How Fear Shapes Memory and the Stories We Live By
Instinctive Fear vs Interpretive Fear
In this series we explore evil and fear but I think it’s important to understand that evil and fear aren’t the same thing. Through this series, while not diminishing the reality of evil, my focus is away from passing blame on unseen external entities. We can’t know the mechanics of that but we can observe the unimaginable evil that humans can execute along with lesser harms in ordinary, daily life. Evil is a divisive and destructive choice but fear is a survival mechanism. Therefore, I think it’s helpful to distinguish between instinctive fear vs interpretive fear.
Instinctive Fear
Fear is part of being human. It’s one of the ways God has equipped us to recognize danger, protect those we love, and respond to threats within the world around us. Long before we consciously process what’s happening, our bodies already assess the risk and prepare us to act.
The problem isn’t that fear shows up. The problem is that fear rarely arrives alone. Almost immediately we start interpreting it by asking questions.
Interpretive Fear
- What does this mean?
- What should I be watching for?
- What danger might be hiding here?
- What explanation makes the most sense of what I’m feeling?
By the time we start thinking about such questions, we’re well along the way to interpreting what’s happening. To distinguish between instinctive fear vs interpretive fear; it helps to acknowledge that fear easily starts as an emotion but can soon become more than that. Fear can become a habit of perception; a way of seeing, understanding. I don’t think it’s so much that we purposely choose a way of understanding. Instead, it’s more about how we’ve learned to understand. Our memories (past experiences) teach us where to direct our attention.
In turn, these past experiences shape us deeply and they often keep influencing how we interpret the world long after the original event has passed. Additionally, even when we’re convinced about a memory, our recall of an event becomes increasingly unreliable the further in our past it is. Therefore, fearful experiences teach us to be on guard. Painful experiences teach us to be cautious. Repeated experiences entrench within us what to expect and our brain loves looking for patterns.
- Your body remembers.
- Your mind remembers.
- Our communities remember.
And what we remember often shapes what we notice and pay attention to.
Remembering Well
This might help explain why Scripture places a lot of emphasis on remembering. However, biblical remembrance is rarely about just remembering information alone.
Israel didn’t just remember the facts surrounding the Exodus from Egypt and life in the wilderness. The people moved memory forward into the present by celebrating the Exodus. They kept re-telling stories and sang songs about it, and they shared those stories and songs with future generations. This Exodus story became part of how they understood themselves and how they understood the world around them. In a sense, remembrance brought the past into the present in order to shape the future. God’s faithfulness yesterday became the basis to choose to trust God tomorrow.
Perhaps this is why the matter of forgetting is such a recurring concern throughout Scripture. Forgetting was never only about the loss of information. It was the loss of perspective. When God’s people forgot the story they lived, they often began interpreting reality through a lens of fear, scarcity, power, or immediate circumstances instead.
What Shapes Our Attention?
I sometimes wonder if this is one of the greatest challenges facing Christians today. We live in a world saturated with information but often fragmented in story. Sure, we still gather around shared stories, but many of those narratives are shaped by anxiety, outrage, political allegiance, cultural conflict, or suspicion (fertile ground on social media platforms).
Honestly, fear is really good at gathering people around a common cause. The Church, however, has historically gathered around a different story. Not a story that denies suffering or ignores evil. Instead, it’s a story that continually remembers God’s faithfulness:
- Through Scripture.
- Through worship.
- Through prayer.
- Through communion.
- Through shared life together.
At their best, these practices aren’t performances. They’re acts of participation. They work to keep directing our attention toward a reality that’s bigger than our fears.
Learning What Governs Us
The goal of faith isn’t to wrestle fear into an elimination match. Fear always remains part of human life. If you never experience fear, you can never be courageous. So yes, questions will remain. Mysteries will remain.
I think the deeper question is, what governs our attention once fear arrives. Will fear become our primary storyteller? Or will God’s faithfulness remain the larger story within which our fears are understood?
Perhaps mature faith isn’t the absence of fear. Maybe mature faith is learning to remember well.