Article November 2, 1974 Issue

Mastering Fear of the Unknown

MICHAEL PETER WATSON

It is possible for us to overcome fear of the unknown and approach our daily activities in confident expectation of good.

Fear of the unknown can take many forms, such as fear of not being able to measure up to new demands in one's work, fear of becoming ill or having an accident, fear that, without one's being aware of it, others may be acting in a way perhaps injurious to him.

Jesus, the great Exemplar, must have been freer from fear than any other man who ever lived. The New Testament contains a great many instances of the way he faced up to problems and emerged the victor. Through the writings of Mrs. Eddy, particularly the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health, we can all learn how to follow Christ Jesus' example. We can learn to make practical use of the lessons he taught and work out our problems through inspired, scientific prayer. In the textbook Mrs. Eddy writes, "If you succeed in wholly removing the fear, your patient is healed."^{Science and Health, pp. 411–412;} It may therefore be very helpful, as the first step in destroying fear in some form, to use our innate faculty of spiritual discernment to identify in our thinking the specific cause of our fear.