological perspectives. They map out how to let go of unhealthy fear, how to grow more reverent fear and how to support others struggling with a type of fear you don’t understand.