It’s left out of most of the big lists. The Seven Deadly Sins don’t include it. The Ten Commandments don’t address it. Unless I’m missing something, Paul in his several lists of sins never mentions it. The only thing I can think of in the Bible is the reference to “the cowardly” in Revelation 21.
But maybe it should be in our lists.
Again and again different voices in the Bible exhort us: “Do not fear!” It’s usually sounds very much like a command. If I then live and act out of fear, am I being disobedient?
Fear as an emotional reaction is natural. It’s raw material. It’s data. It tells me something important about what’s going on inside me in response to what’s going out outside of me.
But acting out of fear, living out of fear, taking my cues and directives from fear—maybe that’s something altogether different. Maybe that’s me giving fear a level of influence that should be reserved for God. Maybe that’s sin.
