CASTING OUT FEAR

I am, indeed, far from agreeing with those who think all religious fear barbarous and degrading and demand that it should be banished from the spiritual life.  Perfect love, we know, casteth out fear [1 John 4:18].  But so do several other things -- ignorance, alcohol, passion, presumption, and stupidity.  It is very desirable that we should all advance to that perfection of love in which we shall fear no longer; but it is very undesirable, until we have reached that stage, that we should allow any inferior agent to cast out our fear. 

-- C. S. Lewis in The World's Last Night


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