Animals can tell if you are afraid, better probably than your fellow humans can; it is harder to “pull the wool” over their eyes. So there are two types of fear predominantly, fear of outward circumstances, and the inner fear which makes the heart go cold.
Goethe records how on his Italian Journey, on descending from the Alps, he came across an architectural conference debating whether it was better to imitate or originate. Imitating won the verdict. I am inclined to agree; though there is no need to be a plagiarist. It is daunting to have to set out on one’s own, and break new ground. Much better to build on the efforts of one’s forebears, if one can. But there comes a time when one can no longer do that. Carl Gustav Jung, who considered himself a Christian, in the 1950s tried to interest the theologians of the Church of England in his work, and persuade them that they must abandon dogma, and take account of the realities of the spiritual world as he had found them in practice. It is a reasonable argument that theory is no good, if it conflicts with experience; and his experience pre-eminently was his descent into the unconscious between 1914 and 1919. But without exception the theologians turned a deaf ear. This chapter of the debate between science and religion was to be about the mind, apparently the last great unknown. Jung was saying the human soul is unbelievably complex, whereas I have never heard a clergyman suggest it had any structure at all. The chasm between their attitudes was as deep as that! Religion has been the great world of dreams, from Jacob onwards. But they want to be realistic dreams; not just wishful thinking.
Jesus turned Judaism, the best religion at the time, into the most sublime religion the world has known. Jesus said he came to show us the Father; in other words to teach us about the intimacy that can exist between God and the soul; which if it is reality and not fantasy, is far deeper than words. This must have started as a dream in his mind; but one he was able to bring to fruition. With difficulty it may be possible from time to time to express this intimacy in words, particularly in regard to what one believes is, or was, one’s vocation. One may of course be mistaken about a vocation, because there is never any absolute safety from wishful thinking. But on the whole it is safer to believe too much, rather than too little. Better to pay a price oneself for over-boldness, than to wreck the whole enterprise by over-timidity. Better to be brave and believe too much, than disappoint God through cowardice, and believe too little.
In many ways the world situation today is similar to what it was in Jesus’ day. Then the Roman world must have been utterly sick of war, after the seven years civil war following the murder of Julius Caesar. Now we are all weary of war; but are compelled to decide whether to submit to terror or fight it.