Psalm 56:11. "[I]n God I trust without a fear. What can man do to me?"

I used to read things like this and think "Man can do a whole lot to me! Just look at all the violence, torture, and abuse going on all over the world!" That is because I allowed myself to fear (and I still do, sometimes, to be honest). Fear of anything this world can do to us is antithetical to trust in God. If I truly believe that God loves me and that He is the all-powerful Creator of the universe who has a plan for all of creation's ultimate redemption, then I really have no need to fear. Yes, the world can hurt me physically, just as it hurt Jesus so tremendously, but no man can take my soul from me; no one can take my free will.

Jesus said not to fear those who can kill the body, but only the one who can destroy both body and soul in hell (Matthew 10:28). So we should fear the loss of our souls, and where they go our bodies follow. But we have free will, the ability to choose to trust rather than despair, and we have confession and God's grace and mercy for those times when we choose poorly. In the end, at the Resurrection of the Dead, we will all get our bodies back. Then our souls, reunited with our bodies, will go to the place we have chosen with our free will for all eternity. Eternal separation from God, from all love, is the only thing we truly have to fear. God has given us the ability to avoid that fate, and He wants to help us do so (so much so that He suffered a torturous death to allow us to)!

Fear is a great tool of the devil. If we allow fear to lead us into sin, into indifference or inhumanity to our fellow man, for example, we are succumbing to the devil's lure. Pain hurts, don't get me wrong, and I still do fear it sometimes. But we are called to bear it with charity, trusting that God is working through it to bring about a greater good, just as He did with Jesus' sufferings. None of us get through this life without pain and suffering, and there is a purpose it it - it helps us on the road to holiness! If we spend our time in fear of suffering, trying to avoid it at all costs, we are wasting the time given to us and distancing ourselves from God.

“We can ignore even pleasure. But pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.” ― C.S. Lewis