Fear or Fear Not

I have been having a conversation for the past 30 hours with someone. One of the topics of the conversation has been fear. She gave me this little acronym, which is probably the smartest thing I have ever heard...

False
Evidence
Appearing
Real

We fear things out of our perception of what we think is happening. We have all heard the statement, "You aren't afraid of the dark, but what may be in it." Well, I don't know if that is necessarily true or not. One could theoretically be afraid of the dark... rabbit trail sorry. We say we are afraid of the dark because it makes more sense than saying we are afraid of what may be in the dark. Dark is evidence of something to fear, false evidence. Darkness is a natural part of the day and is in itself inherently not scary. But the false evidence of things lurking in the dark makes the darkness seem scary. I am not doing a good job explaining this...

I will risk embarrassment and rejection and make this a bit more concrete. Our conversation at the point of fear was about failure. I fear failure and quite honestly really feel like a failure today. The evidence was that I had failed at one thing in one way today. The evidence for my feeling like a failure was miniscule in reality but felt HUGE to me. Therefore it was false to the person I was conversing with but very real to me. Fear was over taking me. Since I already feared my being a failure I saw no reason to try to do anything else right... not a good plan. Fear causes us to do some things that aren't so great.

I have been thinking more about this fear thing today and how false evidence plays into it. But where there are things that are false there is also something true. You know what the problem with having degrees in religious stuff is? Sometimes you can't help your brain taking you to a Biblical principle, even when that is the LAST thing you want. The Bible says "Do not fear" or "Do not be afraid" 365 times... one for every day of the year. Coincidence? I think not, because false evidence is everywhere and fear is something we all struggle with.

Do these realization make me feel like less of a failure? No, not right now. Intellectually, I can see the syllogism and how it should play out. But my heart, oh my heart, is a mess.