What deserves our fears?

Fear: An unpleasant emotion caused by the belief that someone or something is dangerous, likely to cause pain, or a threat.

There is such thing as rational and irrational fear.  We as humans have different amounts of each.  Yes, deer kill more people annually than sharks do, but how could you not be afraid of sharks?  We base our fears on what we see as scary traits and the things that haunt us in our nightmares.  We base our fears on what we find different from the norm.  We even base our fears on people or events that happened in our past. 

Irrational fears- the ones that control you.  They stay in the back of your mind and affect everything that you do.  I think that most people’s fears are irrational.  People, including myself, worry about pointless things such as heights, their reputation, shark attacks, snakes, what kind of car that they’ll drive, what college they’ll get accepted into, etc.  The fears that are less important in the scheme of life, but play a key role.  Sometimes, fear is overrated.  We allow our mind to play tricks on us and before anything has even happened.  We begin to think, “What if?”  This then leads to the domino effect that causes an unnecessary amount of anxiety. 

A rational fear has a strong verifiable, basis in reality.   These are the ones that can keep us alive at times.  For example, my mother could have a rational fear of getting breast cancer when she is older because her mother had it.  However, she doesn't let this control her life.  Much less, she’s not sitting around waiting for it to happen either.  That’s the thing though; it’s what you decide to do with your fears.  Do you let them control you?  While some fears are necessary, majority of them are not.

If you’re a Christian, this is where your faith plays a key role in fears.  You have no control over your fate, but you do control how you spend the time that you have.  As teenagers, we don’t know our exact future, but we know what we want to do in order to make a great one.  We don’t know when we’ll die, but we choose not to worry about that and let it control our lives.  We don’t know who we’ll end up marrying, but spending our time wisely with the one who makes us happy in our lives right now.  If you think about it though, why is it that we understand all of this? We lean on God, not our fears and reality.  Even though I choose to understand the fact that God has my life in his hands, I still have my fears.  I have plenty of fears.  It's normal for human beings to have them.  

Of course, crimes and the abuse of drugs deserve our fears.  Losing a friend or a loved one deserves them as well.   Most importantly, what deserves our fears is the fact that hate, not love, is on the rise.  People are fighting with each other more and more every day.   Taking prayer out of public, institutional events is now a debate and the rate of Atheism is growing.  Basically, anything that blocks our ultimate goal in life, which is getting to heaven, deserves our fears.